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

by David Turell , Tuesday, July 27, 2021, 16:06 (1215 days ago) @ dhw

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.

dhw: 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)?

I wish I could help you. It is a complex article, but the conclusion is quite clear. You've ignored what I have written. There is no proof of time before 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.

dhw: 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!

I'm not on a mental swing. What you imagine I think from what I present swings wildly. And God may well have spent His eternity making universes, and He may well have attributes similar to ours mainly in the fact we both think. I'm not even sure He and we think in the same way. All supposition which results in your producing a very human-like God in His thought patterns. I presume a very vast difference in God think and human think.