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The problem is -- at least I see it as a problem -- there just ain't no such place. You're either in the universe, which means being in time, or you're nowhere. There are no priviliged reference frames. Except in science fiction novels.

Patrick, the excerpt I quoted is not about science fiction plots. It is about the way the world appears to us intuitively, and to what extent that appearance really matches the universe as it actually is. The speculation begins with a search for what it means when we say the space-time universe had a beginning, before which (by logical implication) there was no space and no time. The Big Bang is widely understood to be the beginning of both space and time.

What Overman and Pannenberg suggest is that the beginning is the creative act sine qua non. But we can know nothing with certitude about this beginning, either on the basis of direct observation (impossible) or imaginatively, based on the laws of physics. That’s because the laws of physics utterly break down at Planck time – that ridiculously teensy (10^-43 second) quantum of time following the “explosion” of the singularity.

But if time starts at Plank time (and space too, for that matter), then the singularity itself is not part of time (or space): It belongs to eternity (to “no time”). And if it belongs to eternity, while at the same time (so to speak) specifying (i.e., as a kind of cosmic program) all of universal reality evolving in time -- natural laws, the “tuning” of the primary physical forces in nature, etc. -- then you might say natural laws and physical forces, etc., are eternity -- or at least marks or expressions of eternity -- operating in time.

It is perhaps in this sense that we might understand what Einstein meant when he observed that the distinction between past, present, and future is in many respects a stubborn illusion. I can imagine the “world view” of relativity theory as Pannenberg describes it. I can see what he means when he says that it is, in a certain sense, “a last contemporaneousness of all events that for us are partitioned into a temporal sequence.”

I’ve been yelling and jumping up and down and turning blue in the face for some time now, from yelling out loud my claim that man “stands at the intersection of time and timelessness.” Pannenberg sheds light on what I mean by this. FWIW.

Another fun thing to think about is that everything that exists, including our own bodies, is composed of matter -- particles and atoms -- that was manufactured by distant stars, and released when those stars exploded.... "Living stars" like our Sun make our life possible, and sustain it continuously.

Truly, we need "cosmologies of wholeness" in order to describe the actuality of our universe. Everything is connected to everything else, and everything is always on the move....

Thanks for writing, Patrick!

Thank you so much for your wonderful post, betty boop!

It is perhaps in this sense that we might understand what Einstein meant when he observed that the distinction between past, present, and future is in many respects a stubborn illusion. I can imagine the “world view” of relativity theory as Pannenberg describes it. I can see what he means when he says that it is, in a certain sense, “a last contemporaneousness of all events that for us are partitioned into a temporal sequence.”

Indeed. I've posted some additional research material on the subject at post 210 but wanted to return to the subject because Einstein has been quoted a lot on this thread since your above mention of his attitude about time. The quote was in reference to the death of a friend.

Einstein Quotes

"Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

Here are some others from that same link to help put things in perspective:

"Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."

"I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details."

“God is subtle but he is not malicious."

And my personal favorite:

The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is.

Einstein's speech 'My Credo' to the German League of Human Rights, Berlin, autumn 1932, Einstein: A Life in Science, Michael White and John Gribbin, page 262