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

by David Turell , Saturday, July 24, 2021, 17:03 (1218 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Your definition fits only after time appears instantly at the BB. You still don't grasp the concept of timelessness becoming time, part of the consequence of BB creating space and time. Time only exists if space exists.

dhw: What does “time appears” mean? If the BB happened, you can say no more than that the BB is the first example of past-present-future that we know of.

Your confused question sows you do not accept the fact time starts with the BB. 'Before' is obviously timeless. I'm sorry to use 'before' but we think in a time context.

dhw: but it is illogical to assume that the material BB was caused by preceding materials?[/i]

DAVID: . What preceding materials do you imagine existed before time appeared??[/i]

dhw: We have discussed the complexities elsewhere ad nauseam, and they are not the subject here.

DAVID: You won't answer because you have none for "what materials existed before the BB".

Of course I don’t know. But you wanted to shift the subject from the BB to the complexities of life and consciousness, whereas I am pursuing the following claims by you and Egnor:
dhw: 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.

DAVID: Time is the same as your definition but only in this universe. Humans can theorize about before the BB while knowing it was without time. Timelessness means no sequences, the key to your thinking.

dhw: Thank you for accepting my definition. And how the heck do you or other people know what happened prior to this universe? How do you know there were no causes and effects denoting the passage from past to present to future which you and I call “time”? It is absurd to claim that you know there were no sequences. We haven’t a clue. Do you believe your God would have sat there for eternity and done absolutely nothing until he decided to make a big bang out of himself? If one big bang, why not millions of big bangs? We don’t know, and therefore there is no point in saying time didn’t start till the BB, and there is even less point in saying that the BB provides “absolute proof” of God, whether you think he sat there eternally doing nothing or not.

Eternal timelessness is a certainly a reasonable concept. We cannot know how God 'spent time' if there was no time in our sense of it since we live and think while living in time. God, in His realm, does not experience time, but of course He could have created multiple BB's that started time within those creations. Your trial at theistic theory is as usual muddled. I've presented the authoritative paper about no before before the BB. This means no time until the BB!!!