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

by dhw, Sunday, August 15, 2021, 09:42 (1196 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I accept the concept of time as sequential events ONLY in a spacetime, be it our BB or past ones.

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

DAVID: Only during other previous BB's and during ours.
And later:
"Time doesn’t exist between BB’s.”

Firstly, we don’t need an “only”, since you have now reversed your agreement with Guth and Co that “there is no before before the BB. Time didn’t exist.” Secondly, you continue to ignore the point that if there were past BBs, there must have been a before and an after each one, and our definition of time is the sequence of before and after.

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. […]

dhw: 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: I'm not confusing the issue. Our human concept of time within an existing spacetime is a sequence of events.

You wrote above: “Just to confuse the issue...” but now you are "not confusing the issue”. Yes to the definition of time as a sequence.

DAVID: A sequence of BB's is what we image might have been before.

Yes.

DAVID: Those imagined BB's contain the only time that existed, IF they existed.

Not “contain”. If there was a “before” our BB, there would have been a before and after earlier BBs, IF they existed.

DAVID: We could well be the only BB ever, so time started only with our BB. Use that as a starting point to understand the philosophic point about when time actually exists.
And later:
DAVID: A series of imagined BB's is a sequence. An imagined sequence. For our BB time started at the BB. We cannot know anything more. G,B,& V are recognizing that fact, through complex math.

Nobody knows if there was a before or not, but it so happens that you personally reject the idea that there was no "before before our BB", because you believe in a God who caused it. So you reject that starting point. And my point is that precisely because nobody knows, it is totally absurd to claim as you did that “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."
How can you prove something that nobody can possibly know?