(March 27, 2014 at 7:51 am)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: I'm still confused as to what could be meant by "before the Big Bang" if time itself emerged at that point.
My simple and likely wrong mental picture of 'before the big bang' is one of causality.
We've got 3 spacial dimensions and one of time. Each is orthagonal to all the others. You can move along any of these axes without changing the value of any of the others. One, time, is constrained by second law arguments.
<Sung>
You can't pass heat from a cooler to a hotter...
If you think you're going to well I think you better notter.
</Sung>
It is back along this axis that the big bang lies. The place it came from is orthagonal to that time dimension, but still along a causality axis. We can't see in that direction at the moment. So whether or not it truly exists is speculative.
What's north of the north pole? UP!
I'm ok with a block universe. Just like free will, I don't care if the universe is deterministic if I think it's not.
So how, exactly, does God know that She's NOT a brain in a vat? 
