Quote:May it not correctly be said that nothing created may be infinite, or eternal?
Not necessarily. Why is this the case?
Quote:Suppose one thing is created at some given time and it endures forever. Later, another thing is created that too endures forever. Both endure forever, but since one was created before the other one has endured longer, but both have endured forever, so the contradiction becomes evident that forever is found to be longer than forever.
There is nothing, logically speaking, to prevent one infinite set from being "larger" than another, in the sense you describe. The set of all positive integers is twice the size of the set of all even integers. Russell proved that, IIRC. Yet, the more integers you assign to each set, the larger the (sum) difference between the two sets. Both sets, however, are infinite.
Quote:Would you agree that the universe exists in time?
What does "in time" mean? Time is one of the dimensions of the universe. Does the universe exist in a "time" separate from the time that exists within it? I have yet to hear of a way that question can even be answered, let alone what the answer is.
Quote:Would you agree that time may not exist without motion?
No. Would you agree that a spatial dimension can't exist without something moving? I wouldn't. Time is just a dimension. It is something required to locate an object. Motion is of no concequence.
Quote:Would you agree that it is evidently and logically a property of the universe that it is possessed of motion ("E pur si move")?
It is evidently a property of the universe that motion exists, yes, although that follows from observation, not logic. It is not a property of the universe that it, itself, moves. Things move within it. What is outside it is beyond our power of observation, and since motion is relative, we can't know if it moves or not.
Quote:Would you agree that all motion has a cause?
Yes, in some sense. Motion is just a subset of "everything," and everything, insofar as I can tell, has a cause. Whether that cause is observable or not is a different matter.
Quote:Would you agree that the universe could not have caused its own motion because before there was motion there was no time and therefore no universe?
We have not established, nor can we establish, that the universe, with respect to outside entities, is moving. That the constituent parts of the universe are moving could be a fundamental property of the universe itself, caused by the universe's existence. Therefore, no, I would not accept that.
As for the cause of the existence of the universe, it is, as far as we can tell, beyond our ability to observe, permanently. Hence, the agnosticism of Dr. Hawking: he-she-it-whatever might be out there, but, if so, is utterly severed from our reality, now and forever.
-Jester