# Playing "hide and seek" with God **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 3, 2012, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playing-hide-and-seek-with-god/633549 "2012-09-03T15:48:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playing-hide-and-seek-with-god/633549/1 "2012-09-03T15:48:19Z")
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? ---
**Author:** ![TATG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/50afbb/32.png) [@TATG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TATG)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playing-hide-and-seek-with-god/633549/2 "2012-09-03T15:53:01Z")
Where and when is space-time? (Fucked if I know.) ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playing-hide-and-seek-with-god/633549/3 "2012-09-03T15:54:31Z")
> [@TATG](#): > > Where and when is space-time? > > (Fucked if I know.) Space-where things are. Time-when they are there. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playing-hide-and-seek-with-god/633549/4 "2012-09-03T15:57:15Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![TATG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/50afbb/32.png) [@TATG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TATG)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playing-hide-and-seek-with-god/633549/5 "2012-09-03T16:03:45Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Space-where things are. Thereby allowing, to “God is outside space” the snappy retort of “so God is nowhere”. ---
**Author:** ![Zapp\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/ee59a6/32.png) [@Zapp\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zapp_S)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playing-hide-and-seek-with-god/633549/6 "2012-09-03T16:12:38Z")
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). ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playing-hide-and-seek-with-god/633549/7 "2012-09-03T16:15:49Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playing-hide-and-seek-with-god/633549/8 "2012-09-03T16:21:27Z")
> [@Zapp\_S](#): > > 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). 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. ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playing-hide-and-seek-with-god/633549/9 "2012-09-03T16:24:06Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Zapp\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/ee59a6/32.png) [@Zapp\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zapp_S)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playing-hide-and-seek-with-god/633549/10 "2012-09-03T16:34:40Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > 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. 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. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playing-hide-and-seek-with-god/633549/11 "2012-09-03T18:10:50Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playing-hide-and-seek-with-god/633549/12 "2012-09-03T18:19:00Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > 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. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playing-hide-and-seek-with-god/633549/13 "2012-09-03T18:31:50Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > 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? 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. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playing-hide-and-seek-with-god/633549/14 "2012-09-03T18:45:08Z")
> [@FinnAgain](#): > > 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. 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. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playing-hide-and-seek-with-god/633549/15 "2012-09-03T19:11:02Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > I postulate that there is room for one universe at a time You can postulate whatever you feel like postulating. [ > [@](#): > > The idea of an inflationary multiverse (the universe consisting of many universes with different properties) was first proposed in 1982 in my Cambridge University preprint Nonsingular Regenerating Inflationary Universe . A more detailed discussion of this possibility was contained in my paper The New Inflationary Universe Scenario published in the book “The Very Early Universe,” ed. G.W. Gibbons, S.W. Hawking and S.Siklos, Cambridge University Press, 1983, pp. 205-249. Implications of this picture for the “SUSY landscape” (the universe with different properties corresponding to different vacua of supersymmetric theories) was discussed in my paper Inflation Can Break Symmetry In SUSY, Phys. Lett. B131, 330 (1983). A major step in the development of the theory of the multiverse was related to the discovery of eternal inflation; for a discussion of its anthropic implications see the last page of my paper Eternally Existing Self-Reproducing Chaotic Inflationary Universe, Phys. Lett. B175, 395 (1986). The methods of calculation of the probability to live in the parts of the universe with different properties were developed in my paper with Dimitri Linde and Arthur Mezhlumian From the Big Bang Theory to the Theory of a Stationary Universe, in my paper with Juan Garcia-Bellido and Dimitri Linde Fluctuations of the Gravitational Constant in the Inflationary Brans-Dicke Cosmology, and in the paper by Alex Vilenkin Predictions from Quantum Cosmology, who called these methods “the mediocrity principle.” > > One of the most important implications of the anthropic principle in the context of inflationary multiverse is the possility to solve the cosmological constant problem. The first anthropic solution of the cosmological constant problem was proposed at the last page of my review article The Inflationary Universe , Rept. Prog. Phys. 47, 925 (1984). My second proposal was made in my paper Inflation and Quantum Cosmology. It was written in June 1986, and published in the book “300 years of gravitation,” (Eds.: S.W. Hawking and W. Israel, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1987), 604-630. The main goal of these two papers was to propose a physical mechanism which would allow the existence of different exponentially large parts of the universe with different values of the cosmological constant. Until the invention of the inflationary theory, this was an unsolvable problem. In addition to this problem addressed in my papers mentioned above, one must also show that life can hardly exist in the parts of the universe where the cosmological constant is much greater than the present energy density in our part of the universe. Validity of this order-of-magnitude condition was pretty obvious even 20 years ago, and it was taken for granted in my works mentioned above. However, in order to have a reliable anthropic solution for the cosmological constant problem one should know a more precise anthropic bound on the cosmological constant. The progress in this direction began in 1987 with the famous paper by Steven Weinberg Anthropic Bound on the Cosmological Cosntant . His work and the subsequent developments confirmed the assumption that the probability of existence of life of our type becomes strongly suppressed if the cosmological constant is much greater than the present energy density in the universe. The experimental discovery of the cosmological constant satisfying the anthropic bound was greeted as an experimental evidence in favour of the multiverse scenario. > > One of the most important recent steps in the development of the multiverse theory was a discovery of the KKLT mechanism of moduli stabilization in string theory, which allows to explain accelerated expansion of the universe and inflation in the context of string theory. The KKLT mechanism can lead to an incredibly large number of different vacua, perhaps 10100 or even 101000, corresponding to different local minima of energy in a vast string theory landscape. This means that our multiverse may consist of exponentially many exponentially large domains (universes), each of which may live in accordance to one of the exponentially large variety of laws of the low-energy physics. ]([Stanford University -- Dept. of Physics -- Andrei Linde](http://www.stanford.edu/~alinde/)) ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playing-hide-and-seek-with-god/633549/16 "2012-09-03T19:19:17Z")
Thank you, **FinnAgain**. This gives us something of substance to chew on, at least. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playing-hide-and-seek-with-god/633549/17 "2012-09-03T21:10:31Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playing-hide-and-seek-with-god/633549/18 "2012-09-03T21:21:19Z")
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? ---
**Author:** ![Gagundathar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a183cd/32.png) [@Gagundathar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gagundathar)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playing-hide-and-seek-with-god/633549/19 "2012-09-03T21:26:42Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2012, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playing-hide-and-seek-with-god/633549/20 "2012-09-03T21:29:52Z")
> [@Gagundathar](#): > > 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? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/playing-hide-and-seek-with-god/633549.md?page=2)