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

by dhw, Tuesday, August 03, 2021, 10:41 (997 days ago) @ David Turell

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

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

DAVID: I see time as appearing only within each BB.

Maybe your God sees time as a continuous sequence of past-present-future, including his rest periods in between BBs. It’s all theory, but already you are conceding that time may have existed before our BB, so why do you continue this discussion?

DAVID: […] We can't interpret nor create any events before the BB.

dhw: […] 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: Yes, but you don't pretend you know anything. So you have no answers that satisfy you.

Correct. How does that justify your pretence and that of your pet theorists that you do know something which cannot possibly be known?

DAVID: There are logical and illogical 'truths'.

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

DAVID: God makes universes.

So what is all this nonsense about “nothing before our BB” and therefore time only began with our BB?

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

dhw: 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?

DAVID: Again you are humanly seeing time as a sequence, just as we do within this universe.

I can hardly deny that I am human, but how does my human-ness prove that what I observe is wrong, and never existed before I came on the scene? But please remember that I remain agnostic. I am not the one pretending to know what he cannot possibly know.