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

by dhw, Thursday, August 12, 2021, 08:31 (988 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID (July 19 @ 21.05): But the problem you are not seeing is, there is no before before the BB. Time didn't exist. This was proven by Guth, Borde, and Valenkin by mathematics years ago, presented by my books and here.

DAVID: You cannot apply our sequential view of time in our time to a series of BB's where time only exists within the BB's.

dhw: Firstly, if time exists within an eternal sequence of BBs, it is absurd to support the view that time did not exist before our BB. Secondly, how can you possibly say that the period between BBs is not an AFTER one BB and BEFORE another?

DAVID: Time existed in each BB before ours, an obvious point. And yes we humans view each BB as sequential, but that does not create time between BB's. It is our concept only.

Firstly, if it is obvious that time existed in each BB before ours, please don’t try to defend Egnor’s argument that time did not exist before our BB. Secondly, why are you ignoring the point above? You accept the definition of time as a sequence of befores and afters with each BB as the “present”. Therefore the time between BBs is AFTER one BB and BEFORE the next.

DAVID: I also accept this religious version from Aquinas:

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

dhw: 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).

DAVID: Those sequences are not in time.

dhw: Those sequences ARE time, if you define time as a sequence!

DAVID: Yes, we are discussing our time concept in our spacetime. Between each BB there is no time.

Of course there is time between (i.e. before and after) each BB, if time = a sequence of before and after. And we are applying our time concept to whatever preceded our BB. And once again, you do NOT accept the argument that there was nothing before the BB, though earlier (bolded) you supported Guth, Borde and Valenkin:

DAVID (under “Far out cosmology”): If there was nothing before the BB, where did the enormous energy come from? In considering God as the alternative, we must assume He could create such energy. We can't get something from nothing.