The Logic of God’s Transcendence

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Whether infinitely divisible or quantized, there is something counterintuitive, or paraconsistent (http://lp.jurid.net/articles/logica/dialethe.htm) about spacetime. If either or both space and time is infinitely divisible, then locality of matter-and-motion in terms and space and time is indeterminate. But, if either or both space and time is quantized, or made up of terminate units, then one or more other things are indeterminate, such as how one unit of matter can be determined from another.

For the quantized model, quanta of matter cannot be separated without some quanta of space ‘flowing’into the gap between the separated quanta of matter. There is also the nature of their original connection, where one begins and the other ends. The thickness of the bond between them while they are contiguous is zero-space, having no thickness, so, then, how need matter or space be quantized since there is, then, such a thing as zero-space? The analogue applies to time and motion. Further, if time is quantized, then when the expansion of time? Whence the addition of ever more quanta of time as the future, and, to where do the past quanta of time go?

So, in either model, each of which is intuitive in a respective practical turn of mind, there is something beyond practical, or terminate, spacetime.

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It has…been argued that omniscience is impossible, and that the most knowledge that can possibly be had is not enough to be fitting of God.  One of the central problems has been that God cannot have knowledge of indexical claims such as, “I am here now.”http://www.iep.utm.edu/atheism/ 

 

My response: Such a notion of omniscience is analogous to the rare notion that omnipotence is every instance of every thing which has any kind of power at all, in all of the present, past, and future. And this rare notion of omnipotence is rare because of the universal empirical knowledge that not all things are qualitatively and quantitatively equal in power. So, this notion of omniscience contradicts the knowledge that some knowers know more than know other knowers. I can know that your reasoning is inconsistent and erroneous without my actually being you thinking that your reasoning is sound. And, I can sense how you sense it by putting together the particular rational elements which you put together and in the particular way that you put them together. The pedals go here, and the chain goes there, and, whalla! I have a non-bike-able bike. So, I know both what you know and what I know, and, since my knowledge is more basic than is yours, I know that what you know is a mix-up that doesn’t work. If there is no such thing as the most powerful thing, then either everything is equal in power (which means everything is the most powerful thing possible), or there is an infinite ascension of greater powers (which means there must be an actual infinite power else the ascension tops out at an arbitrary finite height). 

So, omniscience must firstly be thought of as all essential, effective knowledge. In other words, omniscience has a proper task per omniscience, not per all imaginable ‘knowledge’-tasks.  This means, firstly, that omniscience is opposed to a pan-epistemy (i. e., both all essential and all ‘incidental’ knowledge/’knowledge’). Having all effective knowledge would mean not only having all basic or essential kinds of knowledge, but having such knowledge in such a way as to preclude conflation of two unlike things (i.e., mistaken ideas).

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It has also been argued that God can’t know future free choices

Time does not preclude ‘free’ choices, but neither does it preclude a being who transcends time, since time must be quantized, infinitely divisible, or something else still.

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It has come to be widely accepted that a being cannot be omnipotent where omnipotence simply means the power to do anything including the logically impossible.  This definition of the term suffers from the stone paradox.  An omnipotent being would either be capable of creating a rock that he cannot lift, or he is incapable.  If he is incapable, then there is something he cannot do, and therefore he does not have the power to do anything.  If he can create such a rock, then again there is something that he cannot do, namely lift the rock he just created.  So paradoxically, having the ability to do anything would appear to entail being unable to do some things.

 

That’s trying to disassemble-and reassemble a Rolex watch with a meat tenderizer. If this particular notion of ‘all powerful’ is allowed, then it follows that nothing at all has any inherent meaning from the point of view of such a power, including power. In other words, such a power ‘already’ finds no such thing as a paradox or a counterfactual, which is the only way it rationally can be said to have power over inherently meaningful things: to it, there is no such thing as meaning, not even so much as ‘something’ and ‘nothing’. Of course, the sense of ‘already’ is equivalent to ‘inherently’ or ‘immediately’, which is an inherently meaningful…thing. But, that’s not the point. The point is that, to truly model a being with this sort of power, there is no such thing as before and after, greater and lesser, etc.—-which means you can’t pose any task for it in the first place without making demands on it which it does not recognize. In short, such a power actually is indistinct from any real thing that can ever be enumerated. It already is every possible rock, and every possible outcome (including every possible error of reason, like a misassembled bicycle the assembler of which can ignorantly assume that that is what a bicycle properly is).

 

 

                                                                                                                  

God’s transcendence is intimately connected with his omnipresence. And, both are intimately connected with the classic, or direct, logic of physical philosophy. Physics, writ simply.

A bicycle at room temperature is an unnatural collection of solid matter made coherent by its own internal forces. A drop of water at room temperature is a natural collection of liquid matter that can be taken apart by certain external forces. The bicycle and the drop of water are perfectly distinct from, or independent of, each other. They arbitrarily can be separated from each other by any given distance of space.

But, what if the drop of water falls on the bicycle? Is the water then distinctly a different thing than the bicycle? Yes. This is because they cannot both be in the same space at the same time. And, the reason this so is because they are made up of bits of matter which likewise are distinct from one another.

But, how far down into matter can you go? To put it another way, how far down into space can you go? The immediately rational answer is that you can go as far down as you please and still not go all the way to the bottom. This answer is based on the fact that we most naturally think of space as infinitely divisible: there is no smallest bit of space.

We think the same way about time. And, it was in combining the two that old Zeno came up with his famous paradoxes of motion (http://www.iep.utm.edu/zeno-par/).

But, infinite divisibility of a finite bit of space does not mean that that bit of space is infinitely big. The fact that an actual finite unit, say 2, is rationally infinitely divisible (by two, then by halves, then by quarters…) does not rationally mean that 2 is 3, much less does it mean that 2 is 1000. So, traversing an infinite number of positive distances in a finite time is possible if the total distance is finite.  

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Now, the classic geometric point has no extension. The classic chronological instant has no duration. So, the point and the insant are indistinguishable. They each are simply ‘there’. In fact, according to Einstein, there is only one of them—-not one each, but simply one. One point of spacetime.

Einstein called this point of spacetime a ‘singularity’. But, Einstein located this singularity in terms of a past state of the cosmos, an original state. Futher, he defined it as containing all of current matter and all of current physical forces.

What does it look like for a timeless and spaceless point to contain all of physical matter and forces? To picture such a thing is to picture a point of infinite density and infinite power. Einstein thought that this was how the cosmos began; by a ‘Big Bang’ of the expansive subset of physical forces.

But, if the singularity contains no durational time, then how can it have existed merely in the past? How can an instant of time be located in terms of any actual sequence of time-bits? This is a conceptual problem.

This problem was, in a sense, what Einstein, himself, believed. He believed that the singularity, while in some difficult sense is located in the past, could not be located in terms of our normal perception of the passage of time. It could not be pinpointed as having existed at, say, 30 billion years ago. Einstein thought this way because he defined time not as a framework within which events may occur, but as events themselves.

But, to me, this is an odd way of thinking, since events occur in sequence, one after another. They do not occur all together at the same time. To me, time is a framework of duration, not the things that happen in sequence. I can identify things apart from time, just like I can identify matter apart from space. At least, down to a point. No pun intended.

I perceive space as that which allows different instances of matter to be located distinctly at all in any sense. I’m a part of the material world, and I’m not sitting right there where you are seated. There are intervening instances of matter. And, this quality of material intervening-ness is, to me, distinct from whatever matter intervenes. Matter is easily interchangable within space, and a similar thing is true of matter within time. I’m still here, wherever I am. I continue to exist. An instance of matter is made up of other instances of matter. That’s how matter can be taken apart, or put together. It can be made to discohere, and it can be caused to recohere. It’s a practical necessity, since to be a creature is to be synthetic.

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In the most trivial sense of its face value, infinite duration of future time is incongruent with an absence of actual infinity. For example, if a bit of matter can be divided in half at the present time, then, either half can be divided at a future time, since an infinite future of an ever-expanding cosmos is numerically equivalent to an infinite sequence of the dividing of a given bit of matter.

 

Or, assuming that the cosmos is simply cyclical in size, there is, then, only one dimension, namely time, which has the functional property of being infinite. It, then, seems that time is the singularly inviolable dimension, with matter and motion being stowaways, if you will, and space being an unaccountably elastic thing the total number of indivisible bits of which at a given time simply disappear or reappear.

 

In any case, it seems to me that the strictly common sense rational terms of infinite number must exist not merely in respect to a potential infinite future of time, but in the present, actual sense, and in respect to time, space, matter, and motion. While motion, or energy, need not be an actual infinity of velocity, might it not need to be an infinitely divisible set such that matter cannot be truly non-energic?

 

Some have asserted that a dimensionless point precludes infinite divisibility; but, at the moment, I fail to quite recall the reasoning for the assertion. My own reasoning is precisely the opposite: without a dimensionless point, there can be no infinite divisibility, since, then, there would be some arbitrary stage at which the division could never recommence. The bottom of the barrel. Granted, give a non-point unit, potential infinity is allowed by addition. But, then, is time really made up of non-point units to which more such units are unaccountable added? From what are they added?

 

Granted, infinite divisibility of all dimensions equates to infinite regress of causes. But, if there is a true dimensionless point, then something exists beyond that point, outside of anything which the natural denizens of the cosmos find directly sensible, but nevertheless most implicitly indispensible to their reason, and thus to their science: a Sentient First Cause, and whose transcendence is indistinguishable from his omnipresence and his power. So, that, God is not anywhere in terms of the practical cosmos; rather, the practical cosmos is everywhere and everywhen immediately present to God.

 

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In logically considering the rational, geo-chronic point, it can be noted that this Point has no geometric nor chronological extension. It is purely there, as if without actually depending on either extensive space or extensive time for its own existence. In fact, both geometric and chronological points are indistinguishable from each other: neither of them actually possesses the properties of their respective referents.

There can be an infinite number of points within a given finite extension or duration, or even at a given point. They occupy-and-make-possible all of space and time without actually taking up any of space or time. They never crowd you out.

This geo-chronic Point logically allows that space, time, and matter can be ‘infinitely’ divided. In both practical and aesthetic terms, there is then no tiniest possible bit of space, time, or matter; and no end to the ways in which it is organized, and thus to its practical uses. This geo-chronic Point allows the only directly theologically positive view of physics. God can create an infinity of infinities, and let us live and work forever in it.

Since the Point has no true referent, but rather all things are in reference to it, then there are not many Points, but one. God is not omnipresent in terms of spacetime, rather, all of space and time is everywhere and everywhen present to God. After all, God is transcendent. His transcendence and omnipresence are one, and the same, thing.

From the purely rational point of view, the Point logically can exist, even though it cannot be directly empirically proved to exist. Like an algorithm cannot prove that it’s own axiom is an axiom, but can only admit that it has an axiom.

#1 Key Question: Did God create the cosmos to be of the sort that has in mind primarily fallen man’s own power-mad direction-of-mind? Or, did God create the cosmos primarily in mind of an unfallen original humanity—a humanity to which, by open accounts, was given the genuine option to live forever in an Edenic reality in a very big-and-lifeless cosmos? Was mankind originally tasked to spread throughout the cosmos, that is, once he had proved fit to do so by having completed the original explicit task of making the entire Earth into an edenic environment filled with unfallen families?

In other words, did God make physics to be of such a sort as to primary satisfy fallen man’s desire for dominion over every evil thing that he experiences of the physical world, including death and the curse upon the ground? (Who of us, as fallen people living under the curse, wouldn’t want such power?) Or, instead, did God make physics to be endless so as to be a genuine option to an original unfallen mankind of an endless life of ever-increasing practical dominion at home, and to an ever-more-powerful expansion throughout an endless cosmos?

Aha! If that unfallen view is the case, then it also thwarts fallen man’s greedy wishes to be his own creator. God wins both ways. He simply cannot loose. His glory is incomparable. The physical world need not contain its own physical cause; infinite regress of material forces does not have to mean that there is no ultimate causal agent.

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