Light and Matter: another view (Origins)

by dhw, Monday, June 02, 2014, 13:01 (3614 days ago) @ GateKeeper

GATEKEEPER: We can sit down and ask Steven what he means. His stance on "time" may be flawed. Do you understand where dwh?-You have probably not followed my discussion with David on this subject. Hawking's stance is the same as David's (there was no time before the Big Bang). I am the one who considers it to be flawed, because even if I were to accept David's event-related definition of time, we have no way of knowing whether there were or were not any events before the BB. All we can say is that we don't know if or when time had a beginning; we can only measure it as from the BB. The idea that first cause energy, whether conscious or unconscious, would do absolutely nothing for eternity until a few billion years ago seems highly unlikely to me anyway. My own definition of time is the passage from past to present to future,*** and if we believe in cause and effect, there is no way round that sequence (before the event, the event, the consequences of the event). If the BB is the event, and we believe it had a cause, we cannot argue that there was no before, i.e. no past, i.e. no time.-***(Edited later: I should have added that I see this "flow" as being independent of events, which are means of measuring time and, by virtue of the cause and effect sequence, are proof that time exists. Not knowing of events does not mean the non-existence of time.)-I'm still hoping that you will respond to my post of 1 June at 11.29, as my question to you was the starting point of this whole thread, but perhaps like me you are having trouble keeping up with all these posts. May I please also ask you again to quote whatever statements you're responding to, as it's often difficult to follow discussions without the reference points.