Cosmologic philosophy: 'before' is a quagmire (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, February 15, 2023, 12:06 (437 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: The bold is the exact point of his discussion. He accepts no before, before the BB. If our time starts at the BB, we have to accept it. No imagination, as much as you squirm. This is our current state of conjecturing.

dhw: You yourself refuse to accept that there was "no before, before the BB". You insist that there was a conscious mind which engineered the BB. And it is just as likely that your imagined God spent the previous eternity making other universes as it is that he spent past eternity twiddling his metaphorical thumbs doing nothing. The quote above sounds impressive but does not stand up to analysis. The balance to "no end" is "no beginning", i.e. NOT "no before". This would allow for your concept of a first-cause eternal God, so I don't know why you continue to disagree with yourself. But of course we have absolutely no way of knowing whether there was or wasn’t a before, whether space is or is not finite, whether there will or won’t be an end.

DAVID: More of your picket fence conjuring. God either did this only once or more than that. No one knows. Best left at what we know. Our BB happened and started time and space. End of story.

Since no one knows, of course there can only be “picket fence conjuring”! If our BB happened, it started OUR time and space. That does not mean there was no before. You agree, so what are we arguing about?