External Supernatural Being?

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Permalink Reply by Richard Knight on August 21, 2008 at 9:50pm

I'm bored, I'll take a shot.

"Similarly, God lives outside of space and time. He created space. He created time. He is confined to neither of these things. It's somewhat of a stretch for most of us to imagine that, but a physicist or mathematician will attest that it's entirely reasonable. There is nothing absurd or illogical to speak of dimensions outside of space and time; in fact additional dimensions are necessary to rationally explain the universe. String theory in modern physics defines 11 dimensions, four of which we experience."

String theory is still being nailed down; indeed, different numbers of dimensions are needed to model different particles as a vibrating string. However, when physicists are talking about dimensions, we are talking about well defined mathematical constructs. Talk like "God lives outside time and space" is completely nonsensical because your nebulous concept of "God" is neither well-defined nor determinate; whereas a physicist's notion of time, space, and other dimensions is.

An active area of research is at the intersection of string theory and cosmology; it appears that string theory may be able to explain the (non-divine) origins of our universe and may imply other origins of other universes.

"Human experience, without exception, is that all effects have causes. There are no uncaused causes. The inevitable conclusion is that the laws of physics explain how the universe operates but they don't explain how it got here. All explanations require an "eternal" ingredient. The existence of anything at all demands an uncaused cause. So we never escape the question 'where did it all come from.'

A purely physical explanation (i.e. materialism, or an atheistic belief that says that there is no such thing as a metaphysical world) relies on as-of-yet undiscovered principles of physics. It requires faith, if you will, that someday we'll discover a way for matter and energy to come from nothing."

Completely false. Look up quantum mechanics experiments. This argument may have been unanswerable in Newton's time, but these days the above argument is entirely untrue.

"Another problem faced by materialistic explanations is entropy. Entropy says that the universe is cooling down, that energy is being converted from usable forms to unusable forms, and that this process is irreversible. Processes with entropy happen, by definition, over a finite period of time. An infinitely old universe with entropy would now be cold and dead. Once again, the universe can't be infinitely old. It had to have a cause."

Your understanding of entropy is below the high school level. The universe is not infinitely old, and it doesn't require a cause. This is a perfect example of slippery religion, though. Back in the day, the best evidence science had implied that the universe was infinitely old and religion used that as evidence of an eternal god. Now that we now the universe has a specific age, religion uses that as proof a god caused it.

Anyway, we know how old the universe is; and it does not have a "cause" as you define it, while the cause as physicists define it is unknown. Oh, and while it may be unknown, it is known that the cause isn't any definition of god.

"So science as we know it now cannot possibly explain this. The only logical explanation is a cause outside of space and time - which of course is consistent with the definition of God that theists have held for thousands of years."

I believe that science as you know it cannot explain that. Science, by which I mean the method and the body of work it has generated, certainly can. There are questions still unanswered, but that doesn't mean you can just jump in with crazy claims.

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Permalink Reply by Fizzy on August 24, 2008 at 12:20am

RK really already covered this, but I'm bored too, dangit. Where'd you dig this thing up anyway, Marc?

Similarly, God lives outside of space and time. He created space. He created time. He is confined to neither of these things. It's somewhat of a stretch for most of us to imagine that, but a physicist or mathematician will attest that it's entirely reasonable.

I'm a physicist. I will not attest to this. Anything truly outside and wholly separate from the universe would be incapable of interacting with anything inside of it. I mean, really, that's kind of the definition of supernatural. Those additional dimensions, while not spatial or temporal dimensions, are still in (or of) the universe. They are not little pocket universes full of aliens or demons or demon-aliens. Doom was a video game.

Human experience, without exception, is that all effects have causes. There are no uncaused causes. The inevitable conclusion is that the laws of physics explain how the universe operates but they don't explain how it got here. All explanations require an "eternal" ingredient. The existence of anything at all demands an uncaused cause. So we never escape the question 'where did it all come from.'

It's interesting that the author leaves out the traditional 'point' of this argument. Usually they go on to say that the only way to escape from the infinite regression is to identify a first 'uncaused' event and declare that 'god'. Though why god should be exempt from causality (and the matter of what he was doing for the eternity before he created time) is never touched on. It's almost as though our silly little author realized how ridiculous this is while typing, but forgot to delete the lead up.

Another problem faced by materialistic explanations is entropy. Entropy says that the universe is cooling down, that energy is being converted from usable forms to unusable forms, and that this process is irreversible. Processes with entropy happen, by definition, over a finite period of time. An infinitely old universe with entropy would now be cold and dead. Once again, the universe can't be infinitely old. It had to have a cause.

It is interesting (at least I think it is) to note that, for certain non-linear rates of change in the universal constants you can model an expanding universe, in reverse, that converges to an asymptote rather than zero. I don't know if these rates are accurate representations of our universe (the ones we ran in class almost certainly weren't), but is possible. Not to mention a sight more probable than a god popping the universe together with a nose wiggle.


Science does not refute this; in fact a truly scientific assessment of the facts is that all purely materialistic answers to the origins question blatantly violate the laws of physics.

Which laws? Where? When? Why?

Science is the method by which we employ our curiosity. Religion is the instrument with which we crush it.

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Permalink Reply by Marc Sacks on August 24, 2008 at 9:25am

Out of interest I subcribed to that "Atheist's Riddle" you may have seen advertised around here, it claims to have proof of god's existence - what it really proves is religious stupidity.

Anyway, one of the links it provided was a creationists FAQs, which is where I copied this answer from.

I knew roughly how to respond from a philosophical viewpoint, but I wanted a scientific one, so thanks!

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Permalink Reply by LeaT on August 24, 2008 at 8:43am

First of all, he doesn't answer the question... It's a straw man answer really, since the answer somehow seems to be relevant to the question without actually answering it, the question is "Where did God come from? Who made God?", and this just explains the basic idea of how god could be outside space-time in the words of a physicist, yes the possibility that a god could exist outside space-time. The author forgets that if there is another space-time outside this space-time where god could possibly be confined, then you can go on and on, another space-time outside that space-time, another god, an additional space-time outside that space-time of space-time, yet another god etc. I mean, what actually says there is NOT another space-time who created the space-time where god then would exist? Also, to say god exists in a sort of nothing, a vacuum is quite a rediculous argument, since if god actually exists in a sort of nothingness, then the nothingness exists too. You have an oxymoron and even more so a paradox.

Of course, what Fizzy said too about god being a part of causality.

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Permalink Reply by LeaT on August 24, 2008 at 1:51pm

I was thinking more about this, and I realized, the author actually insuniates that the possibility for space-times is infinte, with his book analogy, because he also forgets to mention that John Grisham is also a human, born of human parents and is a finite being living in a finite universe just like the fictional characters in his novels. If god is yet another author and we are the characters of a novel, well, what says that god isn't just another John Grisham?

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