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God, time and space-time

Tom Blackburn The Pre-philosophical view Time is mysterious - before we do philosophy, we are inclined to think of it as some sort of strange substance, owing beside space, and dragging all of space with it into the strange domain we call the future. In low-standards contexts, ie. everyday life, this conception does not seem to trouble many of us, but when scrutinized, this account begins to look remarkably unsubstantial. If time ows, we may ask, how fast does it ow? What marks what we call the present off as existentially more interesting than the past and the future? What happens to past and future objects when the cease to become present? And is time nite, or does it, perhaps like space, extend into innity? Assuming time exists, these are all sensible yet profoundly deep questions about the very nature of reality itself, and are notoriously hard to answer easily. Consider the question how fast does time ow?. The answer we might give would be 1 second per second - but this is a trivial response, and doesnt tell us anything we didnt already know. A rate of change or passage of a substance must be measured against something else; and to say that time passes at 1 second per second is simply stating the speed of time in terms of what we use to measure time! Yet it makes sense to ask, if something ows, what the speed of its ow is - a river ows, and we can easily measure its speed (i.e. how many cubic litres of water pass a particular point every second, for example). Time on the other hand is far less tangible than a river - and so resists measurement. We also tend to assume that the present exists more than the past and the future. But how can this be phrased coherently? We could deny that nothing exists except the present, a view known as presentism to philosophers. This view seems reasonable until we think about how objects and events could possibly emerge out of the non-existent future, pop into existence, and the disappear again instantly into the gloomy recess of the past. Where did they come from? Where did they go? Does it even make sense for real, physical objects to just jump into existence, remain in existence for a mere sliver of a second, and then vanish? After all, the present can surely be no longer in duration than an innitely small instant of time. Most philosophers think that this is not the case, partly to do with what physics has to say about this, and partly due to the fact that its straightforwardly unintuitive. Objects persist - they last longer than a mere instant, it seems to us. If this is true, then its hard to see how presentism can be convincingly held. McTaggarts Paradox Finally, given all the difculties above, it is possible to conclude that time does not exist at all. Cambridge philosopher J.M.E. McTaggart attempted to show this by arguing that the very concept of time is self-contradictory 1. First, McTaggart acknowledges that the fact that things change in the world suggests that time is dynamic - that it ows (as we mentioned above). However, this ow requires that we view objects as past, present or future. For example, the event of me writing this essay is present (to me now), but when you read the essay it will be in the past. Before I wrote this essay, the event of me writing it was in the future. We can make sense of objects beginning in the future, passing through the present,

McTaggart, The Unreality of Time. For a simplied version, see www.wikipedia.org/wiki/ J._M._E._McTaggart

and then into the past on this conception. Indeed, this is how time is thought of before we do philosophy, as mentioned above. However, this leads us into difculties. On reection, it requires us to say of a single event (for example my writing of this essay) that it is both past, present and future. These are incompatible properties, in the same way that saying a cat is fully black and fully white is to make two incompatible statements about something. We cannot predicate an object or event of incompatible properties, because that would be incoherent. The obvious response is that there is nothing incompatible in the case of time - this is because the event of me writing this essay was future, is present (at the time of writing), and will be past. These do not appear to be incompatible - hence the difculty is removed. However, McTaggart argues, this obvious move does nothing to solve the problem. For now we have another three properties - past future, present present and future past. However, all this move does is to construct a second time-series, using the same notions as before - and yielding another three incompatible properties. We can keep avoiding the contradiction by adding yet more properties (past past future etc) but this just pushes the problem up a level, failing to solve the contradiction. An innite regress follows, from which McTaggart concludes that what we take to be time is contradictory, and hence time does not exist. The above reasoning may appear confusing, and thats because it is - and no nonphilosopher would come to such a conclusion regarding the nature of time. After all, most of us take time to be real, and there doesnt appear anything contradictory about us describing events as past, present or future - we do it every day. However, McTaggart presents a valid argument. Most philosophers, whilst accepting that the argument is valid, challenge the assumptions McTaggart makes, in order to show that he has reached his conclusion falsely. There are a few ways to do this, but by far the most interesting is the following way. McTaggart assumes that time is dymanic and owing, this being the only way to make sense of change in the world - but many now deny this, holding a view sometimes referred to as static time, or the B-theory. The B-theory of time2 The B-theory of time is a challenging and exciting notion that, if proven to be true, would cause us to radically change the way we think about time itself. The B-theory takes a departure from our widespread common-sense views about time and holds that time is not dynamic, but static; and in this way, time is strongly analogous to space. For the B-theorist, there is no mysterious moving present, and no sense in which present objects and events are any more special than past or future ones! Rather, all events, past present and future, exist equally, and there is nothing in the world that marks off the present time as signicant. Rather, what we perceive to be the present isnt something owing in the world, but an illusion based on how we perceive the world. To make clearer this view, consider an analogy with space. We normally perceive objects spread out in space. Physical objects such as tables and chairs have what earlier philosophers such as Kant called extension - they take up a certain volume in the 3D space which we also reside in. Physical objects are extended in space. On the B-theory, physical objects (including ourselves) are also extended in time in much the same way.
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Im using this as a label here for one of a range of views, not all of which hold what I ascribe to them. Im generalizing here.

The word now, denoting the present time, functions is the same way as the word here which denotes the present space. Rather than referring to a special time, the present, in which all objects exist, now just refers to whatever point in time one nds oneself in the same way that the word here denotes where I am currently standing (if uttered by me). Here does not denote a single, special place - it denotes wherever I happen to be standing. Similarly, now does not denote a single, special time (the present) - it denotes wherever I happen to be in time. The Space-time Manifold We can understand this strange and radical theory with the help of a conceptual diagram a single block of reality, often referred to as the space-time manifold by B-theorists. But rst, some background comments. In any diagram, dimensions must be suppressed. For example, take this cube:

We can grasp that this is a 3-dimensional object - and yet it is represented as a 2dimensional object on a 2-D piece of paper. We say that one of the dimensions has been suppressed - what is shown here isnt really 3D (we would have to have a model we could hold in our hands to truly represent a 3D cube), but we can grasp that it represents a 3D object. In the case of a B-theory representation of time, TWO dimensions must be suppressed on the diagram, as we add an extra dimension. This is because on this theory, time is like space; and thus a fourth dimension of reality. Objects are spread out in space just as they are spread out in time; time does not ow in the same way that space does not ow - both are static. A four-dimensional space-time diagram is notoriously hard to conceptualize or represent, due to its unfamiliarity and due to the fact that we can only easily conceptualize 3 dimensions. Here goes:

The above is a four-dimensional representation of the earth going round the sun. The diagram should be read from bottom to top, and represents roughly a time-span of 3 years (the earth orbits the sun 3 times here). The key point is that, though it would appear that the earth is moving, nothing is actually moving in the diagram; at every point in the path of the earth as it spirals through time, imagine a little xed picture of the earth. This does not represent several different objects, but the same object (the earth) at different places at different times. The sun is represented by a column because it is not in motion - in the same way, at every point in the suns column, we should imagine a picture of a sun. Again, this is not to say that there are many suns all existing at the same time; rather, the same sun existing at different times. Objects are said to be (in typically bizarre philosophers lingo) space-time worms, spread out in space and time. By looking at the sun in the diagram, we can see where this term might have come from - the path of the sun through time represents a worm-like, extended object. Objects are hence static, four-dimensional space-time worms, just lying there in the vast 4-dimensional block of spacetime that makes up reality. Time does not pass, or ow, and there is no such thing as the special, moving present - all objects exist on a par, time is like space, and the present just denotes wherever in the space-time block one happens to be when one utters the present.

Nonsense? For physicists, the above view is nothing new - since Einstein formulated his Special Theory of Relativity, time has always been thought of in these terms - commonly referred to as Minkowski space-time after Hermann Minkowski who developed Einsteins theory. The problem is making sense of this picture in everyday and philosophical terms. After reading the above, you might be confused - and thats fair enough, considering that the Btheory picture of time just described leaves many questions unanswered. For example, on a rst, glance it seems to leave no room for movement, or change. If I am a xed spacetime worm spread out in time you might ask, then how come I can jump up and down, and generally move about? On a related note, objects change, people age, plants decay, food rots. These are all processes seemingly requiring the passage of time. How can we make sense of these everyday occurrences on the above view? Its not easy to grasp, but the answer is this: all it is to change is to be in one place at one time, and another place at another. Suppose I am sitting at 10:00 (t1), and standing at 10:15 (t2). I have moved; I have changed position. In terms of the space-time manifold, the part of my space-time worm at t1 is in the sitting position, and the part of my space-time worm at t2 is in the standing position. Between t1 and t2, there are is a series of perhaps an innite number of parts of me at intermediate positions between the sitting and standing position. Therefore, change is just being at one spatial location at one time (say, t1) and at a different spatial location at another time (t2). We perceive motion due to our conscious minds and our place in the manifold, but if we could take a Gods-eye position from outside the manifold, we would see no movement - the series of events would be laid out for all to see. Other issues have less satisfactory answers. The main problem with the above picture is that it seems so hard to make sense of, and to reconcile with our everyday beliefs. All objects that have ever existed and ever will exist exist on a par - and it seems hard to accept that Julius Caesar exists just as much as we do. Of course, Julius Caesar does not exist now - but thats only because now refers to our current place in the space-time manifold! If Julius Caesar said now, he would be referring to HIS place in the manifold. There is nothing to single out one of these nows as special over the other - ours just seems special because we are in it! Presumably, Julius Caesar would think the same way as us about his place in spacetime. Furthermore, Special Relativity suggests that there is no special way of slicing the big block of spacetime to yield an absolute present time - it follows that we are unable to single out our current time as the absolute present. Much as we would like to do this, on the B-theory we must simply accept that this is probably impossible. Furthermore, we need an explanation for how, if time is like space, we can freely go where we want in space, but not in time; time seems to have a direction whereas space does not. And nally, and perhaps most troubling, the B-theory seems to allow for the possibility of time-travel, a concept which physicists and philosophers alike have often thought contradictory or otherwise impossible. David Lewis considers a case where one might travel back through the manifold and kill ones own grandfather. There is nothing on the B-theory which rules this out, and this is troubling.3 No philosophical theory is immune to criticism, and these are some of the main disadvantages with the B-theory view. Whether they outweigh the advantages of the Btheory (namely a concrete and less mysterious explanation of time which is in line with current thought in modern physics) is a matter to be decided by the reader.
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David Lewis, The Paradoxes of Time Travel

God If the B-theory is true, then this may have implications of how we view God. I will think of God here as the God of the Christian faith - omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect. Traditionally, there have been two views about how God stands in relation to time. Firstly, Augustine, Aquinas, Anselm and Boethius all thought of God as standing outside time in a special zone called eternity - a single moment of no duration in which God possessed his life all at once. This is a confusing picture to deal with, yet has been held because it fully emphasizes Gods transcendence from the world. A second way of viewing God is to place him in time, but everlasting throughout all times. This is better supported by biblical texts, but has traditionally been less popular than the rst option. A modern proponent of this view is Richard Swinburne. On both views, God is essentially innite - the difference is that on the second view, God is in time, and on the rst, he transcends it. There are problems to be found with both accounts, but it may be that, if the B-theory is true, then the rst view, an eternal God outside time, is suggested. To see this, consider the following. On the B-theory, time is a fourth dimension of reality, analogous to space. If God is placed in time, it might be suggested that he also must be placed in space, and viewed, like us, as a space-time worm, occupying a part of the space-time manifold. This clearly will not do - God cannot have spatial parts like us (he is a wholly simple being) and though in some sense omnipresent must transcend reality if he is to be the creator of the world, all powerful, all knowing and all good. A god placed inside 4D space is no longer the God of the Christian faith. And for these reasons, many who want to hold that God is inside time (with Swinburne) resist the B-theory view. However, if we agree with Augustine that God is outside time, these issues do not arise. To use the famous analogy of Boethius, God is the centre of a circle - the circumference of the circle is reality and God can observe all of it at once without being inside it. Another analogy is a God atop a mountain, looking down at the road below on which history is represented. To take into account the B-theory, we can view God as in eternity outside reality, looking at the whole space-time manifold at once. This picture does not anchor God to space or time, yet allows him to view and perhaps act on the whole of reality at once. However, problems still arise with the nature of this divine action, and to what extent God could cause events in the world. Many have taken the idea of a timeless person as incoherent, as a lifespan necessarily requires temporal duration. Conclusion The views I have illustrated in this essay have been generalized a little, and as in any philosophical debate, there are many, many views that have different takes on all these issues. For example, there are those who are essentially B-theorists, yet hold that the present can be singled out as special in some sense. There are those who accept the physics behind the B-theory, yet see it as a theoretical representation of a reality that is not fundamentally four-dimensional. And there are those who hold that God is outside time, yet can fully act within it and fulll the fully divine role that Christianity assigns to him. It all gets pretty confusing, but I hope this essay has provided a brief sketch of some of the main issues in what is a fascinating and absorbing topic in the philosophy of time and religion.