Way OT : time and tao

[Lynch, Jonathan]

<Er... no. Humans have a hard time wrapping their minds 
<around the idea that time simply didn't exist "before" 
<the big bang. Time as a dimension came into being at 
<the same... er... time... as the other dimensions.

The key phrase here is "time as a dimension"

There is a common sense concept of time, involving the flow of events.

If something caused the big bang, then that something had a flow of
events. I agree that it may not be a dimension of time that is
incorporated into our fabric of space-time.

However, it is still some sort of time. 

Think of an excel spreadsheet, with time starting at time zero. Each
column represents a month. After twelve columns, you see the one-year
results of the "events" that transpire within the spreadsheet.

The spreadsheet itself represents the fabric of space-time of that
little microcosm. In this scenario, time in the spreadsheet would indeed
be a component of the fabric of spacetime.

When you ask the question "what caused the state of affairs as shown in
column 2" the answer would be "the state of affairs in column 1"

However - when you ask the question "what caused the state of affairs as
shown in column 1" you come up with a different answer entirely.

Either you believe in A-causality, in which you case you say that it
just is that way and that nothing caused it...

Or you believe that something outside of the spreadsheet caused the
state of affairs in column 1.

Now, if you define time strictly as a component of the fabric of
spacetime - as a component of the spreadsheet - then you have to say
there is no "before" the starting moment.

But, if you include the flow of events as a workable definition of time,
then you wind up with two dimensions of time, an inner and outer
dimension.

If the definition of the word 'time' is a hangup, then it might be
useful to think in terms of nested chains of causality, rather than
nested time.