I claim that if you believe there is anything that is without end, then you must admit all questions of philosophy and the universe are vain except under certain conditions. Why?
First, what is the purpose of such inquiries? I assume: To gain knowledge and perspective about the universe, or to find meaning in life. If so, I submit that this goal cannot be reached if there is any entity that is infinite, except under certain conditions, which I’ll discuss.
Our brains are finite. The number of interconnections that can be made between neurons, though astronomical, is limited. Mathematically, any finite number divided by infinity is zero. That means that if space, time, or anything outside the universe is infinite, we cannot ever know all there is to know about existence. Even if all knowledge of the universe, time, or extra-universal facts were divided up into equal portions and everyone who had ever lived memorized all their brains could hold at one time, we still could not know it all. Not only that, but a finite number is so small compared to infinity that it is “statistically insignificant.” That means that no matter how advanced we become, our fine and well-developed understanding of the universe will be so incomplete and flawed that it is essentially worth nothing in gaining a true understanding.
Let me make an analogy to show you how limited we really are. Suppose fire ants began to develop a civilization. They could discover better ways to find food and feed their young. Maybe they could invent new chemicals to communicate with. They could unite and crawl all over the whole world, exploring every nook and cranny. At some point the ants would have explored all they could and conclude that the big thing they have been crawling around on must be the only thing there is, because they’ve looked all over and discovered that if you start at one place and keep walking, you end up right back were you started. Then the ants congratulate themselves: They’ve discovered all there is to know about the universe!
What did the ants leave out? They didn’t realize that things such as mathematics, taxes, infatuation, and other planets exist. In fact, their brains (really ganglia) are so limited that they could never understand such things, no matter how they tried. Their faculties are too limited compared to all that exists. Therefore, by asking such questions as “what is the nature of the universe,” we humans are assuming 1) that we can understand the true answer to such questions in some meaningful fashion, and 2) that the cosmos is as limited as our faculties.
So our view of the universe is so limited that it is far worse than a bacterium investigating an elephant. It is even worse than a flat, two-dimensional being trying to understand an apple. It is so limited that it basically has no meaning at all, and will only confuse us because of our limited sample space. No enquiry in philosophy or astronomy is relevant, because it is too limited to give a full picture. Is there any way out of this dilemma?
How can I escape my limited existence? What meaning can my existence have if I am a mere infinitesimal speck in the cosmos? The answer is, I can find meaning if there is anything outside of my limited space that I can somehow discover. If I can, against the odds, because my eyes are so small, see beyond this fishbowl of a universe and truly find out how this all happened or why I am here, I have gained something in my pursuit. But what could exist outside of the universe?
Anything that exists outside the universe does not exist in space. Space and time are connected, so whatever is outside the universe is also not affected by time. Anything that is not bound by space or time is... infinite!!
Christians consider God to be infinite: He had no beginning and no end. Although the concept of something that goes on and on forever, with no end is mind-boggling, the idea of something with no beginning is even harder to fathom. Everything we come into contact with in the physical world comes from somewhere. By this principle, it is easy to see that whatever was initially responsible for the creation of the universe must be an entity like this: something that has no beginning.