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

by David Turell , Saturday, September 25, 2021, 15:54 (1155 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: George Ellis steps in:
https://iai.tv/articles/the-philosophical-problems-of-cosmology-auid-1883?_auid=2020

DAVID: Please note Ellis is a major authority and he is a believer in God, not noticeable here in how he presents issues.

dhw: I do not think there is any such person as a major authority on what might have happened before our BB, and I would have thought that anyone who believes in God would refrain from making assumptions about what their God did or did not do before creating our universe.

DAVID: A believer in God can make all the assumptions about God he wishes.

dhw: That’s true, we are all free to make any assumptions we wish about anything, no matter how far-fetched. I withdraw my statement.

DAVID: Ellis is a very prominent cosmologist has presented philosophical discussions of cosmology before and presented here. Ellis is simply telling us we can imagine but we have no way of knowing anything about 'prior' to our BB. Especially since our 'time' starts at our BB.

dhw: And I agree. It still doesn’t mean that he is a major authority on what happened before our BB, but I’m delighted to see that a prominent cosmologist and I share the same view: namely that we have no way of knowing anything about ‘prior’ to our BB, in which case it is manifestly absurd to claim, as you did two months ago, that “there is no before before the BB. Time did not exist. This was proven by Guth […] presented by my books and here.” The fact that our time starts at our BB has nothing to do with what may or may not have happened before our BB. I’m relieved to see that you have now stopped trying to defend your earlier statement, and hope we can now close this thread.

I stand by my quote from my book. You have invented an objection based on suppositions we invented 17 years later that prior BB's might have occurred. Guth's point stands. There can be no 'before' before our BB because our time started with our BB. Simple and correct.