Timeless causation

Timeless causation

W.L.Craig writes:

God must be causally, but not temporally, prior to the Big Bang. With the creation of the universe, time began, and God entered into time at the moment of creation in virtue of His real relations with the created order. It follows that God must, therefore, be timeless without the universe and temporal with the universe.
https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/scholarly-writings/divine-eternity/timelessness-and-omnitemporality#ixzz4lILYz3mz

The cause of the Big Bang operated at to, that is, simultaneously (or coincidentally{1}) with the Big Bang. Philosophical discussions of causal directionality routinely treat simultaneous causation, the question being how to distinguish A as the cause and B as the effect when these occur together at the same time [Dummett and Flew (1954); Mackie (1966); Suchting (1968-69); Brier (1974), pp. 91-98; Brand (1979)].{2} Even on a mundane level, we regularly experience simultaneous causation;
http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/creation.html

There must have been a point or transition from a timeless dimension, to a dimension in time. This transition could eventually have happened when God created the physical universe. But if it were so, he would have had to create the reality of heaven, and the heavenly creatures at the same time - since, even in a higher, different, or another dimension, as soon as there is action, movement, motion, there is time, space and matter ( even if in a different higher form with different properties ) 

We know that God created the heavens and the angels before He created the physical universe. The book of Job describes the angels worshipping God as He was creating the world:

Job 38:4-7
"Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone - while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?".

And in Romans 8.29 we read:
Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

Ephesians 1.4:
According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:

To me, it seems reasonable to think of following"timeline":

- God existed in a timeless dimension, alone and changeless
- God created heaven, and the heavenly creatures, and moved from a timeless dimension, into time
- God created the physical universe
- This universe will be destroyed and replaced by a new one, which will be eternal

Physical properties have to exist in order for time to exist then time goes back before the Big bang, because, in order for there to be a big bang, there has to be both gravity and material, both of which have physical properties and both of which are manipulated by energy. Therefore, the notion that the creator spoke, or manipulated with energy, everything into existence. Thus, time literally began with the word(manipulation of energy) of God.
That being said, everything is made of energy which existed independently before time and, which under its own power, became an intelligent life form which can manipulate and organize its own energy and create physical material.
In the beginning was the word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.






Objection: God creating a universe out of nothing is magic
Response: Magic without a magician makes way less sense. Its actually impossible, since something from absolutely nothing is impossible, since the absence of any being, cannot produce being.

Nothing is the thing that stones think of
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2817-nothing-is-the-thing-that-stones-think-of

That cause is either personal or impersonal. 
If it were impersonal, it would have to be of physical substance, space, time, and matter. The present moment cannot be reached by adding individual events together from eternity. The second law of thermodynamics refutes the hypothesis of an eternal universe.  Furthermore, if we posit an event - event causation then another contingent physical cause would have had to trigger the Big Bang or further back, a cosmos, multiverses etc, leading to infinite regress.  There could be no physical being beyond our universe or a greater Cosmos. The State - State causation faces the same problem.  This causation is like a frozen pond where you have a tree trunk resting on the top of that pond, and this stay is causing this other state of the tree trunk, but that could not trigger a change from one state into another but would remain static, from eternity. And a state - state causation would also have to be physical.  

What explains the beginning of the universe is state event causation, which has to go from a state of timeless mental being to will an event of a transition, from a non-physical to a physical state of being, therefore the only explanation of what triggered the universe or cosmos is intelligent causation based on will and power. Since that cause created matter, space, and time,  It had to be immaterial and exist in a timeless dimension. The only immaterial things we know of being able to cause something into being are conscient minds which are able to make decisions.   Therefore, the cause must be personal. So there must have been a decision to cause the beginning of the universe's beginning. We know by experience that the mind can cause action solely based on will. Therefore an eternal & necessary first cause is the best explanation of our existence.

How could a mind exist in a timeless dimension, and trigger a transition from timelessness to time? 
Time is a huge topic in philosophy. What is time? We all know intuitively what it is, but when asked to formulate and define time, we soon perceive the difficulty. When we go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning, on average 6 to 8 hours did pass. But we did not perceive time passing. If we were asked but had no watch to check, we would probably not know how much time we slept. If we have a very deep and good sleep, it's almost when we wake up as if we did not perceive any lapse of time. But during this time, we are conscient and dream, there are sequential events in a dream, there is action, but we do not perceive time like when we are awake. What does that mean? Two things: Time is bound to physical action. That's why there cannot be time if there is no matter, energy, and space. Where there is no action and physical reality, there is no time. And secondly: Even IF there would be time, space, and matter, and action, but no mind and conscience, there is no entity to PERCEIVE it. 

So in order to have a sense and perception of time, the following is necessary: Mental conscience that can sensor external reality, space, matter and energy, physical action, and that the mind is in a relationship with external physical reality in action. Then time can be perceived. Some have questioned: How can God exist BEYOND the universe sans universe, and sans time?  If we can dream and perceive a sequence of events in our mind but without EXPERIENCING time, while we can perceive that sequence in our mind, so can God exist timeless beyond the universe, have various mental states and experience sequential events consciously and be aware of, but not EXPERIENCING time. Time is only something that MINDS EXPERIENCE, upon the perception of physical activity. In dreams, there are external actors. Often in a dream, we just passively OBSERVE events, and in many cases, we REACT. We want to do things during our dreams. For example, I often dream that I pedal, and while pedalling I float, rise and fly. When I stop, and when I do not pedal strong enough, I don't rise. So I can exercise will during my dream. 

When we have nightmare dreams, we experience awfully horrific events, which we have no idea, where they came from, and are in real panic. What is the reaction? We try at all costs to flee that event and wake up in panic. So there is an event occurring in your mind, which provokes a PHYSICAL EVENT. We wake up. Decisions can have physical consequences. I can decide to type the letter a. That mental decision provokes a physical event, where I move my arm, my fingers, and type on the keyboard the letter a. I don't know HOW that occurs. Nobody knows how this interaction can take place, but it does. 

God CAN have existed in a timeless dimension sans creation, and DECIDED to create the physical cosmos, and provoked its creation upon his mental power, will and decision. There is nothing absurd about it. I can decide to write the letter a, and in an instant, AT THE SAME TIME that I take the decision, type the letter a. So there has to be no time lapse between a decision process and a physical event. It occurs simultaneously. So God can have existed in an exclusively mental dimension with sequential events, but experiencing no time, then he took the decision to create the universe, and simultaneously to his decision, made it all start, and time begin with the advent of physical reality.

The microscopic world is a shadowy realm where nothing is certain – where an electron can be in two places at once and photons at opposite extremes of the universe can communicate by some kind of weird telepathy. Buchanan (1997) notes, So it is as if the two entangled particles, no matter how far they are apart, are not really separate at all. Measure one, and as its spin becomes definite this triggers the other to respond... What is astonishing and disturbing is that this response happens instantaneously – even if the particles are separated by huge distances. Consequently, quantum theory  requires action at a distance. What happens in one part of the universe can have instantaneous ‘nonlocal’ consequences in other parts, no matter how far away they might be. And this poses a problem, because instantaneous action at a distance is a punch in the nose for Einstein. His theory of relativity – the cornerstone of physics – claims that our universe has an absolute speed limit. Nothing, according to Einstein, can travel faster than light.

These ‘spooky’ observations have forced physicists to coin phrases such as ‘non locality’, ‘superposition’ and ‘entanglement’, when describing behaviour of sub-atomic particles. Einstein spoke of this as ‘quantum weirdness’ that nobody could understand. 

Attempts to reconcile these strange observations, with the laws of physics operating within our ‘arrow of time’ universe, have thus far met only with frustration. In New Scientist Journal of 22 September 2012 we read this statement by Liza Grossman. She quotes Nobel prize-winner Frank Wilczek and colleague Alfred Shapere saying; We can’t ignore the absurdity of the situation any longer. It’s time to get to the bottom of what is really going on and in the process cement our understanding of the fundamental nature of the universe. The article continues, Einstein’s widely accepted theory of special relativity states that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. But the phenomenon of quantum entanglement seems to flaunt the speed limit by allowing a measurement of one particle to instantaneously change another, even when the two are widely separated. Einstein famously called this “spooky action at a distance”. 

A reconciliation between these seemingly irreconcilable realities requires us to accept that the interactions between quantum ‘particles’ takes place within a Timeless Dimension of Reality. This Timeless Dimension is not merely an ‘absence of time’, it has its own laws.

Physics has repeatedly come up with calculations that seem to give substance to ‘infinities’. For instance, Arkani-Hamed et at (2000) suggested, The visible universe could lie on a membrane floating within a higher-dimensional space...Raman Sundrum of Stanford proposed that gravity itself may be concentrated on a membrane in a five-dimensional space-time that is infinite in all directions. This is just one example where ‘infinities’ are proposed in order to help understand quantum realities. This adds further strength to the proposal that our universe is suspended within and built up by the Timeless Dimension of Reality. Whenever our calculations, made from within the limitations placed by our time-bound universe, impact upon realities in a Timeless Dimension, these give us the apparently nonsensical answer ‘infinity’

However, ‘infinities’ are not nonsensical once we accept the reality of the Timeless Dimension. If we go right back to the Big Bang origin of our universe then, if we originate from energy existing within the Timeless Dimension, we have to conclude that this Timeless Dimension Reality had no beginning or ending. A Timeless Dimension simply exists. It is independent from time and can relate to any instant of our time dimension instantaneously! It has no beginning or ending because it is independent from time! Such interactions between time and timelessness have to lead us to infinities!

It is pointless asking where God came from because a Timeless Dimension has neither beginning nor ending. This is a mind-bending concept to grasp but it links perfectly with the scientific understanding that time only started at the Big Bang. It also agrees with biblical revelations about God as existing from ‘timelessness to timelessness’ or ‘everlasting to everlasting’. He revealed himself to Moses as the ‘I AM’, namely the one who exists without beginning or ending. 

Furthermore, acceptance that the Timeless Dimension and the quantum realities revealed to us by science, all originate from and operate within this Timeless Dimension, helps us to understand the ‘spookiness’ spoken about by Einstein and by all quantum physicists since his time. To my mind it is exciting that scientific discoveries have the potential to explain our universe in terms that are in harmony with biblical revelations about the Creator. Amazingly, such revelations were written down centuries before our scientific age.

God is ‘In all things, through all things and by him all things are held together’ Furthermore, he is a hands-on Creator who 6. is continually involved in his creation. He is also the Transcendent God who exists within the Timeless Dimension, even if the universe ceases to exist.

https://factandfaith.co.za/other-articles/

Here is a possible chronological representation of events of the history of God and his creation:

1. God in a timeless dimension:

First, God existed alone in a timeless dimension. In this state, there was no change, no sequence of events, and thus no time in the true sense. The cause of the creation of the heavenly kingdom acted at time t0, i.e., simultaneously (or coincidentally) with the creation itself. In philosophical discussions of causal directionality, simultaneous causality is routinely discussed. This is the question of how to distinguish A as cause and B as effect when they occur simultaneously. Even on an everyday level, we regularly experience simultaneous causality.
An example would be a heavy ball lying on a pillow and simultaneously causing an indentation in that pillow. In the case of the heavenly kingdom, we must assume that the cause is causal but not temporally before the creation. With the creation of the heavenly kingdom, time began, and the Creator entered time at the moment of creation, due to his real relationships with the created order. The Creator must be timeless without the heavenly realm, and temporal with the heavenly realm. The cause of the origin of the heavenly realm must therefore be considered personal. For the only way a temporal effect could arise from an eternal, unchanging cause would be if the cause is a personal agent who eternally chooses to act causally at a (first) instant in time, thereby producing a temporally first effect.

These attributes - timeless, unchanging, eternal, immaterial, enormously powerful, and personal - are some of the core properties of what theists understand by "God."

2. Creation of the heavenly dimension

God decided to create a reality outside of himself. He created the heavenly dimension, including the angels and other heavenly beings. With this creation began a form of time and space, though possibly different from our physical spacetime.

3. Life in heaven

In this heavenly dimension, God and the angels existed. At this point, there was already a sequence of events, interactions, and possibly even some kind of "heavenly time."

4. Planning of physical creation

God planned the creation of the physical universe. In this phase, as Ephesians 1:4 says, he "chose" us "before the foundation of the world."

5. Creation of the physical universe

God spoke the universe into existence, beginning with what we know as the Big Bang. As described in Job 38:4-7, the angels rejoiced as they witnessed this act of creation.

6. Ongoing creation and history

God continued his work of creation, forming the earth and finally creating man. From this point on, the biblical and human history we know unfolds.

7. Present and future

We now live in the physical reality created by God, while at the same time the heavenly dimension continues to exist.

8. Future New Creation

According to biblical prophecy, this universe will one day be renewed or replaced by "a new heaven and a new earth" (Revelation 21:1) that will last forever.

This account attempts to reconcile the biblical statements with philosophical and theological considerations. It explains the transition from a timeless existence of God to a reality with time and offers a possible solution to the problem of God's "first act" by presenting the creation of the heavenly dimension as a transition to time.