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

by David Turell , Thursday, September 02, 2021, 18:17 (1178 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: […] you wrote: “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.”

DAVID: You are still missing the point that time can exist only within previous BB's.

dhw: You are still ignoring two points: 1) that the possibility of previous BBs makes nonsense of Guth & Co’s claim to have “proven” that time did not exist before our BB; 2) that if time is a sequence of before-during-after, you have a before-during-after every BB, and so time exists between BBs as well as during BBs.

DAVID: Guth et al. only discussed our BB. You want time to exist during timeless eternity between BB's, because of an imagined sequence. That is our concept of time within our BB which has time in it.

dhw: According to your original statement bolded above, you and they say that there was nothing before our BB. You disagree with yourself, however, because you say that God existed before our BB, and you say it is possible that there were other BBs before ours. You are now clinging to the argument that there can’t have been time BETWEEN BBs. That still doesn’t mean that Guth & Co have proven that there was no time before our BB, and so you still disagree with them.
Meanwhile, you have agreed that time means a sequence of before-during-after. There is no “eternity” between our imagined BBs. There can only be a before, during and after each one.

The rest of your post simply ignores your own agreement to our definition of time, apart from this:
DAVID: All we can know is time starts at our BB. Anything before is imagined and has created this long discussion.

We cannot know that time starts at our BB since we cannot know what happened before our BB. Of course anything before is imagined. Guth & Co “imagine” that there was absolutely nothing before our BB, because they think it came from nothing. You disagree! So how can you see their “imagined” nothing as proof that there was no “imagined” God (impossible if there was "no before") and there were no “imagined” BBs, and hence no time, before our BB?

In our BB time is seen as sequential events. Fine, we agree. Most cosmologists will tell you that time exists in our BB but not before. The sequence of imagined BB's does not create time before our BB except now in your imagination. The bold above fits.