Design and the intelligence hypothesis

Sidelined, I can (and have, many times) modelled a universe on a computer. The universe is sometimes 4 dimensional. Usually, one (and only one) of those dimensions is "time". My universe can be described as evolving along the time direction. BUT my simulation models the whole universe at once. The time of my model does not correspond to my "real" time. I can interact with my model at any point in "time", and can examine what is going on in my model at any "time". I can change a "future" feature, then later alter a "past" feature. Whenever I change something, the whole universe (future and past) responds. My actions are not constrained by the "time" of my model. I do not require "energy" to do anything. I just change the parameters of my model. My model is constrained by what I chose. I am not constrained by my model... unless I choose to be...Does this picture help explain (my) theism?

Well, I only use the computer because my brain isn't quick enough and I can't juggle the number of variables and degrees of freedom required in my head. But the computer is still only an extension of my brain. However, I'm not sure why this matters. I built the computer to run the program... (or could have done) "time" is intrinsic to my model... it is the name of one of my four dimensions, named as such because my space-time metric is indefinite. I can use my same program to model a 4-d Euclidean universe which has no time dimension. Either way, this has NOTHING to do with time as I experience it. I can run my universe forwards, backwards, sideways, but most usually I solve it simultaneously everywhere.What I am saying is... Even if I assume that God exists within a concept of time... i.e. there is an ordering to his "thoughts" and "actions", then there is no reason whatsoever to assume that his time has anything to do with our time. I go further and say that as our concept of "time" is based on us being in a special part of the universe (i.e. well away from any significant curvature), that God's time CANNOT have anything to do with our time.

This is exactly what I as referring to in my computer model analogy. There is the programmers time, and there is the degree of freedom in the model called "time". These two times have nothing to do with one another. No, becasue I am part of the model. No concept of the programmers "real" time has been incorporated within the model. I am unable to produce evidence. But then, God for me has always been a matter of faith. Unless you are well versed in relativity, I would sugget that your "definite properties" are not so definite. And if you are, you will understand that time is just a degree of freedom with an odd signature in the metric. And "time elapsed" or "time experienced" is entirely dependent upon your track through space-time.As for us living well away from any significant curvature, just try out Pythagoras... seems to work well enough. Try it in the early universe, or close to a neutron star or black hole, and you may be surprised. My evidence is all the evidence for GR amounted so far, and my interpretation of GR is sound in that I used to be trusted to teach it at a highly regarded academic institute.So your experience of time is wholly dependent upon your local gravitational field (i.e. amount of space-time curavture) AND your velocity wrt a comoving object in the universe (Earth, Sun, Galaxy are all close enough to comoving).To say that God's time must be the same time as ours, one must assume that God is following the same track through space-time as we are, and he is also located in a similar area of low curvature.My definition of God does not locate him at any point in space or time. Space and time are model degrees of freedom, and he is the programmer, to return to my analogy.

I have no clue as to where you work now, but you have presented your qualifications and some of the areas in which you have worked. My challenge is for you to present (unadulterated) both this thread and the previous thread to your current boss (ceo, president, chairman, whatever) to read through. That is all. If you think you have made logical, coherent arguments then there should be no problem with this, no concern.If you can provide proof that this has been done, I will happily stump up $500 to the charity of your choice (of an aid nature such as Christian Aid, Oxfam, etc).

Hi Sidelined, sorry for the "slight" delay in replying Yes, absolutely. In The Matrix it appeared that the computer simulation evolved in real-time, so that at any one time, the computer held a 3d reality. Here, time was not being modelled. It could not be removed from the program.In my example, time is part of the model. At any moment, the computer holds a static model of the entirety of space-time. I can see your birth, your death, your great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather's birth, Mitochondrial Eve's first child, the birth of the universe, the end of the universe, etc, etc.Objects appear as lines (we call them world-lines in GR). If we zoom in on your world-line, it starts to look more like a carrot, as your spatial cross-section increases along the time-direction, to a maximum then a slight decrease before we reach the other end.It's just like a big map. At one end is the "future" and the other is the "past". This is how GR works. It is also leads us to one of the biggest mysteries of existence, which is the "problem of time".I make one slight change to my model (one minus sign to a plus sign) and now it is not a model of 4d space-time, but is a model of 4d space. Again, the model can be examined like a map, but now we would probably not use terms like "future" and "past", as there is no causual structure.