Timelessness

[Alex K]

What singularity? Cosmologists no longer talk about an actual singularity once quantum effects are taken into account, including Penrose and Hawking who originally put forward the idea. The Borde, Guth, Vilenkin model which many apologists like to sight as proof of an absolute beginning based on a singularity was not only disputed in the same year by Aquirre and Gratton, but as I've stated elsewhere, Vilenkin states their hypothesis merely attempts to prove, "that the expansion of the universe must have had a beginning." We are currently 4 billion years or so (by our subjective time measurements) into another expansion phase driven by currently unknown causes (called dark energy), but we wouldn't say the universe "began" 9.8 billion years ago at the beginning of this latest expansion phase.

Here is a good article discussing singularities by theoretical physicist Matt Strassler:
https://profmattstrassler.com/2014/03/21...ngularity/

I did not want to get into a debate on cosmological theories (and so hijack your thread). So you are saying that the universe is eternal in the past so there is no end to the causal chain?

It just means there is no good reason to think that there is a singularity where time suddenly ends in the past.

But what you call a causal chain is a subtle thing. The arrow of time is largely a statistical phenomenon, and if in our past there is a time of minimum entropy, it might be possible that if you go further back, you start going forward into a different future. I'm not saying this is proven to be so, just that such weird things are entirely possible. Our simple everyday notions of a linear smooth time likely break down at some point.