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

by dhw, Saturday, August 14, 2021, 07:16 (1197 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Because of your total confusion about my position. I accept the concept of time as sequential events ONLY in a spacetime, be it our BB or past ones.

And so you accept that time may have existed before our BB, and before, during and after other BBs.

DAVID: When G,B, and V say there is no 'before' before our BB they state we (our BB) came from nothing. They cannot use God as a reason as I do.

So why did you tell me: “ 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: Theologically God exists timelessly. I'll stick with that.

That means God is eternal, without beginning and end. If he created sequences of BBs, then time existed before, during and after those BBs. Please explain why you find this unacceptable.

DAVID: Just to confuse the issue, in the theories of relativity, time appears differently to different observers depending upon their position and movement and speed of movement in relative to other objects or people. Don't forget, clocks in fast moving obits slow down!!! Pure fact. So time in our spacetime has malleable properties!!! And can even appear to go in reverse. As a result our time isn't just sequential. It is how we humans experience it.

There is no need to confuse the issue. You have agreed that time is a sequence of before-now-after, and you have agreed that these sequences may have taken place before our BB, regardless of the different ways in which we humans experience it.

DAVID: Back to cosmological philosophy: There is no time as we experience it between BB's. You can conceive of a series of BB's showing sequential time, but it is your concept only in this spacetime. It is all in your head.

The time between BBs is before and after BBs, and time is before and after. Of course a series of BBs before our BB is all in my head as well as in yours, but since you believe in a God who preceded and caused our BB, you too should see no reason why anybody should claim to know that there can have been no such sequences before the BB. That was the starting point of this discussion, when you rigorously defended Egnor, and referred to Guth, Borde & Co as the ultimate authorities who actually “proved” (your word) that time did NOT exist before our BB (see the bold above). Since you have now done a complete volte face, I remain puzzled by your insistence on continuing the discussion.