I don't think it is that simple. I remember learning the idea that the Universe is finite but unbounded - it has a finite size, but you could never reach the edge. So you could likewise argue, 'how absurd that the Universe has finite size' on the basis that if has a finite size, you must be able to reach the edge of it. But in practice, no matter how far you travel you will never reach an edge - the size of the Universe will always appear the same from any point in it.

Likewise, with the 'big bang', even though imaginatively, it appears to be a vast explosion, actually I'm sure that can't be correct at all, because 'an explosion' is something that occurs relative to other objects. But as all space, time and matter are contained within that event, then the event itself is not really an 'explosion' or even a 'big bang'. They're simply analogies.

I don't think it is that simple. I remember learning the idea that the Universe is finite but unbounded - it has a finite size, but you could never reach the edge. So you could likewise argue, 'how absurd that the Universe has finite size' on the basis that if has a finite size, you must be able to reach the edge of it. But in practice, no matter how far you travel you will never reach an edge - the size of the Universe will always appear the same from any point in it. — Wayfarer

I don't think you know what you're saying. This would be the case if space is finite and geometrically "spherical". So likewise it would be the case for time: it would have to be cyclical, and then it would have no beginning and no end.

I don't think so. Chronological time is clock time as measured, not lived or phenomenological time. The idea that chronological time exists beyond the measuring of it, is just that; an idea.

Phenomenological time begins with the advent of sentient beings and ends with their extinction. Phenomenal time is physical time; the unfolding of physical process. It began with the Big Bang and will end with the Heat Death or maybe the Big Crunch. There may be many separate Big Bangs and Heat Deaths or Big Crunches. There would seem to be no conceivable way to relate separate instances of phenomenal time to each other either intra-universally or inter-universally.

I don't think so. Chronological time is clock time as measured, not lived or phenomenological time. The idea that chronological time exists beyond the measuring of it, is just that; an idea. — John

Then if that's clock time, what is physical time?

As I said, it is phenomenal time (process) which incorporates phenomenological time (experience). Of course, as Hegel noted with his 'inverted world' this can be conceptually inverted to make it look as though phenomenological time incorporates phenomenal time.

Either way, it's all just perspectives...

Although I think many of these New Atheists and their kin are hateful of religion because they don't want the universe to be under the dominion of a deity, I also find that the concept of a divine order, in which there is a purpose and no way out, to be quite nightmarish. Not only do I find the concept of a deity or religious doctrines absurd, but the concept of a divine order is utterly scary.

I guess it depends on whether you conceive of Deity as a jackboot on your neck. Because of religious authoritarianism it has often seemed to be that, but I'm sure that is not what it necessarily is.

Besides which, and in a more philosophical vein, one of the original meanings of 'logos' was precisely the 'order of things'. Hence the suffix -logy for the various divisions of knowledge. Reason itself was intimately connected to perceiving the 'ratio of things' as discerned by Pythagoras (although he probably learned it from Egypt). So the roots of Western philosophy are in that very sense of a cosmic order; but now that has been rejected on the grounds that it seems too close to 'theistic'. You note a real hostility on these forums to any such idea; which culminates in nihilism, subjectivism or relativism. So it's your ego talking about being scared, because from a Darwinian perspective, it is primed to proliferate, and anything that appears to undermine that is a threat.

You really ought to see if you can get hold of the essay I mentioned, Darwinian Naturalism and the Fear of Religion by Thomas Nagel, it has a very cogent discussion of these ideas.