While addressing the issue of space exploration this week, President Trump said this (in response to a Buzz Aldrin "to infinity and beyond" joke that he apparently didn't get):
This is infinity here. It could be infinity. We don't
really don't know. But it could be. It has to be something -- but it
could be infinity, right? Okay.
I'm not sure I understand the metaphysics of what Trump was trying to say, but I can tell you one thing: the idea of infinity freaks some people out. I think it has to do with the ultimate unknowability of the concept of infinity-- the idea that most of the universe is stuff we don't know.
I've never been one of those people, though. Of course the universe is infinite; that seems consistent with a God who creates endlessly. What would scare me is a limited universe, one where we knew with a certainty the shape and scope of it. To put a limit on all that is, after all, is to put a limit on God.
Probably Trump wasn't thinking about all of this... but I'd like to think that he was.
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