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

by dhw, Wednesday, July 28, 2021, 10:30 (996 days ago) @ David Turell

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. […]

dhw: You have ignored what I have written. Please tell us these theorists’ definition of time. 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: 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.

I wish you could help yourself. There are many clear conclusions on many subjects written by many people, including yourself as a believer and others as atheists. I’m afraid a clear conclusion is no guarantee of truth. Of course there is no proof of time before the BB. There is no proof of anything before the BB (if the BB happened in the first place). So why do you think a bunch of mathematical formulas you don’t understand must guarantee the truth about something nobody knows anything about? And will you please tell us the authors’ definition of time.

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!

DAVID: 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.

Thank you for confirming that although yesterday your God “IS NOT HUMAN IN ANY WAY”, today once more “He may well have attributes similar to ours”. But apparently you are not on a mental swing – you just change your argument day by day. My different theistic theories present different possible human attributes (e.g. interest in experimentation, ability to learn and to get new ideas, enjoyment of creation, preference for the unexpected over the predictable) from those you believe in (e.g. total control, good intentions, single-mindedness). I note that you have ignored the other contradictions I have listed above. One problem with mental swings is that the swinger sometimes doesn’t realize he’s swinging.