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

by dhw, Saturday, July 31, 2021, 11:40 (990 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: So thanks to a set of mathematical formulas you don’t understand, relating to a subject that remains undefined, you accept their conclusion that there was nothing before the BB, although they can’t possibly know that. I have a magic potion here containing globypatumethulin, which will ensure that when you die you will go to heaven. It only costs a million bucks, so please send me a cheque and the potion will be yours.

DAVID: You are poo-pooing a widely accepted peer-reviewed paper stating that time started with the BB.

dhw: Correct. Now please give me a logical answer to my objections.

DAVID: What logic do you need? Space and time started at the BB.

How can you possibly know THAT if you don’t know what happened before the BB?

DAVID: When did your 'time' start?

Like everyone else, I have no idea when time as I define it started, and that is why I cannot accept any theory as being the ultimate truth.

dhw: Eternity cannot have a beginning.

DAVID: Obviously. God always there, first cause, didn't have to begin. But time does begin when it does in spacetime, not before.

dhw: So your statement that God is the beginning is meaningless. I have no idea what you mean by the rest of your remark. I might just as well announce that your God has always lived within the sequence of before-now-after, past-present-future. How can you prove I’m wrong? I’ll go back to my earlier statement: the knowledge we humans have of this sequence only goes back as far as the Big Bang (if it happened). We can have no idea what preceded the Big Bang (if it happened). Please tell me why you find this illogical.

DAVID: Totally logical. Our time begins at the BB. We can only theorize about our concept of 'before'.

Of course OUR time begins at the BB (if it happened) as in my bolded statement above. Thank you for repeating it. That does not mean that time, as a sequence of before-present-after, did not exist before the BB. As once more you rightly observe: we can only theorize about it. So please don’t tell me that somebody’s theory must be right just because peer-reviewers agree with it.

dhw: And so the theories I propose, every one of which you agree fits in logically with the history of life, cannot be dismissed merely on the grounds that the human thought patterns I attribute to him are different from the human thought patterns you attribute to him.

DAVID: Try imagining Him as all-knowing, all purposeful without any need for self-gratification in any way. You obviously can't or won't. Your attempt at theism are feeble compared to those who believe.

dhw: Why is it feeble to imagine God as experimenting, learning, getting new ideas, enjoying creating, being interested in what he creates etc? My different theories cover an all-knowing, all-purposeful God anyway, and as for self-gratification, I know of many believers who think God wants us to love and worship him – and even you have him wanting us to admire his work. But if you think that he is as unemotional and impersonal as a block of ice, that’s fine (though oops, I nearly forgot: you know he has good intentions).

DAVID: Your same humanizing approach. I simply apply thoughts to Him as above. The personality of your God and mine are diametrically opposed.

dhw: Your “simply applying thoughts to him” = the same process as my “simply applying thoughts to him”, but you think it’s OK for you to do it because you think your thoughts are right, even though they lead you to your dislocated theory of evolution and the problem of theodicy, neither of which you can explain.

DAVID: Tell me how your God would evolve humans.

I have just repeated my different theistic theories above and on the ID thread.

DAVID: And I'm satisfied with my approach to theodicy, even if you aren't.

Your approach to theodicy so far has been that you are sure your God has good intentions, and eventually we shall know what they are. And you are right, I find that approach extremely unsatisfactory.