Part 9 Watch out for speed bumps
Gentle reader ,
Are we are running out of "time" to do the things that are important to us all "world peace", the "perfect" cup of coffee, the great Irish (American, or whatever country you are reading this from) Cosmologists of the Western world today are on the horns of a dilemma. Although it is very generally agreed that the universe is running down, scientists find it difficult to accept the idea that it will really come to an end. What can come to an end must have had a beginning; and this raises the question of who began it. So they speak about a heat death of the universe which is not a physical "end of the world" but only an end of it in its present configuration, as though its corpse would return to dust but the dust would remain. Yet one still has to ask, Who made the dust? A true beginning is as inconceivable in terms of physical laws as a true ending would be. L. Susan Stebbing reported Eddington, one of the most notable of Britain's astronomer-physicists, as having said ( 5)
"Philosophically the notion of an abrupt beginning of the present order of Nature is repugnant to me, as I think it must be to most; and even those who would welcome a proof of the intervention of a Creator would probably consider that a single winding-up at some remote epoch is not really the kind of relation between God and his world that brings satisfaction to the mind. But I can see no escape from our dilemma".
It is a problem, isn't it? Some years ago when the concept of an expanding universe first became a topic of popular discussion, the same Sir Arthur Eddington wrote ( 6)
"The difficulty of an infinite past is appalling. It is inconceivable that we are the heirs of an infinite time of preparation; it is no less inconceivable that there was once a moment with no moment preceding it.This dilemma of the beginning of time would worry us more were it not eclipsed by another overwhelming difficulty lying between us and the infinite past. We have been studying the running-down of the universe; if our views are right, somewhere between the beginning of time and the present day we must place the winding-up of the universe".
Travelling backwards into the past we find a world with more and more organization. If there is no barrier to stop us earlier, we reach a moment when the energy of the world was wholly organized with none of the random element in it. The organization we are concerned with is exactly definable, and there is a point at which it becomes perfect.
There is no doubt that the scheme of physics as it has stood for the last three-quarters of a century postulates a date at which either the entities of the universe were created in a state of high organization or pre-existing entities were endowed with that organization which they have been squandering ever since. Moreover, this organization is admittedly the antithesis of chance. It is something which could not occur fortuitously. This has long been used as an argument against a too aggressive materialism. It has been quoted as scientific proof of the intervention of the Creator at a time not infinitely remote from today. . . .It is one of those conclusions from which we can see no logical escape — only it suffers from the drawback that it is incredible. So there it is: the incredible has to be the only account that is left to us. No other explanation of reality seems possible.
Sir Theodore Fox, in the Harverian Oration for 1965 before the Royal College of Physicians in London under the title, "Purposes of Medicine," had this to say (7)
"To contemplate the Universe is to stand even more abashed. For somehow at some time, all that we see and touch and hear must have emerged from NOTHING. To us this transformation of nothing into something is contrary to reason; and the creation of the Universe is a mystery that Man may never be able to understand. Yet the Universe seems to exist: and we must beware of making excessive claims for any system of thought [i.e., scientific materialism] that finds its origin impossible."
Years ago Lord Kelvin in a popular lecture entitled, "The Wave Theory of Light," reflected upon what would be one's reactions if the universe is limited in its size. He asked his audience: "What would you think of a Universe in which were to go millions and millions of miles, the idea of coming to an end is incomprehensible."( 8 ) What Lord Kelvin said of coming to an end of space, now has to be asked of coming to an end of time.
We have every reason in the light of present knowledge to suppose that time and space are integral parts of a single reality, so that the creation of things occupying space means the simultaneous creation of time when things began to happen. Neither time nor space existed before creation. Augustine asked a pertinent question relating to this. He argued thus: If we should wonder how God occupied Himself before He created the universe, we have to realize how meaningless such a question really is. The question springs out of our consciousness of the passage of time. Before the universe there was no time and therefore it is inappropriate to ask what God was doing then, "for there was no 'then' when there was no time."(9)
Time and eternity: two different realities
Thus we find ourselves face-to-face with some profound philosophical problems. If we see time as a kind of linear property of events stretching out on either side of us, part of it already spent and the rest of it yet to pass by, we cannot conceive of such a tape as endless. But neither can we think of it as having two ends without at once wondering what was before it and what will be after it! Either way, our powers of conception fail us. Yet time is not eternity; for eternity is not merely an endless chain of fragments of time, since these fragments of time already past must then necessarily have shortened eternity, and eternity is thereby being exhausted little by little. Eternity would simply run out of time!
If it should be asked whether time is "within" eternity, I think the answer must still be, No. For this would make time merely a fragment of eternity which then becomes simply an extension of time at either end of the line. Time and eternity are not such that there can be this kind of overlap because the two realities are not in the same category of experience. The only "overlap" is that point of crossover at which the line representing time (which is horizontal) crosses the line representing eternity (which is vertical). Since neither line has any width, the place of intersection is not an area but merely a point, a point that can only be described as NOW. We can diagram this as shown in Fig. 1.
The Beginning of time The End of Time
Gen 1:1 Rev. 10:6
Time Passed "Now" Time to Come
Since this figure when completed may look a little frightening, let us "build" it in two stages. In Fig. 1a we have a horizontal line which represents the passage of TIME. The movement of TIME passes from right to left with respect to each of us personally. We stand at the point marked "NOW." The beginning of TIME has already gone by and moved off to our left. What yet remains to run by is to the right; and since it is limited, it will continue only until, one day, it comes to an end. Thus the short vertical line marking its terminus has yet to move past us. When it finally does, TIME will be no more (Revelation 10:6).(10)
We then add a vertical line through the NOW-point to indicate that wherever our NOW happens to be, at that point ETERNITY impinges upon our consciousness.
Confused Gentle Reader?
Hang in there and all will be clear when you go to bed tonight!
In the meantime consider that you stand in Eternity (where you are in the "NOW" so don’t be a speed bump in the road of life. Or as the great Yoga Berra once said "when you come to a fork in the road , take it"
Love, Denis
Footnotes for those who care about such things:
5. Stebbing, L. Susan, Philosophy and the Physicists, London, Constable, 1959, p.258.
6. Eddington, Sir Arthur, The Nature of the Physical World, Cambridge University Press, 1930, p.83 f., 85
7. Fox, Theodore, "Purposes of Medicine," Lancet, 23 Oct. 1965, p.804.
8. Kelvin, W. T., "The Wave Theory of Light", Lecture delivered under the auspices of the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, U.S.A., Sept. 29, 1884, in Popular Lectures and Addresses, London, Macmillan, vol. 1, 1981, p.322.
9. Augustine, Confessions, XI.xiii.15.
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