It has been put forth by some, after it has been pointed out that the deity they believe in can’t be found, that he resides “Outside Space and Time”, and that it is because he lives “Outside Space and Time” that it is possible to do what he supposedly does.
Where is “Outside Space”?
When is “Outside Time”
If it can be established that such a combination is possible, how can something reside there?
Or, as I stated in another thread:
If I told you that I can solve the housing problem by having people move into round-square subterrainian tunnels that exist in the clouds, would your first question be:
A. How much is this going to cost?
B. Where are we going to build these?
C. What the fuck are you talking about?
Where and when is space-time?
(Fucked if I know.)
Space-where things are.
Time-when they are there.
OK, I have heard it said that Space & Time did not exist until the Big Bang. I have no idea of the scientific accuracy of this but I always wondered if there was no Space, what did the energy exist in, and if no Time, how did it endure?
Re the OP, I would say that God is “Above” or “Beyond” Space & Time in that He is not limited to them, or that He “transcends” them. I have no idea if that helps at all.
Thereby allowing, to “God is outside space” the snappy retort of “so God is nowhere”.
The answer is that God is not a subject to the physical laws. Like he is not made of particles and stuff. More like something abstract.
It’s like if I asked you where is a freedom? I mean not where in the world, but the concept of freedom? It’s not made of particles, it’s just something abstract, an idea. (You can say it’s in your head, like a bunch of neurons carrying that information… but you get the idea).
Think of a book. You are outside the space and time of that book. But if you had it as a word file you could go in and change things around should you want to.
In our case it’s more complicated, more like a really advanced computer simulation but the basic idea is the same.
I’m pretty sure there aren’t many believers who will agree with your “God is only an idea, it’s just in your head” interpretation of their lord. He’s as real as you and me to most religious people.
What I find interesting about the idea of a God outside time is that it implies God might let the universe have a quick run through on it’s own merits before going in to make changes. There would be no way for us to know which iteration we were in, and we could easily be in one of the earlier versions with little to no interceding.
Whereas if God were constantly futzing with things during the first iteration, that makes the idea of being outside of time kind of meaningless.
For believers he is an idea in the sense of “non-physical”.
Non-believers say that this idea is only in believers’ head.
That’s what I meant.
For everything that has a creator, the creator is outside the space/time of his/her creation.
The author of a novel is outside the world and the chronology of the book.
The programmer of a computer game exists outside the computer on which the software runs.
The director of a movie exists outside of, and may or may not appear in, the movie.
And in every single one of those examples the Creator at one time was Created.
Universe, having perfect self continence, is the sum total of all of our spacetime. However, the math behind Inflation indicates that the Big Bang is one of many. It’s perfectly conceivable that there are any number of entities which exist outside of our universe. The leap to assuming that any of them are or might be deific is, however, much larger.
Actually, this makes it conceivable that any number of entities existed before our universe was created. I postulate that there is room for one universe at a time-either these other entities died with the previous universe, or they made it through the BB to live in this one. There is no need to create a nonsense “Outside Space and Time” to accomodate these hypothetical entities.
You can postulate whatever you feel like postulating.
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Thank you, FinnAgain. This gives us something of substance to chew on, at least.
I guess I don’t see the problem the OP is posing for the existence of God to be distinct from that of the occurrence of the Big Bang.
The problem with the Big Bang is that spacetime began with the Big Bang. So where did the BB come from? You can talk about particles and antiparticle pairs spawning out of nothing within our spacetime continuum, but these events happen “where things are,” and happen “when they are there.” But the BB didn’t have anywhere to happen, because there was no ‘where,’ and there was no time at which it could have occurred, because there was no such thing as time yet.
At least as the view is from inside our universe. Yet the BB happened anyway, and as a result we’re yammering at each other over the Interwebs.
Now that isn’t to say there aren’t other problems with the existence of God that are more difficult than those posed by the Big Bang. But there had to be some sort of milieu to give rise to the Big Bang, that milieu had to exist outside of space and time, and so there’s no reason why that can’t be a place where God hangs out when he’s tired from all that godding about.
First, there is NoTime and NoSpace-acceptable.
Then, the BB, creating Time and Space where it didn’t exist before-acceptable.
Some NoTime and NoSpace still exists, though-??
GodEntity resides in this NoTime/NoSpace-How?
GodEntity manipulates greatly what happens in Time and Space from NoTime/NoSpace-How?
I think one of the critical characteristics for the imagined deity is its ability to manipulate the Universe without any traces of its mechanisms. It is posited that such an entity causes changes but the effects of those changes are indistinguishable from those caused by happenstance and normal physical processes.
Like the difference between your flipping a coin 100 times and getting some random number of heads and tails, and my flipping a coin 100 times and getting a number of heads and tails preordained by God?