[longshadow]

At the conference Hawking dismissed the idea of a series of big bangs on the grounds that it extended into the infinite past and so could never have a beginning.

PH, I know that this isn't what you wanted to hear.

From Hawking's POV, it seems he feels both an temporally infinite Universe (or infinite repeating Universe) and a temporally infinite Deity suffer the same deficiency. Essentially, "it/he was always there" is just a philosophical sleight of hand to avoid the messy problem of origins.

This doesn't bode well for the turtles, either.

[PatrickHenry]

At the conference Hawking dismissed the idea of a series of big bangs on the grounds that it extended into the infinite past and so could never have a beginning.

PH, I know that this isn't what you wanted to hear.

They have no evidence. I'm still in the game.

[Romestamo]

No one needs to worry about the turtles. No temporally infinite universe is going to stop them from stacking all of the way down.