A Thick Layer: A Fine-Tuned Critique of Arvin Ash

Luke Barnes responds to Arvin Ash on the fine-tuning argument.

A formulation of the fine-tuning argument

A new paper from physicist Luke Barnes:

Abstract

A new formulation of the Fine-Tuning Argument (FTA) for the existence of God is offered, which avoids a number of commonly raised objections. I argue that we can and should focus on the fundamental constants and initial conditions of the universe, and show how physics itself provides the probabilities that are needed by the argument. I explain how this formulation avoids a number of common objections, specifically the possibility of deeper physical laws, the multiverse, normalisability, whether God would fine-tune at all, whether the universe is too fine-tuned, and whether the likelihood of God creating a life-permitting universe is inscrutable.

"A Reasonable Little Question: A Formulation of the Fine-Tuning Argument"

Handicapping the Craig/Oppy debate

I already did one brief post on the Craig/Oppy debate:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/05/does-math-point-to-god.html

I subsequently added a sentence to the first part of my two-part response. 

Now I'm going to comment on the rest of the debate. A few preliminary observations:

1. For a 70-year-old, Craig is remarkably quick on his feet, especially considering the highly abstract, technical subject-matter of the debate.

2. Oppy is a superior mind wasted on atheism. Even if atheism were true–especially if atheism were true–what's the point of mounting such a sophisticated defense of atheism? What's the point of defending atheism at all? What's the point of anything? If atheism is true, then human life is worthless, so why devote so much effort and intelligence to defending a position that renders human life worthless? Maybe Oppy doesn't view it that way, but a number of candid atheists do.

Consider defending a worldview in which it's okay to take a butcher knife and carve your mother up alive. Consider developing sophisticated arguments to defend that proposition. 

3. Moving to the meat of the debate, I think there was some miscommunication regarding Craig's statement that atheists have no explanation for the phenomena he adduces in his argument. I'm sure that's shorthand for the claim, not that atheists have no naturalistic explanations to offer, but that their naturalistic alternatives are explanatory failures. 

4. Due to time-constraints, the debate didn't have a clear-cut winner or loser, because both sides had insufficient time to expound their positions and respond to objections. Sometimes Craig had the better of the exchange, sometimes Oppy had the better of the exchange, but in some cases that's because of how the exchange abruptly ended. If each side had more time to explain their position and develop their replies, they might have a better comeback. That said, I think Craig did better overall. 

5. In the first round they got bogged down on the question of what motivates mathematicians. Here I think Craig commits an unforced error in how he formulates the first premise of his argument. That's because his formulation is overly-realiant at this point on Wigner's essay. But his argument doesn't require him to take a position on what motivates mathematicians. The issues is what's been discovered as a result of their work, regardless of their motivations. Pure math with practical applications they've developed as a result of their work, regardless of their motivations. Craig's fundamental argument is the unreasonable effectiveness of math, however mathematicians were motivated to stumble upon that insight. So Craig could rehabilitate his argument by reformulating the first premise. 

6. Initially, Craig's argument seems to hinge on scientific realism. Oppy gave examples which might support scientific anti-realism. I think Oppy had the better of that exchange. Craig needs to be able to do one of two things: (i) defend scientific realism or (ii) reformulate his argument so that it works on scientific realism and antirealism alike. 

Later in the debate Craig says the argument is about how the world appears to us. The mathematical equations allow us to describe with amazing accuracy in an uncanny number of cases the physical phenomena. Yet that seems inconsistent with earlier argument Craig and Oppy were having. But perhaps we can treat this as a clarification of the argument. 

7. On a related note, Oppy appealed to many failed theories, where the math didn't prove to be uncannily effective. Craig responded by saying the realm of math infinite while the physical world finite, so it's to be expected that in many cases the math fails to match up. I think Craig had the better of that exchange.

8. Apropos (7), I'd make an additional point. The failures that Oppy cited don't disprove the unexpected effectiveness of math (unexpected if atheism is true). Rather, they simply illustrate the fallibility of physicists. 

9. Craig appealed to the causal inertness of mathematic objects. I think Craig had the better of that exchange. 

10. Because Craig's argument appeals to laws of nature, Oppy challenged his argument on that score inasmuch as the concept or status of such laws is contested in the philosophy of science. However, when outlining his alternative to Craig's position, Oppy posting the necessity of the laws of nature. So he's faulting Craig's theistic position for a commitment which his own naturalistic alternative shares in common. Indeed, he stakes out a more ambitious claim than Craig since he regards the laws of nature as necessary whereas Craig regards the laws of nature as contingent. So that objection seems to be contradictory and self-defeating on Oppy's part. 

11. Apropos (10), while Oppy's objection was inconsistent, the lingering issue remains of whether Craig's argument is committed to some version of the laws of nature. If so, that makes his argument vulnerable at that point to disputes in the philosophy of science regarding the concept and status of such laws. It would be better if Craig could reformulate his argument so that it's not dependent on that assumption. 

Offhand, I don't see that it requires that commitment. The basic argument is that pure math has surprising empirical applications. That makes sense if the universe was "constructed on God's mathematical blueprint" (as Craig put it). It doesn't make sense if atheism is true. This might also be a way for Craig to sidestep the scientific realist/antirealist debate.

12. Oppy outlined his alternative:

A theory of modality. Every possible world shares some initial history with the actual world. Diverges from it only because chances play out differently. Those are the only possibilities that there are. The laws are necessary, the boundary conditions are necessary. Doesn't matter if you're thinking about one universe or many universe model. Where contingency comes in is the outplaying of chances. Couldn't possibly have failed not to be the case. No explaining why something is necessary. 

i) It's hard to evaluate his alternative since his presentation was so sketchy. But an acute failing of his alternative (at least as stated in the debate) is the failure to explain where the math comes from. What is Oppy's ontology of mathematics? 

ii) His commitment to nomological necessity shoulders a high burden of proof. 

iii) While it's true that once we reach necessity, that terminates further explanation, that doesn't sidestep the question of whether we rightly identified what's necessary, or what makes it necessary–in contrast to what's contingent. 

iv) What does he mean by chance? Is he alluding to quantum indeterminism? If so, there are deterministic versions of quantum theory, so he must defend his particular interpretation. 

v) Then there's his concept of the possible world. However, as commonly understood, the actual world used to be a possible world. So possible worlds don't derive from the actual world. 

In addition, from a Christian perspective, both possible worlds and the actual world derive from God. God stands behind both as their common source.

ET religion

This post will be speculative.

1. Confirmed military footage of UFOs heightens longstanding questions about the status of UFOs:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/27/politics/pentagon-ufo-videos/index.html

2. On the one hand it's odd that the Pentagon would confirm the existence of military technology superior to our own. That's an admission that we're vulnerable to military conquest. Some regime or entity has technology that could defeat us. Render us defenseless. Perhaps it's not specifically military technology, but it seems to have a military application that could neutralize our own technology.

3. This also raises the source. Is it terrestrial or extraterrestrial? Naturalistic or supernatural/paranormal?

Is it terrestrial technology produced by another country or corporation? If so, you'd expect the Pentagon to know the identity. 

4. Obama let our national security assets slide. He allowed Chinese agents to hack American assets with impunity. He redirected NASA to focus on global warming. He tried to sabotage Israeli national security while enabling Iran to develop nuclear weapons. So it's possible that we're behind.

5. There are now corporations richer than many countries that might have the R&D resources to develop next-generation military technology, either independently or in collaboration with a nation state

6. Another naturalistic explanation, albeit more farfetched, is intervention from ETs. A stock objection to ETs is that the distance is prohibitive. But perhaps 20C physics is mistaken about the cosmic speed limit. 

Yet from what I've read, even if superliminal travel as possible, that results in backward time travel. A traveler moving faster than light is moving into the past. Assuming that's correct, it's unclear how ETs could get here that way.

7. Another issue is that if these are ETs, why are they so elusive? If they wish to conceal their existence from humans, their behavior is very careless. But if they wish for us to be aware of their existence, why is the evidence so ambiguous? Why not make their existence unmistakable? 

8. There's nothing in Christian theology that rules out the existence of ETs. The question would be the confusing and disruptive impact that would have on human history and religion. But arguably, that's not different in principle from demonic interference.

9. Human technology is getting out of control, with experiments in animal/human and machine/human hybrids, as well as general eugenics and genetic reengineering. 

10. In theory, there are supernatural/paranormal ways to simulate advanced technology. Agents with telepathic powers could make humans hallucinate anything. Simulate convincing illusions.

However, that wouldn't explain photographic evidence inasmuch as cameras can't hallucinate. On the other hand, the UFOs seem to leave no physical trace evidence. No permanent after-effects. So in that respect it's spectral. Rather like ectoplasm, that materializes and dematerializes. 

11. Another supernatural/paranormal explanation would be psychokinesis. The ability of certain minds to directly generate or manipulate states of matter and energy to create objective physical phenomena. If, say, the source was ETs, they wouldn't have to be here to do that. They could be living millions of light years away. The effects we witness on earth would be the mental projections of their psychokinetic abilities. Mental action at a distance. 

12. Mind you, assuming that some agents have psychokinetic abilities, they don't have to be ETs. That might include angels, demons, psychic living human beings, human beings in league with demons, or damned human souls. 

13. There's also the question of whether the hypothetical ETs are benevolent or malevolent. If malevolent, they'd have the power to conquer and subjugate the human race, although they might introduce themselves as beneficent saviors of humanity. It's easy to imagine an ET religion that becomes the dominant religion, co-opting historical religions. In terms of biblical eschatology, that would be consistent with Mt 24:24 (2 Thes 2:9; Rev 13:13-14).  

14. The evidence for Christianity is copious, diverse, ancient, and modern. But it might be necessary for God and his agents to intervene to counteract their influence. If this represents an invasion force, we're no match for it, but God's agents could keep it in check. 

15. Thus far, the current pandemic doesn't seem to pose a threat to the survival of the human race. The larger threat is coming from public officials and Big Tech who use the crisis as a pretext to abrogate civil liberties and instigate a global depression. Will we end up with a worldwide Venezuela? Global social unrest would be an opportunity for the powerbrokers to take over.

16. We also see the suppression of Christianity under the guise to combatting the pandemic. Not only is public worship illegal, but depending on how long the lockdowns and mass house arrest continue, many churches will never reopen because they went broke. 

The discrimination extends to prosecuting churches that practice drive-in services as well as Tech Giants that block electronic services if they disapprove of the sermon content. 

17. Perhaps it's just coincidental that the coronavirus, which originates in a Chinese lab, from which it "escaped," is happening at about the same time that Red China has been purging Christianity in China–with the collaboration of the Vatican, I might add. 

I'm not suggesting this is a human plot. Humans aren't that smart or organized. But it could be diabolical. I don't have any firm opinion about how this episode will end. Perhaps the economy will come roaring back. 

But many churches have capitulated to a very dangerous precedent. And some churches won't recover because they were unable to bring in enough revenue to cover the overhead. Pastors will have to quit the ministry and take jobs in the private sector. 

The Implausibility and Low Explanatory Power of the Resurrection Hypothesis

I'm going to quote and comment on a long academic article attacking the Resurrection:                                                                                             

Robert Greg Cavin & Carlos A. Colombetti, "The Implausibility and Low Explanatory Power of the Resurrection Hypothesis —With a Rejoinder to Stephen T. Davis." SHERM 2/1 (2020): 37‒94.

The article is somewhat challenging to comment on because the authors are responding to a variety of Christian philosophers and apologists, viz. Craig, Davis, Plantinga et al. I don't necessarily formulate the case for miracles or the Resurrection the way they do, so in some cases I may reframe the argument. 

The authors also use abbreviations: (R=the Resurrection); (SM=the Standard Model of particle physics); (LCE=the law of conservation of energy) 

Atheism Is Inconsistent with the Scientific Method

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/atheism-is-inconsistent-with-the-scientific-method-prizewinning-physicist-says/

Spontaneous creation

Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going. (Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow in The Grand Design)

Several problems:

1. How do scientific laws "create" material objects? Such as subatomic and atomic particles. Not to mention spacetime itself. These are what the universe consists of, after all.

   I can see how scientific laws describe and explain patterns in nature. I can see how scientific laws make accurate predictions about the course of certain natural phenomena. But how do scientific laws have the ability or power to create or cause material objects to come into existence? How does a scientific law like "F=ma" have the ability to make a car materialize out of thin air? How does the law of gravity have the ability to make the universe come into existence? To kick off the big bang?

2. Minimally laws describe natural phenomena. As such, what is the law of gravity without the existence of gravity? If the law of gravity exists, then presumably gravity exists too. If gravity exists, then it seems Hawking is arguing gravity is what's created the universe. If so, that would still leave unexplained what created gravity. As well as how gravity could exist before the universe exists.
3. However, if it's possible for the law of gravity to exist without the existence of gravity, then where does the law of gravity exist if the universe doesn't exist? Is the law of gravity a free-floating Platonic ideal? Would the law of gravity need to inhere in some mind?
4. What does Hawking mean by "nothing"? Does he mean what most people mean when they say "nothing" (a)? Or does he mean what physicists like Lawrence Krauss mean when they say "nothing", i.e., some primordial soup consisting of quantum fluctuations (b)?

   a. If the former, then Hawking would be arguing something (the universe) came from literal nothing. How can something come from literally nothing on Hawking's beliefs? (Despite the fact that the law of gravity isn't "nothing". Rather it's "something".)

   b. If the latter, then quantum fluctuations are clearly not "nothing" in the normal sense of "nothing". Rather quantum fluctuations are "something". If something (quantum fluctuations) created something else (the universe), then that only pushes the question back a step: where do these quantum fluctuations come from?

5. Hawking notes the universe created itself. Spontaneous creation. That's illogical. A flat-out self-contradiction. If something doesn't exist yet, then how can it create itself?

   Suppose I have a dog. A friend asks where I got my dog. I reply, my dog created itself, before it ever existed. It just popped itself into existence! How so? By its own sheer willpower? Even though the dog didn't exist to have a will in the first place. All this makes no sense.

   This is true for any created object. Such as the universe which Hawking admits is a created object. Otherwise Hawking might have followed early 20th century physicists who argue the universe is eternal. It has always existed. It simply is.

6. If the universe "spontaneously" created itself from the law of gravity, then doesn't that suggest the law of gravity isn't so much a "law" as it is something less than a law? I mean, wouldn't that be like saying 1 + 1 = 2, but sometimes spontaneous things happen, and 1 + 1 = 3.14 or 6.022 x 10²³?

   How would Hawking square this "spontaneous creation" (which suggests chance or randomness) with his uniformitarianism regarding scientific laws as well as the fact that he believes the universe is a closed system?

   Keep in mind Hawking subscribes to M-theory rather than (say) quantum gravity.

7. Hawking notes it's "not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going". However why assume God is in conflict with a scientific law like gravity?

   Suppose a scientific law did have creative powers - or at least have causal powers. Suppose the same scientific law caused the universe to exist. Suppose God exists too. As such, God could have used the scientific law to cause or create the universe. God and a scientific law with causal or creative powers aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.

   Indeed, if God exists, the God of the Bible, then God would been the one in whom the laws of nature originate in the first place.

Quantum gravity

I recently asked an eminent physicist [Don Page] a question about the relationship between Relativity and quantum mechanics. Here's the exchange:

I was reading an interview with Roger Penrose from 10 years ago:

http://discovermagazine.com/2009/sep/06-discover-interview-roger-penrose-says-physics-is-wrong-string-theory-quantum-mechanics

The idea of parallel universes—many worlds—is a very human-centered idea, as if everything has to be understood from the perspective of what we can detect with our five senses. 

The trouble is, what can you do with it? Nothing. You want a physical theory that describes the world that we see around us. That’s what physics has always been: Explain what the world that we see does, and why or how it does it. Many worlds quantum mechanics doesn’t do that. Either you accept it and try to make sense of it, which is what a lot of people do, or, like me, you say no—that’s beyond the limits of what quantum mechanics can tell us. Which is, surprisingly, a very uncommon position to take. My own view is that quantum mechanics is not exactly right, and I think there’s a lot of evidence for that. It’s just not direct experimental evidence within the scope of current experiments.

You have called the real-world implications of quantum physics nonsensical. What is your objection?

Quantum mechanics is an incredible theory that explains all sorts of things that couldn’t be explained before, starting with the stability of atoms. But when you accept the weirdness of quantum mechanics [in the macro world], you have to give up the idea of space-time as we know it from Einstein. The greatest weirdness here is that it doesn’t make sense. If you follow the rules, you come up with something that just isn’t right.

Of course, this debate has raged for decades, with competing interpretations of quantum mechanics.  Penrose offes an interesting criticism, but it seems to beg the question. What if the world we see around us isn't all there is because there's more than one universe? In that case, the theory shouldn't describe or predict just one outcome, should it? 

Suppose both theories are true, only Relativity is true for our universe while quantum mechanics is true for more than one universe, including ours? Maybe Relativity accurately describes the space-time structure of our universe, but the quantum world is more fundamental than the macro world, which is generated by the quantum world, and the rules for the quantum world transcend the macro world of our particular universe? Our universe represents one set of quantum outcomes, but there are others. The rules of Relativity are specific to our universe, unlike the rules of quantum mechanics. Both theories would be mutually consistent because they describe distinct, overlapping domains. Perhaps the quantum structure of a universe is variable, so quantum mechanics must be more flexible to accommodate the variance, which makes it probabilistic in reference to any particular universe, since it doesn't single out any particular universe.  Does that make any sense? 

I tend to agree with you.  Roger Penrose seems to be among what I think is a small minority (which does not prove that he is wrong, though on this issue I tend to agree with the majority) that spacetime and general relativity is more fundamental than quantum theory.  My tentative position is that quantum theory is universally true (at least as what I see as the most conservative option), and that it implies that general relativity is not universally true but has a limited range of validity, though that range does seem to include most of our observable universe (the part we can observe, taking the very early universe, where GR may not apply, not to be observable by us).

The Universe: How did it get here & why are we part of it

Roger Penrose and William Lane Craig discuss:

Science as a candle in the dark

Thankfully, science is a cure for superstitious nonsense:

The film has a web-site, and there is a long article in Salon explaining that the whole thing is really the production of a cult based in the Pacific Northwest that believes that a woman named JZ Knight is able to channel a 35,000 year old mystic named Ramtha. She does play a large role in the movie and you can read all about her nonsense here.

The whole thing is really moronic beyond belief. One of the scientists interviewed is John Hagelin who, besides being part of the TM cult surrounding Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, presidential candidate of the Natural Law Party, and “Minister of Science and Technology of the Global Country of World Peace” is a rather prominent particle theorist. Prominent if you go by citations that is. His 73 papers are mostly about supersymmetric GUTs and considered quite respectable, with a total of over 5000 citations, including 641 citations for one of them alone.

Hagelin was a grad student at Harvard when I was an undergrad and I met him when we were in the same quantum field theory class. A roommate of mine was interested in TM and I think it was he who introduced us. I remember Hagelin wanting to discuss how quantum field theory could explain how TM’ers were able to levitate, something about how they did this by changing the position of the pole in the propagator. The fact that someone who spouts such utter nonsense can get a Ph.D. from Harvard and be one of the most widely cited authors on supersymmetric models is pretty remarkable.

https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=83

Has Sean Carroll refuted the fine-tuning argument?

The first of five in an interview series between Luke Barnes and Allen Hainline responding to atheist and physicist Sean Carroll (Ph.D., Harvard):

By the way, Luke Barnes is great. His book A Fortunate Universe, co-authored with his colleague Geraint Lewis, is likewise great. Robin Collins (Ph.D., University of Notre Dame), one of the world's foremost experts on the fine-tuning argument, has said about the book:

Lewis and Barnes' book is the most up-to-date, accurate, and comprehensive explication of the evidence that the universe is fine-tuned for life. It is also among the two most philosophically sophisticated treatments, all the while being accessible to a non-academic audience. I strongly recommend this book.

I follow Barnes' weblog Letters to Nature as well as his YouTube channel Alas, Lewis & Barnes. Barnes has done a number of interviews including with Robert Lawrence Kuhn at Closer to Truth.

If I recall, Lewis is an atheist or agnostic, while Barnes is an evangelical Anglican. Both are physicists (cosmologists) with doctorates from the University of Cambridge, U.K., and both are professors in Sydney, Australia.

Barnes and Lewis have a forthcoming book with Cambridge University Press: The Cosmic Revolutionary’s Handbook (Or: How to Beat the Big Bang).

Edit. Part 2 is available below.

From physics to cosmology

Physics began with a question: what is everything made of? Is everything made of the same underlying stuff? 

Physical things are different on a human scale (e.g. solid, liquid) but if bigger things are composed of parts, and parts of parts, then at the bottom of that process, is everything made from the same thing?

That was originally a question about matter and the ultimate constitution of physical things. But eventually, physics (particle physics, relativity) shaded into cosmology. The nature of time, the origin, evolution, and fate of the universe. Attempting to answer a question about what things are made of led to further questions about the ultimate nature of time and space, past and future. 

Mirror, mirror, on the wall

i) One objection to a timeless Creator is that causes precede effects. But is that necessarily the case? For instance, when I stand in front of a mirror, I cause my reflection to move. But is there a temporal delay between my action and the corresponding image in the mirror? It appears to be simultaneous or instantaneous. 

Perhaps, from the standpoint of physics, there's an indetectable delay in the transmission of light from my body to the reflection. However, I'm not sure if that's the case. Given the speed of light compared to the distance between my body and the mirror, is there a measurable delay?

That raises the question of whether a light beam is a continuously dense stream. Is the transmission of light infinitely divisible into ever smaller intervals? By contrast, what if is light granular, so that below a certain scale or threshold, there are no intervals? This goes to the famous particle/wave duality in physics. Admittedly, in this example, cause and effect both take place in time, so it's not strictly analogous to a timeless Creator, but I'm just addressing the specific objection that causes necessarily precede their effects. 

ii) Parenthetically, this example illustrates the limitations of empiricism. Does the reflection cause me to move or do I cause the reflection to move? Does my shadow cause me to move or do I cause my shadow to move? We intuitively understand that there's a relation of asymmetrical dependence, but that's not given in the phenomenon of reflected motion. To judge by appearances, it might be symmetrical or it might be the case that my shadow causes me to move! 

Imagine a science fiction story in which the motion of the shadow or reflection is primary while your corresponding motion is secondary! You move because the image in the mirror made you move in his direction! The shadow makes you move in tandem with the shadow! 

iii) Although that's backwards in physical reality, there's a sense in which, in relation to predestination, I'm the man in the mirror. What I do is a direct reflection of God's plan. I'm the shadow cast by God's light. 

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences

Back in 1960, Eugene Wigner published a famous essay by that title. Christian apologists of a certain bent (e.g. Alvin Plantinga) appeal to this phenomenon as an argument for God's existence. For mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, the mathematical structure of the physical universe is a concrete exemplification of an abstract domain that exists outside the universe. Although Penrose is agnostic, you can see the theistic potential in that admission. Here's a recent book that provides more supporting material for that line of argument.

And here's the interview with Witten.

It's ironic that this is coming from physicists who are atheistic or agnostic. In that regard it parallels the hard problem of consciousness by secular philosophers of mind whose default position is physicalism, but acknowledge that physicalism is inadequate to account for the nature of consciousness.

Miracles, materialism, and quantum mechanics

A testimony

https://sixdayscience.com/2015/05/11/my-testimony/

What is time?

Ever since Einstein, we're used to referring to the space-time continuum. It's often said that Relativity spatialized time. 

On the face of it, space seems physical in a way that time does not. Take an enclosed space like a basketball. Not to mention that finite space has measurable dimensions. Likewise, we move through space. So space seems to be very concrete. 

Mind you, pure geometry deals with abstract spaces. Likewise, dreams and video games have simulated space. 

But we don't move through time the way we move through space. In one respect, time appears to be physical. Physical states and objects undergo change. A temporal process. So it seems like time is a mode of the universe. 

Likewise, it's often said that God created time when he made the universe. He made the universe with time rather than in time. There was no preexistent time. 

However, human mental states are temporally successive. But if thoughts aren't physical, then the temporality of the mental process can't be physical, either. 

And even at the level of physics, there are theories of a cyclic or oscillating universe, where there's a series of cosmic births and deaths and rebirths. Even if those theories are false, it doesn't seem incoherent in principle to say that one universe would be earlier while another universe would be later. 

If so, then time can't just be a mode of the universe, since on that view it ceases to exist when the current universe ceases to exist, then starts anew when a new universe comes into being. But to speak of a temporal series of universes assumes an overarching timeline or relative chronology that transcends any particular universe, and carries through the changes. That's what makes the model sequential. 

However, it's possible to think of time as abstract. Take a novel or script. That has a plot. One thing happens after another. But unless it's enacted, the plot remains static. 

Perhaps, then, we should say a mental process exemplifies time, a physical process exemplifies time. On that view, time isn't essentially physical, but physical states and processes represent time or temporal relations (precedence, simultaneity, succession). 

The Boltzmann brain paradox

Last Thursdayism is a famous thought-experiment by Bertrand Russell:

There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that "remembered" a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago.

Of course, most folks, including most philosophers and scientists, don't think those skeptical scenarios are realistic. However, Last Thursdayism has a counterpart in modern physics: 

It could be the weirdest and most embarrassing prediction in the history of cosmology, if not science.

If true, it would mean that you yourself reading this article are more likely to be some momentary fluctuation in a field of matter and energy out in space than a person with a real past born through billions of years of evolution in an orderly star-spangled cosmos. Your memories and the world you think you see around you are illusions.

This bizarre picture is the outcome of a recent series of calculations that take some of the bedrock theories and discoveries of modern cosmology to the limit. Nobody in the field believes that this is the way things really work, however. And so in the last couple of years there has been a growing stream of debate and dueling papers, replete with references to such esoteric subjects as reincarnation, multiple universes and even the death of spacetime, as cosmologists try to square the predictions of their cherished theories with their convictions that we and the universe are real. The basic problem is that across the eons of time, the standard theories suggest, the universe can recur over and over again in an endless cycle of big bangs, but it’s hard for nature to make a whole universe. It’s much easier to make fragments of one, like planets, yourself maybe in a spacesuit or even — in the most absurd and troubling example — a naked brain floating in space. Nature tends to do what is easiest, from the standpoint of energy and probability. And so these fragments — in particular the brains — would appear far more frequently than real full-fledged universes, or than us. Or they might be us.

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/science/15brain.html

Lately, Sean Carroll has tried to debunk the Boltzmann brain paradox, but his solution is questionable:

https://evolutionnews.org/2017/07/is-sean-carroll-a-boltzmann-brain/

This poses quite a dilemma for atheists–if naturalism and modern physics commits them to a scientific version of Last Thursdayism. 

From a traditional Christian standpoint, one way to relieve the dilemma is to deny physicalism. Minds aren't brains.

In addition, why would a benevolent God make ephemeral conscious beings? Beings with our mental complexity, emotional life, and memories–if that's a trick? False memories–like the malevolent aliens in Dark City. But atheists don't have those countervailing resources. 

Twin paradox

According to time dilation, as I understand it, stationary clocks run faster than clocks moving near the speed of light. That's illustrated by the clock paradox and the twin paradox. If an astronaut rides a rocket to a distant planet, traveling near the speed of light, then returns, he will be younger than his identical earthbound twin. Indeed, centuries may have passed on earth. However, that's not quite accurate since the return trip reverses direction. 

Time dilation is thought to disprove Newtonian absolute time. However, that depends in part on how we define time. As I understand it, time dilation means a physical process operates at a faster rate in a stationary system than a system moving near the speed of light. So the astronaut on the rocket ages more slowly. But is the rate of a physical process equivalent to time itself? Speeding up a process isn't equivalent to speeding up time, is it? For instance, some humans live longer than others because they seem to be aging more slowly. At 110, their physical condition is similar to an octogenarian. But that's not due to time slowing down in their bodies. 

Mind you, this doesn't mean Newton was right, because it goes to the nature of time. What is absolute time? Is time a property of a physical (or mental) process, or is a physical (or mental) process a property of time? Is time a principle independent of the things it conditions? Is time a general principle, which physical (or mental) processes exemplify? 

Can we tell? Can timebound observers assume a detached perspective to discern what time is really like, apart from its affect on us? We're so conditioned by time that it's hard to describe time directly. 

That's an issue in science generally. We use the five senses to perceive the physical world. But the senses filter the world. So there's a conundrum: we can't sense the world without the filter, but the filter screens out certain features while tinting other features. The question then is whether we can reconstruct what the world is really like from reflections and refractions. 

Take a pond. I can see the sky mirrored in the pond. I can see reflected trees and shadows overhanging the pond. Normally, I can compare the reflection to viewing the sky and trees directly. But what if my knowledge of the world was confined to the reflection? Can I reconstruct what the world is really like from the fluid mirror? That distorts reality. Ripples. The color of sunlight. And there's a more subtle change because a mirror-image reverses chirality. 

Years ago I was standing on a dock at night, looking at the moonlight on the water. It wasn't just generic moonlight. If you look closely, the image of the moon is reflected on the water. Repeated images of the moon. Wave action breaks it up, scattering the beams. 

If you couldn't look straight at the moon, if all you had to go by was the reflection, you'd see many moons. How would you do physics or astronomy from that viewpoint? Could you infer that one large moon was produced all these little snapshots of itself? Can we infer an unfiltered view of the world from our filtered input? Can we filter out the filter without going blind? Can we separate the information from the filtering effect without losing key information?

The boy in the barbershop

1. I'm noncommittal on the antiquity of the universe. I'm open to old-earth creationism and new-earth creationism in that regard. A stock objection to mature creation is that it's deceptive. For instance, if the universe is only about 6-10K years old, then when we see a supernova, we're witnessing a nonevent. There never was a supernova corresponding to what we see, because the universe isn't old enough for the light to travel from the point of origin to earth, measured in lightyears. 

2. However, that objection poses a conundrum for the critic of mature creation. It posits a discrepancy between appearance and reality. We see something in the present, but in reality, we're witnessing the past, like a photograph of an event taken from the distant past. So the "deception" is relative to the background knowledge of the observer. According to modern astronomy, the supernova we see may no longer exist. Yet an ancient observer would assume that if he sees it, it must be there. So the objection of deception cuts both ways. 

3. This raises the problem of the observer in science. If physicalism is true, the observer is the brain, connected to sense organs. This means the observer never perceives the external world directly. Indeed, he can only see eyes with eyes. He can't directly observe the instrument he uses to make observations with. So he has no way of independently  confirming that he even has sense organs. The observer can't observe himself apart from himself. He can't assume the role of an outside observer. He can't step outside of himself to observer what he's really like, or what the world is really like. All he has to go by are his impressions. 

4. If anything, the problem is more acute regarding the origin of the world. Since that starts from nowhere, it could start anywhere. An absolute beginning is bound to be artificial. There's no right or wrong way to begin. 

5. As a young boy, I remember sitting in a barbershop. I was sitting in the barber chair, having my hair cut. It was one of those neat swivel pump chairs. Behind me was a mirror all along that side of the shop. In front of me was another mirror. The combination of the two mirrors generated an infinite=y mirror. Sitting in the chair, I could see my reflection multiplied, receding into the never-ending distance, in ever smaller images. Boxes within boxes. 

Of course, that's an optical illusion, but I knew it was an illusion because I was seeing myself. I enjoyed a privileged perspective. 

Yet science is all about reducing the first-person viewpoint to a third-person viewpoint. Eliminating that indexical perspective to produce a universal viewpoint.

But in that event, what counts as the unbiased observer? What's the true frame of reference?

Which of those images in the infinity mirror is the correct representation of reality? We can't say the boy in the chair is the unbiased observer, because that's a unique and unrepeatable viewpoint. An outside observer can't tap into his experience. As the boy in the chair, who sees his own reflection, I know that there's an asymmetrical relation between the observer and the images. Yet that's not a third-person viewpoint. That's not the perspective of an outside observer. 

In theory, the entire system–the boy, the mirrors, and the barbershop–could be boxes within boxes of an even larger image, like a picture on a wall. The observer could be standing outside the picture, looking at the picture of the boy in the barbershop. 

As creatures within the universe, who's the objective observer? Who's the outside observer? Who sees things as they really are? Is the supernova like reflections in a cosmic infinity mirror–or the object producing the reflections? 

6. Modern physics is very strange. The theory of relativity is counterintuitive. And quantum mechanics is even more baffling. There are multiple interpretations of quantum mechanics, and it's a choice between one weird interpretation and another weird interpretation.