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

by dhw, Tuesday, August 17, 2021, 10:45 (1194 days ago) @ David Turell

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: A sequence of BB's does not create time between them!!!

We’re not talking of “creating” time – we are defining it. How can you possibly argue that if there are two events, what exists between them is not a before (the second) and after (the first)?

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: God does not exist in time. When He creates a BB time appears within it. The sequence from God to BB is a timeless sequence. Easy to understand.

If God creates a sequence of BBs, there is a before and after each one. How can you possibly have a timeless sequence, when the word itself means one thing after another? You accepted Guth and Co’s authority (bolded above), but you have now rejected it. Thank you for agreeing with me. You accepted the definition of time as a sequence of before-present-after, and now you are trying to reject that too. Why?