4.21.2004
A Conversation on Faithmaps
This is a conversation I snipped from faithmaps
Hi, Mark. You asked:
1. Regarding the concept of time as we know it, does God experience the past, present and future concurrently? Timeless basically. Will that change? Does it really matter? No, but these thoughts pop into my head and just what the heck is a guy to do? I gotta ask, whether it's foolish or not :-)
Well, I'm not sure this is even really a question. Not that it isn't a question but it isn't a question that makes sense. On my "yet to be read" list is Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point by Huw Price
Here's a blurb from the jacket:
Price then turns to the greatest mystery of modern physics, the meaning of quantum theory. He argues that in missing the Archimedean viewpoint, modern physics has missed a radical and attractive solution to many of the apparent paradoxes of quantum physics. Many consequences of quantum theory appear counterintuitive, such as Schrödinger's Cat, whose condition seems undetermined until observed, and Bell's Theorem, which suggests a spooky "nonlocality," where events happening simultaneously in different places seem to affect each other directly. Price shows that these paradoxes can be avoided by allowing that at the quantum level the future does, indeed, affect the past. This demystifies nonlocality, and supports Einstein's unpopular intuition that quantum theory describes an objective world, existing independently of human observers: the Cat is alive or dead, even when nobody looks. So interpreted, Price argues, quantum mechanics is simply the kind of theory we ought to have expected in microphysics -- from the symmetric standpoint.
IOW, what if our basic, fundamental knowledge of the nature of time is constrained by our perception of it? Or, what if the reality of how time "actually" works bears very little relation to how we think it works?
If God experiences timelessness, is he experiencing the
creation,cruxifiction, and fellowship with the saints?
OK, one last one for the science teacher, please summarize the
relationship of energy/time/quantum physics/string theory and the
various dimensions we live in. A 5 page treatise should do.....
Seriously, I've promised myself someday I'll look into these matters,
I just wonder if there is an orderly way about it.
Mark
I know how you feel, Mark. I'm not sure I'm going about it in the right order and even if I am, my head isn't big enough to hold the ideas. If Greene in his book only comes to a "here's the best guess so far" on the relationship between quantum mechanics, relativity (time and energy are symmetrical in relativity, remember?) and string theory then there is no way I'm going to even understand the questions, let alone have anything remotely resembling an answer.
Which really amuses me when I see many of my theologian friends who have most of the answers all neatly tied up with a ribbon and bow in a boxed set ready for transport and they have no concept of the nature of the discussions going on in physics, chemistry, biology, neuropsychcology and so forth.
I'm a biologist by nature & training so I'm interested in things like genetics, what is life and the mind/body connection. When I start talking to preacher friends about the nature of consciousness or the implications of genetics on Right to Life arguments, their eyes glaze over and they refuse to discuss it. I have some questions I KNOW they don't have the answers to because they don't even know the fundamentals of what the conversation is about.
How about medical ethics and gene therapy? Eli Lilly takes the human gene for insulin, inserts it into bacteria an creates Humulin® in vats as human insulin. When was the last time you heard a preacher questioning the ethics of trans-genetic manipulation? We have, in actual practice, mixed human DNA with bacterial DNA and don't even consider its moral implications.
And then where does this end? If we can do this with impunity, why do we get all bent out of shape when we talk of human cloning?
Yes, it's a long way from physics but I agree with Francis Schaeffer that when it comes to world-changing thought, the theologians are the last people to clue into what's happening in the world at large (sorry, Dan, no offense intended). This is one of the reasons I spend more time reading folks like Dennett and Greene than I do theology books.
But that's just me and I always have been a little odd.
And it's genetic. I asked my 18 year old why the dictionary was in mommy's van. "Oh, Alisha brought it out. She said she wanted to read it because she thought it was interesting." Alisha is 10. Even I wasn't nerdly enough to take to the dictionary for recreational reading.
This is a conversation I snipped from faithmaps
Hi, Mark. You asked:
1. Regarding the concept of time as we know it, does God experience the past, present and future concurrently? Timeless basically. Will that change? Does it really matter? No, but these thoughts pop into my head and just what the heck is a guy to do? I gotta ask, whether it's foolish or not :-)
Well, I'm not sure this is even really a question. Not that it isn't a question but it isn't a question that makes sense. On my "yet to be read" list is Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point by Huw Price
Here's a blurb from the jacket:
Price then turns to the greatest mystery of modern physics, the meaning of quantum theory. He argues that in missing the Archimedean viewpoint, modern physics has missed a radical and attractive solution to many of the apparent paradoxes of quantum physics. Many consequences of quantum theory appear counterintuitive, such as Schrödinger's Cat, whose condition seems undetermined until observed, and Bell's Theorem, which suggests a spooky "nonlocality," where events happening simultaneously in different places seem to affect each other directly. Price shows that these paradoxes can be avoided by allowing that at the quantum level the future does, indeed, affect the past. This demystifies nonlocality, and supports Einstein's unpopular intuition that quantum theory describes an objective world, existing independently of human observers: the Cat is alive or dead, even when nobody looks. So interpreted, Price argues, quantum mechanics is simply the kind of theory we ought to have expected in microphysics -- from the symmetric standpoint.
IOW, what if our basic, fundamental knowledge of the nature of time is constrained by our perception of it? Or, what if the reality of how time "actually" works bears very little relation to how we think it works?
If God experiences timelessness, is he experiencing the
creation,cruxifiction, and fellowship with the saints?
OK, one last one for the science teacher, please summarize the
relationship of energy/time/quantum physics/string theory and the
various dimensions we live in. A 5 page treatise should do.....
Seriously, I've promised myself someday I'll look into these matters,
I just wonder if there is an orderly way about it.
Mark
I know how you feel, Mark. I'm not sure I'm going about it in the right order and even if I am, my head isn't big enough to hold the ideas. If Greene in his book only comes to a "here's the best guess so far" on the relationship between quantum mechanics, relativity (time and energy are symmetrical in relativity, remember?) and string theory then there is no way I'm going to even understand the questions, let alone have anything remotely resembling an answer.
Which really amuses me when I see many of my theologian friends who have most of the answers all neatly tied up with a ribbon and bow in a boxed set ready for transport and they have no concept of the nature of the discussions going on in physics, chemistry, biology, neuropsychcology and so forth.
I'm a biologist by nature & training so I'm interested in things like genetics, what is life and the mind/body connection. When I start talking to preacher friends about the nature of consciousness or the implications of genetics on Right to Life arguments, their eyes glaze over and they refuse to discuss it. I have some questions I KNOW they don't have the answers to because they don't even know the fundamentals of what the conversation is about.
How about medical ethics and gene therapy? Eli Lilly takes the human gene for insulin, inserts it into bacteria an creates Humulin® in vats as human insulin. When was the last time you heard a preacher questioning the ethics of trans-genetic manipulation? We have, in actual practice, mixed human DNA with bacterial DNA and don't even consider its moral implications.
And then where does this end? If we can do this with impunity, why do we get all bent out of shape when we talk of human cloning?
Yes, it's a long way from physics but I agree with Francis Schaeffer that when it comes to world-changing thought, the theologians are the last people to clue into what's happening in the world at large (sorry, Dan, no offense intended). This is one of the reasons I spend more time reading folks like Dennett and Greene than I do theology books.
But that's just me and I always have been a little odd.
And it's genetic. I asked my 18 year old why the dictionary was in mommy's van. "Oh, Alisha brought it out. She said she wanted to read it because she thought it was interesting." Alisha is 10. Even I wasn't nerdly enough to take to the dictionary for recreational reading.
