Replies

Thank you oh so very much for that beautiful Scripture, dearest sister in Christ, and as always your wonderful insights!

Perhaps predestination vs. free will are more like complementarities than they are mutually-exclusive concepts.

I very strongly agree with your assessment!

And yet, how can any organic function of a living being be understood except as the effect (fulfillment) of a "future" cause?

Again, I very strongly agree. Indeed, it is tongue-twisting to try to speak of biological functions without using the word "purpose" as many try to do to avoid speaking of "final cause."

Your example of repair functions is particularly strong when we look at the molecular level. Put another way, living systems developed repair capability before the need could have arisen. It is a temporal anomaly.

Concerning my reference to our existence as a hypersurface, I was thinking in terms of time as volumetric in MHGinTN's lingo.

And I was visualizing from Tegmark's article on the Level IV Parallel universe where he said the bird would see a frog as a "tangle of spaghetti." His observation reminds of the Calabi-Yau Manifold (hypersurface)

That Calabi-Yau gnarled hypersurface is popular in string theory but also many apply in expanded extra dimension theories.

Essentially, I'm thinking that our existence from God's perspective spans over past-present-future, the paths we took on our worldline (linear) and the ones we could have taken had we chosen differently (hyperplane). I realize this is a bit Everett (multi-world) but I couldn't resist ... LOLOL!

Also, I found a related article you might enjoy: A Historical Perspective on the Topology and Physics of Hyperspace

WONDERFUL observation, dearest sister in Christ! The paths not taken — relegated to the "hyperplane" — probably fall into the realm of imaginary or complex numbers. (Just to keep the mathematical analogies going here!)

Don't sweat any analogy to Everett. We're dealing with problems of the One Cosmos. Everett is dealing with problems of generating and justifying other cosmic systems altogether.

I've been trying to grasp the meaning of MHGinTN's extraordinary meditations on time, captured in his marvelous article at Post #37.

[Since we three have been chatting up this issue in private FReepMail in recent times, I hope it's okay to bring some of our issues into public view here.]

An excerpt:

... Time may embrace greater than linear reality ... moment by moment construction of the past is a linear nature, whereas present is a planar nature composed of all the 'arriving' moments on an near infinite number of timelines.

From the backside of this planar present eternity would appear as a plane, but from the otherside of the planar present eternity would appear as a near infinite number of points (moments) each able to extend 'linearly' into a 'nother' planar present of '1/2 infinite directions'.

Dear brother in Christ, please help me here. I seem to lack any understanding of what "1/2" of an infinity may be. But then, when I heard that it was mathematically demonstrable that infinities come in different sizes, I was perplexed then, too. (Topology is not my strong suit.)

I applaud your descriptions of the linear and planar aspects of time. I feel sure you are right about the volumetric extension as well.

It seems both of us are bumping up hard against the crux of the problem: We are, in effect, trying to have a "dialogue" with God. But soon we find we cannot do that, without first ascribing to Him such characteristics as "position" or "movement in time." The ever-transcendent God has neither: He is wholly "outside" spacetime however understood.

Yet as you truthfully wrote, dear brother:

On the one hand, Eternity must be real within the context of the creation, thus God remains greater than eternity because God created the 'bubble' within which eternity may be an temporal expression. On the other hand, perhaps eternity is not even a temporal expression, but we humans have conceived of it that way. In such a context, perhaps God divided eternity in order to create the expression of dimension time for our existence.

God created both Heaven and Earth. I take this to mean that both Eternity and the temporality of His Creation are in His Gift. Or as you suggest, "God divided eternity in order to create the expression of dimension time for our existence."

I really liked your "bubble!" Indeed to me it seems that Eternity is the context, or crucible, in which all spatiotemporal events actually come to pass.

Dearest Alamo-Girl, my sister in Christ, thank you ever so much for your outstanding observations, for "hosting" this exchange, and for the wonderfully engaging links!!!