Cosmologic philosophy: Egnor on Big Bang, etc. (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, July 19, 2021, 08:40 (1223 days ago) @ David Turell

QUOTE: The Big Bang: The Big Bang is clearly a physical effect — it is the ultimate physical effect (the beginning of the universe) — but it is just as obvious that it has no physical cause, because the whole notion of a physical cause is difficult to apply to the beginning of time. The singularity that gave rise to the Big Bang is prior to the universe not in time but in the sense of a causal chain. And the singularity is not itself a physical cause, because in general relativity is undefined.

I struggled through the rest of this, but I’m afraid I just can’t take this sort of thinking. A causal chain automatically involves time because there is a before and after. Nobody knows what caused the BB, if it happened, but since it is clearly a physical effect, it is possible that what preceded it was an earlier and eternal combination of physical materials and energy. For theists who believe that what preceded it was some sort of eternal immaterial conscious mind, where the heck did that come from? There is absolutely no more reason to believe that “first cause” was immaterial consciousness than there is to believe that first cause was non-conscious materials.

This will probably be my last post until Thursday, as I have visitors.