This post deals with a specific part of one of my main arguments, TSM, specifically the material part. If you don't know of it, you should probably read it before this.
Originally I relied purely on the concept of infinity to point to the impossibility, naturally, of having an infinite number of particle layers below the atom. This still holds true, infinity is not a real number and cannot be dealt with by mathematics (and therefore science) directly, we need to use limits. However, a more detailed argument about the results of going on for infinity might help persuade the reader.
If you continue to break subatomic particles down into their parts, each successive particle is smaller in volume and has less mass. If you do this for infinity, or as you do this for infinity, the mass and volume of the particles (or whatever you happen to find down there) becomes zero. This is what philosophy (though it sounds like physics) calls a simple. Another definition or property of simples is that they cannot be divided. So we end up with a weird sort of situation where as we continue to divide particles, eventually (which we never reach), we get to simples which can't be divided. This does make sense to me, but it's a little funny. Anyway...
Beyond the indivisibility of simples, they can't really obey the laws of physics. We know that forces exist between particles, like the electrical force between electrons for instance. But if the world is composed of a quantifiable number of simples that have no mass and experience, therefore, a quantifiable force, then they experience infinite acceleration. As they reach the speed of light instantaneously we run into more problems as their mass cannot be increased (they have no mass), so they even muddle with Einsteins laws. On another point, that of mass, if we are composed of particles with no mass, then everything in the universe has no mass and is in effect kind of not existent.
I have absolutely no claim to have a deep understanding of these things, they're just fun to think about. And as I think about them, I am struck more and more with the fact that this universe and all that composes it, it help up in existence purely by the fiat power of God.
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