Saturday, August 5, 2017

God's Creation Ex Nihilo Time Paradox


In an email debate I'm having with a theist I thought of this argument that proposes a paradox. The paradox applies to the traditional theistic notion of a god that is an eternal, immaterial being that is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. The one major assumption that this argument makes is that god is not beyond logic. That means logic applies to god: god cannot do anything logically impossible or be in a logically impossible state.

The argument:

There are two views of time: eternalism and presentism. On eternalism all moments of time physically exist — past, present, and future; on presentism only the present moment physically exists.


This argument doesn't take a stance on which one is true, but only shows the logical implications for the claim that god created the universe on each view.

If eternalism is true, the universe (as well as everything else) is eternal and cannot by definition have been created in the sense of making something physically exist. All moments physically exist. Hence if eternalism is true, god cannot have created the universe. And also, there'd be no explanation for why this universe vs. another universe, and you'd ultimately get a brute fact.

If presentism is true and god is eternal (has an eternal past) then an infinite amount of moments had to pass before god created the universe. It is logically impossible to traverse an infinite amount of moments, therefore god could never create the universe on presentism.

So regardless of whether eternalism or presentism is true, neither scenario allows for god to create the universe. Hence, the traditional notion of a god who creates the world ex nihilo is impossible.

So how would a theist get out of this dilemma? Well, some say god is timeless prior to creation, or always timeless. But I'd argue that a timeless being cannot by definition do anything: timeless creation is itself logically impossible. They can grant eternalism and say that god creates the universe in the same way we create art and machinery by simply physically preceding it. But on eternalism we don't really create things in the sense of making them physically exist. They already exist. There's just a pattern of atoms before them in the form of humans making them, but it all exists. Now on this view god loses his omnipotence since he's locked into the block universe and could not have been any other way. It also means god has no free will, which few theists are going to accept, as this would negate the traditional notion of god and make it unrecognizable.

So in reality the theist has few realistic options here. They will most likely say that god's ways are beyond our comprehension. A cop out. I can just say the origin of the universe is beyond our comprehension.

What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

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