Creation in Backwards Time

[JDaniel]

Yes, its an amazing epiphany when a person comes to understand this! I’m glad I’m not the only one. I was starting to fear I might be crazy - no one agreed with me.

I suppose… God must hold the rules in place at all points in time.

This can be so confusing because everything you say has to be qualified as our time or God’s time. When we say “the beginning of the universe” we mean at time t=0… which we call the beginning but to God is just one of the edges of the time-space universe that he created.

Yes I think so!

Here’s another fascinating thing you can do with this theory: Imagine that the point of creation was the instant after man’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden. The Garden of Eden was a quite different place from our Earth… God decides to expel man from the Garden, and puts them at a point in space-time in our universe, at 4004BC by our time. God sets the initial conditions at this single point of time, and the laws of physics unfold forward to infinity and backward to the big bang instantaneously in God’s time, and whamo, man has this messed up world that he’s been expelled into with its own history and future based on laws of physics that allow for corruption and death.

Quite an interesting and excellent point. But, that said, He did not need to re-start the continuum. In fact, it works better if the continuum is not re-started. Thus, it shows that WE did this to ourselves, or, at least our first parents did. And, therefore, the need for Jesus and for His death and resurrection.

jd

 

[JDaniel]

Well, I gave one example in the initial post where it made sense, so there’s one time where its not patently absurd But I agree you raise a good question. But it has an answer. Let me explain:

In the same way, it would be hard but not impossible to predict the ball rising up from the ground in reverse time. Look at it in more detail in forward time: when the ball hits the earth, the energy from the ball goes to a few places: 1) into the ground, resulting in a series of tiny seismic waves or shock waves that gravitate out from where the ball hit 2) similar waves in the air and possibly 3) kinetic energy in the form of bits of dirt flying away from where the ball hit. In reverse time, the waves described in 1 and 2 would converge on the impact site so that they would generate a thrust against the ball, sending it flying into the air. The particles in 3 would also converge on the impact site.

But, this is a misunderstanding of physics in the first place. According to the law of gravity, the objects, the ball and the earth, are, in fact, moving towards each other, relatively speaking. Upon contact with each other, the motion towards each other stops. Secondary motions might ensue, but, they are not important except in their own right.

jd

 

[JDaniel]

…sort of, but not quite, unfortunately. I’m afraid you might have just shifted the source of the problem further away, rather than actually addressing it.

…right. So the ball hits, and the energy from the energy of the impact is distributed into other objects and/or converted into other forms of energy in the process.

OK… but why, in reverse time, is all of this previously-absorbed energy suddenly being converted back into seismic waves, and simultaneously converging on the location of the ball? What possible cause could there be for this, from the perspective of reverse time? I mean, yes, if we look at “reverse time” with reference to a prior idea of “normal time”, we can certainly imagine all of the proper steps happening in reverse… but if you simply consider a universe running in “reverse time” as a given reality in and of itself, I don’t see how anything in that universe could ultimately be intelligible. Perfectly-coordinated-for-no-reason seismic waves can just spontaneously arise and converge to launch an object into the air. It just seems to me that you really are positing the existence of a fundamentally irrational universe (like something straight out of Alice in Wonderland) where things can happen for absolutely no natural reason at all.

I think this is part of the problem with your scenario… you definitely seem to be working under the assumption of a fully deterministic Newtonian physics. However, I think you’re going to run into huge problems here, particularly with regard to quantum mechanics. This is pretty much exactly the kind of thing that geometer was talking about when he said that “some systems are critically determined by their history and cannot be reversed or repeated with the same result.” Even if you assumed that it was possible to “reverse” the movement of these particles, there’s simply not going to be a natural reason within the reverse-time universe for the heat energy of that particular molecule (never mind the billions and billions of other molecules nearby) to spontaneously convert itself back into shock waves directed at a particular object. It’s not just “very difficult to foresee” or “next to impossible to predict”… it’s literally happening for absolutely no good reason, and on a macroscopic scale to boot.

There are definitely surface similarities here, but I don’t think it boils down to quite the same thing. Even with something as unpredictable as lighting, there are still natural reasons, at least in general hindsight, as to why lighting tends to behave in the way that it does. For instance, we know that tall trees and tall metal objects tend to draw lightning, because the taller and more conductive objects in the given area will tend to connect with the step-leaders first. There’s still a whole lot of unpredictability built in, yes… but it’s nowhere near as irrational as a universe in which thunder precedes lighting, objects are launched into the air by spontaneously-coordinated seismic waves, and animals un-decompose and grow younger only to be dragged back into their mother’s womb and unfertilize themselves. You really do just end up chucking natural causality out the window… and yeah, I really do think that’s rather absurd.

Master:

And that is exactly why I can’t imagine God pulling a “reverse time” trick on us.

jd

 

[Neil_Anthony]

**In our language – which is our best description of our reality **- we have recognized that there have been things or, events, that have taken place in the past but not necessarily at the same time in the past (although it wouldn’t matter). Using the materials of our language, we speak of the relation of two past events using the past perfect tense. That tense clearly signifies that both occurrences have already occurred, in the past. They are completed. They are thus perfected. If some chance event also happened, it happened in the past so that the results are what they are perfectly.

I have to challenge this claim, that our language is the best description of reality. How could you possibly prove that current language is the best at anything? Do you rule out all future discoveries and philosophies that require a change to our language?

Also, in our language, we have a tense called the future perfect tense. It is a use of the materials of our language to describe an event of the past, present, or future, in relation with time or events in the future. As such, the event has taken place (or, is taking place, or, will take place) but the time or event we relate it to has not yet taken place. This does not, and must not, destroy the past (or the currently-taking-place) event. It is or, has or, will have, occurred and will have always occurred at any time in the future, whether or not anyone is there to remember it. Thus, as you can see, the comparative future cannot be farther in the past than the event that is the subject of our sentence. So, the continuum can only proceed in one direction - for us and for Physics.

No, you can’t destroy the past. Any action that we do can only affect times in the future. I’m not suggesting that we can change the past.

You jump from some pretty obvious observations (an event that is in the future has not taken place, an event in the past has taken place) to this claim about continuum proceeding in one direction. How exactly does a whole continuum move? Is it not us, the observer, who moves through the continuum?

We can, by the use of mathematics, extrapolate to where moving bodies were with reference to each other, in the past and, by the use of mathematics, we can predict where those same moving bodies will be, in the future. But, the moving bodies are not yet at their predicted positions, in the future. At any point before they are related with scientific precision, in the future, an event of chance could take place that changes the situational loci of the moving bodies. For example, suppose two celestial bodies are predicted to be on a collision course with one another. However, before the collision, an asteroid, vicariously blown by some random solar wind, is directed towards one of the moving bodies. After its chance collision with one of the celestial bodies, that body goes off in another direction and for the original two bodies, no collision takes place.

The bolded statement is a tautology. “Not yet” is a phrase that means the event is in the future. Of course we are not yet in the future. The future refers to all times to one side of where we are now, and the past refers to all times on the other side of where we are now. If its in the future, it hasn’t happened yet, by definition.

Now, you could say, as you did in your post, that this could have taken place in the past. Of course it could. But, the event would already be perfected.

“perfected” depends on the observer. If we’re at time t, all events who lie at times < t are perfected from our perspective, and all events at times > t are not perfected from our perspective.

This doesn’t affect whether God defined the universe’s initial conditions at time t=0 or for some other time t>0. God does not reside at one point in time where he looks back on perfected time and looks forward to not-yet-perfected time.

It would be a completed event. Determining how and when that event might take place is merely hindsight. It is nothing more than the current study of a past event or effect. That that chance event might take place cannot be predicted, except in the most general of ways.

God can predict the future, in fact he already knows the future, just as he knows the past. This is about God defining the universe, not about man predicting the future or deciphering the past.

What you are alluding to is that God could have started the continuum whenever He wished. That is, of course, true. But, I rather doubt that He would begin Creation before its beginning. That would be an exhibition of the misuse of language the purpose of which would only be to confuse us. I have not seen that to be that case, in my readings of Scripture. It would be tantamount to Him lying to us. So, while it has no meaning, per se, to us, it has powerful meaning to His communication with us.

If “begin” refers to the earliest time, then by definition the universe was begun at the beginning.

I didn’t use the word “begin” in my claim, because it would make no sense to say God began the universe at some time that wasn’t the beginning. What I said was that God could have defined a physical state for the universe at any time along the continuum, and ordered that the laws of physics work in both directions of time from that point to define the rest of the continuum. The past is still the past in that scenario, and the future is still the future.

You argue that this would make God a liar, but its not any more true than that God is a liar for making it “seem like” the sun revolves around the earth, or making it seem like the earth is stationary. It’s not God’s fault that our limited intellect has up until now pictured God’s act of creation as being at what we call the most distant past.

 

[masterjedi747]

I agree with geometer … If you run the same sequence twice in forward time it won’t turn out exactly the same, and if you run it twice in backward time it won’t turn out exactly the same.

Right… but there’s a third option (which geometer included) that I think you’re leaving out. If you run the same sequence once in forward time, and then once in backward time, it’s not necessarily going to produce the exact same results either. You’re not necessarily going to end up returning to the initial starting conditions… *unless *you’re working under the assumption of fully deterministic Newtonian physics. In *that *case (resulting philosophical problems aside) what you’re saying would absolutely be correct… but the contention now being held is that such an assumption is false, and that quantum mechanics has effectively shattered the mathematical perfection of fully deterministic Newtonian physics.

I suspect you understand the physics, that the particles bouncing around would, out of their apparent chaos, result in these circular waves that formed big circles converging on a point for no apparent reason…

Following on the above paragraph, this is part of what I’m still seeing difficulties with… there’s simply no guarantee in “reverse time” that *any *single molecule (much less *all *of them simultaneously) will happen to emit the energy that had been “previously” absorbed. You just can’t hit the “reverse” button and expect things to unwind perfectly back to their “initial” conditions. The best you *could *do, it seems to me, is just assume that Divine Providence is causing/coordinating these massively improbable events… which works, yes, but still ends up denying any real sort of natural causes in the world, because there would be no *natural *cause for the spontaneous coordination of a billion trillion molecules to suddenly emit seismic waves and launch a single object into the air.

Also, there are things in forward time that are very unpredictable too. It’s not unique to backwards time.

…maybe with enough time to get used to backward time, we would start to see patterns.

…maybe there are rules in backwards time that we could work out to predict macroscopic events that we can’t think of in the few minutes we spend writing these posts.

You’ve used some good examples to indicate what you mean, so I do understand what you’re saying. But it’s not *patterns *and *predictability *that I’m concerned with, really, it’s the lack of intelligible natural causes. What I’m trying to say is that if you reverse the natural order of cause and effect, and you don’t have Newtonian determinism to fall back upon, then what you end up with, really, is a universe in which events just randomly happen for no natural reason. Maybe you can just put God in charge of it all, and that will be enough to explain everything sufficiently… but in and of itself, on a purely natural level, a universe running in “reverse time” just isn’t going to make sense. Freakishly random macroscopic events will just happen, and (yes) predictable patterns certainly might tend to follow after them… but the unintelligible primary events will still, at their root, have happened for absolutely no natural reason.

1. a universe where thunder precedes lightning: actually this universe would be even more predictable than ours.

I can’t imagine how it could possibly be more predictable in reverse time than normal time? I think I could see an argument for it being more or less *equally *predictable… but this sort of an unnecessary side-point, though, so we can just move on.

We would use the laws of backward-physics to be able to know when a lightning strike was about to occur. Why is that irrational? Isn’t the whole point of science to be able to predict natural phenomena?.

See, I think natural science is about *more *than just making accurate predictions. More fundamentally, I think it’s about understanding the natural causes on things… how and why things happen in the way that they do. And I feel like that gets fundamentally destroyed when something like thunder just spontaneously pops out of thin air for no real reason.

Come to think of it… how would something like rain flying up out of the ground *not *be a fundamental violation of the law of universal gravitation, even in “reverse time”? What possible upward force can you invoke to carry the water droplet back up to the clouds? I don’t think the reversed force of impact is quite going to cut it here. Or even better, consider a snowflake… there’s no way the tiny force that thing imparts to the ground could possibly be sufficient even in “reverse time” to *launch *the snowflake back up to the stratosphere… (?)

1. animals un-decomposing: the formation of an animal would be a lot easier to understand in this direction. We would find a skeleton and think “this is going to come alive into an animal some day!” and if we watched the skeleton, flies would come and deposit rotting meat on the bones which would form itself into healthy meat, skin and fur would form, and the animal would start slowly moving. It would make a kind of sense.

Alright, bigger philosophical problems aside, I’ll admit that it sure might *look *cool… but I *definitely *don’t see this being “a lot easier to understand” than the natural generation of an animal in normal time. For one thing, you’d still have the spontaneous and very-much-unexplained-by-natural-causes formation of the skeleton to deal with, since there would be no real reason in “reverse time” as to why *this *portion of earth began spontaneously organizing itself into a skeletal structure, while this other portion of earth just at there and never changed.

Anyway, why does it even matter if backwards time would seem irrational? To God, it wouldn’t be unpredictable…

Right. So what I would say is this: *assuming *for the sake of argument that backwards time doesn’t inherently contradict physical laws (such as universal gravitation), then it’s *not *really going to matter, except from a philosophical standpoint. So at best, if we were to agree that “reverse time” is a genuine physical possibility, then the discussion would simply transfer into considering the reasons why it was better or more fitting for God to have created men in a universe of forward time.

 

[masterjedi747]

It’s really hard to talk about this without being able to share a drawing.

…I might be able to scan and upload one, if necessary. But you did a pretty great job explaining yourself in just a few sentences, so I’m not sure that we need one yet.

In reverse time, the planet is in the same location, but is traveling clockwise. The dotted line shows the path the planet has just finished following (the higher orbit). The asteroid flies by backwards (top to bottom of the page) and attracts the planet. Since the planet is travelling clockwise, i.e. to the right, this attraction slows the planet down.

…your last sentence here is exactly where I’m still having a problem.
I’ll see if I can also explain what I’m thinking without uploading a diagram, though.

Let the planetary orbit be a circle named A, with center S.
Let the planet (on orbit A) be a point named P, at let point P be at the top of the circle.
Let there be a vertical line several inches to the left of the circle, and place super-massive asteroid H at the bottom of this vertical line.

Draw a dotted horizontal line from S (the center of the orbit) such that it meets the vertical line (the path of the asteroid) at right angles. Name this point of intersection X.

Now put both the planet and asteroid into motion, such that:
P moves counter-clockwise on orbit A, and H moves upwards on the vertical line.

And for simplicity, let the two motions be coordinated such that H reaches point X (the closest it gets to orbit A) precisely when P has moved 90 degrees counter-clockwise around orbit A (the closest it gets to the path of the asteroid).

Now, both the super-massive asteroid H and the planet P naturally gravitate towards each other. Therefore, as a result of their mutual attraction, the vertical path of H will be shifted slightly right, and planet P will be pulled slightly left (out of orbit A) and settle into the slightly larger orbit B.

So far, so good. Now wait until planet P reaches the bottom of orbit B, and asteroid H reaches the top of its new vertical path, and throw the “reverse time” switch.

P now reverses direction, moving clockwise on orbit B, while H moves downward on its vertical line.

Once again, the two motions will be coordinated such that H reaches its new point X (the closest it gets to orbit B) precisely when P has moved 90 degrees clockwise around orbit B (the closest it gets to the path of the asteroid).

And because, once again, the super-massive asteroid H and the planet P mutually gravitate towards each other, the vertical path of H will be shifted even more to the right, and planet P will again be pulled slightly left (out of orbit B) and settle into the slightly larger orbit C.

So that’s where I’m still seeing the problem with your scenario.
Unless we break universal gravitation in backwards time, I don’t see how the planet or the asteroid could ever end up being placed back on their original paths.

…and if I may be so bold as to suggest a second example, I’m thinking that a very similar problem is going to happen with magnetism. Put two magnets close to each other, let go, and they will mutually attract each other, and stick together. Now throw the “reverse time” switch, and they should *still *be naturally attracting each other just as they were before… there’s absolutely no physical reason for them to suddenly stop attracting, and instead repel each other, so that they can fly apart and back into your hands.

I’m just saying that initial conditions + physical laws can generate all of time from any point within time.

…well, yes, but only under the assumption of deterministic Newtonian physics.

An omnipotent God could determine the whole universe from any point in time, not just from the “earliest” point in time.

Not sure where you motivation here is coming from, because we don’t say that God determined the whole universe from the earliest point in time… that’s just way too close to Deism, if not in full agreement with it. Rather, we ought to say that Divine Providence is *always *determining and preserving the universe in the present moment. There really is good reason to speak of creation as an ongoing process, rather than as a wholly singular event confined to a particular moment in time… creation is only something like an “instantaneous” event when imagined as if from God’s eternal perspective outside of time.

 

[JDaniel]

I have to challenge this claim, that our language is the best description of reality. How could you possibly prove that current language is the best at anything? Do you rule out all future discoveries and philosophies that require a change to our language?

Neil:

First, let me say that I like where you are trying to go with this line of thinking. It does open up some interesting possibilities. I am on your side, although I think you’re wrapping yourself around the axle, as they say. (I don’t know who “they” are, so, please don’t ask!)

No, you can’t destroy the past. Any action that we do can only affect times in the future. I’m not suggesting that we can change the past.

I was merely pointing it out as I was moving from past to present to future in my soliloquy.

You jump from some pretty obvious observations (an event that is in the future has not taken place, an event in the past has taken place) to this claim about continuum proceeding in one direction. How exactly does a whole continuum move? Is it not us, the observer, who moves through the continuum?

That is correct. I did not say a continuum moves. Sorry if I was unclear about that.

Actually, it is us (and things) that move on (or in) the continuum. If it were not for continuous motion there would be no continuum or time. So, saying that, motion is always from potency to act. Potency to act follows, as it must, a pattern exhibited by potency being past and act being future. Anything else would be illogical and not in keeping with our always understood fact of motion - particularly in the ontological sense.

The bolded statement is a tautology. “Not yet” is a phrase that means the event is in the future. Of course we are not yet in the future. The future refers to all times to one side of where we are now, and the past refers to all times on the other side of where we are now. If its in the future, it hasn’t happened yet, by definition.

Actually, it’s not intended to be a tautology. It is intended to be an emphasis on where we are in the “process”. But, “not yet” can also be said of an event in the past. For example, I could say that C follows A, but, not until B, which has not yet happened. In other words, I could speak of a completed series that took place in the past and speak of its relative parts in the past perfect tense.

“perfected” depends on the observer. If we’re at time t, all events who lie at times < t are perfected from our perspective, and all events at times > t are not perfected from our perspective.

No, by “perfected” I mean fully completed. I am not speaking of “perfect” from a value sense. From The Free Online Dictionary:

per·fect (pûrfkt)
adj.

1. Lacking nothing essential to the whole; complete of its nature or kind.
2. Being without defect or blemish: a perfect specimen.
3. Thoroughly skilled or talented in a certain field or area; proficient.
4. Completely suited for a particular purpose or situation: She was the perfect actress for the part.

a. Completely corresponding to a description, standard, or type: a perfect circle; a perfect gentleman.
b. Accurately reproducing an original: a perfect copy of the painting.
6. Complete; thorough; utter: a perfect fool.
7. Pure; undiluted; unmixed: perfect red.
8. Excellent and delightful in all respects: a perfect day

See the bold parts.

This doesn’t affect whether God defined the universe’s initial conditions at time t=0 or for some other time t>0. God does not reside at one point in time where he looks back on perfected time and looks forward to not-yet-perfected time.

Of course it does. There is no t=0, or t>0 for God. What I am saying is that given that the universe’s continuum is overlapped and overlaid by God, in that sense, you are good to go, and the when of its beginning is only important to our concepts.

God can predict the future, in fact he already knows the future, just as he knows the past. This is about God defining the universe, not about man predicting the future or deciphering the past.

I learned this upon reading the rest of the posts between you and Buffalo, I think. So, it was only later that I understood what you were trying to say.

cont…

 

[JDaniel]

If “begin” refers to the earliest time, then by definition the universe was begun at the beginning.

I didn’t use the word “begin” in my claim, because it would make no sense to say God began the universe at some time that wasn’t the beginning. What I said was that God could have defined a physical state for the universe at any time along the continuum, and ordered that the laws of physics work in both directions of time from that point to define the rest of the continuum. The past is still the past in that scenario, and the future is still the future.

I understand; now. Sorry, but, I didn’t read all of the posts before I answered your initial OA. You explained where you were going in your subsequent posts. I still think we become confused if we try to run down the continuum as though in a boat trying to row upstream. That makes it very rough to get to our destination. God laid in the universe’s continuum in one instant, in His Eternal Now. Thus, He is in possession of the complete thing, past and future. That it exists does not mean He completed it in the past. It means that He surrounds it. He enshrouds the entire universe and its time component.

You argue that this would make God a liar, but its not any more true than that God is a liar for making it “seem like” the sun revolves around the earth, or making it seem like the earth is stationary. It’s not God’s fault that our limited intellect has up until now pictured God’s act of creation as being at what we call the most distant past.

There are some exigencies that are or, were, misinterpreted or misunderstood by mankind. However, would you not admit that if He were to play around with our primary way of knowing and transmission of it, our language, that He would be doing more than simply permitting misinterpretation or misunderstanding to be extant?

jd

 

[masterjedi747]

Neil_Anthony:

I’m just saying that initial conditions + physical laws can generate all of time from any point within time.

masterjedi747:

…well, yes, but only under the assumption of deterministic Newtonian physics.

Upon reflection, I think I need to retract my above claim, and make a distinction instead. Initial conditions + deterministic Newtonian physics will definitely generate all time forward of necessity, but I think you’ll still going to run into insurmountable problems with certain forces such as gravity and magnetism (which Newton certainly accepted) once you try to throw the “reverse time” switch on the universe…

 

[Neil_Anthony]

Let the planetary orbit be a circle named A, with center S.
Let the planet (on orbit A) be a point named P, at let point P be at the top of the circle.
Let there be a vertical line several inches to the left of the circle, and place super-massive asteroid H at the bottom of this vertical line.

I’ve labelled these starting points P1 and H1 instead of just P and H. So we can refer to the locations of P and H at different times.

Now put both the planet and asteroid into motion, such that:
P moves counter-clockwise on orbit A, and H moves upwards on the vertical line.

And for simplicity, let the two motions be coordinated such that H reaches point X (the closest it gets to orbit A) precisely when P has moved 90 degrees counter-clockwise around orbit A (the closest it gets to the path of the asteroid).

Labelled these H2 and P2.

Now, both the super-massive asteroid H and the planet P naturally gravitate towards each other. Therefore, as a result of their mutual attraction, the vertical path of H will be shifted slightly right, and planet P will be pulled slightly left (out of orbit A) and settle into the slightly larger orbit B.

This is where it gets tricky - understanding how the asteroid perturbs the planets orbit. At this point in time, the asteroids gravity is in the exact opposite direction of the gravity produced by S (and presumably much smaller in magnitude). So, its real effect is to reduce the force pulling the planet to the right. With a reduced centrifugal acceleration, the planet will follow a path that goes more downward and less to the right than it would have otherwise. But it won’t move to the left.

I imagine the new orbit would become elongated in the up-down direction, but I’m not completely sure. I tried to download some orbit software but couldn’t get it working. But I don’t think its as simple as you say, that it would be shifted to the left.

So far, so good. Now wait until planet P reaches the bottom of orbit B, and asteroid H reaches the top of its new vertical path, and throw the “reverse time” switch.

Labelled these points P3 and H3.

Before you reverse it, I should also point out that at this point in time, the asteroid is decelerating the planet, therefore reducing the average size of its orbit. Not sure what effect that has on the angle of the ellipse that its now travelling in.

P now reverses direction, moving clockwise on orbit B, while H moves downward on its vertical line.

Once again, the two motions will be coordinated such that H reaches its new point X (the closest it gets to orbit B) precisely when P has moved 90 degrees clockwise around orbit B (the closest it gets to the path of the asteroid).

And because, once again, the super-massive asteroid H and the planet P mutually gravitate towards each other, the vertical path of H will be shifted even more to the right, and planet P will again be pulled slightly left (out of orbit B) and settle into the slightly larger orbit C.

So that’s where I’m still seeing the problem with your scenario.
Unless we break universal gravitation in backwards time, I don’t see how the planet or the asteroid could ever end up being placed back on their original paths.

I have a hunch that they would get placed back on the exact same path, but I don’t have the software to prove it. Try some other examples, like two asteroid flying by each other in straight lines and affecting each other’s paths. It works fine in reverse in that scenario.

…and if I may be so bold as to suggest a second example, I’m thinking that a very similar problem is going to happen with magnetism. Put two magnets close to each other, let go, and they will mutually attract each other, and stick together. Now throw the “reverse time” switch, and they should *still *be naturally attracting each other just as they were before… there’s absolutely no physical reason for them to suddenly stop attracting, and instead repel each other, so that they can fly apart and back into your hands.

When the magnets strike each other, their kinetic energy is 1/2 their mass times their velocity squared (1/2 m v ^ 2 ). Their speed will be quite fast as they hit, due to the strong magnetic force. That kinetic energy has to be converted to some other form of energy. In reverse time, whatever energy that was converted into, gets turned back into kinetic energy, and the magnets pop back apart. They quickly decelerate due to the magnetic effect, but the magnetic effect also drops off quickly as distance increases. The two magnets end up back where they were.

Not sure where you motivation here is coming from, because we don’t say that God determined the whole universe from the earliest point in time… that’s just way too close to Deism, if not in full agreement with it. Rather, we ought to say that Divine Providence is *always *determining and preserving the universe in the present moment. There really is good reason to speak of creation as an ongoing process, rather than as a wholly singular event confined to a particular moment in time… creation is only something like an “instantaneous” event when imagined as if from God’s eternal perspective outside of time.

Well, there was another thread where people were saying I was all wrong for saying that God determines the universe at each moment. They insisted that God determines it at the start, creates physical laws, then lets it go and doesn’t interact with nature anymore. While I disagree with their stance, I wanted to work within that assumption because a lot of people see it that way.

 

[masterjedi747]

This is where it gets tricky - understanding how the asteroid perturbs the planets orbit.

Somewhat unfortunate, but very very true.

At this point in time, the asteroids gravity is in the exact opposite direction of the gravity produced by S (and presumably much smaller in magnitude). So, its real effect is to reduce the force pulling the planet to the right.

With a reduced centrifugal acceleration, the planet will follow a path that goes more downward and less to the right than it would have otherwise. But it won’t move to the left.

You’re right. But I was mostly just thinking that the result of moving “more downward and less to the right” is that the distance between the planet and center S increases… the line between P and S gets longer, such that the “radius” of the orbit grows. So then if the planet continued on to complete its revolution, it would be further to the left when it returned to the 90 degree mark on the left side of the orbit. Which does support my point, but only insofar as it also fails to address certain other complexities of the situation…

I imagine the new orbit would become elongated in the up-down direction, but I’m not completely sure.

Probably so… would make sense to me it that’s what happens, anyway.

Before you reverse it, I should also point out that at this point in time, the asteroid is decelerating the planet, therefore reducing the average size of its orbit.

That’s a good point… for that matter, it would also have been accelerating the planet as they were both approaching each other, right? sigh …I’m beginning to wonder if both of our initial solutions to the scenario might have been wrong, but for different reasons. My too-good-to-be-true scenario definitely falls short because I was glossing over certain complications, though I’m still highly certain that throwing the “reverse” switch and bringing the planets back into proximity with each other is just going to compound the problems all over again and cause the orbit to devolve into something even more complicated each time.

But I don’t think its as simple as you say, that it would be shifted to the left.

Well, for what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s as simple as I said it was either, anymore.
I was definitely over-simplifying things for the sake of an easy argument… but way too much, in hindsight, as I think you’ve clearly pointed out.

Try some other examples, like two asteroid flying by each other in straight lines and affecting each other’s paths. It works fine in reverse in that scenario.

True enough, but that’s because it’s a simple 2-body scenario. Unfortunately, we’re dealing with a planet that’s implicitly in orbit around another body, so that’s implicitly forcing us to work within a 3-body scenario… and I’m pretty darn sure they don’t just reverse like you’d expect that they might, after considering a 2-body scenario.

When the magnets strike each other, their kinetic energy is 1/2 their mass times their velocity squared (1/2 m v ^ 2 ). Their speed will be quite fast as they hit, due to the strong magnetic force. That kinetic energy has to be converted to some other form of energy. In reverse time, whatever energy that was converted into, gets turned back into kinetic energy, and the magnets pop back apart. They quickly decelerate due to the magnetic effect, but the magnetic effect also drops off quickly as distance increases. The two magnets end up back where they were.

Alright… as far as I can tell, fair enough. I still have significant issues with the fact that all of this energy is spontaneously being converted “back” into kinetic energy for no good reason, but I was already having that problem before, so I don’t think we need to pursue this particular scenario any longer.

I’m much more concerned about how you would handle the raindrop and/or snowflake example, honestly… because as far as I can tell, there’s really no way that the kinetic energy imparted by that raindrop/snowflake could possibly be sufficient to successfully propel it back up into the atmosphere against the force of gravity. (?)

Well, there was another thread where people were saying I was all wrong for saying that God determines the universe at each moment. They insisted that God determines it at the start, creates physical laws, then lets it go and doesn’t interact with nature anymore. While I disagree with their stance, I wanted to work within that assumption because a lot of people see it that way.

…I don’t have time to read much of that thread at the moment, but if that is what they were actually saying (and they didn’t somehow intend it to be taken a looser sense), then they’re definitely digging themselves into a very dangerous hole… teetering precariously on the brink of heretical thought, at the very least… and definitely opposed to the traditional Aristotelian and Thomistic understanding of the “first mover”, since the first mover is always the ultimate cause of every motion, and not just something that knocked the first domino over at some point in the past.

 

[Cadellin]

Your argument, or at least conclusion, implies that God could have created the universe at any point in time, past or future. Why not the present? The problem is that God did not create the universe at some point in time but created time along with everything else. Time is the duration since creation and therefore God created the universe in the past, i.e. at the ‘beginning’ of time.

 

[Neil_Anthony]

I’m much more concerned about how you would handle the raindrop and/or snowflake example, honestly… because as far as I can tell, there’s really no way that the kinetic energy imparted by that raindrop/snowflake could possibly be sufficient to successfully propel it back up into the atmosphere against the force of gravity. (?)

Oops, I forgot to address the snowflake and raindrop.

In both of these cases the terminal velocity of the object falling becomes a more important factor compared to their speed from gravity. Actually, that was a problem with the ball falling from space too - the speed at which it hit the ground wouldn’t be nearly fast enough to send it back into space. That’s because the atmosphere would slow it down a lot as it fell.

In forward time, as the object falls, it has to push air out of the way, which slows it down. This pushing of air causes pressure around the circumference of the falling raindrop/snowflake/ball-from-space. In reverse time, the kinetic energy that the object had when it hit would be given back to it from the converging shock waves in the ground… which would be enough to send it back upwards with the velocity that it originally hit the ground. But, especially in the case of the snowflake, that’s pretty slow, not nearly fast enough to send it back up to the clouds.

The snowflake would get sent upwards at some slow speed, maybe 10cm/s. But, remember the air pressure that was created by the snowflake pushing its way downward through the air? That air pressure in reverse time would converge to create a high-pressure spot below the snowflake, lifting it up. And it doesn’t take much to lift up a snowflake, because its so light. It would have an elevator ride right back up to the clouds from the high-pressure air it had created on the way down in forward time.

This really is a strange world though, where snowflakes are lifted into the sky by invisible air elevators. I think the real problem is that entropy decreases in forward time and increases in reverse time. So in reverse time, there are a lot more cases of organized behaviour/structures/phenomena emerging from chaos.

So for God to set the initial conditions at some point in time greater than t=0, God would have to arrange the “chaos” very specifically so that it would work backwards to form the world he wanted at time t=0. In the case of initial conditions at 4004BC, he would even have to do things like leave dinosaur fossils in the rocks, which brings us back to the “God the deciever” argument.

…I don’t have time to read much of that thread at the moment, but if that is what they were actually saying (and they didn’t somehow intend it to be taken a looser sense), then they’re definitely digging themselves into a very dangerous hole… teetering precariously on the brink of heretical thought, at the very least… and definitely opposed to the traditional Aristotelian and Thomistic understanding of the “first mover”, since the first mover is always the ultimate cause of every motion, and not just something that knocked the first domino over at some point in the past.

Well, they were saying in the other thread that God “directly” caused the first point in time, then indirectly caused the other points in time by creating physical laws and letting the physical laws do all the work.

 

[Neil_Anthony]

Your argument, or at least conclusion, implies that God could have created the universe at any point in time, past or future. Why not the present? The problem is that God did not create the universe at some point in time but created time along with everything else. Time is the duration since creation and therefore God created the universe in the past, i.e. at the ‘beginning’ of time.

If “God did not create the universe at some point in time” then doesn’t that contradict God creating it at the beginning of time, i.e. time t=0?

When did God create tomorrow? God already knows what tomorrow brings, so He must have created it.

 

[masterjedi747]

When did God create tomorrow?
God already knows what tomorrow brings, so He must have created it.

I’m not sure there is a simple answer to this question. In a very limited sense, from our position as creatures, we *could *say that He has not yet created tomorrow (has not yet caused it)… even though He *will *do so, and has always known that He would do so. I mean, as long as we’re talking about creation from our human perspective, there’s absolutely no reason why we wouldn’t say that God can have foreknowledge of things that have not yet come to pass.

But even that’s not the best answer, because of course we’re already speaking as if God is somehow subject to time, or acts in time as we do. Perhaps the best response, in the end, is simply to deny that your question is even valid, because it seems to be implicitly assuming that God’s singular act of creation has any proper sense of “before now” or “after now” according to itself.

If “God did not create the universe at some point in time” then doesn’t that contradict God creating it at the beginning of time, i.e. time t=0?

Again, it’s complicated, and depends a lot on exactly what you mean to say… how much emphasis are you really intending to give to the past/present tense verbs in those statements? If you mean to suggest that all of creation took place simply at the moment t=0, then you’ll start running into problems… but if by “God created the universe at the beginning of time” you simply mean that creation *began *at t=0, then that’s fine. The simplest solution by far, however, is simply to say that “God created a universe in which time had a beginning”, and thus avoid all reference to any idea that creation is confined to a particular point in the past and is not a continuous or ongoing process.

 

[Newbot]

Oops, I forgot to address the snowflake and raindrop.

These particular examples are interesting and well worth considering to make the general point more clear. Still, I would like to repeat the general point, since I think it can stand on its own.

Ignoring for a moment the (quite real) contingencies of reality, we can say that it is possible to write laws which describe the relations of measurable quantities in bodies. Hence, for instance, x = ct (the law for the speed of light), where the position and time are variables. F = gm1m2/r^2 would be an example of a gravatic law. What we note, however, is that these laws not only allow us to predict the value of these quantities when t is increased, but also when t is decreased. Hence in x = ct, if t = 1 second, the light will be at position c*1 sec. relative to its original position; but if t = -1 seconds, it will be at a position the same distance, but in the opposite direction. Similarly with the other laws.

If we were able to determine all the laws describing the relations of all measurable quantities for all bodies, and knew the precise value of these quantities at any point in time, we would end up with series of terrible, horrific equations describing perfectly the value of their quantities at any time. But t could be not only increased (such that we could predict future events) but decreased (discovering past events). In a word, these equations would describe the entire universe in all its history, just as knowing the position of a single point on a curve and all its derivatives at that point is enough to describe the entire curve. I admit this is a little abstract, but I cannot see how it would not be true.

However, as to contingency. With quantum mechanics, the laws themselves are not determinate but only probable, as are the measurable quantities. Hence the above master equation would only be probable, giving probabilities of various past and future events. If one brings in the free action of men, angels, and God, there are no laws or measurable quantities possible, so our description of the world would err quite significantly in arbitrary ways.

So much for the mathematical side of things: namely that we can predict past and future events and measurements using laws, based on current events and measurements. But it is slightly different to say that, in reality, past events might be determined (not merely known) by present events, and in this I must agree with the Master. First, because it almost completely removes causality. Why is this animal here? Because, by an extraordinary coincidence, a vast quantity of rats, wolves, ravens, and other creatures, running away from food, happened to come together at a skeleton and regurgate their food. This also happened to be just the flesh and guts appropriate for this kind of skeleton. Then bacteria and similar organisms (there was an unusual concentration there) assembled it together. Then heat waves distributed all throughout the land began to coalescate (not because it was necessary; they just happened to) and gather, gained strength. And then – here it is, the marvel beyond all marvels – two shock waves would form. A vast one would collect, and impart a massive force upon a bullet and bits of flesh the rats left near the body; the other would give the animal a shove so it lifted up, inert. The bullet would pass right through a wound in the animal – bullseye! – and the flesh would hit the wound at high speed and reassemble. The animal would be whole and alive – but it would wither away in a few years, dissolved in the womb of a female of its own species.

I’m saying this, not to make fun of it, but because everything would be like that. Perfection would always be by chance, usually extraordinary, inconceivable chance; imperfection and destruction, by nature (e.g. the womb). There would still be a reason for everything (in the sense of an agent cause), but there would be no purpose or final cause, except towards evil and decay: only chance. This seems philosophically rather inappropriate.

Another difficulty would be: is it even meaningful to speak of time proceeding backwards? If time is the measure of motion (by this I mean, if time is not some independent reality existing on its own somewhere, but only exists insofar as it is connected with or a part of motion, in particular as a measure of it) then it always goes ‘forwards’, in the sense that X is always after Y temporally if Y is after X according to some motion (for instance, if the sun has set and is not rising). To say that, from a single point, time proceeds both forward and backwards, seems no more than to say that there are two worlds, one moving according to ordinary laws of motion and the other by the reverse, but both moving ‘forward’.

I’ve already written too much so I won’t touch on the theological side of things (though it is somewhat tied in with the philosophical), except to say that what the Master is saying there seems good also: that all time is present for God, and hence in a single act he creates and sustains the universe in all its time (hope I haven’t slipped up in stating it).

Newbot

 

[Neil_Anthony]

So much for the mathematical side of things: namely that we can predict past and future events and measurements using laws, based on current events and measurements. But it is slightly different to say that, in reality, past events might be determined (not merely known) by present events, and in this I must agree with the Master. First, because it almost completely removes causality. Why is this animal here? Because, by an extraordinary coincidence, a vast quantity of rats, wolves, ravens, and other creatures, running away from food, happened to come together at a skeleton and regurgate their food. This also happened to be just the flesh and guts appropriate for this kind of skeleton. Then bacteria and similar organisms (there was an unusual concentration there) assembled it together. Then heat waves distributed all throughout the land began to coalescate (not because it was necessary; they just happened to) and gather, gained strength. And then – here it is, the marvel beyond all marvels – two shock waves would form. A vast one would collect, and impart a massive force upon a bullet and bits of flesh the rats left near the body; the other would give the animal a shove so it lifted up, inert. The bullet would pass right through a wound in the animal – bullseye! – and the flesh would hit the wound at high speed and reassemble. The animal would be whole and alive – but it would wither away in a few years, dissolved in the womb of a female of its own species.

Oh my goodness, you got me laughing so hard I almost cried. That was very well written!

I imagine that more people would believe in God if they lived in a world like that. How else could they explain these amazing co-incidences?

Unless, in backwards time, people would remember the future and try to predict the past. Then it would seem exactly like it does in forward time.

In fact, we could be travelling backwards in time and not even know it - at each instant, we remember the times to the left of us on the timeline, and don’t know about times to the right of us on the timeline. Just because my clock says its 4:31pm right now, and I remember 4:30 and feel like I experienced 4:30 just a minute ago, I don’t know that for sure. Maybe God just let me pop into 4:31 for a second to edit this message, then he’s sending me back to 7:00am yesterday to turn off my alarm clock.

Another difficulty would be: is it even meaningful to speak of time proceeding backwards? If time is the measure of motion (by this I mean, if time is not some independent reality existing on its own somewhere, but only exists insofar as it is connected with or a part of motion, in particular as a measure of it) then it always goes ‘forwards’, in the sense that X is always after Y temporally if Y is after X according to some motion (for instance, if the sun has set and is not rising). To say that, from a single point, time proceeds both forward and backwards, seems no more than to say that there are two worlds, one moving according to ordinary laws of motion and the other by the reverse, but both moving ‘forward’.

Perhaps time doesn’t proceed… instead time is like a line (lets call it a timeline) with observers at different points on the line. Some observers go in one direction, some in the other. Much like we move through the other dimensions, and can see the points in space that are closest to us.

 

[Cadellin]

If “God did not create the universe at some point in time” then doesn’t that contradict God creating it at the beginning of time, i.e. time t=0?

No. For God to have created the universe at the beginning of time he must have been within time. Imagine time as a tube. For God to have created the universe at the beginning of time he must have been inside that tube, right at the’ start end.’ But God exists outside of time; he created the ‘tube’ and so wasn’t inside it at the time of creation.

When did God create tomorrow? God already knows what tomorrow brings, so He must have created it.

Perhaps time is in a state of continuous creation. Yesterday existed, today exists, but tomorrow has not come into being yet. I know what date it will be tomorrow. Does that mean I created tomorrow? God knows what tomorrow will bring before it is created, just as knew that Man would sin before he created Man.

 

[Dameedna]

Premise 1:
The laws of physics can work in either direction in time - given perfect knowledge of the present condition of the universe, physics can predict future events as well as it can say what past events were. For example, the laws of gravity that determine the orbits of the planets let us predict where they will be in the future, and where they were in the past.

Premise 2:
God is outside of time, so all points of time are equally present to Him. The direction of time as moving from past to present to future that we see, is arbitrary to God. God can see future then the past then the future again.

Conclusion:
Therefore, the point of “creation” where God set the “initial conditions” of the universe need not have been at the earliest time. It could have been at the most future time, or any other time in between. The laws of physics God created could determine the whole sequence of time from start to end given an initial condition at any point in time.

Is this correct? If it’s true, we could say that “creation” occurred at any point in time, even in the future.

Two things I’ve read about(not areas I am knowlegable on myself though).

1. There is a theory, that one particular physicist(popularist) has, that creation did in fact occur, at the “end” of the universe rather than the beginning. Although I have no idea of the actualy science behind his conclusions, he is supposedly quite well respected, although tends to annoy his peers with his popularization of a very difficult topic.
2. There is another theory, I just read about which related to time but also discussed the “laws” of the universe. IE, mathematical laws. It has been presumed that these laws are fixed from the point in time(or at the singularity). This theory challenges that, and indicates that the laws of mathematics are evolving along side us, and have not been “fixed”. Very simplistic explanation of an article I really didn’t understand the majority of…lol!!

No idea wether these theories hold any weight, but it does show that your questioning isn’t unfeasible at least to some people in the scientific realm.

 

[masterjedi747]

Well, they were saying in the other thread that God “directly” caused the first point in time, then indirectly caused the other points in time by creating physical laws and letting the physical laws do all the work.

Then yeah, that’s definitely not quite going to cut it, for the reasons given before.

There would still be a reason for everything (in the sense of an agent cause), but there would be no purpose or final cause, except towards evil and decay: only chance. This seems philosophically rather inappropriate.

…and that’s putting it rather lightly, I think.

Another difficulty would be: is it even meaningful to speak of time proceeding backwards? If time is the measure of motion (by this I mean, if time is not some independent reality existing on its own somewhere, but only exists insofar as it is connected with or a part of motion, in particular as a measure of it) then it always goes ‘forwards’, in the sense that X is always after Y temporally if Y is after X according to some motion (for instance, if the sun has set and is not rising).

I wondered about this particular point as well, but then I figured the arguable “solution” in this case would be to just completely and simultaneously reverse *every *motion of *every *particle in the universe… because then if things *did *unwind perfectly from there out (granting it for the sake of argument), there would seem to be some justification for saying that time (though more properly, motion) had been “reversed” for the universe.