Big Bang or Big Dud? A study of Cosmology and Cosmogony - Origins

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Originally posted by forgiven:
don't think so john... not only are the members of each subset infinite, the sumtotal of every subset itself is infinite...

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What you are telling me is that it is impossible to walk up and pick one book. This is absurd. You cannot claim that every subset of size 1 is infinite in number. And if I can pick one, I can pick a set of 2 or 3 or 4 or 5.

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our universe is a closed system of space/time

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Not sure about this one.

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in which all past events can be traversed by subsequent subtraction

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Not sure about this either. The quantum nature of sub-atomic particles make this impossible even in theory. At small enough sizes things become unpredictable-- meaning we cannot connect causes to effects. The connections don't exist. Well, the universe itself was at one time for a tiny fraction of a second below that size threshold.

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making it ~actually infinite by definition

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I think Joz mentioned this, but I doubt anyone is going to argue that as the observable universe is actually infinite. As things look now, it had a beginning.

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smith attempts a similar line, but his arguments have always been unconvincing to me...

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If can take an infinite number of steps, if you have an infinite amount of time in which to take them.

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but imagine you are inside this library with the actually infinite number of books... you happen to be looking for one specific book, probably plantinga's 3 volume set *grin*... you know it's in the philosophy section (subset) of the library... you have an infinite (actually) amount of time to both find and read the books, so you start your journey....

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But you are not looking for a particular book. Just reach out and grap one then you're off. Whatever book your hand is on is the present, those behind are the past and those ahead are the fuure. History consists of only those books you've touched (in series) It is a finite set, until you have touched ∞ which won't happen practically speaking.------------------
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Originally posted by forgiven:
no, the question revolves around traversing an actually infinite number of points... or better stated, adding to an actually infinite set by subsequent addition... can't be done in the real world

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Why? Why must one traverse an actually infinite set in order to traverse A set? We are traversing A set. I don't see why one would have to start at the beginning or end at the end.