Before there was Time, there was no Time
. jordan179 opines:
But I do suspect that something very like our concept of thermodynamics applies to the whole shebang.
The problem with this posture it that is asks us to accept something that is hard to support, namely, the idea that there are multiple continua which somehow all obey the same laws of nature, in order to escape a conclusion that is easy to support, namely, that the Big Bang, or creation ex nihilo, was a miracle in the supernatural sense of the word.
To support this statement, let me make a careful distinction.
On the one hand, other "universes" in a "multiverse" would be physical places like ours.
When a science fiction writer speculates that there is one or more other timespace continuums as real as our own but outside our light-cone of possible positions in time and space that we can reach or receive information from — then the science fiction writer is talking about another part of this, our natural universe.
He is talking about the possibility that, while there may be minor differences of conditions there, or even major differences in things we (incorrectly) once called laws of nature before the other continuum was discovered, the other continuum is a natural world and operates by the laws of nature.
Think of the ‘shadows’ in Roger Zelazny’s NINE PRINCES IN AMBER, or the multiverse of Moorcock, or the Mirror, Mirror universe in STAR TREK, or even the Weaponeers of Qward in GREEN LANTERN. The concept of parallel dimensions is clearly a naturalistic concept. Let us call them therefore not other universes, for that terminology involves a paradox: let us call them other worlds, since they are natural cosmoses like our own.
When we speculate what conditions might obtain in parallel continua, often it is suggested that these multiple worlds might contain other constants aside from the ones we know: gravity might operate by an inverse-cube law, for example, or Plank’s constant might have a different value.
Unfortunately, the speculative base for multiple worlds is insufficiently rigorous to erect a defensible conclusion on top of it.
One could argue that other worlds might have other physical constants, but there is neither evidence nor logical proof to support the assertion. One could argue with equal logic that, for a reason yet undiscovered by human physicists, other physical constants aside from the ones we know are not possible in this or any other universe, and for the same reason that a non-three-sided triangle is not possible: that it turns out to be a logically incoherent concept, something that exists in speech only, not in reality.
How to decide between these two arguments? Since neither has nor can have a scintilla of evidence to support it, and since neither has any argument or proof from first principles, inductive nor deductive, to lend it any persuasive weigh at all, a fair minded jury would dismiss the case without a hearing. Even the idea that there are multiple worlds rather than one world rests on the most doubtful speculation.
If it were found that another continuum had some other basic conditions of physical constants — let us say a world where Aristotelian physics was found to be correct, or Newtonian mechanics, or one where the speed of light was three meters a second — then, for the sake of clarity of terms, we would have to say not that these other world had ‘different laws of nature’ (for such a phrase is a paradox). To be precise, we would have to say that what we, in the limited conditions of our little cosmos, thought were laws of nature, turned out to be merely a description of merely local conditions.
To discover what we thought the universal laws turned out to be local ordinances will shock and disorient no honest scientist. In much the same way, for speeds far below the speed of light, the behavior of physical bodies matches the description offered by Newton, and conditions on the earth’s surface match the geometry described by Euclid. It is only at high speeds or under conditions of immense gravity or over large distances that the Newtonian description breaks down: Mercury’s orbit processes in stubbornly non-Newtonian ways, for example, or lightrays bend passing near a star. Euclidean geometry does not describe the behavior near the event horizon of a black hole as well as Reinmannian geometry, for another example. Newton and Euclid are not natural law, but local ordinances.
In that case, whatever laws were discovered or presumed to obtain over all continuums in the "multiverse" would be the real laws of nature. Jordan speculates (and, I think, with reason) that the law of entropy must obtain in all continuums in the "multiverse".
I put the word "multiverse" in quotes only to remind the reader that this term is a paradox. We are, precisely speaking, talking only about one universe. The universe by definition is one. The universe is the realm of nature, what the Greeks called phusis, what we call physics. The other parallel worlds to ours, if they are natural worlds governed by laws of nature, would be physical worlds, and their behavior would be described by physics.
Anyone and anything governed solely by the laws of nature, the real and universal laws of nature, is in the universe, which is to say, is in nature. By definition, anything outside, above, beyond, or axiomatic to the system of the universe, that is, superior to nature, is supernatural.
On the other hand, the supernatural is not and cannot be another physical place with other laws of nature.
This distinction avoids much confusion in these arguments. I have heard, for example, theists argue that, given any number of possible worlds, there must therefore be one world occupied by a being of such immense power that he could create universes at his command. This argument is merely a confusion of words. You can call world-making creatures gods if you like, but they would be natural creatures bound by the laws of nature.
This is not what Christians mean when they talk about God, who is supernatural. A more apt and precise word for such a being would be "Demiurge,"
You can even say the world-making creatures can create whatever laws of nature are desired in a special area of spacetime they are molding, and the world-makers have as much ability to make their local conditions suit themselves as the Architect in the Matrix, or a Ensign Berkeley on the holodeck, or the Lords in Famer’s "World of Tiers" series has to make the laws of their vestpocket worlds. The Demiurge can program the local conditions to be anything he likes, within the limits of his budget and technology, but he cannot break the laws of nature by definition–because if they can be broken from inside nature, they are not laws of nature.
The local conditions created by engineers folding space to make new continuums is not what a scientist, if he were speaking precisely, would call a law of nature. For example, if we discovered that the speed of light in shadow Amber was instantaneous (as Aristotle, for example, proposed), whereas the speed of light in shadow Earth was 300000 m/s, then "the speed of light is c to all observers" is not a law of nature. It is merely a local condition, like saying you cannot light a match on the moon. (In this example, it would, however, be a law of nature that the blood of an Amberite spilled on the Pattern can destroy it, and any shadows issuing from it. Earth, as well as Amber, would be destroyed if the Pattern were blotted out by prince-blood. Since it applies universally, it is a natural law).
For the purpose of this argument, let us call the physical constants known to operate in every place we can reach or sense “our local conditions”. They may indeed be universal laws of natural for all parallel worlds, but we do not know that and can never know that.
What, then is a law of nature? A law of nature is where cause leads to effect, not merely in one case or set of cases, but in all cases.
In other words, we call it a law of nature if a particular cause always leads to a particular effect. If all bodies, in this and every natural world, are always and everywhere attracted inversely to the proportion of their distance and directly in proportion of their mass, then the Law of Gravity is a law of nature. If, somehow, in other parallel continuum, their laws of gravity would deal with different proportions, then whatever physical cause it might be (something to do with the geometry of curved space, perhaps) that defined their particular local gravitational behavior would be the law of nature.
Who knows what it might be? “In convex timespace continuums greater than pi, gravity is by inverse square; less than pi is inverse cubed; when the timespace continuum is concave, then antigravity obtains.” Let us just pretend this is the case. If so, Newton’s Law is not a law of nature, but a local condition pertinent only to our pi-high convex timespace continuum. The timespace continuum next door, where Peter Pan lives, antigravity is the order of the day. But since the law relating gravity to something more fundamental applies to all timespace continuums in the universe, ergo it alone is rightly called a law of nature.
Now then, having with much difficulty drawn a distinction between what is really a universe and what is merely a local continuum or local world in the universe, and having drawn a distinction between what is really a law of nature and what is merely a local condition of physical behavior in one continuum or world in the universe, let us define one more term that is otherwise slippery and ambiguous.
What is a miracle? We use the word to mean anything astounding, or any sign or wonder sent by God. But here we mean something more specific:
Inside the universe, natural objects behave according to nature. Every object and event that is open to being described by mechanical causation is assumed to have a cause prior in time and sufficient to bring out the result observed.
(I realize some modern physicists use a contrary language to describe certain quantum weirdness, but these men make a subtle metaphysical error, and since metaphysics is not their field, they can be forgiven. Their language is deliberately paradoxical in order to avoid an implication springing from a limitation built into the epistomology of empiricism–but for the purposes of this essay, let us assume physicists believe the axioms on which physics is based, even if they talk as if they do not.)
If we saw, or, rather, experienced something that behaved not according to nature, where no cause sufficient to produce the effect seen could be ascribed to a mechanical cause, we rightly call this a miracle.
The Virgin Birth is a miracle, because virgins are not able, in and of themselves, to give birth. The Resurrection of Lazarus is a miracle, because dead bodies are not able, in nature, to come again to life.
Skeptics accept this definition of a miracle when they say that by definition miracles cannot exist: since science looks only at the mechanical causes of repeatable natural events, science must simply stand mute when it hears a report of a non-repeatable supernatural event. No investigation of the medical condition of Mary or of Lazarus could possibly lead to the expectation that she could give birth without seed, or he could be dead three days and stinking, and wake up and walk again. Everything should have a natural explanation. (From this they leap to the conclusion that, since it should not have happened, it did not happen. An impermissible inference, but one commonplace today.)
But while every report of every other miracle can be doubted by the skeptic, the Big Bang produces a particular difficulty for them: because here there is no sincere doubt about the event. The Steady State theory is of historical interest only, as dead as the theory of Phlogiston. The observed universe is not infinitely old, but had a definite beginning point, estimated to be about 15 billion years ago.
The current scientific consensus is not merely that all matter and energy, but also time and space, issued from one submicroscopic point, which contained all the energy in the universe. Some scientists argue that the physical constants of our universe, which, as far as we know, are indeed the laws of nature, were established at that moment, due to the initial conditions.
(For the reasons I give above, I criticize this terminology as being paradoxical: if it is a law of nature, it cannot be established by an act of the physics involved the initial conditions. It is at best a local condition. “Cause and effect” is a law of nature–nothing comes from nothing. If the speed of light was established by some peculiar ratio of how matter-energy erupted into timespace, then it is a local condition: it is an effect of a previous cause.)
But if we agree that time itself began at that time, this introduces a fatal paradox the naturalist cannot explain. Indeed, even his language has no words for it, his system has no axioms for it.
Time is that condition where cause leads to effect. If cause and effect ran backward, time would run backward, and to us time would seem to be running forward, because the only thing the word “time” really means is the category of cause and effect. That twice two equals four, or that four is twice two, is not a relation of cause and effect, but of logical axiom and conclusion, and for this reason we notice that the truths of mathematics are eternal, that is, not of nor in time.
Hence, time itself cannot be an effect of a previous cause.
If, as modern science says, the Big Bang created timespace, then not only was there nothing “before” the Big Bang, the phrase “Before the Big Bang” has no meaning, no more than the phrase “further north than the North Pole” has meaning.
By definition, no laws of nature can exist outside of the realm of timespace/matter-energy. Logic forbids that there be cause leading to effect when there is no time, and hence there can be no particular causes tied to particular effects, which is our definition of a law of nature.
Even if many parallel multiple continuums arose from that one Big Bang, and even if we are only aware of one narrow tube of timespace issuing from that moment of cosmic genesis, and even if any number of other tubes also issue from it, nevertheless, time began at that moment, which means, something happened that has no sufficient natural cause.
Let me emphasize this.
The Virgin Birth could have been due (let us allow the imagination to slip the reign and gallop freely) by space aliens kidnapping Mary and impregnating her with soul microbes Alpha Draconis. It is not logically impossible.
Lazarus could have been merely in a coma, and possessed of an amulet from Atlantis which allowed him to appear to be rotting when he was actually merely in suspended animation.
Or the Gospels could have been written by the Adam Weishaupt in 1776, and only retroactively introduced into all of Europe by means of a special technology called “tuning”, where matter and energy can be rearranged to produce any form of false evidence: and, of course, everyone on earth had their memories erased and replaced by Dr. Schreber with injections to the skull. It is not logically impossible.
Lazarus could be a vampire, one of those special types of romantic vampires who sparkle in the sunlight, and he was just sitting in the tomb waiting to hear if Jesus would give him permission to marry Bella Swan, whom he loves.
If there is some true but natural explanation (no matter how comically unlikely) sufficient to produce the observed effect from natural causes for the Virgin Birth or the Resurrection of Lazarus, then these are not miracles.
But to say the Big Bang had a natural cause IS logically impossible. To say the all laws of nature arose from a law of nature is nonsense.
The Big Bang cannot arise from natural causes because no natural causes, no time, and hence no laws of nature existed “before” the Big Bang. Indeed, as mentioned above, there is not even any such thing as “before” the Big Bang. Recall that laws of nature are universal cases of cause and effect, which is another word for time.
How, then, do we explain the Big Bang? What caused all of nature to arise from nothing?
At least two cases present themselves:
First, the obscure case.
While the Big Bang seems to have arisen without a natural cause, we are required to assume some mechanical cause is prior to every event, since this is an axiom of science.
So when modern astronomers and physicists agree that timespace and natural law arose at the Big Bang, we have to pretend they did not say that, or they don’t really mean it.
Instead, we have to assume that the Big Bang was a purely local phenomenon, and that time is infinite outside this, our local continuum. Our continuum had a beginning, but something else, a metacontinuum, did not.The universe is older than it seems. Call this “Otherspace”.
We have to assume the universe is larger than it seems, and contains areas not open to inspection and never to ever be open to inspection: we can call these other areas “multiple worlds” or “imaginary time” or “othertime.”
We have to assume Time, but another kind of time or another continuum of time, exists outside or above our local continuum, and events in that “otherspace” — events which had natural causes — gave rise to the Big Bang.
Now, since our local time began with the Big Bang, the othertime of the otherspace stands in relation to us in a fashion that we can neither define nor imagine. We cannot say the otherspace is “before” our continuum, because our model says that time arose at the Big Bang. This is not a relation of cause and effect as we understand it, so let us call this “othercause.”
This otherspace, since it (by definition) is merely a natural continuum, no doubt suffering from entropy, and ergo only finitely old, must also have had a beginning: and this beginning must in turn have been triggered by an even older and larger continuum which stands in the same otherspace relation to it as it does to us.
And that larger continuum likewise, and so on, ad infinitum. This infinite regression taken as a whole has no first cause, and so therefore the initial conditions which defined it and set it in motion do not exist.
We see a row of dominoes toppling, but we assume that there was never any first domino that fell and started the motion, so the motion exists without a mover.
We will just assume this paradox in defiance of the laws of science, which say that everything has a cause.
The paradox is piled atop paradox because the relation here is not one of cause and effect, but of othercause and othereffect, that is, a relationship not of time but of some undefined and undefinable form of parenthood. Our timespace proceeds from the othertime, but was not caused by the othertime: so it was begotten, but not made. (And you thought the mystery of the Incarnation was obscure.)
In other words, in order to avoid the appearance of a miraculous beginning to nature, we have to assume the following (1) an undefined ‘othertime’ which is not like the time we know (2) an undefined sort of ‘othercause’ which is not like the cause and effect relations we understand (3) an ‘otherspace’ we assume without any evidence, which we presume to be natural and yet also to have the ability to produce other and smaller continuums, as offspring (4) an infinite regression of these othercauses through othertime, which violates the fundamental assumption of science.
These implications go beyond astronomy. The naturalist assumption means we also assume the beauty and intricacy of the universe we see, and things like free will, human dignity, the laws of nature and the laws of morality, are either accidents, unintentional, coincidences, or illusions.
Not only is everything here for no reason, the question of how it got here has an answer that it worse than incomprehensible.
Second, the obvious case.
While the Big Bang arose without a natural cause, it is a paradox, and merely a nonsense of words, to say it arose for no reason. Whatever arises for no reason cannot be reasoned about: if something actually did happen for no reason, we humans could not reason about it, not even insofar as to say it actually happened for no reason or not.
So it happened for a reason, but it could not be a natural reason. Ergo, it must have been a supernatural reason.
Causes in nature are mechanical: but the reason which gave rise to the Big Bang could not have been a mechanical cause (the warrant for this statement was given above, viz., the Big Bang arose without time, cause and effect are synonyms for time, ergo no time means no mechanical cause).
We are all of us perfectly familiar with a reality that arises for no mechanical cause: namely, actions of the will of beings with free will.
These are causes that arise, if at all, due to future circumstances, not past conditions. We decide to do things based on what we hope or fear will eventuate if we do or do not do them. At first glance, this seems to be the very opposite of mechanical causation. It is causation which arises from goal-related, or future-orientated behavior. We call this final cause. We will “this” for the sake of “that.” Mechanical causes do not do anything for the sake of goal. Raindrops fall because gravity acts on them, not because they are hungry for the ground and dive toward it, laughing.
While causes in nature are mechanical, causes of the will not only seem not mechanical, but positively alien to the normal mechanics of the universe, since the cause is in the future of the effect.
Of course, the imagination or picture in our heads of the future can be said to be in the present, or in the past, so, strictly speaking, the cause is not in the future, and cause and effect are not being reversed in that sense. But since those pictures in our heads (if we are not robots or madmen) do not arise from anything was can describe as merely mechanical causes, the supernatural nature of the free will remains an open question. We cannot, at this point, logically rule it out as supernatural. We can affirm that attempts to reduce cognition to mechanical causes are paradoxical and risible.
So, again, the cause of the Big Bang was not the operation of a law of nature, but — since no other option presents itself — the cause was a final cause, that is, an operation of the Will.
It could not have been natural or mechanical; ergo it was supernatural and deliberate.
A will cannot exist without one-who-wills. What else can we say about this One?
The One has sufficient power to create time, space, matter, energy ex nihilo. So we are not talking about a Demiurge or a mere engineer bound by the laws of nature. We can call this trait omnipotence.
Since this One exists before, or, rather, above, nature, He is eternal, at least in the same fashion as mathematical objects, ideas of justice and beauty, and other things that do not partake of time. We can call this trait eternity.
Since there are no laws of nature in eternity, the One cannot be a mechanical process, an idiot savant, or any other form of contingent being, that is, a being who rests on another for his existence and definition. The One cannot be unintelligent or merely operating by reflex.
This means the universe was designed: i.e. that the universe is a Creation, and that it was created by a Creator.
If omnipotent and eternal, is He therefore omniscient, on the ground that the ends of all His creation can be seen and known by Him at once? This makes an impermissible assumption. We can say, based on the argument so far, that He might be.
Is the creator benevolent? Did he make this beautiful universe just to torture us? That is something I do not think merely logic can deduce. If you think existence and life are better than the unimaginable condition of never-having-had-been, then you have to grant at least some benevolent motive to the Creator. If you think yourself better off dead, then you are probably not reading this in any case, or not really serious about reaching that better condition.
But no matter. Whether the Creator is the benevolent deity described by the Christians, or is a remote and disinterested watchmaker as described by the Deists, or is a serene and untroubled unmoved mover, perhaps as described by Aristotle or Lucretius, we can nonetheless deduce that, if the Big Bang is what it seems to be, the origin point of timespace and nature, then the Creator is a god, and he is eternal and supernatural.
Now, why do I say this is easy to believe? Because all human cultures since before the dawn of writing have believed in some sort of god or some sort of creation or another. I report that it is easy to believe as a matter of psychological fact.
But I also assert that by Occam’s Razor, it is the simplest hypothesis.
We have one unknown, the universe, which cannot (by definition) arise from nothing for no cause: therefore if we postulate a cause sufficient to create the universe, we are required by logic to describe that uncaused first cause as a supernatural and eternal creator. It is a simple hypothesis which explains all the known facts with one assumption.
Contrast that with the argument above, which postulated at least four unwarranted if not impossible assumptions.
You may ask: but, sir, you only push the paradox away by one remove! Surely if you invoke a creator to explain creation, you must then account for the creator. If God made the universe, who made God? Are there an infinite chain of Gods, each older and bigger than the last, making a small God inside him like so many nested Russian dolls?
Ah, but the question contains an assumption we cannot permit. We posit that the Big Bang has a cause, among other reasons, because we know (within a certain approximate) when it happened. A natural event, or even a natural universe, must have a cause, natural or supernatural. But nothing in our chain of reasoning says that anything in supernatural eternity must have a cause, aside from a final cause. To repeat the example above, twice two is four “because” of the logic of mathematics, but not “because” of any mechanical event in nature.
If we say every human law, in order to be a law, must be enacted by a lawmaker, nothing in that statement implied the lawmaker himself is a thing whose nature is such that he was enacted by a lawmaker. The computer programmer is a man, not a line of code bound by the programming language he uses to write code. The musician who writes a symphony is not a string of notes arranged by a symphony-writer of human lives. Likewise here: if the creator makes a universe, and the universe is defined by time and space and matter and energy such that no mechanical cause arises without a prior mechanical cause, nothing implies the creator is also bound inside time and defined by a set of previous mechanical causes. Indeed, the reasoning above reaches an opposite conclusion.
Finally, the obvious case is not only obvious because every human soul is psychologically fitted (almost as if by design!) to believe it, and because it satisfies Occam’s Razor in a fashion that a towering infinite regression of undefined and unimaginable othercauses in othertime cannot, but also because the obvious case satisfies both the testimony of history, and offers elegant explanation for those things the nonobvious case cannot explain, such as free will, or the beauty of the stars.
If the obvious case is true, then reports in history of miracles are not necessarily all false: which means that all the people you know who believe in God or believe in miracles are not necessarily fools and dullards, and the things that reports (that we have no reason otherwise to disbelieve) say happened actually did happen.
Best of all, certain specific moral actions, such as self-sacrifice for a cause greater than yourself, which are either merely sentiment, or Darwinian programming, or madness in the obscure case, become reasonable and feasible in the obvious case.
Theism hence is not only the simplest explanation for astronomy, but also for metaphysics, morality, and other sciences currently without any underpinning logic to them.
If the universe arose out of no natural cause, that is a miracle. To assume that something can arise from nothing is an insolent rejection of scientific principles; to assume that there must have been a natural cause before the universe in the conditions where no concept of ‘before’ is possible is awkward, if not incomprehensible.
It is really so much simpler to believe in an infinite regress of othertime somewhere in non-timespace than to believe this creation had a creator? Really?
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
