If you read the book, please let us know what you think!
For more on the ekpyrotic physical cosmology, click here.
Concerning time v. eternity and related issues, I offer that space, time, autonomy and physical causation are part of the creation and not properties of - or limitations on - the Creator of them.
I leave it to my dearest sister in Christ, betty boop, to clarify the issue concerning Aristotle and the beginning or first cause.
This is fascinating, thank you. I will read it more completely and reply as time permits.
You delegated to me the clarification of the "issue concerning Aristotle and the beginning or first cause." I'll try to do my best in that regard.
The short answer to Thales Miletus' question is: NO. Not at all.
The issue of God is not just about the inception of the universe; rather the real question directly goes straight to the persistent order of the Universe. Such that, even if the universe is acknowledged as "eternal," no account is given of how it transpires to eternally "hold together" as a (putatively) unified cosmic system. in the immanent world. Which is to suggest that God is necessary, not only with regard to the beginning of the universe, but also with regard to its subsequent organic, developmental organization as consistently revealed in time and space.
Were this not so, we couldn't even speak of universal first principles or of the existence of physical or natural laws. Science would be totally out of business under such conditions. Mathematics would be obviated, having no point of contact with reality, and thus nothing meaningful to do....
But to get back to Thales Miletus' characterization of Aristotle as a fan of the Eternal Universe Model, which purportedly gets rid of the "God problem."
For openers, no one in the Greek world of Aristotle's time was dealing with "the time problem" in the same terms as conceived by us "moderns." The genius of the great Greeks was the explication of universal (that is to say, timeless) principles as they impinge on the natural world, starting with Thales. "Time" as subject matter of inquiry in and for itself was simply not on the agenda of Greek thought at the time.... They were seeking the explanation of the persistence of phenomena which could only be classified in time as in some way inherently carrying the quality of timelessness, which alone carries their own persistence in time and space.
Which is to say that the great Greeks — with the possible exception of Zeno — did not engage the Time Problem at all.
Aristotle very likely believed, as did his master teacher Plato (and collaborator of some 27 years in one way shape or form), that the Cosmos is "eternal." That is to say, not limited in time. But I daresay neither of these men thus concluded that the requirement of a creator, of a first principle, was thereby obviated.
Whatever "dispute" there may have been between Plato and Aristotle (pace Ayn Rand), it wasn't a dispute about the divine origin of the Cosmos. Both regarded the cosmos (universe) as "eternal." But even an "eternal cosmos" demands some "divine rule" as it relates to explain the persistence and coherence in time of temporal creatures that arise within it.
Anyhoot, I think that any perceived difference between a Plato and an Aristotle can be explained as a "shift of attention" from one paradigm to another.
For Plato, the creator and sustainer of all that is arises in the Beyond of human observation and direct experience. The Platonic Idea spawns the Forms of being from outside the sphere in which these Forms are manifest in creaturely life. That is to say, the Form of all existents itself exists apart from the field of creaturely manifestation.
Aristotle's great insight was that the Form of creatures can be perceived in the (immanent) creatures themselves. This was a shift of attention away from Plato's understanding of "Form" as emanating from a transcendent Source. And with this shift of attention, Aristotle has well earned his reputation as the Father of the Natural Sciences.
But then maybe all Aristotle was saying is that, finally, immanence and transcendence are but two sides of the same coin. They are "complementarities" in the sense that you need understanding of both to explain the total situation that each endeavors to describe separately, each from its own "perspective."
Thank you ever so much for writing, dearest sister in Christ! And for your very kind words!