Timelessness
Theists readily embrace a timeless, immutable deity. But what does it really mean, to exist timelessly? Physicists like Victor Stenger (author of Timeless Reality, amongst other books), along with philosophical advocates of the B-theory of time, consider it possible to view our universe as “timeless,” where time is perfectly symmetrical at a quantum level. But what this really implies is that what we consider to be all times in the past, present, and future co-exist, neither more temporally privileged than the other. It’s important to note that this view does not eliminate causal events or the arrow of time based upon things like ever-increasing entropy. For example, in this block universe model, we can still say that there was a causal relationship that one or more stars went supernova prior to the formation of our solar system which used the heavier elements forged from these exploding stars.
This view is something of a paradigm shift from everyday perceptions of time for those new to the theory. Try this: rather than thinking of time like a tourist on vacation taking photographs every second, the current photo representing “now” and the previous photos representing “past” with future photos yet to be taken – the B-theory imagines all photographs of the entire vacation have already been taken and co-exist, all equally real, despite the fact that the photographer himself may only perceive he is currently taking the first, or second, or third photograph, etc. Another way to think about it is that time becomes an address or navigation point in a space-time manifold where all times co-exist, just like all houses may co-exist spatially within a neighborhood. To get to any one house you may have to take a certain path depending upon where you start, but there is no privileged single house which all others define themselves by, just as there is no privileged “now” under the B-theory. But is this what theologians mean when they say God is timeless?
Absolutely NOT!
To apologists like William Lane Craig, the past really happened, the present is now, and the future has yet to be written. This A-theory of time is one of the foundational assumptions of his Kalam Cosmological Argument, without which even Craig doesn’t believe the KCA can be supported.
So to exist “timelessly” prior to the creation of the universe based upon an A-theory of time, God would not have a past, nor a future, only an eternal, unchanging “now.” This begs the question of how an unchanging, timeless being can do anything? Some theists want to imagine that God first existed prior to creating the universe, then created the universe (including, ironically, time itself). This is having their cake and eating it too. Others imagine God existing, considering, deciding, and creating the universe all at the same instant the universe came into being. But this implies God never existed prior to the universe, and thus if the universe had a beginning, so did God; or if God is eternal, so then the universe.
But what if God is not timeless after all, but lives in a different “metaphysical” time, as WLC has himself imagined? Then they must face the problem of who created this metaphysical time which God is himself subject to. If metaphysical time can come to exist without God, then why not universal time (along with space, which Relativity demonstrates is intrinsically linked with time as space-time). Once theologians open the door to something existing independently of God, then entire universes can logically exist independent of his creation. But if God created metaphysical time, then when did he do that?. In “super-metaphysical” time? Just imagining something as “metaphysical time” doesn’t make it real or solve the problem.
The true nature of time is still being contested amongst physicists and philosophers, though more believe in a relativity based B-theory than not. But to be “timeless” in an A-theory model while still maintaining the freedom to move from one event to another is contradictory, illogical, and wholly impossible… even for a god.
References:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YycAzdtUIko
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjkPcqDU7uA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-NTXoYTvao
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time/#TheBThe
