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godrulz
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2005
Total Posts : 17

Posted 7/18/2005 1:33 AM (GMT -6)

In discussions on Theology Online, a non-OT is convinced that OT is impossible in light of Einstein's relativity. OT depends on absolute time, but science has supposedly proven relative time/time frames, etc. He uses special relativity to support simple foreknowledge. He thinks other logical/philosophical arguments are unnecessary since relativity supposedly undermines OT. I suspect he is misapplying the theory to God, free will, eternity, etc. Whatever perception relativity distorts, should not undermine the essential issues of presentism and the impossibility of exhaustive foreknowledge of future free will contingencies.

Are there any links or discussions resolving the issue of Relativity and OT? Has Dr. Boyd commented on this?

Also, can I assume Craig's Molinism/middle knowledge is an inadequate solution to the tension?

Know God and make Him known!

Sahid
Megistered Rember

Date Joined Jun 2004
Total Posts : 2013

Posted 7/18/2005 3:06 AM (GMT -6)

Relativitiy doesn't prove the impossibility of absolute time; it presupposes it.

Watch me fly. Freedom like wings and I will use them. Freedom like wings and I will spread them wide. - Stavesacre

godrulz
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2005
Total Posts : 17

Posted 7/18/2005 2:05 PM (GMT -6)

Can you expand on this?

Know God and make Him known!

Tom
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 7/18/2005 2:47 PM (GMT -6)

Hey godrulz-

As I understand it, what Einstein proved is only that time is relative to finite observers. That is, no two finite observers share exactly the same reference point in space and since they depend upon the speed of light for the transfer of information cannot share exactly the same "now." But as Lorentz argued, this doesn't rule out there being an infinite observer, or to use Lorentz's words, a "universal mind" not limited to a single reference point in space or dependent upon the speed of light for the transfer of information. Given God's omnipresence (his unversal and immediate presence apprehending all points in space equally), God would not depend on the speed of light for the transfer of information. So the is absolute symulteneity, just not for finite observers.

Tom

"doGfood itself is good" Sahid

godrulz
Registered Member

Date Joined Jan 2005
Total Posts : 17

Posted 7/18/2005 6:13 PM (GMT -6)

The egghead on the other board claims that Lorentz is refuted or not applicable in relationship to relativity.

Know God and make Him known!

Similitude
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968

Posted 7/18/2005 6:30 PM (GMT -6)

Godrulz, I have a set of videos from the Teaching Company taught by some award-winning guru on relativity. He said that Lorentzian relativity is logically consistent, but we have no THEORY for it. We have no theory for Einsteinian relativity as far as I'm concerned, because it presupposes the invalidity of our intuition. As long as there is a logically consistent alternative which is consistent with our intuitions, I'm sticking with it, theory or no.

wjs

Alan Rhoda
Registered Member

Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 680

Posted 7/18/2005 6:31 PM (GMT -6)

Hey Godrulz,

For a thorough response to the argument from Special Relativity, see Craig's book "The Tenseless Theory of Time". His book "Eternity and Time" also contains a chapter or two on the issue--it's not quite as thorough, but it's more accessible. Here's a link to one of his articles that discusses the matter.

The simple truth is, the four-dimensional spacetime interpretation of special relativity does not at all refute Newton's postulation of absolute space and time. Einstein simply redefines time in operational terms; he doesn't show that time in the Newtonian sense doesn't exist.

Alan

Post Edited (Alan Rhoda) : 7/19/2005 12:02:40 PM (GMT-5)

Tom
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 7/18/2005 7:37 PM (GMT -6)

I couldn't get Alan's link to Craig's article to work, so if it fails for you too, try this:

http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/leftow.html

Tom

"doGfood itself is good" Sahid

Paul M. Blackmore
Registered Member

Date Joined Mar 2005
Total Posts : 53

Posted 8/4/2005 9:55 PM (GMT -6)

http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?t=28155&page=1&highlight=theory+of+relativity

This link may be of interest. I am "Evangelist" on that board, and I begin posting on post #27.

Personally, I believe that Einstein opened the door to the concept of "Time travel" with his theory of relativity, but he himself is apparently quoted as saying that this notion was "a good joke taken too far"! icon_brows2

icon_brows2

OVT precludes time travel because it does not allow God such a luxury. If God can't time-travel, than nobody can time travel in my view.

I do believe however that God is well able to function with what would seem to us to be a milleniem of preponderance and planning, within what might be a millisecond or so in our world. However, there can be no crossing of the "unified event plane"(as I call it), because the plain teaching of scripture does not allow it.

Therefore Einstein's theory can only stand if it be limited to speaking of events happening simultameously. One must allow for "high speed time-frames of reference" to coexist with "slowmotion time-frames of reference", but never can one allow for the "unified event plane" to be violated. Some claim that Einstien's theory allows for such a thing.

If it does, than Einstien falls in my view. The Bible trumps all!

Regards

Paul M. Blackmore

Psalms 119

⁹⁶I have seen an end of all perfection: but thy commandment is exceeding broad.

⁹⁷O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day.

Humphrey Bogart
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2003
Total Posts : 205

Posted 8/5/2005 4:39 AM (GMT -6)

Hey, I'm no expert on physics, but I can I ask a question?

One thing I can't understand is that you get people saying that relativity rules out any kind of absolute time, but then they turn around and say things like "the universe is approximately 15 billion years old", or "when the universe was 1 billion years old, galaxy formation was in such-and-such a stage", and so forth. Now maybe I'm really off beam here, but don't these latter statements sound awfully like statements about absolute time? Doesn't the big bang theory have the universe expanding from time=0 to where it presently is at time=15 billion years or so? So how do physicists reconcile this with the claim that relativity rules out absolute time? Surely the answer to the question "how old is the universe" would have to be "it depends on your frame of reference?".

Sahid
Megistered Rember

Date Joined Jun 2004
Total Posts : 2013

Posted 8/5/2005 8:06 AM (GMT -6)

I think "the universe is approximately 15 billion years old" is shorthand for "the universe is approximately 15 billion years old from the point of view of our reference frame." What is interesting is one theory of Gerald Schroeder. He claims that if we calculate the age of the earth from the reference frame of the very early universe (quark confinement, when stable matter began to exist), about .00001 seconds after the big bang, we come up with the answer that the universe is just under six days old. His other stuff seems to stretch the truth here and there, but this basic idea is interesting. But of course, that's not what this thread is about.

Watch me fly. Freedom like wings and I will use them. Freedom like wings and I will spread them wide. - Stavesacre

Humphrey Bogart
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2003
Total Posts : 205

Posted 8/6/2005 10:11 PM (GMT -6)

Sahid said...
"the universe is approximately 15 billion years old from the point of view of our reference frame."

Well, if that's true, and our reference frame is purely arbitrary, then I think that physicists are just blatently dishonest. If someone keeps dogmatically insisting that something is X years old, and tells a story of its history in those terms, but secretly they believe that these estimates are based on a completely arbitrary metric and that any other metric would be just as legitimate and yield different results, then I don't think they have the right to expect lay people to respect their integrity.

I thought that there was some Schwarzenfeld or something-or-other time metric that they used. My point was to question whether or not that metric was arbitrary or not. If it isn't, then I think they have tacitly introduced an absolute time measure. But if what you're saying is right, Sahid, then I think they're having themselves on.

Sahid
Megistered Rember

Date Joined Jun 2004
Total Posts : 2013

Posted 8/7/2005 9:29 PM (GMT -6)

Well I think it's alright, but as with any assumption or shorthand, we should keep it in the back of our minds that it is an assumption or shorthand. We need to pick some reference frame, and (like the British putting 0 longitude in England) it makes since to use ours. It's just that most physicists (and theologians) don't seem to remember this when laughing at a six day creation.

Watch me fly. Freedom like wings and I will use them. Freedom like wings and I will spread them wide. - Stavesacre

Post Edited (Sahid) : 8/7/2005 9:33:26 PM (GMT-5)

Ronald A. Newcomb
Registered Member

Date Joined Mar 2002
Total Posts : 45

Posted 11/13/2005 3:05 PM (GMT -6)

Lorentz believed in absolutes. Einstein, on the other hand, made attempted to make virtually everything relative because he was an ardent naturalist.
Einstein is so highly regarded partly because he supported this particular world view. However, his theories only work in a gravitational field. In the absence of gravity that are irrelevant. So, how does that affect time?
First, see my subject titled “Time” for longer explanations.
If there is any being that is not affected by gravity, then time is absolute and it is the observation of events that is relative, and relative to the gravitational field they occur in, that is, sped up or slowed by the change in the G field.
Einstein made a huge mistake in stating that time is relative.
Moving forward to Hawking, following the flawed logic, states that time stops in a Black Hole. However, directly contradicting this is the continuation of motion and transformation of mass into energy particles coming out the axis if the Black Hole. If time stopped inside, then nothing at all could happen and it would not spew out large amounts of energy.
As for Craig, he was close, but time is not the kind of thing that can be created. Philosophically, God would not have had the TIME to create anything, if there was none. “Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could.”
Lorentz was correct, it was Einstein’s theory that was flawed. His view is sometimes called an unbounded universe. The bounded universe is the Biblical view and allows for absolutes.

R.A.Newcomb

Tom
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 11/14/2005 9:34 PM (GMT -6)

For those interested:

“Time travel and the open future” by Kristie Miller, University of Queensland

http://disputatio.com/articles/019-2.pdf

Abstract

I argue that the thesis that time travel is logically possible, is inconsistent with the necessary truth of any of the usual ‘open future-objective present’ models of the universe. It has been relatively uncontroversial until recently to hold that presentism is inconsistent with the possibility of time travel. I argue that recent arguments to the contrary do not show that presentism is consistent with time travel. Moreover, the necessary truth of other open future-objective present models which we might, prima facie, have supposed to be more amenable to the possibility of time travel, turn out also to be inconsistent with this possibility.

Similitude
Registered Member

Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968

Posted 11/14/2005 10:12 PM (GMT -6)

Ronald: "First, see my subject titled “Time” for longer explanations."

Jeff: Where is the article?

Starkman
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747

Posted 11/15/2005 9:41 AM (GMT -6)

Jeffscott,

"Time" is a thread. I don't know, though, if this search engine will find it, because (I think) it was over on the Gregboyd.org site when it took place.

Starkman

My teacher used to say that whenever he read Scripture, he would always ask the question, "What does this have to say about the character of God?" Working off his thinking, as I read Scripture, I have come to ask, "What does this have to say about the heart and passion of God's desire for relationship for us?

Corey
Five with a Four-wing

Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893

Posted 11/15/2005 5:20 PM (GMT -6)

Yeah... this search engine is not meeting our needs. I intend to replace this board with a different package or rewrite the search engine myself. Ugh.

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