(October 28, 2015 at 2:28 am)Jenny A Wrote:(October 28, 2015 at 2:11 am)Nestor Wrote: As I see it, it's incoherent to suggest that infinity can exist as a complete set - think of infinity as a number. You can always seemingly add to whatever that infinite number "is" - hence, it could not actually be infinite. So, if past time were infinite, the present could not arrive, for it would require an infinite amount of time for every prior successive moment to reach completion, which doesn't appear to mean anything. But if we grant infinite past time, there is no need for God. I'm more interested in granting the logical impossibility of actual infinities for the sake of argument, and then asking how it is that God is also not made logically impossible?
How is the problem of an infinite regress never reaching the present different than the problem of an arrow never reaching it's mark because there are an infinite number of points between where it was shot and its mark? The arrow does reach its mark whether we can describe how it gets through an infinity of points or not.
I think it's different for this reason:
What Nestor is suggesting is the concept of a supposed actual amount of infinite time in the past... which would mean it really never could reach the present because there would be an infinite amount of time in between.
The example you give is actually about a finite passage of time in the big picture but on the micro level there is just ultimately no finite way to measure because all the points of that finite passage of time can be divided further and further to create a infinite regress of immeasurability within that finite passage of time defined.
Does that make sense?
