Philosoft

Let me try to understand; inconceivability, the very fact we can't even form a mental concept of the idea, affects the possibility of a now concept-less group of letters not at all? So we can just throw a bunch of letters together and say, it doesn't matter if we don't understand what these letters mean when arranged like this, the fact that the alleged, albeit unknown, concept contained by the letter arrangement hasn't been show to be logically impossible is what's important? Seriously?

<strong> How about this: in order to discuss the logical coherence of a concept, there must first be a concept in existence, not merely an assertion that a concept exists.

<strong> Yes, I can. Brian Greene explains them quite well. And string theory has mathematics on its side. Way ahead of old God already.

<strong> Stop trying to convolute this into some parallel mysticism. String theory is mathematically sound. That is all that needs saying. Whether I believe matter is actually made of 1-dimensional Planck-length, vibrating strings is entirely irrelevant.

[ October 11, 2002: Message edited by: Philosoft ]</p>

K

luvluv:

Don't you see that there can be no "during" for a being that exists outside of time. During is a completely temporal concept. Even speaking of "His time on earth" is meaningless for an atemporal being. It implies a change. But there can be no change, all change requires a delta against time.

A God that existed outside time could not communicate with us. Every method of cummunication we could conceive of must change over time. There is no information in an unchanging signal.

wdog

luvluv,

my spatial analogy is valid to a point since we live in phase space (x,y,z,t) and you are saying that being out of time is being able to view all times at once. I am allowed to make analogies between time and space, you are right in that the analogy is loose since the minkowski metric ds=sqrt(dx^2+dy^2+dz^2-cdt^2) and the equations that govern dynamical systems are not symmetric with respect to space and time coordinates.

my analogy is far more developed than your out of time concept though, so before you denigrate it as inadequate I suggest you develope your own idea.

let's look more at your out of time thing. we live in a universe where we are allowed to exist at one time only, the present, t0. You are saying that some being is at this moment observing my funeral at some future time t1. such a feat would require that I actually exist at time coordinate t1 as well, our current universe only allows me to exist at t0 though. Secondly if this creature sees my funeral at t1, then from my frame of reference that is entirely equivalent to foreknowledge or predestination. I simply will have to die when t1 arrives, any control over the sitaution would be illusionary. If I don't have to die when t1 arrives in my reference frame, then the creature is not viewing my future. Again, from our own point of view in our universe, knowability is equivalent to predestination (lack of free will), and your out of time is equivalent to knowability.

Your out of time concept have severe logical implications for causuality. If out of time is possible, then causuality (that is you cannot observe the effect before, or during, the cause) is out since god sees effect and cause effecively simultaneousy. Out of time is logically inconsistent with causuality.

Your out of time concept is logically inconsistent with the heisenberg uncertianty principle, which clearly states that the exact state of a system at some future time t1, is inherently unknowable, by even a god (hence einstein's 'god does not play with dice', which was shown to be indeed the case by later experiments). Being able to view all states of a system though time at once is at odds with what we know about how physical systems evolve in time, and secondly a quantum mechanical system does not even assume a state unless observed (forced into one). If god is observing them in the future, his observation is in fact throwing them into defined states and predefining the future.

look at a simple system, a particle, in a two dimensional phase space (x,t) (also please excuse me leaving momentum out of all my phase spaces, I am trying to keep it simple). We have one spatial coordinate and one time coordinate. Assume the particle has a 'free will' in that is it allowed to select where it will go next along x. All that we will demand is continuity in the spatial coordinate (it can't just jump discontinuously between points). Also the time coordinate must increase montonically, or in other words the particle cannot move backwards in time. Nomally if we were observing we would just see the particle move about x as time marches on and it would trace out a curve in phase space, but we only see it at one place at a time. Now imgine your out of time concept and what would you see as an observer (god)? You would see not a particle, but a line in phase space reprsenting all of it's positions in time simultaneously. (I can't see how you can reconcile this with what we know about our unique existence at one time t0 only). The fact is that you would have perfect knowlegde of the particles entire life span. There it would be, a clearly marked path of the particle.

Now in order for the particle to truly experience free will, its future position x with respect to t0 must be unknowable. But out of time clearly contradicts that, since it is clearly knowable in that context as you would have a picture of the exact trajectory of the particle, or in other words it would be indentical to the 'clockwork universe' of classical mechanics.

Out of time is clearly in logical contradiction to free will.

Walter_Mitty

Luvluv:

Everything that humans conceive of is expressible in terms of time. The God that you hypothesize is not expressible in terms of time. Therefore, you cannot conceive of God.

If you cannot conceive of God, then no one could know that he operates outside of time. Thus it is incoherent to assert that God operates outside of time.

luvluv

First of all, I'd like to again EMPHATICALLY restate that this is not, is ADAMANTLY NOT "my" theory. This is not, IS NOT, a theory of my own making. I first encountered it in an intelligible fashion in the Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, but I heard this concept coming up through my little Baptist church my entire life. As I said, I believe William Lane Craig actually wrote a book about it, look here at amazon.com:

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1579103162/qid=1034440576/sr=8-3/ref=sr_8_3/002-3677948-6324842?v=glance&n=507846" target="_blank">http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1579103162/qid=1034440576/sr=8-3/ref=sr_8_3/002-3677948-6324842?v=glance&n=507846</a>

I need to do some more research as to where the idea originated, but kids let us PLEASE resolve this:

This is not an invention of luvluv's, this is an orthodox position of the mainstream church.

Are we clear on this? Good, let's move on.

wdog:

First, you have not established that the law of causality must apply to someone's observation outside of time. For instance, if I had a videotape of an event I could play it in reverse and all effects would preced their causes FROM MY OBSERVATIONAL STANDPOINT, but that would not effect the direction of actual causality. Remember, I am arguing for God's timelessness as an OBSERVATIONAL epistemology. If all of time were for God nothing more than a videotape, or for example, a reel of film with which he could observe every frame, then causality WITHIN THE FILM is not broken by his ability to look at the cause before the effect if he wishes. In addition, we only know that the law that an effect cannot precede or exist simeltaneously with it's cause to apply TO TIME, or in this analogy, TO THE FILM STRIP. We are not aware of any law which would mean that a person outside the film strip could not choose to look at effects before causes if he wanted to. Again, to make this argument apply you must drag God into time and thus beg the question.

Okay, I am not expert on the Heisenberg principle, but I always assumed it was due to the fact that the smallest possible vehicle for our observation, the photon, is too big to be used in observing the positions of things that are roughly the same size. WIth the two slit experiment, this leads to a situation where, if we tried to use a photon to see which slit a particular electron was sliding through, the photon would hit the electron and thus knock it off course. So, unless I am mistaken, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle applies only to beings who cannot use any vehicle of observation smaller than a photon. Now this is the situation as I have understood it, which may be a gross oversimplification (or even a complete misunderstanding), but if this is the case I see absolutely no reason to assume that God is in anyway dependent on photons for his observations.

As far as superpositions, I always thought that particles in superpostions were forced into as state by phyiscal interaction with the photons (or whatever) used in observing them, not from some metaphysical knowledge the particle has that (to quote Rockwell) "somebody's watching me". Again, there is no reason to assume that God "shines a light" on future events and thus disturbs them. It is entirely possible, indeed it nearly follows from the idea, that a God who lives outside of the physical universe and outside of time does not use photons or anything else recognizeable to us to observe the universe.

Again, to make this objection you have to drag God not only into time but into our physical universe, and again beg the question.

At any rate, as I said before, you could look at the whole situation as God living only at the end of history and able to look at any event in the past. In that case, He would not have to look at any "future state", since all steps would be, from His perspective, past. I don't believe quantum mechanics dictates that states that have ALREADY OCCURED cannot be known precisely. When you say that God cannot know a future state, you are again begging the question by assuming that ANY event to God is in the future.

You have yet to establish this. You have yet to establish that an act must be unknowable to be free.

Bibliophile:

By your definition a person could not say anything about God. It is a basic fact about God that there will be plenty of aspects about Him which we will not be able to conceive, that does not make any of them ON THOSE GROUNDS ALONE, false. But I am saved from the implications of this concept because I believe that God has said this about Himself, in scripture and in church history.

Folks, we are discussing here not whether or not I can prove to you that an omniscient God and free will actually exist. We are trying to establish whether or not the two or logically contradictory. I maintain that they are not, and I believe I have defended that. If you cannot prove to me that they are impossible or contradictory, then you would certainly be more than epistimelogically justified in not believing in either, but you would not be justified in dismissing their co-existence as impossible.

[ October 12, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

K

luvluv:

I know it's not your theory, but I would still ask you to defend a flat earth theory if you asseted it's truth.

The size of the photon is irrelevant to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. We already use electrons in electron microscopy because of its smaller wavelength. This hasn't tightened the the window in the H.U.P. at all - it's a theoretical limitation. It doesn't matter if any photons are even used in the experiment.

Devilnaut

Actually I thought that the uncertainty principle had to do with roughly what Luvluv described. Not the size of the photon persay, but that the tighter and tighter we try to make our observations past a certain point, the larger and larger the margin of error becomes.

So I don't really see how it affects scientific determinism, or how anyone can conclude that some things have no cause, from this. Certainly everything is caused.. i mean, if there are things that happen at specific times which have no cause, why don't they happen at a different time? The whole "causeless" concept just seems absurd to me.

Walter_Mitty

&lt;&lt;&lt;By your definition a person could not say anything about God. It is a basic fact about God that there will be plenty of aspects about Him which we will not be able to conceive, that does not make any of them ON THOSE GROUNDS ALONE, false.&gt;&gt;&gt;

My definition? You are the one spouting all this nonsense about God operating out of time. Furthermore, you are already presuposing that God exists!

Try this: there is a little blue elf that lives outside of time. Of course, I have a personal relationship with said elf. It's a basic fact that due to this little elf living outside of time, there are many facts that I cannot concieve about him. But he's still there and gives me freewill, yet is not responsible for it.

Somewhere I hear William Occam rolling over in his grave!

&lt;&lt;&lt;But I am saved from the implications of this concept because I believe that God has said this about Himself, in scripture and in church history.&gt;&gt;&gt;

Hold the phones nurse! A few back you said that scripture had no relevance despite me citing scripture. Which is it? If scripture is relevant to all of this nonsense, I assert that there is more "scriptural evidence" that God is NOT omniscient. (see above) If God is NOT omniscient based on scriptural evidence, free will matters not a lick!

&lt;&lt;&lt;We are trying to establish whether or not the two or logically contradictory. I maintain that they are not, and I believe I have defended that.&gt;&gt;&gt;

Ok Luvluv, lets assume that your God is only observing the future. It stands to reason that this future is a real thing which may be observed or he could not observe it. If the future is a real thing, then if something in the future changed through the process of free will, the future which God observes would not exist. So, if God is able to observe the future, then it cannot be possible that the future is any different than what God observes!

Add free will to the mix and God would not be able to know the future because the future he observed would be changed by the actions of free-will; thus, rendering him non-omniscient! The future has to exist for God to observe it--no matter where he is.

Omniscience and freewill do not hold water.

K

Devilnaut:

That's exactly why Einstein disliked it so much. The idea of non-causality didn't sit well with him at all.

H.U.P. does indeed imply noncausality for events on the quantum scale. Like anything in science, it hasn't been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, but it is well supported by observational evidence.

Events occuring at scales above the quantum level are still causal.

wdog

luvluv,

I don't think I am going to spring the cash for the book by Craig. I have read many of his other works and he has no great insights into physics. I'll let you explain it to me, how about that?

You make an analogy to being outside of time to playing a video tape backwards therefore causuality is violated, videos and pictures are not reality, but only imperfect representations of reality. Video cameras are also only able to record the past, not the future. If you wish to portray out of time as like a videotape, that is a really bad idea as there will not be a full correlation to the real universe.

The heisenburg principle applies to any two conjugate variables of quantum mechanics. The two varibles I had in mind were time and energy, not position. Since you are not familiar with that, look at another inherently unpredictable system. Take a nonlinear chaotic system like the weather. The reason that we cannot have two month forecasts is not lack of complete information about every single molecule in the atmosphere, it is because it is nonlinear and therefore governed by equations of motion that have inherent mathematical unpredictability in them. The only way to know the exact weather two months from now is to sit back and let it evolve in time, it is impossible for anyone or any being anywhere in or not within this universe to have foreknowledge of the weather as that would violate the very nature of the weather itself. Out of time is a form of foreknowledge, therefore it is inconsistent with nonlinear dynamical systems.

I know what you are going to say, that I am somehow dragging god into this universe. No, I am simply saying that this universe is governed by a set of rules. If someone is going to 'observe' it from outside this universe without disturbing a thing (whatever that really means, it is simply not accessable to us since we cannot access the other universe so I fail to see how you have any insights), then they cannot change the rules. It is not I who is trying to bring a god into this, it is you.


but that statement makes absolutley no sense. you are now assigning god, who lives out of time, a place in time at the end of history

actually it sort of does, what it really says it that a system never really assumes a state unless 'observed', that includes in the past. and the uncertainty principle prevents any state from being known precisely under any circumstances.

when i say that god cannot know a future state, I am saying that he can't do it without changing the rules of this universe. which as an observer that you say he is, he is not allowed to do.

but that has been explained by example over and over again in this thread.

if an act at some future time t1 is knowable by any means you can imagine, then when t1 coordinate arrives that act simply must occur, where is the choice?

let us say again that god is watching my right now at time t1 (proper time in my frame). so then what MUST happen to me when in my frame of referenece t1 arrives? you tell me. if it must happen then where is the choice?