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

by dhw, Friday, August 13, 2021, 10:54 (1198 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

dhw: 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.
And:
DAVID: Timeless God is not nothing in that He can create BB's from nothing by His powers. Invoking G,B,&V doesn't help you. They state there is no 'before', before the BB.

This is the biggest twist so far! You wrote:
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.

In July you firmly supported Guth & Co, and in August you are firmly disagreeing with them and telling me what I told you at the time!

DAVID: We are back to timelessness before the BB. And they are not considering God in any way, as pure scientists. I am separating sequential time in our spacetime from a series of BB's. Time exists, as we experience it only within a BB.

Just as you have tied yourself in knots by defending Guth & Co and then rejecting them, you are now tying yourself in knots by ignoring all my previous responses, so I will sum them up. Your belief in God means that you believe there WAS a "before" our BB. You accept the definition of time as a sequence of before-now-after. Your belief in the possibility of a sequence of BBs means that not only did time exist before our BB, but that time has always existed in the sequence of before BBs, during BBs, and after BBs. I don't know why this discussion is continuing.