ARCHIVE: God time and relativity

[1013]

<No one believes that this slaying was literal and many believe it to be symbolic of the plan to sacrifice Christ for our sins. Thus from the foundation, just after adam and eve sinned, was the lamb slain.>

No one? Weren't Abel and Zechariah martyred? It seems literal to me.

relevence?

we are speaking of the slaying of the lamb in rev 13. I don't see what bearing abel and zechariah have here.

Hmm, I am not sure about that, it seems like a stretch but I would have to look at closer.

as I said, look in the nasb. the experts behind that translation don't think this is a stretch. there is an ambiguity in the greek that that translation takes the other way.

If God created the world, knowing that the future would be open in this world, in a sense didn't He limit his knowledge by allowing for something He couldn't know?

if God created a certain future, doesn't he limit his knowledge to the precise details of what he can know of that future? The limit of knowledge is truth. What is the world like. If God "knows" something about the world that isn't true of the world, transgressing those limits, he doesn't really have knowledge. So the question isn't about wether God's knowledge is complete or limited. The question is "what is the world like?" If it's open, ie filled with possibilities, then a God with unlimited knowledge of that world will know that the future is open.

But can it be truly ordered if it is not determined? If it is not determined in some way then what can prevent at least some things from happening that messs up the order?

the world is determined in that it is ordered. It just isn't determined exhaustively. Thus we do not have determinism. Indeterminism is not the total lack of determined aspects and details. It is merely the negation that everything is determined. and that which is undetermined isn't merely senseless chaos. As you've already pointed out, a radically indeterminate picture given to us by quantum mechanics yeilds to determism at the macro level. and that picture as a whole really can't be called determinism as determinism is the total determination of all of the future from the beginning or the eternal past. Furthermore, some of the indeterminate features of the world will still recieve order. We make determinations in time. thus details that weren't determined are set in order by rational minds (though sometimes they are determined irrationally).

True...it is interesting b/c in some ways it seems that evolution affirms a determined, naturalistic universe, but almost determined by the forces of chance and evolution, but yet everything seems totally chaotic, then process theology adds God into the picture and says God orders the chaos...

well, in the grand scheme of things, you can still hold consistently hold to either determinism or indeterminism in an evolutionary frame. the difference is this. if a determinist who is an evolutionist uses the term "chance", he doesn't mean real metaphysical uncertainty but rather he uses the term in the sense that it is purposeless even though each detail and step and wiggle of an atom that contributes to this was determined at the big bang or in the eternal past before the big bang. The evolutionist who does not subscribe to determinism means that chance really is chance. If you were to take the universe and wind back the clock and set everything back a billion years ago, the deterministic evolutionist would say that everything would wind up exactly as it is today if time then proceeded to go forward. The indeterminist would say that much would most likely be different.

but I'm not an evolutionist so most of that makes little difference to me.

Honestly, I don't know enough about all these areas to really formulate my opinion strongly, but I figure its helpful to walk through and discuss and get my ideas down...

bueno. take your time.

 

[geralduk]

Who can PLUMB THE DEPTHS of God.
Or find them out?

It seems much of this debate on this subject is trying to put God in a managable form that will allow man to still think he is greater or at least not realy SUBJECT to God.

Is it considered that God is both the CREATOR of time.
Who made Himself SUBJECT to it.
and showed that He was both MASTER in and out of time.

That the BIRTH,LIFE,DEATH,RESURECTION,GLORY and RETURN were and are all ACCORDING to the SCRIPTURES.
Showing that HE is God and MASTER of ALL.
and ALL things WORK according to HIS will.

 

[Jaltus]

I'll get back to this tomorrow or later today.

 

[1013]

It seems much of this debate on this subject is trying to put God in a managable form that will allow man to still think he is greater or at least not realy SUBJECT to God.

why should the knowledge of God be unmanagable or unreasonable. Nobody's denying that God is mysterious. But lets understand what we can understand.

Is it considered that God is both the CREATOR of time.
Who made Himself SUBJECT to it.
and showed that He was both MASTER in and out of time.

maybe he did create time. you couldn't prove it by scripture though. And maybe time is eternal because an eternal God is temporal thus making it nonsense to speak of God outside of time.

 

[Jaltus]

1013,

moment, temporal slice, whatever you want to call it. I don't see why we can't speak of a point in time like we can a point on a line. I don't see how the innability to stop all motion causes us difficulty in speaking of moments as an ininitely small slice of time in the manner that a point is of a line is relevent to our conception of this for the purpose of understanding presentism.

The problem is that a "slice" of time still has dimensionality, whereas a point in time does not. Having width or depth means that if you put some of them together, you start building something bigger. When you have points, if you put them together, you still only have a point for they have no width, height, or depth. A billion points are the same length (or whatever dimesnion you wish) as one point. A billions slices is bigger (in what ever dimension) than a single slice. do you see the difference yet?

My point (pardon the pun) is that there is no basic unit of time such that every one of that unit corresponds to another one of those units in the twin paradox unless they have no dimensionality, in which case both twins experience an infinite number of them. There are the same amount of points in a foot and in a centimeter. Why? Because both have an infinite amount. That means that a point is not in fact a measurement, it is only position. That is the difference.

what is a line? an infinite series of points that are connected. of course it is not a measurement. I'm making measurement irrelevent to the issue of presentism.

But measurement is relevant to the issue at hand.

a plane isn't a measurement either, yet we could say that there are an infinite number of plans in a 3 dimensional object.

True.

every line segment has a halfway mark. you can divide a line in any way you like. any division of one line can have a corresponding division in another line. 3 qurters of an inch can correspond to 3 qurters of a mile. 1 billionth of an inch can correspond to one billionth of a mile. I don't see why we can't do the same with time. if we can, then it is reasonable that every moment the twinns live is in the same present as the present of the other and those presents correspond in there time lines.

Correspondance shows that there is still a difference. If an inch is set equal to a mile, we still know that the inch has less length than a mile does. In the twin paradox, the question is how can one experience more time than the other? There is correspondance of time, but there is not EQUALITY of time. One will always experience more seconds or nanoseconds or whatevers than the other. No matter how small of a unit you break it down to, as long as it has some dimensionality, one will always experience more than the other. There will never be a place where you can say they experienced the same amount of something. The obvious exception to this is "points in time," since both (and everyone else) experiences an infinite amount of "points of time" each and every second, since a "point of time" has not dimensions, it is only a specific instance, showing position on the "time graph," as it were.

The twins never experience the same amount of anything as long as that anything has dimensionality.

then what does have a dimension. in a four dimensional universe, a 100 3 dimensional "planes" add up to nothing. so what are we then?

We are not planes. We are not 100 planes added together. We are actual four-dimensional objects. If you keep adding 0 to 0, you keep getting 0. It is not until you add 1 to 0 that you come up with something other than 0.

of course one twinn will experience more time than another. however if you divide each twinns experience of time by infinity, both of the experience an equal amount of those divisions. as long as we can do this, it is simple to see how str does not threaten presentism (Which I know you said is not the problem, but then what is your point in challenging what I said of the twinns? If that is Minkowski... and not str (not strictly str) then I don't see what the problem with the Minkowskian picture is)

First off, you cannot divide infinity. It is an indivisable number (other than by itself or 0, either of which are points of singularity, meaning that what happen is undefinable). You cannot have an infinite number of measurements. Anything divided by infinity is zero. An infinite number of divisions means you have NOTHING LEFT. Then you are saying that you have equal amounts of nothing to compare, which is nonsensical (or a tautology). Presentism does not make sense because there is no way to show that the twins have blahs that correspond as long as the blahs have dimensionality.

 

[1013]

That means that a point is not in fact a measurement, it is only position. That is the difference.

and all I'm suggesting is that there is only one temporal position at which all of actual reality takes place within.

so what if two people experience a different amount of duration. I really don't see why that matters as long as halfway through one's second can correspond to halfway through anothers minute, 22.58835 percent of the way through one's second corresponds to 22.58835 percent of the way through another's minute. and when do these correspond? In the present. Is there any incoherence in this description? I just can't concieve how one can be derived.

Correspondance shows that there is still a difference.

and what difference is that to presentism? that the correspondence can exist at all is all that is necessary for the coherence of presentism in a reletivistic universe.

No matter how small of a unit you break it down to, as long as it has some dimensionality, one will always experience more than the other. There will never be a place where you can say they experienced the same amount of something. The obvious exception to this is "points in time," since both (and everyone else) experiences an infinite amount of "points of time" each and every second, since a "point of time" has not dimensions, it is only a specific instance, showing position on the "time graph," as it were

Isn't that what I've been saying?

however if you divide each twinns experience of time by infinity, both of the experience an equal amount of those divisions.

An infinite number of divisions means you have NOTHING LEFT. Then you are saying that you have equal amounts of nothing to compare, which is nonsensical (or a tautology).

It doesn't seem incoherent to speak of a plane within a four dimensional space.

Presentism does not make sense because there is no way to show that the twins have blahs that correspond as long as the blahs have dimensionality.

but you've just said that there can be an equal amount of points of time no matter what the length. there you go. and if we cannot speak of this because points are equal to zero, then we can't speak of points at all. but we can. they are mere "positions," not actual lengths, and presentism merely suggests that there is only one position in all of the temporal order of things that is real regardless of the differences in the rates of duration throughout the universe.

perhaps some analogies would help. if you had two pipes of water and selected a single point on both pipes, lining them up, and in one, lots of water ran through swiftly passing the point and in the other the water went slowly. that doesn't effect the fact that there is only one point to which both streams of water pass and that is like reality. Of course you may ask, well gee, we've got this quatifiable entity that runs at different rates through out the universe and your suggesting that it is only real at this one point? that would be a good observation, and perhaps you could say that there really is something there, but that does not necessarily indicate that on a metaphysical level that the present isn't the only truly inhabitable point of time (the most real or only real) and the future isn't maleable and the past isn't set in stone.

presentism just simply isn't about length of duration and different lengths experiencable aren't relevent.

perhaps you understand something about this that makes it difficult and perhaps an incoherent picture, but nothing you've said really communicates that to the laymen.

so are we talking about reletivity or minkowski. My college introductory level education of physics calls the twinns paradox reletivity. but you say it's problematic although you hold that str isn't problematic for presentism.