Universal profit...infinite. Wage limitations...finite. Corporate greed...infinite. Corporate decency...finite.
The universe is finite. What is not is humanity's belief that it and its intelligence is transcendent (whan it in fact is finite too).
The universe is incomprehensibly big. If in fact it isn't infinite, it might as well be based on our ability to conceptualize it's true size. So for all practical purposes, it is infinite.
This will make your brains bleed out of your ears: Infinity is a quality or quantity for which it is possible to be reduced in a way that the reduction is, in some sense, equivalent to the original. What a reduction is and what it means to be equivalent is, of course, crucial. A particular example of infinity would be an infinite set which is infinite if reduction means removing a single element of the set and two sets are equivalent if there is a one-to-one correspondence between them (i.e., there is a bijection between them). What it means to be finite could then be a quality of quantity that is not infinite. For example, if reduction means subtraction and equivalence is taken to be equality, no counting number has the quality of infinity since, when reduced, no counting number is equal to the original. Then perhaps we can answer some basic questions such as is there anything in the universe (or is the universe itself) infinite?
I've always cosnidered it infinite. If it were finite then there would be an end say a box or sphere for example. My question would be what's on the other side of the box or sphere?
If it's finite, then what's on the other side of that finite space? I told you...infinite is the amount of cash contained in corporate accounts. The amount of moral and corporate decency? Now...THAT's finite.
Short answer: I don't know. But the way I've always understood it is that the universe is finite but endless. Much the same way that if you were a 2-dimensional being living on the surface of a sphere, you could travel forever around and around your "universe" and never find an end. Yet the surface area is finite. I'm not up to speed on the latest cosmological theories, and I probably couldn't understand them anyway.
What was the original question referring to - is the universe infinite spatially (size) or temporally (time)? It just occurred to me you might have meant in terms of time.
Haha well I don't have a better answer for the other option either! But what I understand about time is that time and space both had their beginning in the big bang, so to talk about what happened before the big bang is nonsensical, since time didn't exist yet! So in a sense, yes the universe is eternal in that it has always existed since the beginning of time. In fact the universe IS time and space. (space-time)
Yes you explained it quite well actually. You do have some different views on things than me but it is nice to hear them. And this one I do agree with .
I was basically paraphrasing what I've read in science magazines and websites and such, with my limited understanding. I wish I could understand the hard science better, so I could have enough confidence to state what I believe, but unfortunately I have to rely on the real scientists. But I am confident that the scientific method will always generally lead towards the truth.
