Imbalance of Power

[Bravus]

Just today's blog post from me, which I thought some of you might enjoy:

Imbalance of Power

Fantastic sermon yesterday from Dr Juan Carlos Ortiz. It was very cool because he talked about a conception of God very similar to the one below, which I had discussed with Cassie’s class last week. I arrived at mine from the perspective of physics - General Relativity to be specific - while he got there from theology and studying the Bible. Cassie got to hear both perspectives within a few days, which was also very cool.

(the title of this post will make sense, I promise, but we have to get there)

What I told Cassie’s class was this: in the theory of General Relativity that Albert Einstein proposed early last century, space and time are really all one thing - we have three dimensions of space, and time is the fourth dimension. So in General Relativity terms we talk about space-time. Also in General Relativity, matter and energy are in a sense the same thing. Each can be converted into the other: that’s what the famous ‘E = mc2‘ equation is all about. Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. So as well as talking about space-time we can talk about matter-energy.

Now, General Relativity describes gravity, not as a force, but as a curve in space-time. Planets orbit the sun not because they’re attracted to it, but because that’s the way space-time is curved for them. They follow their path through the curve of space-time. But it’s the mass of the sun that causes the curvature of space.

One simple (!) way of describing the theory of General Relativity is:

Matter tells space-time how to curve, space-time tells matter how to move

So anyway, one implication of all this is that, where there’s no matter, there’s no space or time (nothing to tell it how to curve). That means that outside of the universe, and before the universe began, there was no space and no time. Space and time are local phenomena, caused by matter.

So then, if we understand that God is not made out of matter, then we understand that God is outside of (as well as within and through and permeating) space and time. God has access to all of time because He[1] is not bound by or affected by time, not being made of matter. In a very real sense the universe (and potentially a large number of other universes) is contained within God.

Now the universe is seriously immense. I showed this bit of video to Cassie’s class to give them a sense of that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcBV-cXVWFw (just under 7 min, YouTube video)

That’s the end of what I told Cassie’s class - and I’d already talked to them about the Big Bang (not advocating or opposing, just a pretty straight telling of the best current scientific views on how and when it happened) and the origin of the universe. The rest of this post is musings based on yesterday’s sermon.

A God who contains all that and much more is truly awesome, and so, so much more than a white-bearded old white guy (or, as the movies increasingly suggest, Morgan Freeman). A God who is outside (within, through) space-time is indeed omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent.

OK, now back to the title. One corollary of this understanding of God is that all the Hollywood and fictional (including Christian fiction) portrayals of the battle between good and evil that portray God and Satan as roughly equally matched combatants are a trillion miles off the mark. Satan is often called the ‘Lord of this World’ - but this world is unimaginably tiny and insignificant on the scale of our galaxy alone, let alone of our universe… and all of that is tiny compared to God. So Satan is more like … I dunno, an acne bacterium to God. He can cause minor and temporary pain, but is no threat at all to the totality.

Of course, it’s hard for us to see that when we live in the zit.

1. Given that God is infinite, God is clearly not male - or not only male - but includes all possibilities of gender that we can think of and many that we can’t. I only use the masculine pronoun because it gets awkward to write sentences with no pronouns, and by tradition, and because people freak even more if I call God ‘It’ or ‘She’, though either is at least as accurate as ‘He’

[Nan]

Very interesting, Bravus. A bit of mindstretching but that is good for one.

God is infinite - does that mean with an infinity of attributes? You could argue for the picture above without such things as love, mercy, justice being part of His attributes. Would such a God create us 'for His pleasure"?

I am not knocking what you are saying, I admire the explanation - but does it tell the whole story? Or are we presumptuous little whatevers to think we can have any conception of the whole story.

Just my musings and half baked at that but I will be interested to see where this goes.

[Bravus]

Thanks, Nan, for reading and thinking with me!

I guess an infinity of attributes would have to include the possibility of evil as well, but that God does not choose to exercise those attributes. I guess, though, that looking at the universe shows us that one attribute that's pretty clear is creation and creativity and a love of diversity: how many different kinds of stars and galaxies are there? And how many different kinds of beautiful tropical fish and beetles and nematodes and...

[carolaa]

Of course, it’s hard for us to see that when we live in the zit.

Ewwww!!!

Other than that disgusting (though accurate) visual, I enjoyed your comments very much. I love pondering that kind of stuff. Thanks!

[David Koot]

But my dear Bravus, your application of General Relativity to the nature of God does sound, at least as you have written it here, rather like what JH Kellogg theorized in "The Living Temple." After all, if, as you say, the universe and everything in it is contained within God, then God is in all the universe, and every component thereof. Therefore, you, too, are God, because God is in you and you are in God--in a literal sense.

Dave

[Bravus]

Yeah, I guess that pantheist temptation might be there, for those who find that tempting. Dr Ortiz used a different metaphor, one that made my technophilic soul rejoice (and was extra cool coming from a septagenarian) - the wireless internet is everywhere, the waves passing through us at all times. All we have to do is connect. God is everywhere, permeating everything, including us. He is not far off, somewhere through Orion's belt, he is right here (omnipresent, remember). We just need to connect.

Dr Kellogg's approach was too naturalistic - it pulled God back into some kernel of the physical world. This approach - which while it owes much to relativity at least in my understanding, also relates strongly to the Godly attributes of being eternal, omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent - frees God from (our perception that He is in) captivity in space and time like us. We are not God, but we are in God.

[fccool]

That subject is always fascinated me. It would be reasonable to accept that the reality is really an illusion of reality simply because of how the matter is structured. If we blow up an atom, then we find that it's very tiny particles rotating around very tiny particles extremely fast and at relatively large distances apart. If the core of the atom would be blown up the size of a coin, then the distance of the electron clouds would be measured in miles. So, technically, the matter is just a bunch of nearly empty space, but we don't see it as such because our brains don't interpret it as such. We have came up with reasonable explanations of the "strong" and "weak" forces, and the gluons that keep the atoms together. But these are educated speculations at best as we don't really know how the matter really sticks together as it should not stick together, but it does.

The same goes about the space/time. It's a theory that can not be easily verified. Understanding of time as a "forth dimension" simply put means that time is motion. So to say that God exists outside of time/motion is not an accurate illustration of things IMO. Time is an artificial construct that we use to explain relative motion of the objects. So time is simply NOT a fourth dimension, because technically... there is no such thing as time. There's motion which we measure to come up with idea of time. And Bible does tell us that God sets the worlds in motion, thus He himself therefore the cause of that time/motion and actively participates inside of the realm of it.

The biggest problem that I see with relativity that it does not really explain gravity. It gives us a theory how gravity is caused, but it does not explain the mechanics. The theory is now considered "proven over and over" but when you ask someone to explain it in detail, even the physics professors (like my mom) cringe. They understand the general concept, but it's up to the elite to understand the mechanics of it, and even they speak about the mechanics of it in general terms because after all it is a theory, just like evolution and creation is a theory. The experiments that supposedly "prove" the theories forget that one thing does not necessitate the other.

So I think there are several problems with the theory as it holds to the idea that nothing can travel faster than speed of light in vacuum... and thinks of vacuum as empty space to begin with. I think that gravity force acts much faster than light and has to be instantaneous as Newton pointed out. It's really simple to verify the fact. By the time light from the sun reaches the earth, we have 8.3 minutes passing, while the gravitational effect is instant and constant as revealed by the planetary and galactic trajectories. Without this constant gravitational force between planets...there would be no possibility of life as the gravitational pull would have to be instant at the time of the creation... otherwise by the time sun

s gravity would reach the earth... we would have problems.

On top of that relativity starts to break down on quantum level, and extreme places in the universe. We have yet to detect any time/space wave propagation through that have to exist if the theory holds water. There are observatories built to detect the phenomenon, but it has yet to be detected.

The mechanics of gravity is the key to explaining the mechanics of reality, and general/special relativity theories provide simplistic explanations, which do make sense on some levels, but break down on other. I'm not saying that the theory is outright wrong as it is hard to absolutely prove either way, I just think these should be re-examined more closely instead of religiously held to be true. There are some alternatives such as ether physics that seem to be reviving again with the Zero Point energy phenomenon.

I don't think as humans we will ever explain the mechanics of reality completely unless God Himself will provide the explanations. We just don't have the tools to do this right now. We can theorize and experiment, but experiments that set out to prove a theory... generally "prove it"... These are not without a bias.

[Dr. Shane]

Since God is a Trinity, I don't think all Three have the same attributes. The Omnipresence of God seems more to be an attribute of the Holy Spirit than of Jesus or the Father.

[Bravus]

fccool - but under general relativity, gravity does not have to 'travel' from the sun to the earth. Rather, the mass of the sun permanently bends the space-time around it and the planets simply follow their paths through curved space-time. So under this theory the absolute speed limit of the universe is not contravened.

But I agree that this is the case for *any* scientific theory:

Quote:

I'm not saying that the theory is outright wrong as it is hard to absolutely prove either way, I just think these should be re-examined more closely instead of religiously held to be true.

Certainly the theory does not prove the existence or nature of God. Rather it is a helpful metaphor to me in trying to understand the nature of God as revealed in the Bible. I wish I'd had a pen with me to write down the texts Dr Ortiz used, because it would be very useful to bring those to this discussion.

[Bravus]

Shane, my way of thinking about it is that Jesus, through becoming human, has now bound Himself within space and time. He has a human body, albeit a perfected one in heaven, and is made out of matter. It helps to understand the incredible, immense power and freedom that he freely chose to relinquish in order to save us.

I'm not willing to suggest that the Father is bound to a particular location and it is only the Spirit who is omnipresent, but it's also probably not worth arguing about.

[fccool]

I don't know about that one, Shane. That's a tricky one as we can't even explain away the Omnipresence to begin with. Jesus himself said:

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age

So it's kind of omnipresent wouldn't you say? But then again, I don't claim to even understand the concept of the trinity. It's like having a family of Gods in a way, but we claim that it is not.

Just like people think of God the father having a physical body... but Bible clearly teaches that God is a spirit and no man has seen God except through Jesus.

No man has seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him. (Jn 1:18)

So it's kind of the child's "Does God have feet?" question. It's along the lines of ... why did Jesus experienced hunger and ate fish after the resurrection? Does he need to eat to sustain his life having a glorified body? Obviously not, but somewhat an oxymoron.

There are denominations that hold that the Holy Spirit is not a separate character in Trinity, but is just a manifestation of God the father... just like Jesus is a physical manifestation of God the father... as they explain it away. They use something along the lines of "I and the Father are one" texts.

[fccool]

fccool - but under general relativity, gravity does not have to 'travel' from the sun to the earth. Rather, the mass of the sun permanently bends the space-time around it and the planets simply follow their paths through curved space-time. So under this theory the absolute speed limit of the universe is not contravened.

Once again... It's a great idea, until you start get into the mechanics of it . Inevitable questions pop up. How does sun's eccentric ( it would have to be eccentric right?) curving space time generates an inward "pull" for the earth and keeps it from deviating off it's orbit around the sun? You know... questions like such.

[Bravus]

But see, that question basically just arises because you're trying to get the new theory to work under the terms and assumptions of the old theory...

[Dr. Shane]

When Philip asked to see the Father, Christ replied by saying to see Him (Jesus) is to see the Father. Ellen White, in vision, asked if the Father had a body like Jesus and was told yes. From what I understand, God's Omnipresence is in the form of the Holy Spirit. The whole Trinity is mind boggling to consider.

[fccool]

God can manifest himself in any way He would like to. For example... a burning bush. It does not mean that God has a bush for a body. God reveals himself to us in a way that we can perceive Him. But I think no one has see then Father in His original form, which is being a spirit. Physical characteristics are only bound to this world... especially organic physical characteristics that only can exist in a certain environment and have to be sustained by air, food, and sunlight. God would have no need for a body like that, but only when he reveals himself to us.

This is the same case with angels. Angels are not corporal beings and are spirits. Angels don't have two wings per se. There is no record in the Bible of angels having two wings, but they can choose to manifest themselves as human beings, or as some other creatures distinguishable from humans.

That's why God is not to be pictured in likeness of material things here:

4Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

Here's a specific reference to worshiping God who is a spirit. We don't worship the Holy Spirit, that's why it leads me to believe that it's not a Holy Spirit that is described here:

24God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. (John 4)

Jesus himself defined a spiritual being in following way:

39Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.

In colossians... Paul is telling us that God is invisible. Only spirits are invisible to us and chose to be manifested in certain way:

15Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature:

I think the following verses clarify this, and not talk about only Holy Spirit in this case.

27But will God indeed dwell on the earth? behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded?

What do you think God meant by this statement?

20And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.

God's physical apearances on this earth and even in Heaven are metaphorical expressions of Himself who is infinite being. Infinite being can not be contained in a limited place

27But will God indeed dwell on the earth? behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded?....

7Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?

8It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know?

9The measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea.

....

To say that God has a constant physical body is to have a very naive picture of the infinite God. That's why God detests Idolatry. It fits God in a box as humans make a God that they like and that can be pictured.