wdog

luvluv,

no, that's incorrect luvluv. The condition of existence, that an object can only be in one 'place' at a time applies to any dimensional object. Spatially a one dimensional object would be a point or a line segment, and it can exist at only one place at a time on the ojne diemsional line.

again I don't think so. A time traveler would be someone whose clock is ticking at a different rate than yours, and going back is not really possible. What the time traveller would see is some evolution of time pass by, then if they visited you they might see you at some time in your frame that would represent a different time interval that elapsed for them from when they last saw you.

you are confusing the issue again. the time traveler CANNOT see you simultaneously (in their frame) at two different times your frame. that amounts to saying that they can, at the same time, watch two luvluvs at different points in luvluv's life.
That was your claim, that god can see us all at once, from his point of view, at all points in our time line. In other words god can see an infinite number of luvluvs at once. That is far different than time travel.

please don't take C. S. lewis seriously, the man is not really a profound scientist/thinker. He was just coming up with some half-baked mumbo jumble to try and give people like you some sort of intellectual satisfaction. He has no justification for his thoughts other than he thinks they explain something, nor did he really attempt to align them with all of science and what we know.

tronvillain

wdog:
I think what luvluv is saying that three dimensional objects that compose our universe could be analagous to the line rather than the point. That is, when I look at you, I am only seeing a three dimensional slice of a four dimensional object which extends into both the past and the future. Is that right luvluv?

Ah, you are simply assuming that travel to the past is impossible and that a time traveller is simply someone whose clock is ticking differently than yours - someone who "traverses" the same distance into the future as luvluv but experiences less personal time than he does. Exactly how do you justify those assumptions?

Again, this is simply a product of your assumptions about time travel. Why should a time traveller capable of moving in four or more dimensions be incapable of seeing some distance in them as well? If "luvluv" is a four dimensional object extending over, say twenty or thirty years, exactly what prevents a tiem traveller from watching two luvluvs at different points in luvluv's life? It could be as simple as you looking at two points reasonably close together on a line.

Well, given your rather limited definition of time travel, you are correct. Using another definition, it is simply a logical extension of "time travel."

Have you ever read The Screwtape Letters? It's quite good. Perhaps you could listen to the audio version - i believe it is read by John Cleese. Much of what Lewis says is perfectly reasonable.

wdog

hi tron,

welcome to our little discussion.

I see what you what you are trying to point out here, but I disagree. I think that we exist temporally in the moment (ours), not extended in all time. I would have to see some kind of formal justification to believe that we have a temporal extent (if that really means anything). For us to exist in all time, there would essentially have to be an infinite number of us extended out so so that we can be observed 'simultaneous' to someone else who could possibly see such a thing. Let us assume that we are actually 4-d spatial creatures, why would you assume that extend spatially in the 4th dimension to every point we have ever existed at?

The first problem I mentioned way back still would not be addressed by this. There is no absolute, or universal, time axis to plot the universe against. Einstein showed that idea was an error of human imagination. Every object in the universe basically has its own local rate of time increase.

I justify them by the fact that time moves forward in every frame of reference in the universe (possibly from the second law of thermodynamics), so time travel (as we can concieve of it) would simply be living inside of a frame whose clock has a rate of progress slower than something else. It is not possible to make the other frame's clock move backwards. I have read of some exotic wormhole type of travel, I thinnk they mentioned something about going back, but that also you could not survive the trip.

Do you have any formal justification for other types of travel? If not then it simply a product of your imagination and we really can't take that stuff seriously as 99% of what we humans think of the universe (new ideas) are wrong in the reality. That is why I don't take C.S. Lewis seriously, there is no attempt at justifying it with reality or checking for consistency, just a man and his musings- that's all. As an apologist he isn't even one of the better ones, he is more on the Josh McDowell level rather than the W. L. Craig level. That is also why I have only read a little of his works, the level of rigor is pretty low, so no I have not read the screwtape letters just as i will not read what every single yahoo out there has to say about the world.

like this fella here: <a href="http://www.timecube.com/" target="_blank">http://www.timecube.com/</a>


That's a mighty big if there tron, and that is my whole point. Turn that 'if' into something more than a flight of fancy then we can have something to talk about. I have given reasons not to believe it: lack of a universal time coordinate, finite extensions in space, from what I can tell we only exist at one point in time.

[ October 19, 2002: Message edited by: wdog ]</p>

luvluv

wdog:

But what I am asking is what if time was not a one dimensional line. What if, for instance, the line is not half the dimension that we experience it as (because we can only move forwards in time), but it is just a full single dimension: that is, let us assume that it is possible for an object to go backwards on a time line, or stand still.

If we imagine this as a graph, where the x axis corresponds to time and the y axis corresponds to space, you can see that a point could remain stationary on the x axis and move infinitely far north and south on the y axis. It could therfore be at more than one place at one time.

The axiom that an object can only exist at one place at one time is not an axiom that applies to all existence, it only applies to objects residing in a space-time contiuom where the flow of time has only half a dimension: irreversibly forward. If an entity exists, or has access to, a backward dimension of time, it would be the simplest thing in the world to be in more than one place at the same time.

He could go back to a specific time, say Thursday at 3:00, and go back to a different place than he was the first time he travelled through Thursday at 3:00.

Think about Brian Greene's analogies from the Elegant Universe. A being in a one dimensional universe would think it was impossible to move laterally. He would exist on the line and consider lateral movement an absurdity. Similarly a two dimensional object would consider the words "above" and "beneath" to be logical absurdities. They would categorically state that above and beneath are impossible.

Similarly, we draw the same conclusions about time. But string theory shows us that there are more dimensions of space, so why not more dimensions of time? It also shows us that two-dimensional objects aren't just abstractions, they actually exist. The analogies therefore aren't fairytales, they are concrete in reality (though, obviously, one dimensional entities can't think).

Well, I agree with tron that you're basically begging the question here. You may not believe that any other time travel is possible, but you really haven't demonstrated why not. I realize that the burden of proof is on me to prove it, but your claim that time travel other than that described by the theory of relativity is impossible is a claim that carries a burden in itself. You can not believe in something and yet not claim that it is truly impossible. Unless you can prove that time travel backwards through time is truly impossible, you would be better off to say you didn't believe it was possible.

wdog, on a certain level why would he need to for the out of time view to be correct?

Let's assume our time traveller was immortal. That is, within his own time, he would never die. Let's assume that, from his observational point of view, that he would never be bound to the flow of time in our universe, the universe he was observing.

This time traveller could go forward through all time, stopping at every millisecond in our time line and going through every spot in our universe recording observations. From our standpoint, he would have "functionally" simeltaneous knowledge of all of our actions and choices WITHOUT our having to have temporal extent.

It would be simeltaneous to us, even if it was in some sense sequential to him, because he would not have been on our time line and could, after he had finished making observations, return to the big bang on our time line and observe from there. He would then have observational knowledge of everything we have done, knowledge gained solely through OBSERVATION, NOT THROUGH PREDESTINATION, thus enabling the time traveller to be functionally omniscient and us to be functionally free.

If it is possible to skip over time, backwards and forwards, then this view is very logically possible. You are simply begging the question when you declare time skipping to be impossible when you don't know that it is. The wormhole theory of Stephen Hawking and certain aspects of String Theory still hold it to be a distinct possibility. You are still well within your epistemological rights to disbelieve in out of time, but to declare it impossible would be incorrect.

wdog:

Those are some pretty big words, there, champ. I'd say that C.S. was mostly a philosophical apologist, along the lines of Plantinga, and as such does not really need to resort to empirical proofs for most of the claims he is alleging. (And what, praytell, do you mean by "people like me"?). There are many atheistic arguments that are unscientific. There is no empirically verifiable claim within the problem of evil, for how can one empirically verify that evil exist? How would you measure it? Arguments can have bearing on reality without being scientificly verifiable. For instance, can you prove to me, from science, that science is the only way to know anything about the universe? Not without begging the question, you can't.

It's safe to say that C.S. Lewis was not the smartest person who ever lived, but it is also safe to say that he is smarter than you or I. If you really haven't read much of his work then you're opinions on his ability aren't really worth much. Might I ask what book you did read that gave you such a low opinion of him? (I hope it was more than one.)


Well, I would neither dispute nor blame you for not believing it, but you asserted in the other thread that you "showed it was impossible". That's what is at issue here. I wouldn't question your right to believe or disbelieve in out of time, but I question your right to call it impossible. If you are just assuming it to be impossible, with no justification, then we can end this discussion right here.

And as far as I can tell (if I am understanding your terms) the lack of a universal time coordinate works IN FAVOR of out of time, not against it. Also, the finite extension in space would not prevent it, as I attempted to explain in the illustration about the immortal time traveller.

tronvillian:

It's an honor to be on your side for once.

wdog

hello again luvluv,

the idea of time as a linear dimension like space has its limits as an analogy. I never said that in such an analogy that time is a half-dimension, I said that the condition of our existence is coupled with an auxilliary condition, the second law of thermodynamics tells us that the universe cannot evelove in a backwards direction. It is not possible for objects in our universe to move backwards due to this, not an intrinsic property of a time line.

if you draw an x-t plot, it is not possible to 'move' while holding t constant. movement implies the passing of t. all non-point objects spatially occupy more than one place at once, so what? I think you are attempting to allude to Craig's hypertime plot. FYI he didn't draw 'god' correctly, he drew god as a line when 'god' should have occupied the entire t-T plane in order to represent the omnipresent property. The whole idea was rather undeveloped and if you read it, at the end craig admits that his hypertime construct did not resolve the paradoxes in question. He was trying to put some apologist concept of this on firmer footing since all these apologists realize the problems that we all have been trying to point out to you.

which is US luvluv, why do I have to keep repeating that? we are such creatures luvluv. so it doesn't matter if some other creature is not so confined, the point is that we are, so if you want to observe us you will have to look at where we exist. I don't exist last tuesday, so what if 'god' sees it?

String theory is a developed theory consistent with what physicists know about the world. your god in hypertime theory is not. that is the difference. it is okay to postulate hypertime, but that is all it is, an undeveloped postulate.

We don't draw conclusions until we have a well accepted theory luvluv, you are trying to draw conclusions based upon a postulate whose plausability hasn't even been demonstrated beyond some simple spatial analogies.

I am simply using relativity and thermodynamics to guide me in my thinking. I am not stating that anything is impossible, I keep an open mind. I am at least attempting to use established science luvluv, are you? I simply will not accept anything that is simply based loosely on postulate as i mentioned above. 'Show me the money' luvluv.

You originally said that god can see our whole lives at once, that is why my first statement. It would be impossible for a time traveller to do such a thing, as I mentioned he may go to next tuesday to watch, but I am not yet there to be seen.

We WOULD have to have temporal extent luvluv, for him to race ahead to next week and observe me there. I am not there, I am here.

You have not grasped to paradoxes presented to you. I'll try this one since it is the one that craig had trouble with. god knows the winner of the next super bowl. what if he told the world? if he can't tell us by some physical law, then he doesn't have free will and is not omnipotent since it would not be allowed even for him. Is it possible for god to tell the world right now who will win the super bowl and not affect the outcome? Is it possible that foreknowledge by all the players in the NFL would not affect how they play? of course not, hence the paradox. if you tell them, you change the very future that you are supposed to have foreknowledge of. If you can't tell them, then you yourself (god) have no free will.

consider the implications for xtian theology. god knew before he created adam that man would 'fall' and also that he would have to flood the earth. then why go ahead with something that you don't like? and act surprised by the fall and the flood when you had foreknowledge? Very illogical actions.



What I am saying is that if i wanted to know as much as i could about the physics of time, I would study what is established as science. That is what we are talking about here, a scenerio for the physics of out of time. Start with the established results, then possibly maneuver out into philosophical interpretations. Philosophy is fine, and the ideas are generated by some truly brilliant poeple, but that doesn't establish the correctness of an idea. Saying that CS lewis is smart therefore I should believe him would be to abandon logic and reason (appeal to authority).

I am not saying that C. S. Lewis is a dummy, I am simply claiming that his ideas appear to be less developed than say a W. L. Craig and that he is not an expert on relativity. I am perfectly within my rights to say so without any ad hominems.

My honest opinion is that the likes of C.S. Lewis and Josh McDowell are for people who already believe or for people who don't care to think deeply. I read some, but not all, of Mere Christianity and Evidence That Demands a Verdict. After being able to pretty much tear apart arguments as I read them, I was dissappointed (this was when I was a Christian looking for substantiation of my religion, I wanted irrefutable proof). I then went on to work that I considered as more rigorous and hopefully satisfying (Craig for example). Utimately the search is futile for a person like me, I have no choice but to obey intellectual honesty and conclude that Christianity is not true.

no, I disagree. you see lack of absolute time means that your time traveler would have to visit essentially an infinite number of time frames (as well as space!), physically impossible. It also denies some sort of absolute knowledge as the sequence of events in the universe is wholly dependent on which frame of reference you are in.

ohwilleke

I see merit in the question of whether there is an absolute present. Two points can't be in the same space at the same time, which imposes a certain degree on consistency on objects with different time scales that are in proximity to each other.

Consider the twins problem. One twin hangs out on Earth, the other zips out and back to a distant star at close to the speed of light. Just before they leave, and at the moment twins reunite, they need to share a common point in time and be close in space, in order for the meeting to happen. They need to share, in other words, an absolute present.

Special relativity can be used to tell us from either twin's perspective, when that instance of coinciding will happen. The amount of time that will have passed between the departure and arrival of the travelling twin will be different for each twin, but the two time scales have to match up sometime. This is true even if the twins are never have the same interial reference frame because the travelling twin buzzes by the stay at home twin, instead of slowing down to chat.

Moreover, stay at home twin, if he were so inclined, could pull out his computer and calculate precisely where to send a speed of light communication to the travelling twin so long as the travelling twin kept to his itinerary.

Thus, with a fairly modest set of facts, it is possible to translate from one interial reference frame's time scale to another for any practical purpose. It is only modestly more difficult than converting from the English system to Metric, although it has more real life physical meaning.

It is probably impossible to know if there is physical meaning or importance to cases where there is no ultimate contact. But, there is no real reason to think that relativity is "observer dependent" in the sense that it produces different physical consequences if an observer does or does not observe an event in the way that quantum theory does.

Put another way, GR and SR are internally consistent, despite it not being obvious that differing time scales for different travelers could produce such a thing.

luvluv

wdog:

But God's ability to see the future would not depend upon the future's evolving backwards, but God observing our future in reverse order.

If God exists outside of our time line, and is not in anyway effected by it, then it is perfectly within his power to observe our universe from the end to the begining if he wants to.

Consider: if God made the universe, then He necessarily made it from outside of our physical universe. Much like an author, who writes a book, must exist outside of the book to write the book. It would be impossible for one of the characters who has his only existence within the book to have written the book.

We can say that God created this universe in much the same way that an author creates a book. For the sake of clarity, instead of a book, lets use a comic strip. Now, for the characters within the comic strip, there is a time frame that passes from left to right one frame at a time. Causality flows in one direction. But the creator of the comic book, if he chooses to, can READ the comic strip backwards REGARDLESS of the proper flow of time within the comic book. In fact, the author can even WRITE the comic strip backwards, so long as, when read forwards, maintains it's causal flow. In other words, to an external author, the flow of time or entropy within his creation is totally non-binding SINCE HE IS NOT IN THAT CREATION.

If the universe exists to God as a comic book exists to it's author, (and it must to any actual God) then it is absurd to speak as if the flow of time within the universe limits the observational ability of someone outside the universe in their own time. Objects would not have to move backwards to be observed in reverse order.

Again, the tape analogy is appropriate. Say you had a video tape of an explosion. It is true that the laws of thermodynamics say that the debris of an explosion cannot comustively UNITE instead of DISSASSEMBLE. But a person with a VCR, who exists OUTSIDE of the events on the tape, can OBSERVE them in reverse order.

I ask all these in order to entertain your argument, but all I really needed to ask you was this: what makes you assume that omnipotence could not occassionally reverse the law of thermodynamics if He wanted to? Your simply begging the question again here, because if the being we are discussing is God, there is no way he could NOT be capable of reversing the law of thermodynamics if he chose to. (I have heard, after all, that this possibility has a non-zero probability of occuring at any rate).

You are begging the question. I explicitly stated that we were dealing with a being who was not bound by OUR time, even if he was bound by a time of his own. Further, we are dealing with an Omnipotent Being, in that the being whose existence we are discussing is God. Therefore, this being CAN move relative to his own time, while OUR time, to Him, is standing still. He could even stop time completely in our universe without us knowing about it. Again, if we are to God as comic book characters are to their authors, this would be as easy as not turning the page, or flipping backwards a few pages.

All time in our universe moves along at a second per second, and you are assuming that God is in the tide of the time waves and must Himself go along with the flow. But He is not bound at all by the flow of our time, anymore than you would be bound by the flow of time in a book you are reading. You can stop and put the book down for two weeks and when you pick it back up the characters, relative to your observation, are still in the same place they were two weeks ago. They have remained frozen in time for two weeks FROM YOUR OBSERVATIONAL STANDPOINT. ("A day unto the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as a day...")

Again, you are begging the question. You are acting as if you and God are on the same time line, when your time line is seperate to and parallel from God's. If God wants to observe last Tuesday it doesn't matter if you ARE there, it only matters if you WERE there. He is not trying to observe you NOW (October 21) He is trying to observe you THEN (October 15). That you are not there NOW is of little consequence to God because He's not trying to observe you there NOW, He's trying to observe you there THEN.

Similarly for the future, it does not matter if you are not in the future "NOW" because "NOW" is not what He is looking at when He looks at the future. You don't have to exist there "NOW" for Him to see you, you only have to exist there "THEN", at the time He is looking at you, and of course you will.

Again, if you were a character in a book you might consider yourself to be at a certain point of time, which God might consider page 27. To you, the events that, for God, comprise page 32, do not exist yet. But for the observer from the outside, it does, you have just not intercepted it yet.

Again, you are assuming that God cannot make a 4-dimensional reality of free-willed creatures in the same way that we could make a book, and observe it (and even act in it) in whatever order He wished, even though to us, within the "book" it appears as if everything is flowing causally, inexorably and necessarily, from one point to another. Again, given omnipotence, it is difficult to see why, exactly, God could not do this. This is what you need to explain: why an Omnipotent God could not create a reality seperate from His own which is analagous to an author's relationship to his own literature.

Regardless, if out of time is possible (and I find it to be very possible, given the time paradox we encounter at the begining of the universe) then the attempt to rule out the co-existence of God and free will is unsound. You haven't commented on whether or not you agreed with that.

Well, then, this discussion is pretty much over, because all the counter argument needs to be is POSSIBLE for the argument for the contradiction of omniscience and free will to be unsound.

You do realize, this being the case, that you cannot say that omniscience and free will are incompatible?

If you concede that then this argument is over. I never pretended that I could prove to you that out of time was TRUE, only that it was consistent with omniscience and free will, and not a logical contradiction for an Omnipotent Entity outside of this universe, which we presume God to be. That's all I need to show.

You're the prosecuting attorney in this case, wdog, trying to state beyond a reasable doubt that omniscience and free will cannot co-exist. All I need to show is a reasonable scenario by which they could co-exist to the observer in question, an Omnipotent Entity outside of our universe. I have done so. Therefore, your case is not beyond a reasonable doubt. The laws of logic, like the laws of the court, do not abide by what YOU THINK the reality of the case is, but WHAT YOU CAN PROVE. And you cannot prove your argument any more than mine, so in this case the defendant, God, goes free. His existence, with all the attributes described in the Bible, remain possible.

I still believe that He does, but He doesn't have to for the discussion at hand, so I can abandon that tactic. He could be effectively omniscient, and we could be effectively free, if he knew our actions one at a time.

You are not there NOW, but you are there THEN, and THEN, is where He is going. That is the whole meaning behind time travel. He's not trying to watch you there NOW, He's trying to watch you there THEN. God willing, you will be in next Tuesday somewhere, and next Tuesday is where the time traveller is, so it doesn't matter if you "ARE" there so long as you WILL BE there.

You are here NOW, you are not here THEN. And THEN is where He is going to look for you.

What does this have to do with anything we are discussing? Who said anything about God having free will?

And further, wouldn't God know what team would be enabled to win the Superbowl BECAUSE he said it, so wouldn't He just say that team? His words would be a causal agent, and He would have known from eternity that He was going to say it and that His words would cause the team in question to win (directly or indirectly). And it does not follow, that from refraining from speaking, that God COULD NOT SPEAK if He wanted to, so He would retain free will. Not that this scenario has anything to do with what we are discussing.

Well, I am not a biblical literalist, so I maintain that those accounts are rough translations of the reality. As I said before, I can see why God would not want to tell men (particularly primitive men) about the temporal aspects of His reality because it would just confuse them. I think the Bible is written as if chronology applied to God to avoid confusing the readers. But at the same time the reader is warned several times that, regardless of appearences, stricy chronology does not apply to God.

Well, if relativity tells us anything it tells us that time intervals are not infinite, they had a definite begining, and if the God of the Bible exists, they will have a definite in. So the time intervals would be very great indeed but not at all infinite, and obviously string theory tells us that there is not an infinite amount of space (it only gets so small) and big bang cosmology tells us the universe can only be so big. About 30 billion light years across. So the time and space to explore are MASSIVE, but finite, and the observer in question, God, being immortal, would have eternity to explore them, so it's a pretty reachable goal for Him.

As for C.S. Lewis, I would say read more of Him. Lots more than half of Mere Christianity. If you demand demostrative 100% proof for everything, there should be a lot more things than God that you disbelieve in. People are capable of belieiving in things they have no direct, certain evidence of. You do it everyday. To be frank, I think that anyone who demands 100% proof for anything is probably looking for an out. No one in your life could prove to you 100% that they even exist outside of your mind, you just believe they do because at a certain point doubting everything you can doubt becomes unreasonable.

tronvillain

wdog:
[quoet]hi tron,

welcome to our little discussion.[/quote]

Does anyone else fine it irritating to be "welcomed" to a discussion on this board? Besides, I was the first one to reply to luvluv on this thread.

[quote]I see what you what you are trying to point out here, but I disagree. I think that we exist temporally in the moment (ours), not extended in all time. I would have to see some kind of formal justification to believe that we have a temporal extent (if that really means anything).[quote]
You disagree that our universe could be analagous to the line rather than the point? Then it is up to you to demonstrate the logical impossibility of such a scenario.

Perhaps you are under the impression that there is something implausible about "an infinite number of us", but it is simply a matter of slicing a four dimensional object into an infinite number of infinitesimal slices. Of course, that assumes that time is infinitely divisible, which is not necessarily the case.

It is the simplest assumption that one can make. Do not multiply entities unecessarily.

No, there is no universal time axis. What is a month in one reference frame may be a year in another... yet at the end of the month and the year you end up at the same point. There is no apparent obstacle to constructing a four dimensional view of the universe, though any values assigned to the fourth axis will be arbitrary.

I am quite skeptical of the possibility of time travel myself, but I do not see you providing any actual justification for your assumptions about it. Yes, time "moves forward" in all reference frames, and but reference frames are simply the product of variables such as acceleration and velocity. While it is not possible to make another frame's clock move backwards by simply modifying such variables, this does not seem to preclude time travel to the past by other means.

I do not have any formal justification for other types of time travel, but as we are merely discussing logical possibilities rather than actualities, I fail to see the problem. You are the one attempting to make authoratative statements about something unknown, not I.

The lack of a universal time coordinate does not appear to be a problem for either view, I have no idea what you mean by "finite extensions in space", and you would make the same observations under either view and so the observations you make do not count as evidence for either view over the other.

tronvillain

luvluv:
Thank-you.

wdog

hi tron and luvluv,


well tron first i want to adddress

well pardon the hell out of me tron, just trying to be friendly. no, i would never mind to be welcomed, but i do mind uptight and snippy comments.

Not sure if i can respond to everything, getting too long, but it is kind of fun so I'll keep going.

It is? take the three dimension version of what you say then. we extend spatially in 3-d to every point that we have ever existed at, when taken at a moment in time. I don't think more than a quick glance at yourself disproves that one.

who is you? to make such an analogy you have to compare two entities. and no they don't. that would be impossible since one frame would have to be moving with respect to the other. or one would have to be near a warped spacetime field, at a place different than the other. they are at different points in spacetime.

tron I am simply quoting results from relativity, how is that not justification?

then tell me the other means, and then tell me how the paradox of shooting your own grandfather is resolved.

I am making statements about the very logical possibilities you and luvluv are trying to present, as have all the other critcisms. If you want insist it is logically possible to travel back in time, then please address the logical paradoxes involved which I keep bringing up. It seems that whenever a paradox is brought up, you and luvluv just want to say "oh don't worry, somehow out of time takes care of it" without explaining logically how.

Logically explain this then : what would happen if you went back in time and killed yourself? please present a complete and logical answer without just saying that somehow, by a wave of a wand that something like out of time takes care of that problem.

video tapes also only record the past, not the future. A person with a video does not exist outside they event, they are intercepting photons emitted from the event and recording the interception on film. If god has only a videotape, then he cannot ever interfere with the events he is viewing, only watch. that is not christian theology.

no I am not, i am saying that the subject of the observation, us, exists in a definite relation to time no matter who is observing. An observer is something that does not change the rules of our existence. If we do not exist at next tuesday, then I don't care where god is, he can't make us be there without changing the very nature of our existence (NOT his).

whoa, back the truck up. all i am saying is that i haven't attempted a rigorous proof of anything. it really isn't my burden, it is yours anyway to show out of time is plausable. you have not achieved that.

I can say that omniscience and free will are incompatible based on what we know about our own universe. You haven't really added anything new here, so why should I change my conclusion.

nope, again the burden is on you. let me give you an example. I cannot prove absolutely that there are no jellyfish on the far side of jupiter, but if you want to claim such, then it is up to you to provide positive proof and answer all criticisms. I concede nothing as I am not presenting anything new or what people have struggle with before. The fact that you have to bring up something new, out of time, to explain the paradox away means that it is you, not me, trying to make a case. Your case, not mine, has to be beyond a reasonable doubt. What you say is exactly backwards from how science and logic works.


it has a lot to do with this. if god doesn't have a free will to do as he pleases, in other words change our history, present or future, and change his mind whenver he wants to as it appears in our time, then he isn't all powerful.

you want to talk logical possibilities. from what you have said the following logical possibilities arise.

1) God could, if he wants to, go back to your birth date and kill you. that would definitely change your existence. So god has two choices, to kill or not to kill. They both present different timelines for you. Now you say that god has always known that he wouldn't kill you, but why can't he just suddenly (as it appears to us) change that fact? He is after all omnipotent and can do anything. If he does change his mind, the all that he had seen ahead for you would all be false, therefore he didn't have accurate foreknowledge of his own actions. You cannot get around these paradoxes if you want to talk about an atemporal being interacting with a temporal universe.

2) what if god told you right now that you were the next sniper victim (again, he has the choice, he is omniscient), and he told you when and where. You would alter your actions, hence your future, based on that knowledge. The act of giving you that knowledge is a temporal act with temporal consequeces, an atemporal being cannot escape that. The temporal choice presented to god gives two possible futures, the only way for god to preserve perfect foreknowledge of his own choices is to never interact with us temporal beings. If he can never interact, then he is not omnipotent.


this is from W. L. Craig at:

<a href="http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/stump-kretzmann.html" target="_blank">http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/stump-kretzmann.html</a>

I cannot take metaphor as anything other than a way for believers to soothe their minds.

I demand reasonable justification luvluv, not 100% absolute proof. This idea though comes nowhere near reasonable justification for me.

[ October 21, 2002: Message edited by: wdog ]</p>