Was There an Existence Before the Big Bang?
Andrew,
>> BTW, what do YOU think was the condition of existence leading up to the singularity we call the Big Bang? <<
Figuring out how to think about problems like this is a load all by itself. Allow me to re-state the question in the form of a chicken-and-egg paradox: "Before the Big Bang, there was nothing (no events); Something, not nothing, created the Big Bang."
I am using the following assumptions in my answer - feel free to reject, modify (I am always looking for cleaner designs - for example, is analogy a subset of logic, or vice-versa?) or accept them.
If :
1) Logic is a method of inclusion and
exclusion (the fitting together or organization of definitions); and
2) analogy is a universal method of defining ideas in terms of other ideas; and
3) the assumption that everything is related to everything else via the
Big Bang (any individual thing is included in the set of all things created
by the Big Bang) is determined by using logic and analogy,
then:
paradox-type questions (chicken-and-egg, God's "unliftable" rock) describe the boundaries of the unifying powers of logic and analogy; that is, paradoxes showcase two ideas, one of which apparently can never be included in the set of the other (Before the Big Bang there was nothing; Something, not nothing, created the Big Bang).
Paradoxes form a "hole" or break in a physical mental structure; in this case, a break in the assumption that everything is related to everything else via the Big Bang (because any event causing the Big Bang is necessarily related to it - influencing it, and influenced by it). This break can be defined as the inability to connect the "legs" of a paradox - the inability to form a single design which joins the ideas coherent with one leg of the paradox with the ideas coherent with the other leg of the paradox into a logical, confluent circuit.
Were there events prior to the Big Bang? It appears that logic can't answer this question unless we solve the paradox problem. And the only way to do that is to define our terms in a way that makes the paradox disappear.
For example, you could eliminate the paradox by defining "nothing" as "the absence of energy". Then, by definition, the idea of "nothing" does not correspond to a physical reality. Yet "nothing" does exist as an idea - the joining of the idea of "absence" ("existing, but not here") with the idea of "energy". The map (physical idea) is not the territory (separate physical object).
The conclusion I draw is that there physically exist ideas that have no correspondence to a separate physical reality (it may help to think of the set of ideas as Thoughtcrete and the corresponding set of physical realities as Mattercrete). If we define "nothing" as the absence of energy, then "nothing" by definition does not exist ( ! ) - except in Thoughtcrete. Which makes the question of nothing existing prior to the Big Bang a mental construction with no bearing on a conventional physical reality.
In this context my answer to your original question is that a physical "mental" universe (a geometry of ideas; i.e., Thoughtcrete) could have logically preceeded the Big Bang; the gate between the "pre" and "post" Bang Thoughtcrete eras is the shared ideas existing in both architectures. The difference between the "pre" and "post" Bang eras is that in the pre-Bang era - assuming there was "nothing" - the ideas did not refer to a corresponding Physical universe - just the potential for such a universe. Then possibly some Thoughtcrete event sparked the Big Bang.
Of course, other definitions of "nothing" may contain hooks into Mattercrete and return a different result.
I don't have money bet on this analysis, so feel free to take your swings. Have a good Fourth,
Tony