Can anything exist for an infinite time or outside of time?

No, not true. (related to Son Goku's answer) There is no universal parameter of time in any of our current theories of physics. In other words, there is no great clock in the sky ticking away moments of time, such that our own individual "now" is carried along by this clock's own time.The only "passage of time" that occurs in physics is that of our own awareness, and there is actually nothing to align all of these individual clocks other than convention (this takes us into some very interesting areas on the question of awareness and physics.)So to sum up - as far as we know, an awareness simply sees passage of time in the region of the Universe where that awareness is located. The Universe could be temporally infinite, semi-infinite (in either direction) or finite, and this would make no difference to how an awareness perceives time.

Hi Chimp, please see my previous post for my reply.

The "Sun", in one form or another, has been around since the beginning of the Universe. It is only in the past 4.5 billion years that it has had the form of a hydrogen burning ball of gas. All we can extrapolate is that prior to 4.5 billion years, the Sun had a different form. We cannot determine a beginning. And in the same way, no.

No, I was merely confused over the angle you were taking. I had already addressed the situation in the most general terms, and so I took a physical approach this time.In any case... Perhaps you can begin by defending this extremely unobvious proposition.

Picking an object that by your definiton has finite duration and then declaring that it cannot extend infinitely into the past is surely an exercise in stating the bleedin' obvious? I really don't know what you are attempting to show here...

Yes, it does cover SG's example, and thus is contradicted by SG's example . Although SG colloquially spoke of a particle, what he is actually thinking of is the geodesic along which such a particle will be defined. The geodesic extends infinitely to the past (to i^- on a Penrose Diagram of the black hole in question) but only finitely to the future (to the future singularity, T=0, if we are talking a Schwarschild black hole.) This geodesic is fixed - there is no choice involved.

Well, it's a bit of a no-where proof to be honest You state that X(t) is finite, then force upon it a condition which will necessarily make X(t) infinite should X(t) be defined for all t, then use this to state that X(t) cannot be defined for all t because otherwise it would not be finite - this is good politics but lousy logic

How could an actual beginning have a "before" or a "cause"? Either one simply relegates this "beginning" to a "start if a new phase."

Of course not. Explaining the made-up functionality of a made-up concept is not exactly going to tax anyone - ask my six year old about all his new Ben-10 characters.

Are you defining "God" as simply that that needs no cause? I'm not sure you will find many theologians, nevermind Christians, to agree with you... Maybe you would think, but that hardly leads to your above claim, does it? And how many physicists working in this area give this as an explanation?

cart before the horse methinks. I know of the Universe. What is this "God" that you mention? Then quite obviously your understanding is rather limited. I am a physicist, mathematician, and cosmologist - and while I was an evangelical Christian, considered myself quite the theologian. And actually, of all these, when it comes to the nature of reality, mathematics provides by far the most "why".

you provided no explanation. You merely stated that it was not difficult to know how some god could have created the Universe, as if you have some insight into the metaphysical machinations of your own particular deity. And we all laughed...

True, there are many many slight tweaks that could change the Universe dramatically (and other tweaks that surpisingly don't change it so much.)We see exactly the same situation with higher-level parameters - just imagine all the parameters that go into making Earth suitable for complex multicellular life for a sufficiently long period of time for something like us to arise. Tweak anything too much and you've got Mars or Venus.So, given what we know of the Universe, what is the obvious explanation for how we have the correct range of parameters on Earth?And could this be a suitable explanation for the next level down, in terms of the parameters that govern having a Universe with stars and planets?