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

by dhw, Tuesday, July 27, 2021, 13:53 (1215 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: You accept that when a star is born and when a star dies, there is a reality of before and after. If there are periods when nothing happens, then they are periods when nothing happens. How does that invalidate the concept of time as a sequence of before-present-after?

DAVID: You are still stuck in our spacetime to present examples of time I accept.

We don’t know of any other examples, but why don’t you accept that a period of non-activity does not mean that there is no time?

DAVID: I've presented the authoritative paper about no before before the BB. This means no time until the BB!!!

dhw: How can there ever be an authoritative paper on a subject we know nothing about?

DAVID: Guth, Valenkin and Borde presnted at Hawking's 60th. I can send you the reference. I have the book. Mentioned over and over by me here and in my books.

dhw: Well, I never knew that presentation at Hawkings’ 60th guaranteed the truth of the offering. From your intricate knowledge please just tell me how there can be an authoritative book on a subject that nobody can possibly know anything about? But perhaps you would also be so kind as to tell me these authors’ definition of “time”. It is very easy to create definitions that will exclude any possibility of contrary theories. (I recall Romansh’s definition of free will as being independent of the universe, and therefore non-existent.)

DAVID: The paper included a bunch of mathematical formulas I can't follow. It is fully accepted by all the cosmological theorists I know of. No negative papers ever followed. I didn't know Romansh was your philosophic expert.

You have ignored what I have written. Please tell us these theorists’ definition of time. I quoted Romansh as an example of how a silly definition can result in a silly conclusion. And may I ask what makes you think that a bunch of mathematical formulas you don’t understand can prove something that nobody can possibly know about (i.e. what happened before the BB, if the BB happened)?

DAVID: It is generally accepted, except by you, that the concept of an eternal God is a timeless God.

dhw: Words! One definition of timeless IS eternal. I wonder how many religious folk sing of their timeless God, believing it means that there was nothing before the BB, and their God had no concept of before and after except after he’d caused the BB.

DAVID: I think God knows He is timeless but recognizes the passage of time in that which He creates. I think of God as timelessly eternal and unchanged and unchanging. He is always exactly the same. He never thinks of anything new. All his thoughts from His beginning are the same, all his purposes the same. HE IS NOT HUMAN IN ANY WAY.

If he exists and if he never thinks of anything new, then time must have existed for ever, and not merely after the BB. Your image of God is already contradictory if you say he is eternal and all his thoughts from the beginning are the same. How can there have been a beginning if he is eternal? If he’s been there for ever, do you think he thought of the earth and humans an eternity before he actually produced them? I wonder what made him suddenly create a BB after an eternity of thinking about BB, a universe and humans. As for your own thoughts, one minute your God possibly/probably has thought patterns and emotions similar to ours, the next moment you are certain that we mimic him, and the next moment he is not human in any way. But I'll have to admit that I'd be very surprised if my so-called "humanized" God's thoughts swung this way and that like yours!