Jamie_L

Theli:

Actually, Theli, the reason I'm asking all these questions of late about god and time, and spouting off about 4-d time-space is that this is the view of time that I get from various "physics for people who don't understand physics" books. At a basic level, I believe this view of space-time is farily consistent with modern scientific views of time.

Regardless, however, I'm beginning to think the perceptions most Christians have about God are consistent with the notion that he is trapped inside linear time with the rest of us, creating the universe at t=0 and wrapping things up at the other end. Based on my understanding of physics these days, this seems to limit god to less-than-omniscient status.

Jamie

[ July 25, 2002: Message edited by: Jamie_L ]</p>

Theli

What do you refer to as the 4th dimension?
Is it time, or is it the hypothetical fourth geometric dimension?
I call this psuedo4D as many christians use it as an attempt to hide god from being disproven, not really knowing anything about 4D.

One-eyed Jack

Again, I'm new to this forum so I don't know what has been said already on other threads; if I repeat material please accept my apologies in advance.

As understood, the universe is composed of spacetime, that is, 3-space + time. The Riemannian geometry used by Einstein to describe this spacetime seems to agree with large-scale physical observation right to the limits of Einstein's theories--ie right to black hole singularities--so we're pretty sure it's a good mathematical model.

Extra dimensions seem to come into play in 'superstring' theory, but these extra dimensions are miniscule...if the universe itself is curved such that a supernatural spacecraft could eventually circumnavigate it by travelling in a 'straight' line for thousands of billions of lightyears, then a single subatomic particle could circumnavigate the extra dimensions of superstring theory many times over merely in travelling from one side of an atomic nucleus to the other.

In other words, the extra dimensions of superstring theory are not a good place for God to lurk. They are so small that even subatomic particles don't 'notice' them.

Some philosophers have noted that if God is said to reside outside spacetime, then His existence cannot possibly be proven or disproven by science: science by definition only ever deals with evidence and observations within spacetime--ie, within the universe of our common experience, our shopworn and familiar 3-space + time. If an experiment is not reproducible within the universe of our common experience, then it is not scientifically meaningful.

On that view the concept of God is not scientifically meaningful, unless future theories allow us to logically extend observations beyond our common universe.

But we were talking about an extradimensional God and the concept of omniscience. I really can't escape the idea that an omniscient God who exists independent of time will have available at all times a perfect understanding of all that has transpired, is transpiring, and will transpire in the future. In a way it's like the concept of a hologram: each individual subdivision of the hologram contains all the information necessary to recreate the whole. Each infitesimal moment of God's existence contains a perfect knowledge of all of time and space.

Except, of course, that I'm an atheistical barstid who doesn't believe in the Big Guy at all, and never has...

There may be concepts of dimensionality in 'brane theory that describe the possibility of macroscopic dimensions--dimensions larger than the sub-sub-atomic ones of string theory. I dunno, I'll have to research it a bit. But for just now I am a bit skeptical of the idea that a fourth dimension allows God a place to hide.

[ July 25, 2002: Message edited by: One-eyed Jack ]</p>

Theli

One-Eyed jack...

By "extradimensional" you mean extra gemetric dimensions?
I have no idea what this "independent of time" mean.
I see 2 problems with this.

1. God cannot observe the universe, because for the universe to be observed it must transmit something to be observed. It's like the flatlanders. We cannot observe anything in a 2D space as it doesn't transmit light in our 3rd dimension. It's a closed system.
2. For god to see the future, the "future" must already have elapsed. Wich would mean that everything must already have happened, including our own obervations of the universe. There would be no element of chaos, and thus no diversity in the universe.

I've wondered about this. "Outside" refers to a position. But how can there be a position without any geometric dimensions?

Thanks for replying.

parkdalian

Unless he ran a perfect Bush/Universe simulation on a computer, in his head or even created an identical universe to our universe beforehand. Of course that would be consistent with determinism.

Typhon

The problem of the logical inconsistency (or impossibility, as some hold) of a god who is both omniscient and omnipotent aside, I would still say that in theory, a god who knew all its creations' future choices, could still grant those creations free will.

It is no less free, to us, if such a supposed god has full knowledge of exactly what every single choice we'll ever make, will be, from before the moment we were supposedly created. I don't hold that it has to be like this, or that there is any evidence that any god exists with such qualities or any other, but if it were so, I would still say this doesn't necessitate the annulment of free will.

However, what it does do, and resoundingly so, is to make any judgment of our acts, reprehensible beyond imagination.

As god is supposedly the agent that:

a. Created humans

b. Had full foreknowledge of exactly how each human would behave given "free will" down to the every choice, happenstance, and occurrence which would shape each and ever single individual member of his or her creation

c. Choose to label some choices, which humans would make, based on how they were created, and given "free will" to do so, as good or bad, and to condemn or reward those who made them on this basis

Then that same supposed god would know exactly, from before the first glimmer of creation entered its possibly anthropomorphic eye, which of its creations would be saved or damned, and in what manner, and by what choices, and that a sizable, very sizable portion would choose freely those choices which would cause their creator to damn them to eternal, painful damnation. Grok that if you may, an infinity of suffering which I, even as a supposedly "flawed" and inherently "sinful" human could never imagine inflicting on the worst of all my worst enemies or the most terrible of history's human monsters. Not Hitler, not Daumer, not a man who raped my own family or skinned me alive could I or would I think it either just or merciful to condemn to such a fate. Some finite punishment or revenge, yes, perhaps, (I would have not allowed my creation to be so flawed as to produce any, but that aside) but for all eternity, never, no! I have not that degree of hatred or evil within me, and hope that I never will.

In the end, those who understand the full enormity of this moral problem could never worship such a cruel and pitiless being, at least not out of anything but the basest of fear. Most of those who do, are ignorant of the quandary and many even incapable of the degree of abstract thinking and philosophical reasoning, as simple as it may be, to arrive there. A few do, and have long tried to explain away this problem, but with at best, poor results. This is not why I am an atheist regardless, but is one of the reasons why I consider the supposed Christian god to be a monster as bad or worse than any others we have imagined in our many other works of fiction.

And frankly, any deity who was truly omnipotent, could have just as easily created humans who given free will, would each and everyone, choose to be saved. The very existence of hell furthermore, while antiquated motivator of great importance to the faith, is one of its largest liabilities in this modern age. I believe that it only points to a flawed or much, much less than "perfect" creation and/or creator. Our own notion of morality has eclipsed this, making the petty gods cast with this stigmata and blood lust appear to be nothing more than distant reflections of our own brutal natures, as seen through the smoke of iron-age campfires. Again, few of the majority of the faithful, undereducated, incognizant and far from encouraged to ask questions as they are, have been historically detracted by this glaring inconsistency with their god's supposed "perfectly just and moral" nature. The intelligentsia of the faith however have been trying vainly, and with even less success, to put this theological and ethical bugbear to rest, for centuries. They, not surprisingly, have made quite a poor show of it so far.

In short, any omnipotent, omniscient god who grants free will but damns some based on that free choices, is not, can not be called by logic and necessity, anything resembling omnibenevolent or even by the basest of human standards, just, let alone "perfectly" so.

Luckily for us all, no such gods or god likely exists, so this is all nothing more than an intellectual and perhaps philosophical exercise of the mind.

.T.

"Gods are made, not born."

[ July 26, 2002: Message edited by: Typhon ]</p>

Theli

Great post, Typhon!

This raises some questions.
1. How can it be refered to as "our choice" or "our will" when the choices has already been made?
2. How can we observe anything in our world, when all events (cause-&gt;effect) has already passed (including us oberving it)?

Non-praying Mantis

This is fine for the explaination of how God's omniscience works, but unfortunately, this knowledge destroys your free will. Let me demonstrate:

You say that God is "present" to watch you buy a DVD player in two weeks, and God is also present to watch you "struggle" with your decision to buy one two weeks before its purchase. This elimnates your free will.

Is it possible, when you are mulling over your decision to buy the DVD player, that you might not buy the DVD player in two weeks? Free will is defined as the ability to freely choose your actions. Either you will buy the DVD, or you won't. However, you said that God is present to watch you buy the DVD player, two weeks hence. Given God's foreknowledge, it would be impossible for you not to buy the DVD player, thus you have no free will in this situation !

If you have no free will, the doctrine of humans being responsible for their actions collapses. If God has no omniscience, God's plan for humanity collapses.

You can't have your cake and not have cake at the same time!

NPM

[ July 26, 2002: Message edited by: Non-praying Mantis ]</p>

One-eyed Jack

I agree: Typhon rocks. Typhon, you write: "The intelligentsia of the faith however have been trying vainly, and with even less success, to put this theological and ethical bugbear to rest, for centuries. They, not surprisingly, have made quite a poor show of it so far."

I agree completely. As far as I know, every theological attempt at an invulnerable solution to the Problem of Evil has failed and even some Christian theologians admit it, while philosophers such as Bertrand Russell and J.L. Mackie have made well-nigh unanswerable arguments demonstrating the irrationality of theism.

The only answer is the Shrug of Blind Faith, in its many forms: God's intellect is immeasurably greater than man's, so Man cannot question God's motives; God is by definition perfectly good (proof: the Bible says so) and therefore whatever He has created is by definition the best of all possible creations; etc.

luvluv

One Eyed Jack:

The everywhen aspect of God's character is certainly not heretical. You need to dig a little deeper into that. There are several Biblical passages that allude to the fact that God is not bound to time like humans are. The one that springs to mind is the verse "A day unto the Lord is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is as a day". I'll find you chapter and verse in a minute. Point being,(you listening Philosoft?) the temporal omnipresence of God is absolutely not an ad hoc argument, it was common theology when this particular argument against free will was just a gleam in it's daddy's eye. From at least the time of the prophets, God was considered to reside outside of time.

Philosoft:

All representatives of God have consistently stated that there were aspects of God's attributes that were beyond human understanding. If there is a God, and He has the attributes ascribed to Him, He is necessarily beyond explanation.

Is there a good reason to believe that a thing cannot exist if humans cannot conceive of it? Can you really conceive of, say, a singularity?\

Typhon:

Perhaps you are ommiting the role that interrelatedness plays in all of our decisions. Sometimes a person only changes their lives after seeing the bad ends of people who did not change. For example, a drug addict may decide to get clean only because he saw another drug addict overdose and die. So if God does not create the drug addict who dies, the drug addict who would have changed his mind from seeing the consequences of actions similar to his on an unfortunate neighbor would have never changed.

Point being, if you eliminate all of the people from the planet who would have not chosen to serve God, you change the destinies of all who did an you get an entirely different set of choices as you have removed an enormous resevoir of catalysts from the scene.

(I realize this seems to argue for determinism, but it doesn't. Even free will acknowledges that human decision is not immune from the effects of human actions. In other words, my free will can have a dramatic influence on what you choose to do with your free will. An abusive parent, for example, uses his or her free will to mess up their children and from that choice their children's future choices are heavily influenced but not determined.)

Also, there is a major difference between won't and could not have. If free will is correct, there are people who won't be saved, but there is no one who could not have been saved if they had chosen it.

Non praying mantis:

You folks keep smuggling linear time back into God's perception. God is constantly present at every event in the history of the universe. He experiences it all simeltaneously. To see someone doing something is not the same as making them do it. I could have not bought the DVD player but I did. Just because God sees what I eventually decide to do does not mean I never made a decision, nor that I could not made another one. I don't understand why this concept is so difficult to grasp.

Say you are watching a documentary in which a man robs a bank. He considers it in the begining of the film, conceives the plan, waivers, then goes through with it. You watch the video tape so you know what the man is going to do. You rewind the tape and watch it again. Does the man, at the begining of the film, have the option of not robbing the bank? Yes! In the footage before the bank robbery when the subject of the documentary was mulling over whether or not he was going to rob the bank he absolutely had the opportunity to not rob the bank.

Your observation of him actually robbing the bank later in the film played no role in the freedom of his decision to rob the bank!

Now it is possible that to God the universe is something like a video tape. He can "rewind", "fast forward", and "pause" our actions such that He is allowed total observation over all of our decisions. His observation of our decisions plays no role in what decisions we actually made. Just because He fast-forwarded to the end does not mean that He played any role in determining our decisions.

I know you'll say that in God's case he created the entire framework to begin with by the first act of creation, but other than the fact that we exist, God's original creation act has very little to do with the institutions that we have made. God didn't make banks, jails, paper money, guns, DVD players, market economies, etc. So the surrondings enveloping our immediate moral decisions generally have more to do with man than with God.