At 07:43 AM 1/9/06, Vortex Swirling wrote:
Here is an idea I've been working on for some time intersecting fractals and chaos theory, philosophy, and (dare I say it) religion:
<http://www.sonic.net/~jot/kk/philosophraktal.html> I went to the web site in question. I found many things to comment on, but lacking time, I will comment on only one thing at this time. On the web site it was written:
Could it be that the Creator Of All Things HIMSELF, for all His infinite wisdom and power, does not, can not, predict or know exactly how it will all turn out!? A general picture can be seen but exact prediction is impossible.
This supposition assumes that God exists in the same sequential time stream as mankind. It implies that for God like for man, time is divided into past, present and future. This means God, like man, knows the past but cannot change it, and has knowledge of the broad range of future possibilities, but lacks knowledge of the smaller details. It is an interesting view, but a problem immediately arises. Relativity shows that past, present and future are relative. There is no universal present moment of time, and what is in the past for one observer could be in the present or in the future for another. Since there is no universal time, to me it makes no sense to state that God knows what is happening at this moment throughout the universe, or to wonder whether or not He knows every detail of the future. According to religious teaching, and the experiences of mystics, God is eternal. This does not mean that He endures through an infinite length of time, it means that He exists outside of time as we know it. God exists in the timeless spacetime of relativ- ity. He is not only fully present at every moment of time, but at every point of space as well. I also wonder about the cosmic speed limit of light. Does God have a definite location in space? If so, does He instantly know what happens a billion light-years away? If so, how does He get the information at faster-than-light speed? God must be a non-local thing, spread through the universe more like a wave function of quantum mechanics than a super-being in the sky. I could continue raising paradoxes and absurdities, but let's simply accept that God, like the quantum world, is totally beyond our comprehension. Let's not try to reduce God to the level of a glorified man, a being with nothing more than en- hanced versions of man's senses, experiencing the universe as would a super astronaut. In my opinion, the relation of God to the universe is the same as the relation of a dream to the sleeping mind that is dreaming it, and the only way of contact- ing Him is by going within ourselves. I'll write more about the opinions on the web site when I get the work caught up. FOTD in 3 hours. Jim Muth