Please explain time with creation?

Question

Heres a problem I struggle with. If time always existed in the void
then creation is impossible because it would of taken forever to happen (to get to a specific point in time from eternalty). If time only existed post-creation and during then no motion could take place to start its process.

Answer 1

Whenever we encounter paradoxes such as this one, it's usually a good idea to re-examine our concepts that have led us to such paradoxes. For example, when Maxwell consolidated the laws of electromagnetism into his famous equations, he and others noticed that the laws weren't invariant under Galilean transforms, but under a weird transform dubbed Lorentzian after the mathematician who studied them. Einstein was the first to say, "Well, maybe we were wrong with our older assumptions about space and time", and thus was able to resolve the paradox.

In this case, if we have a naive view about time, conceptually seen as an infinite line where the origin t = 0 is arbitrary, and imagine that "the universe" or "everything else" is parametrized by this line (think of frame numbers in a movie), and that any "act of creation" also has to be referenced somewhere on this line, then, yes, we have a Russell-like paradox: "Where do we place the act of creation of everything including this line?" (see link about this kind of paradox). This seems to be a paradox regardless if one believes that God has created the cosmos, or that some Big Bang was the beginning of "time and space".

The resolution to this kind of paradox is usually found by making a distinction between a set and a class, so that while we may have a class of sets, we cannot automatically assume that we can always make sense out of a set of sets, because, depending on the definition of the set, we can run into paradoxes. Likewise, this "act of creation of everything including the timeline" cannot be assume to be parametrized by something that it's in the act of creating! But can it even make sense to speak of such "creation" without reference to such a timeline? Yes, it can. One idea about time is something we might have to give up, just like Einstein was one of the first willing to give up the idea of universal simultaneity, is that there is only ONE timeline, and only one universe. Indeed, today there are a number of mulitverse theories, where other universes exists with their own timelines, and yet there is no "universal" timeline that have meaning for all. Furthermore, it cannot be assumed that for "any" physically realizable system, there necessarily has to be any time at all! This may sound truly bizzare, but certain physicists have already worked on such concepts, such as Julian Barbour, who at least showed the feasiblity of "doing physics" in this manner. See 2nd link.

A good place to look into as a foundation of "pre-time pre-space physics" is the study of topology. In topology, the concept of metric space (which is something we need to have for ordinary metric spacetime) actually comes pretty late after a lot of abstract preliminaries are already in place. Those "abstract preliminaries" would be a good model for "physics before time and space".

Answer 2

Both of your statements are invalid. We have a fairly good understanding of space, time, matter, and energy from the present, most of the way back to something like a Big Bang. Before that, if there was a before that, we know nothing. Space and/or time might have existed 'before' the creation of the physical universe. Or God might have created them by the same act of creation. We just don't know.

Answer 3

Your assumption is flawed. Time, like any other dimension in this universe, is infinite. Look at any object and you will tell me it has a beginning and an end, yet the axis of the dimensions you are observing are infinite. The object only takes up a segment of the continuum.

It should be easy for you now to see than a "segment of time" is merely an observable portion of an infinite axis. In other words, our universe is but a segment on the infinite axis of time. Your paradox is created because in your finite assumption you insist that there must have been a "beginning" to eternity....

Thought for the day: eternity is but an instant.

Answer 4

Time is a spatial dimension effectively, and motion is really just position in space correlated against position in time. Outside the universe, time doesn't exist any more than space does, so the concept of 'before' and 'always' has no meaning. Being a human, you are accustomed to your perception of time, and thus it is extremely difficult to visualise it in its true form.

Answer 5

You are slightly confused with the notions of time and creation. Time is (most likely) infinite. Creation is not the beginning of the universe, as there is none, as time is infinite. The creation is the beginning of space-time, the beginning of the universe as we know it today. These are completely different notions.

Answer 6

there are only two possibilities

1) Something can be created out of nothing at all.
2) Something was always there.

for something you can read time , or something thing that embeds time.

you can chose what you like.

Motto for today:
^^^ Time runs in its own time ^^^

Answer 7

I think time and things always existed for ever.

Answer 8

time only exists on this physical plane, not in the void

Answer 9

God's time is not our time and vice versa.