And of course, if this were actually what the B theory of time said, it would also rule out all change of any kind, including all motion.
I see what you’re saying about moving westward, but what I do not understand is how causality is compatible under B-theory. Yes, changes can occur but I am having trouble seeing how these changes can be sequentially or causally related. In other words there is no actual “progression” of species, in the sense the some species come “after” another; rather they all exist simultaneously and tenselessly. They can “change” by looking for movement across the temporal axis but this temporal axis does not move in an arrow and exerts no causal force on objects the same way being left or right of an object does not imply any causality either.
If the past/present/future distinction is illusory, then future species are not causally related to past species any more than past events/species are causally related to future events/species. Natural selection would be in an ontological crisis because nothing truly “dies” under b-theory. At least this is my initial impression; I’m curious what the answer would be from people who see a compatibility between natural selection and B-theory. I know at least one biologist who denies B-theory because if it’s implications for natural selection, but I can’t say whether these are good reasons since I haven’t studied this in any depth
Why single out evolution? In this version of B theory, there is no causality in any aspect of physical reality.
You still have causality in a spatial dimension… as the conditions in one area affect the condition in adjacent areas. To be sure we are generally accustomed to thinking of causality in time. But physicists don’t have that difficulty… especially when the equations governing events are time-reversible. They are trained to look at things in higher dimensions and the whole history of the universe can be looked at as a static 4 dimension object. You can object that this doesn’t make sense of our experience of time, but the physicist doesn’t necessarily have to concern himself with such philosophical questions.
Obviously I am not arguing the case for B theory. I definitely think A theory is correct – no question about it for me. But you cannot make a good case for A theory when you don’t completely understand B theory and your arguments against it miss the mark.
Perhaps another analogy might help. The universe according to B theory is like a novel in a book. The whole book is right there in front of you and reading it you create the subjective experience of time in going from one page to another. But you could also read it backwards or jump around to pages randomly – or what if you read all the pages simultaneously… so everything happens at once. The point is that as much as you/we need the experience of time personally, it is all in you/us and what you/us do with the book and not in the book itself.
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Saying that God “transcends” such things might be a clearer term than “is outside of” to imply that he interacts with them, but is not confined to them.
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Surely the unobservable nature of an uncaused cause relates to the theory of time. Or that an immediate effect or its acting does actually occur at some times and places.
Would this be like how Ohm’s law works the same with either current flow theory?
I mean our descriptions of truth are relative and are constructs of reality. I don’t think we have access to truth that is not filtered through our limited abilities to conceive of reality, so in that respect I just don’t think “absolute truth” is something we are equipped to access. I don’t think that means, as some people claim, that everything can be deconstructed down to nothing or to meaninglessness or that truth really doesn’t exist or that we can’t decribe reality accurately or that all people’s experience of reality are equally true. Truth is more than just what we individually perceive or subjectively experience (people can be wrong or biased or deluded and consensus about reality matters), but our ability to comprehend and communicate truth is limited by our subjectivity. And sure maybe there is some reality experienced/known by God that is absolute reality in some sense.
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[quote=“glipsnort, post:23, topic:51503”] Why single out evolution? In this version of B theory, there is no causality in any aspect of physical reality.
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While this is true you can still have logical causality based on the relationship between objects and propositions. But yes, I was simply singling out natural selection as an example; a whole new metaphysic would be needed under this version of B theory (which I think is not necessarily the view people have under relativity).
I think I understand what you’re saying now (I typed an entire reply and realized you disagreed with what I thought I was replying to haha). It sounds like what you’re saying is that there is still events that happen “before” others in that they affect what we consider current and future events, but the experience with passing through the events can happen in any order. In other words, people who claim there is no distinction between past/present/future are wrong.
Paul, I’ve just finished reading through the thread, and I listened to the Stanford Plato entry on A and B theories of time in the “Time” article (Time (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)). It’s interesting, but there’s a lot I don’t understand. I’ll look back over things soon, and particularly Mitchell’s explanations.
I have a few questions at this point that really have nothing to do with one theory of time or another.
- Why is one or the other of importance to WLC?
- Does he need one or the other to be true in order to build a particular apologetic argument?
- What if his argument is built on a faulty concept of time, or he has misunderstood/misconstrued/otherwise-missed on the concept of time he “needs” for his argument?
- Would this argument be understandable to a) the average layperson, or b) even a graduate-level person, who is working in a field of math study most people can’t even describe? c) only Physicists? d)Anybody else?
- If the argument is not understandable to anyone but physicists (and maybe also non-physicists who read heavily in the area and understand what they read), and given that WLC is not a physicist himself, what use is it?
What does it have to do with the price of tea in China?
Mitchell, is there any website or book or other resource you can suggest for the rankest pre-beginner with space-time (space-time structure?)? There’s no point in me attempting to ask for clarification on anything you’ve spent the time to describe and explain here, when I can’t even put together a decent question nor would understand the answer.
Thanks
Of course there are books and resources… but easier to understand??? gosh… I was trying to make it easier to understand, with no mathematical equations. You can try the wikipedia article on “relativity of simultaneity.” But my suggestion is, even if you cannot formulate a question, you can point out which part you are finding difficult and let me try again.
But I think the place to start is why the idea of the universe as a sequence of instances doesn’t work. The problem is that this imposes a notion of universal simultaneity which has no basis in the facts. There is ambiguity involved in doing that because of how it depends on the inertial frame you do it in. Any event on the sun within a 16.6 minute window can be equally considered simultaneous with the present moment here on earth. In the case of Alpha Centauri the window is 8.734 years wide.
But if you restrict things to just the earth the ambiguity drops down to only .04 seconds and so looking at things as a movie film (sequence of instances) works pretty good in that case.
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And God bless you for this, Mitchell. What math I had has atrophied with disuse, and it wasn’t enough for this anyway.
Reading your reply, I realize what I am asking about is probably more foundational than I realized. A native English speaker doesn’t start reading even the delightful children’s chapter book, Emil und die Detective until after a few years of German language study. There’s basic stuff to know, before taking on the challenge of the simplest work.
I could try the article on “relativity of simultaneity," maybe as a backward pointer to the previous step of study, and keep working backward to figure out where to begin to go forward.
I’ll keep your suggestion in mind:
Thanks.
I think Mitchell, Vinnie and Christy as you quoted above, all said it well.
I DO think human experience is essential to our understanding of the world. Because of that (my human experience, that is) I am baffled at WLC’s perceived need to pull in concepts of time from physics and philosophy in order to support faith in Jesus, or back up the Kerygma. Is the listener simply to be dazzled or baffled (ya’ll know the saying about brilliance and b.s.)?
The questions that lead people to an interest in Jesus or more broadly in God rarely involve formal concepts of time, but the nitty-gritties of life. A parent with a sick child wants hope, not philosophy. People want meaning, perspective on suffering (as well as relief from it), love. And people want to know if they can trust their personal experience/sense that there is something beyond their “self.”
People outside the faith, looking in, want to know what the &&&& is wrong with the people on the inside, why we’re such a crowd of twisted, self-righteous, hypocritical prigs.
The Gospel is hard enough to get to today with the challenges to the texts we rely on, and the state of the church as we know it. We have more immediate issues to hand that have nothing to do with philosophy of time, concepts of infinity, types of uni-/multiverses.
We could begin to demonstrate an apologetic of life in Christ. Which brings me back to Penner and my summer reading review.
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One thing I realized quite recently is that there isn’t a “one-size-fits-all” approach to bringing people to Jesus. Some people respond to the gospel directly, others respond to emotional arguments, and others still to more logical arguments (and I’d argue that’s okay). WLC himself says that the primary way people come to know Jesus is through the Holy Spirit (not through rational argumentation), but logical or philosophical arguments are sometimes needed to justify certain aspects of Christianity.
This was very important to me, because I wanted to know that Christianity was true, and not just wishful thinking, a delusion, etc (as some skeptics claim). I’ve heard plenty of scientists claim that science and cosmology remove the need for God. In my view, WLC is (rightly) pushing back on these claims and also showing that Christianity is an option for “thinking” people.
With that being said, I do see you point; is this really helpful for a majority of people? Is this really showing the virtues of Christianity? To be honest, I don’t know. But WLC’s popular work like On Guard (not his academic work that goes into all these issues about time) were instrumental for me believing Christianity and specifically the resurrection.
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Jesus was an apologist. So was Paul. And both were in word and life.
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BTW…
To connect this up with that diagram above, what I am talking about is the difference from the usual Euclidean version of space time where the present is only this thin plane between past and future (labeled in the diagram above as the “hyperspace of the present.” But in that conical diagram, most of space time is neither past nor future but the space in between. Other planes through the center, at a different angles would be the so called “hyperspace of the present” that you would get in other inertial frames (while the future and past cones would be exactly the same). The fact that these future and past cones are the same in all inertial frames (with all the same space-time events inside) is why we can say that relativity makes a clear distinction between past and future.
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As a former Forum comrade has been known to say, “This will take some time.”
Thanks, Mitchell.
It’s not like there is such a thing as alternative facts though. Factual evidence is not subjective, even if someone is the only observer or the evidence is very personal. Phil Yancey comes to mind.
One thing somewhat related is this.
We often speak of God as being outside of time. As in the past and future is the present for God and because of this he knows all things or something.
Jeremiah 19:4-6
New American Standard Bible
4 Since they have abandoned Me and have made this place foreign, and have burned sacrifices in it to other gods that neither they nor their forefathers nor the kings of Judah had ever known, and since they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent 5 and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, a thing which I did not command nor speak of, nor did it ever enter My [b]mind; 6 therefore, behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when this place will no longer be called Topheth or the Valley of Ben-hinnom, but rather the Valley of Slaughter.
But if he knows all things, why does he seem to have been surprised by the fact they offered their sins as a sacrifice through fire. Like it says “ it never crossed their mind” and so…. Sounds like he was not expecting that and is in time as well. Just like verses on patience. It takes being confined to time to have patience.