Deism for non-believers

[Angrboda]

Just to, perhaps, cast this issue into a little more focus. If this immaterial world, and any god in it, do not in some sense exist in time, even if not our time, then all caused existents related to it are co-existent with it. This is generally not the option chosen in such a scenario, but rather that the immaterial existed, and then the material existed. It's possible, even in immaterial time, that this was simply the unfolding of what passes for natural law in the immaterial world, without depending on the choice of any agent, immaterial or not. However, if an immaterial agent chose to change the state of existence, immaterial or material, that choice, and its effect is intervention (see below).

intervene, v.

Forms: Also 16 entervene, interveyn, Sc. -vein.
Etymology: < Latin interven-īre, < inter between + venīre to come. Compare French intervenir (earlier entrevenir, 1363 in Hatzfeld & Darmesteter).

In this case, the immaterial agent is "coming between" events and what would be without its choice and act, and causing that 'existence' to take a form it wouldn't have without that choice/act.

There's a third option that occurs to me, the so-called logical necessity defense, that if the agent was in some way unable to avoid the act (such as if in order to avoid it, they would have to make false equal true), it may not be considered an intervention in the usual sense of a voluntary action which comes between the natural course of events and their resulting in the natural course.