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

by David Turell , Sunday, August 15, 2021, 16:11 (979 days ago) @ dhw

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.”

dhw: 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.

You are applying a human concept of time in our spacetime to our imagined previous possible 'before' our BB. It may well have been the only BB ever.

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

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

In our present concept of time as a sequence, yes.

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.

dhw: 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?

Ask G, B, & V. Their paper was accepted by all cosmologists at the party. And the religious world's publications went wild: if the BB appeared from nothing then God had to have done it .