Just show me evidence of any kind of an event that occurred before the Big Bang to demonstrate time existed before it.
Ohh, that's relatively simple, you can infer it from the actions of the universe. Something had to be occurring or the BB would not have. A firework does not go off, despite existing with potential energy, without some form of kinetic energy to trigger it.
In fact, modern western and ancient eastern cosmology both include ideas about cyclical universes being born, dying, and reborn out of the "ashes" of the old for all eternity. Stephen Hawking's model that you cited as evidence against eternal time (although it specifically implies eternal time, the misinterpretation is strong with you young Jedi) specifically mentions timelines being born out of other timelines, and perhaps collapsing back into the other timeline at the end of one timeline, only to shortly thereafter start another timeline.
In the complete absence of evidence we don't assume things exist. We assume they don't.
Yes. There is no evidence that there was not something before the BB. In fact, what we can infer from causality is that there was definitely something before the BB. All evidence points towards eternal existence of something.
And the physicists who I refer to when I refer to physicists claiming time started at the Big Bang are Stephen Hawking and Lawrence Krauss. I have read Hawking say it and heard Krauss say it.
Yeah. The thing is with the Hawking quote was taken out of context- he did not actually mean what you claim he means. You disregarded everything else he said, and misinterpreted what he said completely. In this light, I would be very obtuse to believe you will be able or willing to interpret what I or anyone else say correctly.
In fact, it has also been pointed out that although Krauss tried to arrive at something from nothing, he admits in the preface of his book that there must be some sort of framework that exists (and thus some sort of causal impetus) that causes things to appear out of "nothing", in other words his causal framework and impetus are
not nothing.
But until we have evidence of time before this universe we can't assume it exists. We have to be very skeptical of things claimed to exist yet have no evidence to support their existence.
Everything we see in reality points towards something always preceding something else. So, from this we can infer eternal precession. Since we have absolutely no evidence that something did not precede the BB, it's up to those claiming no precession to provide evidence.
But there can't be infinite beginnings in an infinite past because people have described it as a thing with NO beginning, not infinite beginnings. Whatever "no beginning" is supposed to mean.
Something that always exists has no beginning to its existence. Something that begins to exist within something that always exists does. There can be infinite beginnings in eternal time, or simply enough.
Nope. The present is part of the past and the future- part of a continuum. To be part of a string does not mean that the string ends at you, if you are not the end of the string.
To have a present moment means all the moments before it have come and gone. All the prior moments have finished.
This is inescapable. There is no other way to have a present moment unless all the prior moments have finished.
Well, the present gas eternal duration, has existed forever, and will. So, you really don't get to say the present has stopped, or began. It just is always. You don't arrive at it- it exists in the past and future as well as now.
So -10 minutes from now is a point in the past, it's magnitude is positive (10), but it is measured from now backwards, so its direction is negative. Measurements into the past are from NOW, and are measured in finite units from now in the negative (pastwards) direction.
The amount of time that has passed in the last 10 minutes is 10 minutes. Not negative 10 minutes.
Ok, do you know what magnitude is? Magnitude is the absolute measure. From now to a point 10 minutes ago (-10 minutes from now) has a magnitude of 10 minutes. So does the measurement from now to 10 minutes in the future (they both have a magnitude of 10 minutes). However, the measurement from now to the past is -10 minutes, because it is in the negative direction, and from now to the future is +10 minutes because it is in the positive direction (we can switch which one we define as positive or negative- they simply have to be the opposite sign because they are opposite directions).
The amount of time in the past is always positive.
Sure, unless you are measuring from now. It's always has a magnitude of +infinity. However, measuring backwards we generally interpret as measuring in the negative direction, and measuring forwards positive. We aren't required to do so- we can say that ten minutes into the future is -10 minutes, and 10 minutes into the past is +10 minutes. We differentiate between the direction of measurement by assigning positive and negative to the magnitude measured.
