Ship of Fools: Before time

Thread: Before time Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by PaulTH* (# 320) on :

I've been following Professor Stephen Hawking's Grand Design. While he isn't a militent atheist like Richard Dawkins, there is no place for a God in his scheme of things. he says,

" I have no desire to offend anyone of faith but I think science has some more compelling explanation than a Divine Creator."

He goes on to say.

" You can't get to a time before the big bang because there was no before the big bang. We have finally found something that doesn't have a cause because there was no time for a cause to exist in. For me, this means there is no possibility of a Creator because there is no time for a Creator to have existed ."

While I wouldn't want to lock horns with a man of Professor Hawking's intellect, it seems to me that he's missing something vital here. The idea that there was no time or space before the big bang is a difficult concept to grasp for us creatures who live in time and space, but we believe in a transcendent God, who exists eternally outside of time and space, and who created those things for us.

I am enough of a panentheist to also believe that God is immanent, and highly involved in this, His creation, but I can't see how the absence of time before the physical universe came into being at the big bang leads to the idea that "there is no possibility of a creator."

Any thoughts?

[ 03. October 2012, 13:15: Message edited by: Ancient Mariner ]

Posted by Freddy (# 365) on :

quote:
Originally posted by PaulTH*:
I can't see how the absence of time before the physical universe came into being at the big bang leads to the idea that "there is no possibility of a creator."

I agree.

Since God is almost always conceived of as being outside of time and space the question of what He was doing all day before creation is a non-sequitor.

It is just as easy to posit that God brought time and space into existence as that it happened spontaneously with no cause.

Posted by Crœsos (# 238) on :

quote:
Originally posted by PaulTH*:
I am enough of a panentheist to also believe that God is immanent, and highly involved in this, His creation, but I can't see how the absence of time before the physical universe came into being at the big bang leads to the idea that "there is no possibility of a creator."

Any thoughts?

I think you're overstating Hawking's position. It seems to be more along the lines of "there is no necessity of a creator". Just as science doesn't need to posit gravity angels or electron pixies to work, it cannot definitively prove that such entities don't exist.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

I think Augustine makes the same point somewhere, obviously not about the Big Bang! But that there is no time before the creation, since God creates time.

So the question 'what was God doing before he created the universe?' is absurd.

Another demonstration that when scientists move into philosophy, they are in jeopardy.

[ 02. October 2012, 19:43: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]

Posted by PaulTH* (# 320) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Croesos:
I think you're overstating Hawking's position. It seems to be more along the lines of "there is no necessity of a creator".

You may be right, but "no possibility of a creator" is a direct quote from the program I saw.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

Yes, I've seen the 'no possibility' quote. If he'd put 'necessity' he would have been OK. But some scientists love to start tangling with possibility and probability and so on, and quite often, they fall flat on their face.

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by PaulTH*:

quote:
Originally posted by Croesos:
I think you're overstating Hawking's position. It seems to be more along the lines of "there is no necessity of a creator".
You may be right, but "no possibility of a creator" is a direct quote from the program I saw.

Folks who are convinced by that silly modal argument for God's existence ascribe to the notion that if God is not necessary then He is not possible. So, at least for some subset of humanity, the notion that God is not necessary is equivalent to His being impossible.

--Tom Clune

Posted by Mark Betts (# 17074) on :

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I think Augustine makes the same point somewhere, obviously not about the Big Bang! But that there is no time before the creation, since God creates time.

So the question 'what was God doing before he created the universe?' is absurd.

Another demonstration that when scientists move into philosophy, they are in jeopardy.

You see, at least we can agree on some things. I think what Augustine has to say is better in fact, because at least he has some sort of answer to what was before time, even though we can never penetrate it (in this life.)

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by PaulTH*:
"You can't get to a time before the big bang because there was no before the big bang. We have finally found something that doesn't have a cause because there was no time for a cause to exist in. For me, this means there is no possibility of a Creator because there is no time for a Creator to have existed." ... Any thoughts?

Sure. That's dumb as fuck. First, it is a category mistake concerning the Creator, which ignores what is commonly associated with that concept. In particular, that the Creator is eternal and thus by definition not time-bound. Second, he proposes the magical mystery universe, which somehow manages to be one-sided time-bound and existent, and other-sided simply non-existent, without this apparently needing any sort of causal explanation. The problem here is a rudimentary misunderstanding of causation, which ignores the true scope of rational inquiry and focuses simply on physical modelling. But when we ask "why does water run downhill?" we do not primarily inquire about any temporal sequence of cause and effect. We ask about logical causation. The answer is primarily "gravity", not some ordinary differential equations detailing temporal changes. The latter can be a way of expressing the former, but it is the former we are after.

Likewise, when we ask about the origin of the universe, when we ask "how did all this come about?", nothing is gained by the statement "no time-based mathematical answer is available". This does not in the slightest touch the question of causation, logical causation. The universe of Hawking still pops into existence without any reason to do so, and this is just as impossible as any other such suggestion. No credibility is gained merely by pointing out that "popping into existence" is here not referring to any time markers. We do not need time to ask how the heck that universe managed to be when it didn't have to be. The logical question is not answered by the inapplicability of temporal descriptions.

I reckon what we have here is a man who has smoked one too many Copenhangen interpretations. Operate long enough on the principle that unless asked an experimental / observational question, one does not have to answer - as a physicist - and you may just manage to convince yourself that this restriction of the scope of physics is not a sign of intellectual humility but of superiority. Of course, if the world is defined by measurement, then it is not rational to inquire about what one cannot measure. And we definitely cannot measure "what was before the universe". But while a physical scientist may humbly restrict herself to finding relationships between measured quantities, the questions motivating her have never been of this kind, and never will be. Physical scientists share with all of mankind the quest for logical causation, they merely have chosen to restrict their scope in order to make progress.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by PaulTH*:
You can't get to a time before the big bang because there was no before the big bang. We have finally found something that doesn't have a cause because there was no time for a cause to exist in. For me, this means there is no possibility of a Creator because there is no time for a Creator to have existed.

If a student in my Philosophy of Religion class wrote this on a paper, they'd likely get marked down a letter grade for the paper. What a mindbogglingly ignorant thing to say. As I said elsewhere, he's a brilliant scientist and a miserable philosopher. He should read Tractatus §7 and shut up.

Posted by Mark Betts (# 17074) on :

quote:
Originally posted by PaulTH*:
You can't get to a time before the big bang because there was no before the big bang. We have finally found something that doesn't have a cause because there was no time for a cause to exist in. For me, this means there is no possibility of a Creator because there is no time for a Creator to have existed.

Actually, his (Steven Hawking's) statement is complete nonsense. I don't even have to explain why, it's self evident.

[ 03. October 2012, 05:52: Message edited by: Mark Betts ]

Posted by Galilit (# 16470) on :

"And so I saw full surely that before ever God made us, he loved us. And this love was never quenched and never shall be. And in this love he has done all his works, and in this love he has made all things profitable to us, and in this love our life is everlasting. In our making we had beginning, but the love in which he made us was in him from the beginning, in which love we have our beginning"
Julian of Norwich

Does that help?
No physics involved, nor temporal anomalies nor extraordinarily energetic particles...

Posted by Mark Betts (# 17074) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Galilit:
"And so I saw full surely that before ever God made us, he loved us. And this love was never quenched and never shall be. And in this love he has done all his works, and in this love he has made all things profitable to us, and in this love our life is everlasting. In our making we had beginning, but the love in which he made us was in him from the beginning, in which love we have our beginning"
Julian of Norwich

Does that help?
No physics involved, nor temporal anomalies nor extraordinarily energetic particles...

It's more than a help - it's a welcome relief from all this scientismic psycho-babble.

[ 03. October 2012, 10:31: Message edited by: Mark Betts ]

Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on :

PaulTH

How does he explain the Church realising there was no time before creation some 900 years earlier? Obviously the non-existence of time before creation does not threaten belief in God. The understanding of the Church on the nature of God's causation is different from the one Hawkings is using. Empirical causation has never really worked when dealing with a transcendant God.

Jengie

Posted by kankucho (# 14318) on :

You're right there. Scientismic psycho-babble it certainly isn't. I don't get how it enhances the discussion on time before time though. Could you push it a bit further for the benefit of those of us who don't equate sincere feelings about love and loveliness with that which can be seen full surely?

[edit — Addressed to the last but one post, by Mark Betts]

[ 03. October 2012, 10:56: Message edited by: kankucho ]

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
PaulTH

How does he explain the Church realising there was no time before creation some 900 years earlier? Obviously the non-existence of time before creation does not threaten belief in God. The understanding of the Church on the nature of God's causation is different from the one Hawkings is using. Empirical causation has never really worked when dealing with a transcendant God.

Jengie

Bingo! And yet, again and again I have been involved in discussions with atheists, where this basic contradiction is ignored. Thus, the demand for 'evidence' seems to be saying that naturalism should provide an explanation of God. Eh?

Prof Dawkins' book TGD is shot through with this misunderstanding, for example, his idea that God must be very very complex. Well, yes, if God is a sort of celestial Brunel, making giraffes and electrons in a shed somewhere.

I'm not sure if this is a genuine misunderstanding, or perhaps total confirmation bias - that some atheists cannot actually conceive of any arguments outside naturalism - or deliberate equivocation. I suppose some atheists simply have the belief that there is only the natural.

It's probably a mixture of all of them. I have given up such debates in the main, as it is so wearisome to keep explaining it.

Posted by kankucho (# 14318) on :

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
...... I suppose some atheists simply have the belief that there is only the natural........

I think that's a fair assessment of all atheists, at least insofar as they reject what is commonly proposed as super-natural. However, some of them might also embrace the notion of cyclic cosmology being a natural phenomenon, and therefore be unperturbed by these sorts of challenges from smirking theists as to the problem of time before time.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

I think Hawking has changed his mind on this. When he wrote A brief history of time all those years ago - which actually starts with St Augustine - he seemed more agnostic.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

quote:
Originally posted by kankucho:

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
...... I suppose some atheists simply have the belief that there is only the natural........
I think that's a fair assessment of all atheists, at least insofar as they reject what is commonly proposed as super-natural. However, some of them might also embrace the notion of cyclic cosmology being a natural phenomenon, and therefore be unperturbed by these sorts of challenges from smirking theists as to the problem of time before time.

I ain't smirking. Resigned, really, that most debates with atheists seem to founder on a very basic issue such as this. I don't mean time before time, but that naturalistic arguments are used to describe God/the transcendent. Just incoherent really.

Posted by Mark Betts (# 17074) on :

quote:
Originally posted by kankucho:
You're right there. Scientismic psycho-babble it certainly isn't. I don't get how it enhances the discussion on time before time though. Could you push it a bit further for the benefit of those of us who don't equate sincere feelings about love and loveliness with that which can be seen full surely?

[edit — Addressed to the last but one post, by Mark Betts]

It was just my immediate response to a more theological way of looking at things - I didn't expect to be asked to explain it scientifically. Test tubes, probes and white coats are no use for this, you need to understand more about mysticism. I'm no expert, far from it, but you need to let such quotes speak to you, rather than probe, question and analyse them.

Posted by George Spigot (# 253) on :

Mark Betts:

quote:
Actually, his (Steven Hawking's) statement is complete nonsense. I don't even have to explain why, it's self evident.

Well perhaps you could explain to me how anything can happen outside of time?

Posted by Mark Betts (# 17074) on :

quote:
Originally posted by George Spigot:
Mark Betts:
quote:
Actually, his (Steven Hawking's) statement is complete nonsense. I don't even have to explain why, it's self evident.
Well perhaps you could explain to me how anything can happen outside of time?

Really George, others have explained the case far better than I can already. Read back through the thread - especially the people whose views you usually don't like! [Biased]

Posted by George Spigot (# 253) on :

Excuse the double post but let me expand on this. Imagine I told you that there was a sphere that contained everything. There was nothing outside this sphere. Now imagine I told you that x is outside that sphere. Unless we radically change the meanng of the words everything and nothing this is obviously an impossible situation.

Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on :

quote:
Originally posted by George Spigot:
Mark Betts:
quote:
Actually, his (Steven Hawking's) statement is complete nonsense. I don't even have to explain why, it's self evident.
Well perhaps you could explain to me how anything can happen outside of time?

Things happening outside of time is actually a philosophical issue within the physics of the big bang theory. Space/time dimensionality only emerges at some point after the inflation has commenced. The sort of terms used are "unfurling", and similar. So whilst time does not come into being in the sense we understand it until after the big bang, it is still there from the moment of the big bang. The fact that it is not immediately unfurled does not preclude the issue of anteriority (i.e. things preceding it, though clearly in a somewhat different sense, as we are effectively mapping the early stages of a universe onto conditions of our own already-existant universe, even though such dimensionality is only a property of the universe in itself.)

Posted by kankucho (# 14318) on :

Mark: I suppose I should really have asked for enhancement from Gallit, who posted the Julian of Norwich quote, rather than you who only uncritically praised it.

Perhaps I do need to understand more about mysticism. If more of us did so, then it would cease to be mysticism and a good number of loincloth-clad layabouts would be out of a spurious job. But, for the time being, claims for mysticism amount to "don't presume to challenge me with your inferior intellect: you need to elevate your consciousness to my unassailable way of thinking".

Posted by George Spigot (# 253) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Mark Betts:

quote:
Originally posted by George Spigot:
Mark Betts:
quote:
Actually, his (Steven Hawking's) statement is complete nonsense. I don't even have to explain why, it's self evident.
Well perhaps you could explain to me how anything can happen outside of time?
Really George, others have explained the case far better than I can already. Read back through the thread - especially the people whose views you usually don't like!

Do you mean the people who say God exists outside of time? How would such a being preform any kind of action? There would be no sequence of events. No before. No now. No after.

Posted by Galilit (# 16470) on :

I think it refers to the nature of God as love which is directed to create and to form.

In another portion Julian says:
"From the time it was shown I desired often to know what was our Lord's meaning. And fifteen years after and more, I was answered in inward understanding, saying 'Would you know your Lord's meaning in this? Learn it well. Love was his meaning. Who showed it you? Love. Why did he show you? For love. Hold fast to this, and you shall learn and know more about love, but you will never need to know or understand about anything else for ever and ever.' Thus did I learn that love was our Lord's meaning"

So there doesn't *need* to be "time before time". Before time there was love.

I think Karen Armstrong articulates this in our own day and idiom, but she is not to hand so can't quote her. (I may also be wrongly remembering her; i.e. K.A.)

Posted by kankucho (# 14318) on :

Respectfully, Galilit, I'm sorry but you've left me better informed, and with a warmer fuzzier feeling inside, but really none the wiser about the pre-dawn of time. The Devil is screaming "Circular!" and "Self-referential!" into my benighted brain.

Can you please bridge the gulf between these quotations and your conclusion that "there doesn't *need* to be "time before time". Before time there was love."?

[ 03. October 2012, 13:53: Message edited by: kankucho ]

Posted by Mark Betts (# 17074) on :

quote:
Originally posted by George Spigot:
Do you mean the people who say God exists outside of time? How would such a being preform any kind of action? There would be no sequence of events. No before. No now. No after.

How do you know God can't "be" outside of time? [I hasten to use the word "exist" because I know I'll be pulled up on it] but if God created time, then He's not bound by it is He? Neither is He subject to scientists with their white coats and microscopes who ARE bound by time.

Why are you so sure that time began by accident?

Posted by kankucho (# 14318) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Mark Betts:

.....Why are you so sure that time began by accident?

Why are you so sure that time began?

Posted by Mark Betts (# 17074) on :

quote:
Originally posted by kankucho:

quote:
Originally posted by Mark Betts:

.....Why are you so sure that time began by accident?
Why are you so sure that time began?

One question at a time please - scientists are already convinced that time began with the Big Bang, so let's stick with that for now.

Posted by kankucho (# 14318) on :

It's integral to the same question. Scientists also take seriously the notion of cyclic cosmology, which I mentioned further up this thread.

Here's a brief taster.

[Added]
The Big Bang that scientific/theological contests get so hung up on is just one of a never-beginning and never-ending Bangs, in a time scenario which is nothing like as linear as we are conditioned to imagine.

[ 03. October 2012, 14:15: Message edited by: kankucho ]

Posted by kankucho (# 14318) on :

[late correction...^]

...never-ending sucession ofBangs...

Posted by daronmedway (# 3012) on :

Speaking of the Big Bang™ Hawking says "we have finally found something that doesn't have a cause". Good. He thinks that this "something" is an event and Christians think that "something" is God. Although surely it can't be an "event" because events require time. He must be referring the non-eventual moment between no bang and bang.

If he is prepared to posit the theory that the Big Bang™ can have no cause, it's not much of a step for him to agree that "someone" can have no cause.

The issue, I guess, is whether he would be prepared to consider the possibility of "being" before time which, of course, could introduce causality into his equation.

[ 03. October 2012, 14:23: Message edited by: daronmedway ]

Posted by Mark Betts (# 17074) on :

Maybe there never was a Big Bang - or is that scientific heresy?

Posted by Galilit (# 16470) on :

quote:
Originally posted by kankucho:

Can you please bridge the gulf between these quotations and your conclusion that "there doesn't *need* to be "time before time". Before time there was love."?

Before time there was God
Then I would make a quantum leap sideways to the Jewish idea of the "Breaking of the Vessels" ["shvirat ha kaylim" in Hebrew] which is a Big Bang.

Or, if I started from my well-thumbed copy of The Grand Design, perhaps I would say that since the universe is multi-dimensional but some of those dimensions are so tightly curled up that they are not perceivable and so exist only theoretically; then perhaps the Big Bang exploded some dimensions - including time.

Posted by Ikkyu (# 15207) on :

This article Does the Universe need god? by Sean Carrol is very relevant to the discussion because it clarifies what Hawking meant.

Relevant quote:

quote:
The important point is that we can easily imagine self-contained descriptions of the universe that have an earliest moment of time. There is no logical or metaphysical obstacle to completing the conventional temporal history of the universe by including an atemporal boundary condition at the beginning. Together with the successful post-Big-Bang cosmological model already in our possession, that would constitute a consistent and self-contained description of the history of the universe.

Nothing in the fact that there is a first moment of time, in other words, necessitates that an external something is required to bring the universe about at that moment. As Hawking put it in a celebrated passage:

So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end, it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

This is about the models in which the Universe has a "beginning". There are other models in which the Universe is eternal no beginning to time. Not eternal in the IngoB sense.
And importantly for this discussion,
The Jury is still out about the models.
We don't know which one it is because we don't have a complete quantum gravity theory that we would need to really explain the Big Bang.
So no, scientist have not already decided that time began at the Big Bang.

Posted by George Spigot (# 253) on :

Mark Betts:

quote:
How do you know God can't "be" outside of time?

Because the sentence has the word "outside" in it. You might as well say, "I'm going to stop the unstoppable object". Or "Meet me outside the circle that contains everything".

If you want to claim that something exists outside of space/time (everything) then you have to redefine the meaning of the word everything.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

Humans cannot imagine being outside time any more than a goldfish can imagine being outside its bowl.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by George Spigot:
If you want to claim that something exists outside of space/time (everything) then you have to redefine the meaning of the word everything.

Christians have always believed God existed outside the world; that means outside the spacetime manifold we call our home. If something is outside of space, it is perforce outside of time and vice versa. WE don't equate "everything" with the world of space and time because we're not materialists. We don't feel beholden to use your definition.

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Mark Betts:
Maybe there never was a Big Bang - or is that scientific heresy?

If you play according to Hoyle there was no big bang. One of his objections was that the big-bang theory sounded too much like theism to be scientific. Carl Sagan suggested "Big ring" instead of "Big bang"-- that before the big bang another universe had collapsed and then there was another explosion. He used this suggestion as another opportunity to get a dig at the church: for its concept of linear time (apparently totally unappreciative of this concept as a historical precondition of science as we know it). Hinduism, which sees time as circular, had gotten it right, and much earlier. [Earlier?]

I have a question: if it is not valid to think of continuity of time through the Big Bang, then mightn't we just as well think of simultaneous, rather than successive, "multiverses?"

Posted by George Spigot (# 253) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:
Originally posted by George Spigot:
If you want to claim that something exists outside of space/time (everything) then you have to redefine the meaning of the word everything.
Christians have always believed God existed outside the world; that means outside the spacetime manifold we call our home. If something is outside of space, it is perforce outside of time and vice versa. WE don't equate "everything" with the world of space and time because we're not materialists. We don't feel beholden to use your definition.

Thanks. I can sort of see where you are coming from now.

The difficulty I have with this concept is that I've always understood the word everything to mean.......well everything.

If during the many debates we have on the ship I responded to a question by saying, "This is how I'm going to define this word I'm using in my argument", how far could I stretch that do you think?

Posted by Ikkyu (# 15207) on :

If there is a valid point in what Professor Hawkins says is that there are valid scientific models in which god is not Necessary but are still consistent with everything we observe.
Of course this is no "proof" that God does not exist.
But defining God as something that cannot even in principle be observed, since He/She is Outside both Time and Space,seems to me to be getting close to defining God as something that either does not exist or is totally irrelevant since He/She cannot interact with us.
If on the other hand you want a God that interacts with us, how does that work if He/She is outside of space and time?

Posted by Galilit (# 16470) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ikkyu:
.
If on the other hand you want a God that interacts with us, how does that work if He/She is outside of space and time?

'Coz we are less limited by time and space than might be imagined. Especially if/when we pray and meditate and that kind of thing.

Posted by George Spigot (# 253) on :

Just to be clear it's the semantics of the argument I'm struggling with.

Posted by Ikkyu (# 15207) on :

@ Alogon

The article I posted a link to has a nice discussion of current cosmological models. Hoyle
is not the fashion in current cosmology. His alternative to the Big Bang. Steady state Cosmology failed the observational test. The early Universe is clearly different from what we have now.
The debate is not between those who think there was an earlier stage in which the universe was much denser and Hotter (Big Bang). And those that don't.
That aspect of the Big Bang theory is no longer controversial. The debate lies in alternatives to what happens at the Big Bang. Was there time before the Big Bang? And those won't be settled until we get a theory of quantum gravity.

Posted by Jay-Emm (# 11411) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ikkyu:
...
But defining God as something that cannot even in principle be observed, since He/She is Outside both Time and Space,seems to me to be getting close to defining God as something that either does not exist or is totally irrelevant since He/She cannot interact with us.
If on the other hand you want a God that interacts with us, how does that work if He/She is outside of space and time?

From the theistic pov*, that's a bit of a non-sequiter.
It's a bit like saying if you're not wired directly how can you interact with the computer, and the CPU going aha so which bus is he on.
Or perhaps in Sims 5 you can imagine Alex Sim going so where is this mythical Ikkyu, if he's not in the town.

Indeed from the Christian** perspective we insist that God's actions can be observed, partly in the church, more directly but (now) less observable in Jesus in 1stC Palestine, partly ...
But we've never expected to be able to point a telescope at a big rock and go there's a giant old man with a white beard***.

*and pantheistic but in a different way.
**and with slight variations Jewish/Islamic
***cref Solomon's dedication of the Temple

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by George Spigot:
The difficulty I have with this concept is that I've always understood the word everything to mean.......well everything.

That seems fine. The problem comes when you take the extra step and equate that to the material universe. "The space-time continuum we belong to is all there is" is a step beyond "everything is everything." It's essentially saying "God doesn't exist." To go on from that starting point to prove that God doesn't exist is circular.

Posted by kankucho (# 14318) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:
Originally posted by George Spigot:
The difficulty I have with this concept is that I've always understood the word everything to mean.......well everything.
That seems fine. The problem comes when you take the extra step and equate that to the material universe. "The space-time continuum we belong to is all there is" is a step beyond "everything is everything." It's essentially saying "God doesn't exist." To go on from that starting point to prove that God doesn't exist is circular.

If there is more to the space-time continuum than is dreamt of in any of our philosophies, then we 'belong' to the hidden bits as well, don't we? If space-time is in fact cyclical and without beginning, then that is the natural circumstance in which Everything® exists.

[ 03. October 2012, 17:43: Message edited by: kankucho ]

Posted by Ikkyu (# 15207) on :

@ Jay-Emm

Following your analogy, what about a keyboard? You need to interact physically with computers. If there is no Physical connection you can't.
Where is God's keyboard?
@ Galilit
I have been meditating regularly for around 10 years and have yet to transcend the bonds of Space and Time. Maybe I'm doing it wrong.

I'm with kankucho when he says:
"then that is the natural circumstance in which Everything® exists."

Again you can't eat your cake and have it too. Either God is with us and therefore part of the Natural world, or She/He is not.
Arguments that claim that He/She is outside all space and time whatever that means when it is convenient for your argument and interacting with space and time when that is convenient don't sound very convincing to me.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

Although even the word 'outside' carries a presupposition of some kind of spacetime existing. So in a sense, we have already dragged in covertly some kind of framework, whether it's naturalistic or not, I'm not sure.

Reminds me of the philosopher who said, 'there is no up'. Seems obvious from one point of view, but not from another.

I don't think experience itself can be tied down in this way, but that is not particularly a Christian idea. Never mind.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by George Spigot:
Well perhaps you could explain to me how anything can happen outside of time? ... Do you mean the people who say God exists outside of time? How would such a being preform any kind of action? There would be no sequence of events. No before. No now. No after.

Nothing can happen outside of time, since for something to happen there must be a change. And change basically is time.

God is eternal and unchanging, says classical theology.

Can there be a cause without a change? To take the classical example from Aristotle, imagine a foot standing in the sand of a beach, eternally. There never was a time when the foot wasn't there. Yet we would still say that the foot is causing the footprint in the sand. Of course this is a terribly constructed example, and it works merely by subtracting the temporal change (the foot coming down on the beach) out of the picture. But that's OK, we do learn higher concepts by abstracting from the physical realities we encounter. But what we are learning here is that there is a deeper sense to causation than "temporally imposing change". Something like "being the reason for", logical causation. That concept includes physical causation as a possible mechanism, but is broader in scope. It can deal with the foot in the sand, for example.

Now as for how an eternal (unchanging) God could cause a temporal universe to be, let's take seriously modern descriptions of spacetime for a second. I'll make a diagram of spacetime with one spatial dimensions, with some object moving in it:

code:

t
^
|   *
|  *
|  *
|*
|------------>x

Notice yourself staring at this little diagram. Obviously, you are outside of diagram time. And so was I, of course, in constructing it. No big mystery there, really. It's just that neither you nor I are anything like that object moving in the diagram. We are not diagramatic beings, plotted by a diagrammer. We are those diagrammers, in particular, I am the diagrammer of this diagram. We are a different category of beings. And while admittedly some real time passed for me (since I am a created being...), there is no need for that in logical causation, as just discussed. I could theoretically be unchanging and still be the reason why this diagram exists. In theory, if I were not what I am, I could be the eternal cause of this diagram, having always been the reason why it exists.

I hope it is clear now that it is just silly to ask how the universe could be caused in the absence of time. This is like the object in the diagram wondering how anything could exist below the zero time line. That's the wrong dimension to ask in, that's diagram time. I'm not in diagram time. And God is not in our creature time.

The deeply sad and funny thing about Hawking is that he doesn't realize that his "atheistic" model perfectly fits the classical Christian God. The Hawking theory merely rejects the notion of a demiurge, but Christians also reject the notion of a demiurge. The Hawking theory merely rejects the notion of a temporal causation of the universe, but the Christian God does not cause temporally, only logically. There really is nothing here that requires any discussion that Christian didn't have many, many centuries ago.

Posted by George Spigot (# 253) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
And while admittedly some real time passed for me (since I am a created being...), there is no need for that in logical causation, as just discussed. I could theoretically be unchanging and still be the reason why this diagram exists. In theory, if I were not what I am, I could be the eternal cause of this diagram, having always been the reason why it exists.

Sorry. I really do apreciate the effort you are taking to explain it to me but I'm just not getting it.

In your example both the diagram and the creator of the diagram are still in time as far as I understand it.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by George Spigot:
In your example both the diagram and the creator of the diagram are still in time as far as I understand it.

I've made two key points.

Diagram time (the dimension labelled by t in the diagram) is not diagrammer time (my time). You can ask when I made that diagram, but the answer to that is not some point in the diagram itself.
Causation is more general than "imposing temporal change", as shown by the foot in the sand example. A causing B can mean that A is the reason for B, even if there wasn't first A in time and then B due to A. There is the possibility of what we could call logical causation. Without foot, no footprint. Nevertheless, there always was the foot.

My statement about God puts these pieces together. 1. Like I am to the diagram, God is to the world. 2. Unlike me, God is eternal. There is no "God-time" in which He operates. Nevertheless He can cause, but logically, not temporally.

Did that make more sense?

Posted by Jay-Emm (# 11411) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ikkyu:
@ Jay-Emm

Following your analogy, what about a keyboard? You need to interact physically with computers. If there is no Physical connection you can't.
Where is God's keyboard?

It was a like statement, the analogy does break down (for a start even if the universe was one planet on computer scale we're like 100 bytes of ram).

Which is partly why I included something Simish as an alternative where in-universe the connection is much more ethereal, and only apparent by 'miraculous buildings' and 'uncharacteristic actions' and needn't be.
(although it does make God look like a puppet-meister)

However (taking the analogy as a description of reality), what you're thinking of God's keyboard equivalent would be in God's space.
The computer side bit, would be a source of streams of events, that could 'just be', and are really really slow and rare, sometimes completely absent despite the user being in control.
It's not very like the Christian view of God*, even as regards the aspect your question raises, but it has (a slightly weakened) immanence and otherness. And hopefully explains why we don't consider that a problem, or in some ways a meaningful question**.

*(if you thought of him as the atoms and electric fields that make the chips and the universe view as the 'windows and pictures' you'd get some sense of the primal cause relationship and connectivity, at the expense of the personanity and looking a bit pantheistic). Dream and dreamer, writer and story, again has some strengths and weaknesses.

But for a perfect analogy, you need to consider something God-like and something Universe like and the relationship between them.

** In some respects, it's the reverse of those asking what comes before the big bang, or those other questions where you can't see why we think there's a problem.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by George Spigot:

In your example both the diagram and the creator of the diagram are still in time as far as I understand it.

The traditional analogy is comparing God to the author of a book. A writer can write stories based in past, present, or future, or some imaginary time that doesn't exist in the writer's world. The author is the cause of the book, its creator (or "sub creator" as Tolkien coined), is intimately connected with the boiok at all points in of the story, but is not part of the story - unless they write themself in as a character.

quote:
Originally posted by Ikkyu:

Arguments that claim that He/She is outside all space and time whatever that means when it is convenient for your argument and interacting with space and time when that is convenient don't sound very convincing to me.

Unfortuanately that's Christianity for you. Immanance and transcendence, God is right here with us ("Emmanuel"), and born as an ordinary person, and also everywhere in the universe, omnipresent, and also the eternal creator, holy, holy, holy, different, different, different, utterly not the same sort of thing as anything in the universe and quite outside it. And all at once. Its quite scandalous really. We not only get to have our cake and eat it we get to have your cake as well and in fact all logically possible cakes that could exist.

That's one of the points of the idea of the Trinity and all those Ecumenical Councils full of long Greek words.

quote:

Therefore, following the holy fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the fathers has handed down to us.

Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ikkyu:
Again you can't eat your cake and have it too. Either God is with us and therefore part of the Natural world, or She/He is not.
Arguments that claim that He/She is outside all space and time whatever that means when it is convenient for your argument and interacting with space and time when that is convenient don't sound very convincing to me.

I agree about it not sounding very convincing, so I've been thinking about this to try to come up with an answer that is satisfactory (at least to me). Not that I'm inclined to see it as a valid argument against the existence of God, rather that as a theist and as an amateur philosopher, I think that I ought to be able to come up with a reasonable answer. So I'd be interested in any responses to the following, particularly if my understanding needs to be corrected in some way. Not that I'm offering anything new in addition to what other people have posted in support of God's existence, just that I'm trying to express it without using analogy.

As I understand it, science studies cause and effect in one of two ways. In experimental science a cause is controlled and manipulated to see how its effects change. In observational science, varying situations are found in which a cause varies naturally by circumstance (e.g. due to the amount of ambient energy present in different locations), and then those situations are studied to see how those variations in the cause might lead to variations in the effect. But in the end, it always comes down to studying causes rather than studying effects in isolation from their cause.

Furthermore, the relationship between causes and effects is such that they can be chained together where the cause of one effect is actually itself an effect of some prior cause. And of course, scientists try to follow that chain as far back as possible. Theoretically, scientific study has to stop when it reaches far enough back in the chain that it encounters a cause that cannot be manipulated, either experimentally or observationally. My impression is that physics is at or near that boundary, but a field like evolutionary biology still has a long way to go before it encounters such a boundary.

So at some point, though, all fields of science will potentially reach a limit where the question of "how" can only be answered by "we don't know, it just is." At that point, the question of "how" might aptly be described as meaningless from a scientific point of view.

But to ask where God shows up in a cause/effect chain so that he can be observed and measured is to assume that he is merely one part of the universe among many other "ordinary" parts and that he will show up as somehow special and different compared to all other causes. Such an assumption does not allow for God to be a cause that is prior to the limit beyond which science is unable to reach.

God may well choose to take part in his creation as a special cause, distinct from other "ordinary" causes (and indeed a significant percentage of Christians believe he did just that), but I don't see how it makes sense to argue that he can only interact with creation that way.

For example, I believe that physicists consider quantum randomness to be true randomness that cannot be further reduced - it just is, and cannot be further explained from a scientific point of view. Yet from a philosophical point of view (as I believe IngoB has examined at length in other threads), it seems reasonable to assume that if God exists, then he is an unseeable cause behind that randomness.

And this is where I see God interacting with the universe analogously to hardware and electricity interacting with a computer software program that presents us with its own version of reality. You may say that God is not needed to explain everything we can observe, but it seems perfectly reasonable for me to believe that God is why there is anything to observe to begin with, and why we are capable of doing the observing. In my view, we are in some ways quite a bit like a software program that is aware of itself, but not aware of the hardware or electricity necessary for it to be so.

I don't expect God to show up as an observable, measurable cause because I see him as maintaining the whole system from moment to moment, doing an infinitely complicated dance to sustain all the countless particle interactions across the universe at each tick of the quantum clock (in an attempt to channel Martin PC not [Biased]

), all so that we can exist in a system that allows us to experience life and freely choose how we want to respond without having to resent the undeniable existence of a creator who is constantly in and around us everywhere and incessantly urging us to choose wisely. If I'm right, then that is actually the case, but it would mean that God has managed to do that without forcing us to be aware of it.

The very stability and predictability of the physical universe is what makes the whole system work because the only thing we are forced into is making some kind of choice, not into any one particular choice. To my way of thinking, the physical universe is the furthest boundary of creation where God's presence is no longer undeniable and where we are free to ponder how we want to respond to his creation for ourselves, without interference from him.

Yes, it's very convenient that I have no proof of God to offer, and that I have no scientific claim attributable to his existence for you to refute, but I don't expect to convince anyone. I only expect that whatever truth science does discover, I will be in a position to accept it without finding that it demonstrates that God cannot exist.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

W Hyatt, I think you may be slightly mistaken about how Divine causality works, given that you talk of God becoming a "special cause". Let me explain with another diagram (time going up, one-dimensional space going to the left):

code:

t
^
| *                  %          +  =
|  *          *#     %    £$    +  =     ?!
| *   &@     *  #   %    £ $    +  =    ? !
| *  &  @   *   #   %   £  $   +  =    ?
|*    &  @         %     £ $  +    =  ?  
|------------------------------------------------>x

If you carefully look at this diagram, you may spot a rule. Namely, if two (typographic) objects come into direct proximity, they invariably annihilate each other. If one of these objects, say the "%", was a sapient observer, then he may derive a natural law from observing this. The "%" may then make statements like "The '&' and the '@' caused each other to disappear when they met, according to the law of annihilation which I have discovered and published in the eminent journal Diagrammatica." That is reporting one sort of causation, the causation internal to the diagram. However, I - as the diagrammer - caused this annihilation as well, like I caused everything there. It's neither here nor there in a sense whether you wish to say that I caused the diagram-internal law of annihilation or simply all the annihilations individually but regularly. In the end, these are just different ways of talking about how I did in fact draw this diagram.

Now say that I continue to draw more of this diagram vertically (i.e., the world of the diagram lasts longer). I may continue it in part as such:

code:

t
^
|       %           @   #
|        %          @  #
|       %            @#
.      %            @  #
.       %           @  #
.------------------------------------------------>x

The observer "%" may now say something like this: "Wow, I've just witnessed a miracle! Two objects came in close proximity and did not annihilate. ... No, I'm sure I'm not mistaken, they really touched each other, but still didn't disappear. ... Yes, I realize that this is utterly incredible and unheard of. But I swear I just saw this. ... No, I'm not hallucinating. I'm completely fine. Seriously, believe me, this really happened." These statements of course make perfect sense from our diagrammer's perspective, no matter how much trouble "%" may have in convincing other diagrammatic observers. But note that I had no need whatsoever for any kind of "special causation" here. I certainly did not somehow get into the diagram to become another diagrammatic actor which then somehow paused the diagram-internal natural law of annihilation to pull off something special. That's not what happened. All that happened is that I decided to draw one part of the diagram irregularly. But other than for this decision as such, I acted in exactly the same manner.

"Natural law" vs. "miracles", Divine "letting the universe run" vs. Divine "hands-on interference with the universe", these contrasts make sense only as long as we think in terms of the world and the regularities that we discover. They make no sense at all once we take the Divine perspective. God is not doing anything different there as far as His mode of action and causation is concerned. God merely happens to will different things.

Jesus walking on water or multiplying loaves of bread or instant-healing epilepsy or whatever - all this is special only because it doesn't usually happen. That seems like a trivial statement, but it really isn't. What I'm trying to say is that this requires no exception clause for natural law as far as God is concerned. These are signs of the Divine for us because, and only because, we humans tend to get used rapidly to anything that repeats as perfectly normal. Actually, if we see someone sinking into water, if we see one loaf of bread remaining one loaf of bread, if we are faced with intractable epilepsy or whatever - all the time we should really be saying "Oh, look, God is making this be as it is." All of this is just as Divine, caused by God just the same way. It merely is ... regular.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by kankucho:
If there is more to the space-time continuum than is dreamt of in any of our philosophies, then we 'belong' to the hidden bits as well, don't we? If space-time is in fact cyclical and without beginning, then that is the natural circumstance in which Everything® exists.

You're just restating the materialist position: spacetime is all there is.

Posted by George Spigot (# 253) on :

I think I'm just not educated / clever enough to understand. It's a fascinating thread though and I'll keep reading it.

Posted by PaulTH* (# 320) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ikkyu:
Arguments that claim that He/She is outside all space and time whatever that means when it is convenient for your argument and interacting with space and time when that is convenient don't sound very convincing to me.

Actually, I find the shape of the universe, as far as we can perceive it with our limited brains and perspective, quite conducive to a belief in a transcendent creator. One thing which interested me in Prof. Hawking's program, was that he explained how all the energy we see in the universe, ie stars giving out heat and light, is balanced by negative energy in the spaces. I don't pretend to understand what negative energy is, but the energy balance of the cosmos is zero. So eventually, it will return to the nothingness from which it came.

This is compatible with our belief in creation ex nihilo , done for the purpose we are living out. The very vastness of the known universe makes me think that there's probably intelligent life out there somewhere, but I suspect it's quite rare. If we, and all creation exist in the mind of God, He can create a new heaven and a new earth that is not corrutible like the one we currently inhabit. The Goldilocks effect, which makes all forces just right for our existence, which given a whisker of difference, couldn't have supported life, all fufill the purpose of our growth into maturity.

Posted by PaulTH* (# 320) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ikkyu:
Arguments that claim that He/She is outside all space and time whatever that means when it is convenient for your argument and interacting with space and time when that is convenient don't sound very convincing to me.

Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on :

Thank you, IngoB. I'm pretty sure I understand what you are saying, and if so, then I agree.

I guess my point is that when someone asks for evidence demonstrating that God interacts with the physical universe, I think they are really asking for such a "special" cause. I just don't understand what such a cause would look like, even in theory.

It seems to me that there would be four theoretically possible scenarios to answer such a request:

1. If a particular phenomenon is proposed as a candidate to demonstrate God's interaction, then there would immediately be a question of repeatability. Without repeatability, the proposed phenomenon would not be scientifically investigatable and therefore dismissed as possible proof.

2. If it is repeatable, then the next question would be whether a mechanism can be discovered that explains the phenomenon. If there is such a mechanism, then the phenomenon is part of the ordinary operation of the universe.

3. If no such mechanism can be found, then it is part of the frontier of science and it would only require sufficient time and resources to discover the mechanism.

4. Or if the phenomenon cannot be reduced in any way, then it is considered to be a fundamental property of the universe.

We know of real examples of all of these cases and none are considered to be proof of God's existence, so I have to conclude that the original question is posed in such a way as to preclude the possibility of meeting the proposed standard. Which means it serves purely rhetorical purposes.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

As God creates the whole universe and everything in it, God's interaction with the universe will look completely natural. not supernatural.

God does not need to break the rules or do miracles to make things happen. Miracles are signs, messages, revelations, they are not the operation of some cosmic remote manipulator.

Although creation might be a single event from God's point of view (only "might be" because how could we tell? Unless God tells us) from inside the created universe it looks continuous. We say that God creates and sustains the universe. That does not mean that God created on some Day Zero in the distant past and then shifted gear into sustain mode. The act of creation is no nearer to Day Zero than it is to 2012 or to the end of the universe (if there is one).

Is the eternal presence of God any nearer to the North Pole than to the South Pole? Of course not (putting aside Mexican jokes for a while) Similarly God is no nearer to any one moment of time than to any other, even the first moment of time.

Posted by kankucho (# 14318) on :

quote:
Originally posted by George Spigot:
The difficulty I have with this concept is that I've always understood the word everything to mean.......well everything.

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
That seems fine. The problem comes when you take the extra step and equate that to the material universe. "The space-time continuum we belong to is all there is" is a step beyond "everything is everything." It's essentially saying "God doesn't exist." To go on from that starting point to prove that God doesn't exist is circular.

quote:
Originally posted by kankucho:
If there is more to the space-time continuum than is dreamt of in any of our philosophies, then we 'belong' to the hidden bits as well, don't we? If space-time is in fact cyclical and without beginning, then that is the natural circumstance in which Everything® exists.

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
You're just restating the materialist position: spacetime is all there is.

I'm restating it and expanding it, in an effort to make sure we have some grasp of the true scope of what we're discussing.
What you seem to be doing, if I'm reading you correctly, is taking the truth that we don't know everything about space-time to be proof that God does exist. This is just a 'god of the gaps' assertion.

quote:
Originally posted by ken:
As God creates the whole universe and everything in it, God's interaction with the universe will look completely natural. not supernatural.......
........The act of creation is no nearer to Day Zero than it is to 2012 or to the end of the universe (if there is one).

How different would this scenario look to us if God didn't exist in the process at all, and the universe were a self-manifesting entity perpetually creating and re-creating itself in a single eternal 'now' moment?

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by kankucho:
What you seem to be doing, if I'm reading you correctly, is taking the truth that we don't know everything about space-time to be proof that God does exist. This is just a 'god of the gaps' assertion.

You are most certainly not reading me correctly, then. Even if we knew everything that could possibly be known about spacetime, it wouldn't be all that there is. Indeed I can't see how our state of knowledge of spacetime affects ontology at all.

Posted by The Revolutionist (# 4578) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ken:
As God creates the whole universe and everything in it, God's interaction with the universe will look completely natural. not supernatural.

God does not need to break the rules or do miracles to make things happen. Miracles are signs, messages, revelations, they are not the operation of some cosmic remote manipulator.

Although creation might be a single event from God's point of view (only "might be" because how could we tell? Unless God tells us) from inside the created universe it looks continuous. We say that God creates and sustains the universe. That does not mean that God created on some Day Zero in the distant past and then shifted gear into sustain mode. The act of creation is no nearer to Day Zero than it is to 2012 or to the end of the universe (if there is one).

Is the eternal presence of God any nearer to the North Pole than to the South Pole? Of course not (putting aside Mexican jokes for a while) Similarly God is no nearer to any one moment of time than to any other, even the first moment of time.

Indeed - this puts it really well, as do IngoB's explanations.

Atheists that insist that God must "break the laws of nature" to prove that he exists are like characters in a book demanding plot holes to prove the author exists. The order of the universe is as much God's action as his miracles. Which is the very opposite of God-of-the-gaps.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by The Revolutionist:
Atheists that insist that God must "break the laws of nature" to prove that he exists are like characters in a book demanding plot holes to prove the author exists.

Very true, but its not usually atheists who insist there must be plot holes. Its some of the more heretical believers, such as the "Intelligent Design" lot. They seem to assume that God must have cocked up creation so they can see the gaps. As do some of the YECcies.

Posted by EtymologicalEvangelical (# 15091) on :

quote:
Originally posted by George Spigot
Well perhaps you could explain to me how anything can happen outside of time?

It could be argued that we actually do not live entirely within time. The Bible has the curious phrase "He has set eternity in their hearts" (Ecclesiastes 3:11), which admittedly can be translated differently, but this translation suggests something which I think is true.

We operate within the present moment, by which I mean that we are conscious of the present. Our consciousness of the past is entirely through memory, and of the future through anticipation and prediction. Memory and anticipation are cognitive functions, but we are not immediately there in either the past or the future. If it were the case that we could be conscious of actually being in the past or the future, then human society would collapse, because no human activity could ever be coordinated. Could you imagine trying to have a conversation with someone who was actually conscious of being two days behind you?

We all experience the same present moment. But there's a problem. What is the present moment? What is the 'now'? Is it not a durationless instant? If the 'now' possessed any duration, then it could be divided into past and future. One billionth of a nanosecond can still be divided into two periods of past and future as the infinitesimally small 'now' travels through it.

Our fundamental consciousness cannot be simply a psychological amalgam of memory and anticipation. If that were the case, then we would not all be living in the same 'now', and chaos would ensue. I work with people suffering from various conditions including dementia and short term memory loss. I have had many conversations with people who forget what we have been talking about almost from one moment to the next. And yet these conversations can be quite coherent and intelligent, because memories from the distant past can often be clear and retained. So we can talk about the war, or life fifty years ago or whatever (or at least I can ask questions, given that I was born in the 1960s!). Clearly people with these kinds of memory problems have a different relationship to the past than most people, who do not suffer from this kind of memory loss. Furthermore, they appear generally not to have much anticipation of the future.

If the consciousness of these people was simply psychologically constructed from memory and anticipation, then they would actually be living in the past and not particularly conscious of the present, because the only informational input that would create their consciousness would be from the distant past. But it is clear from my interaction with such people, that they are fully aware of the present moment, judging from their reactions.

It is also manifestly true that our fundamental sense of identity - having the sense of being 'me' - is independent of experiences and material conditions. My simple awareness of being 'me' has not changed at all throughout my entire life. My body was not inhabited by another person when I was five years old, for example. My body has always been inhabited by 'me'. I have not become more 'me' over the years, because my fundamental 'me-ness' has been fixed, in the sense that I have always been the one living in this body. This body of mine when it was, say, twelve years old, didn't suddenly have a particular experience that made it become 'me'!

It is clear, therefore, that our fundamental awareness of our own identity is not materially caused. It is not a product of cause and effect, and this awareness operates within an infinitesimally small period of time: a 'period' of time which lacks duration, and which is therefore effectively no time at all, since infinitely small is, for all practical and material purposes, zero.

And yet from this position of 'zero' we live our entire lives.

Is it not therefore obvious that we are all living in a higher dimension of reality, above material cause and effect, but obviously within that continuum also? This dimension of reality intersects with time at the point of what we call the present moment. We are creatures of both dimensions.

So I don't think it is too much of a stretch to argue that God can exist and operate within this eternal dimension, of which we are a part.

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