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> [i]DT: I am assuming a past without time, that has always existed.[/i] -A past without time makes no sense to me. It&apos;s just wordplay.-[i]DT: As for consciousness, I don&apos;t think such a complex entity can invent itself through Darwinian evolution. I conclude it has always existed and each of us has a small part of it.[/i]-I think the complexity of consciousness is much overrated. One can clearly see stages of consciousness developing by looking at the stages of awareness to be seen in existing forms of life.-[i]dhw: The issue for me is not time on its own but time linked to cause and effect. If the Big Bang happened, it must have had a cause. You cannot have cause and effect without before and after.[/i]-For me this is outdated thinking. Things don&apos;t need to have a cause. Things are happening all the time by chance.-[i]dhw: "Past" and "present" are temporal concepts, but that doesn&apos;t have to mean time as measured and experienced by us humans in our particular universe.[/i]-You appear to be wanting to invent some new fantasy "time" of your own. For me it is just the ticking of a clock.-[i]dhw: I find it inconceivable that the Big Bang should not have occurred without a cause, and that there was no such thing as a before (and after). Consequently, I find it inconceivable that there can ever have been pure nothingness since, as David argues, nothing can come out of nothing. This means there must have been "something" for ever and ever. [/i]-It is perfectly possible to conceive such things if you really try! -I&apos;m not arguing that the universe "came out of" nothingness (although I have considered that in the past) more that "it was" nothingness. I take the "big bang" to be the earliest stage of the universe that we can detect traces of (background radiation and all that). I suspect there was a certain amount of time and space before that for a short while, but ultimately there was no measurable time or space. I suppose that must be a type of nothingness. -I&apos;m willing to accept that that is where logic leads me, so is the best we can say. Trying to talk about time before time and space before space is just playing with words.