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

by dhw, Monday, August 09, 2021, 09:36 (1202 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The truism is nothing can come from nothing. It is not THEORY for me. Something comes from something. Some form of conscious energy had to preexist our reality.

dhw: And so you agree with me that this spacetime-containing universe did NOT simply appear from nothing, and the most recent evidence is wrong. […]

DAVID: God did it.

dhw: So clearly you don’t agree with “current scientific thought”.

DAVID: That thought is atheistic, as you well know.

Then why do you continue to support it if you disagree with it?

dhw: If eternal God has eternally been creating universes in a sequence of befores and afters, and if we define time as a sequence of before and afters, with “now” as each moment in between, then time has always existed. What do you mean by “timeless” if you don’t mean eternal?

DAVID: I do mean eternal:
https://godtv.com/timeless-eternity-living-beyond-time/

QUOTE" […] Eternity is where God resides and He has no beginning and no end. He, therefore, operates beyond time. Timeless eternity is therefore a dimension that is beyond time."

Of course eternity has no beginning and no end. But you have accepted my definition of time as a sequence of before-now-after, and you have agreed that the possible making of universes constitutes a sequence of before-nows-afters. You therefore disagree with the latest research which claims that there was no time before the BB, and a God without a beginning and end does not mean that through eternity there has been no sequence of before-now-after. And I must repeat that any period between universes will constitute a before (the next universe) and an after (the previous universe). Eternity is not a negation of time!

DAVID: I also accept this religious version from Aquinas:

QUOTE: "For Aquinas, God's timeless eternity is unending, lacking both beginning and end….

We agree.

DAVID:…. and an instantaneous whole lacking succession.

You and I disagree. Any event in eternity entails a succession or sequence, as above.

QUOTE: It is a correlate of divine simplicity (see the SEP entry on divine simplicity), and it is incapable of being defined or fully grasped by a creature."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/eternity/

Timeless eternity is a tautology if by timeless you mean eternal! But eternal (without beginning or end) does not mean devoid of any sequences, and so whether you believe in an eternal God or an eternal and impersonal universe makes not the slightest difference: nobody can possibly know that there were no sequences prior to our BB (if it happened).