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To: PasorBob; betty boop
To the contrary, God is not "in" time or space. Time and space are not properties of God.

Neither therefore can the term "physical causation" or any other physical terms, e.g. physical laws, operate as restrictions on God.

God is the only possible candidate for the uncaused cause (first cause) of causation.

All physical cosmologies rely on space/time for physical causation (e.g. multi-verse, multi-world, cyclic, ekpyrotic, imaginary time.) They cannot have an infinite past (plentitude argument, everything that can happen did) because there was a beginning of real space and real time. All they do is move the goal post to prior space/time which also had a beginning, i.e. a finite chain of prior physical causation.

Truly, the only closed cosmology known to me is Max Tegmark's Level IV Parallel universe which is closed precisely because it is radical Platonism. In his view, the perceptible physical world (the frog view) is a manifestation of the real mathematical structures which actually exist outside of space and time.

“A mathematical structure is an abstract, immutable entity existing outside of space and time. If history were a movie, the structure would correspond not to a single frame of it but to the entire videotape. Consider, for example, a world made up of pointlike particles moving around in three-dimensional space. In four-dimensional spacetime — the bird perspective — these particle trajectories resemble a tangle of spaghetti. If the frog sees a particle moving with constant velocity, the bird sees a straight strand of uncooked spaghetti. If the frog sees a pair of orbiting particles, the bird sees two spaghetti strands intertwined like a double helix. To the frog, the world is described by Newton’s laws of motion and gravitation. To the bird, it is described by the geometry of the pasta — a mathematical structure. The frog itself is merely a thick bundle of pasta, whose highly complex intertwining corresponds to a cluster of particles that store and process information. Our universe is far more complicated than this example, and scientists do not yet know to what, if any, mathematical structure it corresponds.

“The Platonic paradigm raises the question of why the universe is the way it is. To an Aristotelian, this is a meaningless question: The universe just is. But a Platonist cannot help but wonder why it could not have been different. If the universe is inherently mathematical, then why was only one of the many mathematical structures singled out to describe a universe? A fundamental asymmetry appears to be built into the very heart of reality.”

Tegmark, Max, “Parallel Universes,” Scientific American, May, 2003

His cosmology is closed precisely because mathematical structures - Platonic forms - are not "in" space or time.

We began with a scientific image of the world that was held by many in opposition to a religious view built upon unverifiable beliefs and intuitions about the ultimate nature of things. But we have found that at the roots of the scientific image of the world lies a mathematical foundation that is itself ultimately religious. All our surest statements about the nature of the world are mathematical statements, yet we do not know what mathematics "is" ... and so we find that we have adapted a religion strikingly similar to many traditional faiths. Change "mathematics" to "God" and little else might seem to change. The problem of human contact with some spiritual realm, of timelessness, of our inability to capture all with language and symbol -- all have their counterparts in the quest for the nature of Platonic mathematics.

Barrow, Pi in the Sky, pg. 296-297

And even under Tegmark's model, there must be an uncaused cause of the mathematical structures themselves.

But the frog cannot discern this because he relies first on his sensory perception for knowledge. He is a natural man. To him, the particle is in an orbit, the wave is continuous. He cannot perceive by sensory perception alone the beginning and end of it.

The bird whose perspective is Platonist - the "beyond" - discerns this. Sensory perception is not his most certain source of knowledge. Reasoning to the Platonist would trump sensory perception.

More importantly, the Christian discerns the "beyond" directly, Spiritually - even if he does not have the terms of mathematics, physics and philosophy to describe it to others.

For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.

Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.

But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned. – I Corinthians 2:11-14

For this reason, the Freeper survey on how we know what we know and how certain we are that we know it was quite helpful. Oftentimes, the correspondents are not speaking the same language.

To God be the glory!

148 posted on 11/19/2008 9:29:52 AM PST by Alamo-Girl
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To: Alamo-Girl
To the contrary, God is not "in" time or space. Time and space are not properties of God. Neither therefore can the term "physical causation" or any other physical terms, e.g. physical laws, operate as restrictions on God.

Just because aspects of God are outside of time and space doesn't mean that others are not in time and space. Certainly the Son and the Holy Ghost have physical and temporal qualities, but I digress. I agree that your concept of God is eternal and uncaused and outside of time and space. This is a theological statement and a belief based on faith. It cannot therefore be argued.

Philosophically and scientifically, however, it is encumbent upon you to show why one class of object, let's call it the "supernatural" can exist outside of space-time and cause events inside of space-time, but other classes of objects may not.

Tegmark and Plato may be right or they may be wrong about mathematical constructs existing outside of space-time. Clearly this is another form of the koan: "tree falling in forest with no one to hear".

It is also the core of my cosmology. Interestingly, in "Timothy" you birdies mention Dawkins repeatedly, but I have yet to see references to the memes that he invented. (I'm only half way through (I read Gatsby in 2 hours which says something about Timothy)).

There is no doubt thgat Bethoven's fifth exists in space-time. It was created in space-time by a creature of space-time. And yet it doesn't exist anymore than the Pythagorean theorem absent some medium. It moved from a mind to written music to another mind to a wax disc to vinyl to tape to cd and it will exist as long as some form of memory exists.

If you listen carefully, you will learn that you too are just a signal in the fabric of space-time. All that exists is space-time and unique peices of information contained in discrete wave packets of space-time. That includes you and me and God and Satan and ducks and pencils and all other nouns and pronouns. I forget the word used for a discrete wave packet that behaves like a wave. It was discovered in Edinburgh in the 19th century near Heriot Watt University.

Dawkins didn't get it with his memes. He thought they were physical structures in brains, but they are your theoretical information outside (but really inside) of space-time.

151 posted on 11/19/2008 11:17:25 AM PST by PasorBob
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To: Alamo-Girl
And even under Tegmark's model, there must be an uncaused cause of the mathematical structures themselves. No. Tegmark pretty much says they ARE God.
153 posted on 11/19/2008 11:33:53 AM PST by PasorBob
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