Cosmology: time begins (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, May 25, 2014, 18:43 (3622 days ago) @ dhw


> dhw: No harm in speculation, but since you have put this highly controversial speculation in bold, we need to review the situation. You and I have agreed that nothing can come from nothing (see the first section of your post), in which case there must have been something before the big bang. But as George has argued, there cannot be a "before" without time. We then come to the problem of defining time. If we take it as meaning the sequence of before/now/after, or past/present/future, you and I cannot say time began with the big bang.-I must say that our concept of time began after the Big Bang. Note the following. Before the big bang is unknowable:-https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/92e02ca82f7f-> dhw: But we have no way of knowing whether there were or were not other events before the big bang, and so even if we accept your definition of time, we have no way of knowing whether the statement in bold is true or false. The heading: "Cosmology: time begins" therefore seems to me just as misleading in its boldness as "Innovation and Speciation: pre-planning". Far too many sensational headlines! Methinks we need a bit of moderate agnosticism on the AgnosticWeb!-Our time begins at the Big Bang. Period. But something caused the big bang. Since the universe is all energy in various forms, what caused the BB is energy. And unforunately for us timeless energy is all we can conclude prior to the bb, because we measure time by a succession of events. Moderation is what keeps you stuck on the fence.