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

by dhw, Monday, August 16, 2021, 09:18 (1195 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.”

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.

DAVID: 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.

You are applying the same concept. No one can possibly prove that there were no BBs before ours, and in your case, since you believe in a God who existed before our BB and created it, you have been arguing all this time that it’s perfectly possible he created a sequence of BBs before ours. But strangely, you cannot grasp the fact that if he did, the periods in between BBs would also have been part of the sequence of before and after.

dhw: [..] 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?

DAVID: 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.

I am not discussing this with them. I am asking why you accepted their statement when it clearly goes against everything you believe in! Why didn’t you simply agree with me in the first place? You have said over and over again that the BB could not have appeared from nothing, because your God is not nothing. And your agreement that he could have created countless BBs for all we know, makes it doubly absurd for you to agree with them that there was no before and time didn’t exist.