I’m willing to take believers at their word, but in this case it seems their words aren’t consistent. How can God be immaterial and outside space and time, while still speaking to people, taking them up into heaven and flooding the earth? Is God immaterial, or isn’t he? Is he outside of the universe, or within it?
Because if God is fiddling with things here in the material universe, it seems like he’d be detectable at least in principle by scientists and other observers (not to mention breaking all sorts of our universe’s physical laws, but that doesn’t seem to bother anyone). But if you say that, you get the “outside space and time” business, which just seems like a dodge. So which is it?
Full disclosure, I don’t believe in an interventionist God, so I can’t really so well offer much of a defense for those positions. I will, however, offer the analogy by how I like to think of how this interaction works.
Imagine the universe as a film, with each frame being 3D instead of 2D and time represented, as with film, by sequential frames. We, as part of the universe, are the various characters in the film, and God is the director/editor of this film. In my view, from God’s perspective, he might very well do a significant amount of editing to the film to get it to play out a certain way or he may not, that’s sort of a separate discussion, but any editing that might take place, from our perspective as characters internal to the film, have simply always been that way and are simply a natural part of the progression of events. The only way we will, in fact, see any signs identifiable as editing of the film is if, in fact, God were to do a poor job of editing the film.
For instance, consider you’re watching such a film, you will obviously know that certain parts are CGI, like some big dragon, or if it’s just poorly done and the lighting or outlining or detail doesn’t match, but if the film is well written, then that CGI dragon fits right into the context of the film and it doesn’t appear out of place at all. In fact, even from our perspective we’ll see things that are ridiculously unrealistic but make more sense than what a truly realistic version would be, like a Hollywood explosion.
In short, internal to the characters of the film, there ought not to be any way for them to distinguish which aspects of their world are natural to the world used to model theirs (ie, the real world) and which ones were added in post production by the editor, it ought to be a completely seemless perspective. Thus, as the idealized equivalent of that director/editor, the hand of God ought to be completely indistinguishable from natural occurences.
And from that same sort of analogy, we realize that attempting to understand the nature of the world of the director or the director himself in the terms of the film is going to be difficult or impossible to reasonably pull off. How do we identify which aspects of our world are representative of his world and which are parts are not? Or asking where and when that director exists in the world would be akin to trying to say that director exists in a certain part of a certain frame or frames. It just doesn’t make sense.
In fact, from my perspective, using this analogy, it would be precisely that seeing any telltale signs of the hand of God would inherently violate his omnimax property, as a perfect editor/director ought to leave no distinguishable mark that is inconsistent with the world he’s presenting.
That all said, I that perspective could explain an interventionist God as well. God could choose to break the fourth wall so to speak and include events in the film like floods or ascension to heaven that completely violate the rules as understood by the characters of the film. It should, of course, draw the characters into questioning their understanding and the consistency of the laws of their own world, but there’s nothing that inherently stops a director/editor from violating the rules inherent to the film other than any technical limitations, his vision, and his artistic integrity.
It’s generally implicit to the concept of “the universe” that it be closed. If god has any way of influencing or interacting with anything in this universe, then it is part of this universe. And if it doesn’t, it’s no god. Those other universes in multiverse theory? They’re closed too.
Not true.
As in so many things, we invented the category first and then tried to ram reality through it (e.g. “waves vs particles”). There are some arguments for the idea that ‘communication’ between universes would be possible in a multiverse by using gravitation. The idea that just because we call our corner of spacetime “Universe” means that nothing can influence it and it can’t influence anything else is not supportable.
Our “universe” is by definition a closed system, which cannot influence nor be influenced by anything else. IF something influences or is influenced by this universe, it is by definition a part of this universe. What other definition of “universe” is there?
So it is supportable because that’s the definition. Hence my qualms with the extracosmic deity. If he can tweak things in this universe, he is by definition a part of it, at least during those moments that he is doing the tweaking, anyway.
Just like quanta were once defined as “particles” or “waves” before we finally realized our very definitions themselves were wrong as were our categories. There is nothing, at all, that requires our universe to be unable to influence or be influenced by other universes in a multiverse. A workable definition might very well be “a self-contained patch of spacetime with a unified set of physical constants that differ from the universes next door”, or what have you.
But the fact that our definition disagrees with reality is a reason to discard or modify the definition, not reality. So no, of course it’s not supportable because “that’s the definition”. We can engage in Argument From Definition when we’re bullshitting or talking philosophy (but I repeat myself), but we cannot when we’re studying physics. When reality isn’t aligned with our models, we change our models,we don’t ignore good science.
That’s totally different. Books affect us, people write books, so technically they are all part of the same universe. The same one universe we live in. As far as I understand “the universe” as a scientific term, anything that can interact with this universe is a part of it.
For what it’s worth, wikipedia defines it even more broadly as simply “everything that exists, has existed or will exist”. However, there is another meaning, further down in the page as a “Connected space-time” (bolding mine):
You have Wikipedia saying that universes are unable to interact with each other. I have Lisa Randall explaining that there are very good arguments for why they can.
I’d go with Lisa Randall, myself.
We don’t disagree on anything having to do with reality or science. It’s just terminology, definitions, and language. I could adopt your definition of “universe” or you could adopt mine, and we would equally be in agreement with reality and each other either way.
Personally, I don’t think it makes any sense to say different physical constants define separate universes any more than Jupiter is in a different universe because it has a different speed of sound. If something can interact with our universe, I don’t see how you can arbtrarily say it isn’t a part of this universe. It is. But that is a matter of definitions only. It shapes our philosophy, but it doesn’t constrain reality in any way.
Changing the gravitational constant, the strength of the Weak Nuclear Force, etc… will have vastly more important ramifications than how fast sound moves in a non-vacuum depending on the materials in question. In fact, the anthropic nature of our universe would evaporate with just a slight shift in only one of a handfull of constants.
This is not something you can ignore via Argument From Definition.
I think this is more of a hybrid case, whereas the causative agent is outside of the domain in which we have agency, but is able to affect the domain from outside it. The author/novel is a good metaphor again here. Even though the occupants of a novels’ world can’t directly measure or observe the author, they can still make inferences based on the nature of their world, recurring themes, general stylistic choices, and possible errors.
I think even within the strict realm of real physics, we will necessarily encounter a similar obstacle when investigating whatever the base “substance” of space time is “made of”. It seems likely that while we can make inferences about it, using logic and math, there would be no way to actually observe or measure it directly, because it is context rather than content.
So which aspects of our universe suggest an outside author-like entity? Every time I’ve seen the “outside space and time” argument brought up, it is when pressed for evidence of God, and to explain why there isn’t any. If there is any reason to believe in God, present it.
I’m not ignoring it. “Argument from Definition” in this case isn’t an argument at all. It’s simply an explanation of our terms so we can get on the same page.
Even if the fundamental physical laws and constants change, if it can affect our universe, I would just consider it a different part of our universe. Why do new planets, galaxies, states of matter, black holes, completely new concepts like non-Euclidean space-time and quantum mechanics, and epochs like inflation and the big bang count as part of our universe, but as soon as you throw a 5 dimensional “brane” with leaky gravity in the mix (or a magical omnipotent creature, for that matter) it’s suddenly a completely different universe?