The Banging Gong

It never fails that on the days I most need my brain cells, they take a rousing drinking vacation, damned things.

Here’s a quote from a post on a blog which shall remain nameless for now, dealing with the Big Bang and whether the ‘material universe’ either (1) may not have started at the Big Bang or (2) may not actually have a cause and therefore, needs no explanation.

That’s assuming, of course, that the Big Bang is indeed the beginning of the material universe, which might not be the case. Even if the Big Bang should turn out to have a material cause, though, the general principle will still hold true: time is a property of material reality, and the law of cause and effect is bound to time (since the cause must occur before the effect in order to be an actual cause), and therefore there will never be a time when material reality, in some form, does not exist. Ultimately, material reality must be an uncaused cause, which has no beginning, no cause, and no “explanation.”

If wading through my mental miasma will allow me, it seems there’s something intrinsically wrong with this quote, perhaps an equivocation—or maybe an obfuscation—of the meaning of time and of causality. It seems it’s asserting that the presence of time is a necessary and sufficient factor for causality so that if it doesn’t exist (as it doesn’t before the Big Bang) it is impossible to have causality.

What’s wrong with this, if anything?