From Chapter 8 – Understanding Science. © 2020 by Emory Lynn.
There are some serious theological problems that have resulted from scientific discoveries about time. When the great religions of the world were founded these insights were not available. The God of the Abrahamic religions was envisioned as unlimited in any way, including any handicaps imposed by the passage of time. Ancient theologians came to believe that God exists outside of time (and space), yet could still somehow exert complete control over the universe. Unbeknown to ancient theologians and probably to most counterparts of today, a God that exists outside of time is a God that can hardly interact with the material universe. If God exists outside of time then he also exists outside the space-time continuum, which means that God exists outside the universe because our universe is up to its eyeballs in space-time. Such a God could not be in control of the universe.4 You can’t work in a medium you’re disconnected from. To do otherwise is a logical impossibility.
Let’s be kind and allow theologians a different take on God’s relationship to time to get around this problem. Rather than existing outside of time, let’s say that God is so into time that he has total access and control over it. He can fast forward, rewind or hold time steady because he can access and control the “time dimension” or “time variable.” There are still problems. Because there is no such thing as universal time, there is no universal past, present or future, and there is no such thing as a universal time dimension or variable to work with. All times are extremely local. The present at one location in the universe is the past at other locations in the universe, and the future at still other locations.
On the scale of the universe, every part is causally disconnected from virtually every other part of the universe.5 If point A is out of causal contact with point B, then there isn’t sufficient time for light to travel between them so that point A could effectively control what is happening at B. If a signal is sent to B from A, when it arrives the conditions at B may then be irrelevant to the information in the signal. So, how could God have continuous control over, or even knowledge of, everything going on in the universe when almost everything is causally disconnected from almost everything else? Twiddling the knob to change the local time, if that were even possible, would only change the local time. It would take an unimaginable number of knobs to control time across the universe. If you simply say that God can continuously control everything in the universe because he is omnipotent, all you have done is make an inexplicable and unprovable claim.
What if time is an illusion, as many physicists believe [as discussed earlier in the chapter]? Then there isn’t even a local time dimension or time variable to do anything with. God couldn’t back time up or freeze it or speed it up, not even for something in his lap. Without time being real, God would be officiating in a much different ball game. Every location would have a unique history for its freeze frames of space. For God to have perfect knowledge of the past, as he is assumed to have, he would need perfect recall of all information for every freeze frame of space in the history of the universe. An alternate way for God to know the past if time doesn’t exist would be to take present conditions at every point in the universe—or at least a representative sampling— and back calculate the changes. This would require a completely deterministic universe, at least for God.
For God to have perfect knowledge of the future if time is illusory gets even more complicated. Three possibilities exist. First is the possibility that God is in total control of the future. Thus everything is like a computer simulation and our existence and purpose for living lose their meaning—not a theologically acceptable possibility. If God doesn’t exert complete control of the future, then a second possibility is that he must be able to at least foresee the future. In this case the future must be completely deterministic for God. He would have to be able to account for a virtually infinite number of freeze frames of space for a virtually infinite number of spatial points, extending far into the future (or at least a sufficient sampling to connect everything). One freeze frame of space would account for everything down to the subatomic level, at all possible locations in the universe, for just one frozen instant! To be able to foresee the future without being able to exert any control over it leaves no place for supernatural intervention—again, not theologically acceptable.
To make room for interventions a third possibility is required that is a combination of the other two. God must be able to at least exert some control when he foresaw a “problem” arising that needed “corrective action.” In other words, as part of his deterministic analysis of the future, God would have to be able to produce indeterminate hiccups ahead of time called miracles. This is the best possibility for the theology of a personal, all-everything God, yet problems still persist.
The existence of human free will is an essential assumption in the Abrahamic religions. If our will is indeed free, how could God foresee what we humans will be doing in the future? Islam sees this paradox as no problem for Allah. Christian theologians are compelled to draw the same not so logical conclusion. This can be debated on philosophical grounds, but the likelihood that the Judeo-Christian God does not have foreknowledge of human activity is demonstrated throughout the Bible. God changed his plans on occasions when humans failed to go along with his original plans. At times he got angry, he got jealous, he took revenge, he even changed his mind on occasion or was subject to doing so when dealing with humans (Exodus 32:14, Jeremiah 18:5-10, Joel 2:13, Amos 7:3, Jonah 3:10, 4:2). Now we have yet another theologically disturbing possibility. Because of their free will God did not know what humans would be doing in the future and responded with heated emotion to what they did do.
Physicists have what they call the problem of time, which is a problem of pinning down the true nature of time. The problem has been an obstacle in developing some new scientific theories but has not invalidated scientific achievements to date. Theologians don’t seem to recognize that they have a problem with time that calls into serious question their long-held theology about an all-everything God. Any way you slice it, the modern understanding of time presents problems, including logical impossibilities, for a theology that champions an omniscient and omnipotent God.
Notes:
4. This is true at least on a macroscopic scale—an ensemble of a great number of particles. In quantum physics, subatomic particle pairs can become entangled and regardless of where each particle resides, even in different parts of the universe, an action on one particle immediately affects its entangled partner. They are causally connected. There is some indication that the interaction between entangled photons occurs outside of space-time. See Zeeya Merali, Physics of the Divine, (Discover Magazine, March 2011), p 51–52. There is now evidence that entanglement can occur for several particles, but not for enough particles to comprise matter of any significant size.
5. This too has the exception of entangled quantum particles, no matter how far entangled particles are separated in the universe. Based on current understanding in particle physics, this comprises only a tiny part of all matter and energy in the universe, however.
