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

by David Turell , Sunday, August 22, 2021, 15:03 (1189 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: You have agreed with the point that time has to be created to exist.

dhw: This is a new form of argument: tell me I have agreed with a point I have just explicitly disagreed with! Please look at the bold: “time is a description, not a creation”. The events must exist, and the word "time" is used to describe the sequence of before-during-after the events.

I seem to remember such an agreement, but don't know how to find it as you do. In theoretical physics time runs both forwards and backwards. And we consider our universe as in spacetime.

DAVID: So you don't think time has to be created? Our imagined discussion of a sequence of BB's is occurring in our created spacetime, isn't it. We exist in time, don't we?

dhw: If our BB came from nothing, there would have been no events before it. You and I agree that time means the sequence of before-during-after events. It is the events that have to take place (I don’t like “created”, as the word presupposes a creator) before we can say that time exists. As regards imagining, we both reject the possibility that our BB came from nothing, and so we reject your statement 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.” Nobody can prove what did or did not exist before the BB.

Our BB starts the only reality we know, and also the only time we know.

DAVID: Guth et al are not abandoned. Time, called a 'before', did not exist until our BB appeared. You agree.

dhw: From the very beginning of this discussion I have DISAGREED! Because it is totally impossible for anyone to prove what did or did not exist before the BB. You yourself firmly believe that your God existed before the BB, and it is perfectly possible that he would have created lots of BBs, i.e. lots of those sequences of before-during-after which you have agreed is our definition of time.

DAVID: Our definition has been created only in our spacetime.

dhw: Yes, our spacetime is the only one we know. And it is impossible to prove that there was no spacetime before ours, and therefore it is absurd to claim that Guth & Co have proved that there was no time before ours.[…]

Remember before the BB you can imagine anything you wish. The only real time is post BB

DAVID: It is nice of you making up my real thoughts. Guth et al and I do not see time before our BB. To repeat, our imagined sequence of prior BB's is an imagined concept we have created to discuss. Time only exists within those nebulous previous BB's, not between them.

dhw: Nobody sees anything before our BB. That does not mean there was nothing before our BB, and you firmly believe that there was SOMETHING before our BB (namely your God), and you agree that it is perfectly possible that he created other BBs during the eternity of his existence. Nobody can “prove” that he didn’t, and nobody can “prove” that there were no events, and hence there was no time, before our BB. And you continue to ignore the obvious fact that if there is a “between” BBs, the “between” is after one BB and before another, which is our agreed definition of time: before-during-after.

Of course I have agreed a series of BB's might have occurred before ours, but based on our BB experience, time only exists within BB's. That previous sequence looks like time to us with our experience in this BB. You cannot go further and insist time, as a real entity, exists between BB's..