Instead of saying God resides “Outside Space and Time”, why not just say that he resides in another universe?
The same people who tell you that this deity exists outside of space and time will still claim they have a personal relationship with it. :rolleyes: It’s BS.
What I think they mean (at least some of them) by ‘outside of space and time’ is ‘at some higher level of reality to which we have no access’.
And although there are many reasons to give religious people a hard time, I don’t believe this is one of them. Quite respectable cosmological proposals routinely make quite similar-sounding claims - for example brane cosmology posits that (quoting Wikipedia) the visible, four-dimensional universe is restricted to a brane inside a higher-dimensional space, called the "bulk".
And the Holographic Principle posits (something like) that what we perceive as energy and matter in three spatial dimensions may just be information painted on the horizon of the universe.
To be clear: I’m not arguing equivalency here - just pointing out that “it sounds like nonsense” isn’t really a solid criticism, when so many things in cosmology and physics sound like nonsense.
Let’s forget ‘outside space’ for a second, and focus on the really nonsensical (to me) idea of being ‘outside time’. So what could that even mean?
For example, the universe is finite. If God is not, then there must have been a ‘time’ when God existed, but the universe did not. Or are we saying that the universe is ‘simultaneous’ with God’s existence? If we are, then isn’t God also 13.7 billion years old, or so?
And how can he act without the passage of time? Is the future happening right now simultaneously with the past for Him? This kind of thing is supposed to pass as an argument for how He transcends our ability to detect him and such, but to me it’s just meaningless babbling.
I don’t think anyone that says it truly thinks about what it really means; it’s just supposed to get Him a free pass by appealing to his mysterious, paradoxical nature. After all, he’s God! If we start with the premise that he can’t be understood, then we can make it up as we go along, all the while forgetting that we’re pretending to understand what we just said nobody can.
It’s not totally meaningless to suggest that there might be other space-times, or other “places” (whatever that means) where there are time-like dimensions.
Our own local time is limited – much like the race-time at the Indy 500. It is meaningless to ask what the race-time was ten minutes before the race started. The race hadn’t started; the clock hadn’t started running. Only in a larger universe, in which the Indy 500 is imbedded, can we talk about “before the race starts.”
Our own space-time is like Indy 500 race-time, with the additional difficulty that the entire cosmos is closed in by the race-track walls. To us, there isn’t any “outside.” We can’t see it, and can’t go there. When the final checkered flag flies, the race – and the existence of our entire cosmos – ends.
Christians say that we go to a nice place and have a beer with the race-car sponsors.
Atheists say it’s just Indiana out there.
In my (admittedly limited) understanding of what relativity theory says about space-time, it makes more sense to talk about being outside space and time than it does to talk about being outside space but not outside time.
If I had to play devil’s advocate, so to speak, and argue the philosophical side of God existing, I’d take his presumed omnipotence and omnipresence at face-value.
This would at least narrow it down, greatly.
It would mean every quantum of space-time, and matter-energy is just another manifestation, another side—just like the aforementioned—of the entirety of the Universe itself; because he’d have to be everywhere, every-when and be every part of it.
I’d argue He’s not hiding outside spacetime, but rather, within it.
And we all seeketh the God Particle, and we all sayeth, “oooooohmmmm…”
There was a delightful old Dan O’Neill comic strip where a guy figured, if God is everywhere, we must be inside God. Maybe in God’s heart. Or some other part. Maybe we’re way down in God’s toe. Hope he doesn’t stub his toe on a rock! Watch out for rocks! And snapping turtles! They’ll bite your toe right off! Watch out for snapping turtles, God!
It’s snapping turtles all the way down!
You make it sound as if No-Space and No-Time are just another form of space and time.
I don’t think that is what is meant.
No-Space just means no space. There is no ‘outside’.
This is of course a very contra-intuitive notion. I have trouble with it as well.
I prefer the image that space is indeed endless, also difficult to fathom but there you are.
The universe, our bubble of galaxies, is forever expanding and then imploding and exploding.
I find it easier to come to grips with the notion of endless time than that of no space.
Because that limits God to the constraints of that other universe. The Erik von Danikens of this world are unambitious hacks, positing that God is an alien from another planet… God is beyond/outside/unlimited by* the universe yet at the same time within/interacting/containing/contained by* it, and those little men want to bring It down to “little green man” level.
- sorry, there simply isn’t an adequate preposition.
I saw a presentation by Stephan Hawkins and it was very sad how such a brillent guy can’t get the concept that God is much bigger then our space-time. It was not the only time I felt really sad for him as there were times he was describing aspects of God in how he describes the universe, and is 99% there but just failed that last 1%, so I guess you are in good company.
As for your OP, I take is as the universe as we know it is part of a living being - God’s child on a very large scale. The conception of this child we would take as the Big Bang, yes God often had puns intended and there is a reason why it is called what it is, hey He created everything.
So saying that God can’t exist outside spacetime is akin to saying nothing can have ever existed before you were conceived, nor does anything exist outside of you.
Actually there is; it would be God transcends…
Which isn’t meant to be just a nitpick - the philosophical concept of transcendence crops up in so many different contexts that it’s almost ordinary - Which is why I don’t think it really makes much sense to pick at it.
Religious people might be using this to dodge addressing a contradiction or something (which would be bad). They may just be plain old wrong, but what they are not doing is making a special, novel, unique argument that we must dismiss as logical nonsense on the basis we’ve never seen its like (because we have in fact seen, and not summarily rejected, arguments like it).
Now I just feel bad for the billions of non-English speakers who will never get God’s bawdy puns.
If we take the universe as being within a black hole, then there is an outside of that black hole, beyond the event horizon, which we are cut off from. In fact, that could have an independent space time and could have spawned our universe. Maybe sufficiently advanced beings could spawn lots of them. All knowing God? Not likely. I’m backing a bored grad student as our creator myself.
To my knowledge, the modern concept is that while we do live inside a black hole, it was a naked singularity and thus had no true event horizon. That still leaves us with a boundary between other universes in a multiverse, however.
Either way, it’s saying he exists outside of this spacetime continuum, so I’m not sure I see a point to the distinction.
Wow…what a wonder this beautiful board is, feel like a visitor from outside space and time myself.
The word eternal gives just a hint of what outside time is but the real concept of what space is to wondering human minds is really not even explainable to the people of physics, who came up with the concept of time as well the understanding of space, how can you define an illusion ? If you can visualize it then build it. all things are possible, limits exist only in your own mind, that is what creation is.
Ooh, so you could say God was “pulling a Hitchcock” when he became human.
Yep, I’m a Christian, but this whole “Outside Space and Time” thing is what pisses me off about God. Yeah, I’m calling you out, big dude. Enough with the Transcendence thing. We need help down here; we ask for guidance and all we get is “Oh, I’m too mysteeeeerious [/spooky voice] to show up and actually lend a hand. If I do help, you’ll never know if it was me, or just a coincidence.”
Look, I’ll be at Mickie’s Dairy Bar having breakfast later. I’ll save you a stool. I don’t ask much… just show up, okay?
Because “living in another universe, in another space and following some other unspecified timeline” is not the same thing as “existing outside of the constrants of time and space”. Somthing gotta be somewhere, dude.