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

by dhw, Monday, August 02, 2021, 10:44 (1209 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: Your objections don't recognize the obvious point time starts with the BB. Of course whatever was 'before' is all theoretical.

dhw: I am disputing your claim that the point is obvious. How can it be, if we do not know what preceded the BB? One theory is that there was no time before the BB, and another theory is that there WAS time before the BB.

DAVID: Time before BB. Whose theory is that besides yours?

It’s also yours, since you agree that your God might well have created other universes before ours.

dhw: Since you tell us that your current philosophical thinkers don’t even define time, I obviously have a distinct advantage over them. I propose that it is perfectly possible that before the BB (if it happened) there were other, and possibly even continuous events that followed the sequence of cause and effect, of before-present-after, of past-present-future. Your theorists propose that there were no such events. Since nobody can possibly know the truth, my theory should carry exactly the same amount of possible truth as theirs.

DAVID: So it is your theory!!! All possibilities in an unknown before the BB. Very inventive and highly dependent on what ifs style of thought.

The same argument applies to your theory that before the BB there was an eternal, sourceless, conscious mind which for all we know might have been banging on and on. Very inventive and highly dependent on “what ifs style of thought”.

DAVID: Sequential time is the way we humans experience it, nothing more. If before the BB there are no humans to experience the sequences to create the impression of a passage of events, no clocks, is time present?

dhw: Back to solipsism! There were no humans present throughout most of the Earth’s history, and therefore there was no history? What would you say if I said that I wasn’t there when there was supposed to have been a BB, and therefore the BB never happened? We humans give definitions to everything, but that does not mean that the things we define did not exist before we defined them.

DAVID: Not solipsism. Time is a human concept subject to philosophical interpretation as we are doing. And we create the past history before us, not the solipsism you imagine. We can't interpret nor create any events before the BB.

Yes, time is a human word used to describe a process which we know exists now. How does that come to mean that the process did not exist before we arrived? What do you mean by we “create the past history”? Do you mean the past history never happened? Of course we can’t interpret events before the BB. That does not mean there were no events before the BB! Your last statement is absolutely correct. We weren’t around to create events that happened before we were around (pretty obvious), and we can’t interpret events that might have happened before the existence of the only world we know. It is therefore absurd to insist that there was nothing before our world came into existence. We have no way of knowing. I am NOT, however, insisting that there was something. I am promoting agnosticism here: if you can’t know the answer, don’t pretend that you know it.

DAVID: There are logical and illogical 'truths'.

How very true. Your theory of evolution proves the point, as does the claim that a universe can arise out of nothing.

DAVID: I agree with your basic interpretation of time as sequences of events we observe. Your 'events' prior the BB are totally your mind's inventions.

I have not invented any events. I am saying that we cannot know if there were events, and so we should not pretend that we do know.

DAVID: The only time we know starts at the BB. That is fact to work with.

You have repeated what I said earlier: 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). And since we have no idea, it is just as logical to suppose that the BB was the result of one in countless sequences as it is to suppose that it resulted from nothing.

DAVID: And remember dear Einstein. Time is relative to each observer's viewpoint. Einstein's spacetime approach is proven. Still event based.

How does that prove that before humans and before the BB there were no sequences of cause and effect, of before-now-after, of past-present-future? Do you really think dear Einstein knew more than the all-knowing God you believe in?