God isn’t omnitemporal as the past is dead and the future hasn’t lived.
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In conventional thinking. We, of course, are limited to the now, but God isn’t.
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This was referenced elsewhere here recently – did you watch it, perchance (maybe you can’t in the UK?)?:
The Illusion of Time (it’s under ten minutes)
[Oh, it’s the original NOVA program on PBS that might have international issues, probably not the YouTube excerpted from it.]
The title tells me everything I need to know.
I can comment on the NOVA program.
The speaker suggests that what Einstein discovered means that the distinction between past, present, and future may only be an illusion. This is incorrect. What is correct is that the distinction is far more complicated than our everyday experiences might suggest. Instead of the Euclidean notion that you have a series of instantaneous moments strung together like you do with a motion picture, the division is made by the speed of light.
Though the so called “hypersurface of the present” in this picture has no basis in reality. It is an intellectual construct depending on and attaching unrealistic significance to the inertial frame of the person doing so.
This distinction between past, present, and future is no illusion.
The speaker then strangely goes back to the old Euclidean notion which has been discarded by relativity speaking of time as a sequence of snapshots. He seems rather confused to me.
What do you know about spacetime ‘slices’ across cosmological distances? What do you know about Brian Greene’s narration that you reject?
Agreed. That does not negate Greene’s points.
Not sure what “points” you are talking about.
Your third picture is a good illustration that the “hypersurface of the present” can equally be made in many different ways according to different inertial frames. It goes to show that all the space between past and future cones are equally the present and equally simultaneous with the here and now.
The problem with the block universe isn’t in relativity but quantum physics which shows that the future is not already there but actually created by events in the present.
I know that < that is dead and gone and that that > didn’t exist until < then.
Time is not an illusion to us, but God exists independent of it – we’re not God.
Without any expectation or hope of convincing you otherwise, there are no other “universes”, in absolute time or space, assuming that “cosmos”, “universe”, and “world” are synonyms. If you assume that each term refers to something different, then the first and last problem is to come to an agreement on taxonomy, which I don’t expect anytime soon, and definitely not “here” and “now”.
However, out of curiosity, have you ever heard of or seen a Loedel diagram?
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If God is more than a dream-like fantasy then His independence from space-time is not an exemption from basic logic, by which He cannot see what hasn’t yet been created by His non-Deist interaction with us. He can only see the future as possibilities before He chooses which of those possibilities are realized. And giving free will to us means we participate in that choice as well.
Please don’t start with your dreamy vocabulary. God’s orchestration of providential interventions, with the myriad of precursor events required over extended periods and involving multiple individuals, defies your concept of time, or at least what it implies about limiting God.
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Incorrect. This is no more true than claiming it precludes weather forecasting.
Who controls the weather? And we are not talking about ‘forecasting’ providential interventions, we are talking about their orchestration.
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Depends on how far into the future you mean. In the short term you can ask the meteorologists about the variables they use for their predictions… meaning it is basically the laws of nature. But farther in the future and it can anything including butterflies and things we know have no cause in space-time at all.
We are not talking about ‘forecasting’ providential interventions, we are talking about their orchestration.
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How do you explain then God seeing 7 years of prosperity followed by 7 years of famine in Egypt.
Things get pretty chaotic after a week for meteorologist, and seven years is a ridiculous amount of time when we assume uncertainty has some effect on it.
What is the explanation then? Was the story not to be taken literally? Was God’s ability to foresee so great that 14 years weren’t a big deal? Or maybe God influenced the weather himself to carry out his plan?
Anyone that limits God to sequential time limits his power and also precludes even the possibility of true prophecy.
A great number of things are predictable from climate change to economic trends and human behavior. Human behavior is especially predictable when the people are dominated by the habits of sin.
That is correct. But that is when you are expected to predict daily details. It doesn’t mean that the long term climate changes are completely unpredictable.
Only when you are trying to predict whether it will be sunny or rainy on Monday.
I see no reason not to.
Not when He isn’t expected to tell you whether it will be sunny or rainy on Monday.
That is certainly a possibility. I really don’t think God needs to make such extra-ordinary alterations of nature in order to impress people – let alone that He is even willing to do something so bully artless. If God was responsible for the changes in those 14 years then it probably was already planned and Daniel was just relaying the information. I can see this being a part of God’s plan for the future events of Egypt and Israel.
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