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

by dhw, Friday, July 23, 2021, 10:51 (1219 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: But the problem you are not seeing is, there is no before before the BB. Time didn't exist. This was proven by Guth, Borde, and Valenkin by mathematics years ago, presented by my books and here.

dhw: But you are convinced that there WAS a before, and that nothing could come of nothing!!! How could your God create the BB if he didn’t exist BEFORE the BB? Nobody can possibly prove that that there was nothing before the BB, and why will you not accept a definition of time as a sequence of past-present-future, with cause and effect the most obvious manifestation?

DAVID: You don't understand the concept of time and no time existing. There was no 'before' in a time sense, since time appeared after the BB. To be neutral, whatever or whomever created the universe was timeless, therefore eternal.

If time appeared “after the BB” you already have a sequence of before and after! The whole discussion is totally pointless unless you define what you mean by time. So please tell us why you reject the bolded definition I have offered above.

dhw: Bearing in mind that nobody can possibly know what preceded the BB, please explain why it is logical to assume that there is an eternal, sourceless, conscious mind that preceded and caused the material BB, but it is illogical to assume that the material BB was caused by preceding materials?

DAVID: You ignore the complexity of what appeared in the inorganic universe and the appearance of organic matter leading to our minds and consciousness. You must look at this continuum to analyze from the whole set of evidence. What preceding materials do you imagine existed before time appeared??

We have discussed the complexities elsewhere ad nauseam, and they are not the subject here. You claimed that if the BB was true, it provides “absolute proof of God”, and Egnor
claims that the BB obviously had no physical cause because it’s difficult to apply a physical cause to “the beginning of time”. And yet he acknowledges that there a “causal” chain, which can only mean a sequence of before and after, which I propose as a definition of time (with each present moment in between the two, i.e. time = past, present and future). I have no idea what materials existed before the Big Bang. How does that prove the existence of a sourceless, immaterial, conscious mind? I eagerly await your definition of time.