Copyright 1998-2010 by Donald R. Tveter, http://www.dontveter.com, commercial use is prohibited. This material cannot be quoted at length or posted elsewhere on the net or included in CD ROM collections. Short quotations are permitted provided proper attribution is given.

From the Bible came the idea that the only reason the world worked was that God was busy controlling every detail of the world, without his attention nothing would work, for instance we have Colossians 1:17 from The Book:

He was before all else began and it is his power that holds everything together.

Atheists looked at the clockwork universe and noticed that you could claim that things always just were (the universe was eternal), things just happen without any plan behind them at all and the laws of physics kept things working without the need for a Creator. Even when evidence that the universe was created from nothing in the Big Bang about 15 billion years ago began to surface atheists still assumed that the Big Bang was something that just happened based on natural laws that are not yet known and it was not the work of any Creator.

This perspective on the world also includes something else that is very important. It includes the idea that only the present exists, the past is gone and the future is not out there yet. Philosophers call this outlook presentism. But then along came Einstein with special relativity in 1905 and it gave scientists an idea that most of them still cannot accept called the block world (BW). Special relativity says there is no such thing as "now" (except in our minds) and that the past, present and future all have to be out there at once as a kind of solid block of everything that "just is". Later on Einstein introduced general relativity and general relativity has re-enforced this idea. Philosophers call this idea that everything, past, present and future just exists, eternalism.

Then came quantum mechanics (QM). Quantum mechanics deals with the motion of the tiniest particles of matter and when particles are that small whole new rules were found to apply. With big things you could always predict where they were going and when they were going to get there. But in QM the little things move around in a somewhat random fashion. Instead of just being particles they also seemed to be like waves. Physicists quickly found the equations that tell them how likely the little thing is to end up in one place or another but there is no certainty. Nothing can be predicted with certainty. It's a flip of the coin or a roll of the dice. Or so it seemed. So with QM we have the idea of non-determinism.

One of the quirks of quantum mechanics is that the tiny sub-atomic particles behave in the present as if they know what is going to happen to them in the future. What's going on is that the future seems to be influencing the present (and the past)! The equations predict this and various physics experiments have confirmed this. To use an analogy at the human level it is as if these tiny particles know what tomorrow's winning lottery numbers will be! From the study of these strange effects in quantum mechanics physicist John Bell said these strange results could be explained if the universe was "super-determined". This means that it isn't just that the future of the universe has already been decided but doesn't exist yet, it means that the future has already been decided and it is already there.

So both relativity and quantum mechanics are giving the same important result: the past, present and future are all out there "at once" and the present isn't just determined by the past, the present is also partialy determined by the future. Physicists have had to confront these results for up to over 100 years now and they are still not comfortable with them, in fact they like to ignore them because the ideas are so strange and because they seem to do away with free will. There are however some physicists who do embrace this new perspective, they call it the relational block world interpretation of quantum mechanics. The block world perspective shows up in places in the Bible and so what we have is an example of Science finally catching up with the Bible. As we'll see modern science takes us right back to the old idea that God is in control of absolutely everything.

The new block world perspective has a number of amazing implications that will turn everyone's view of the world upside down as we will see in this chapter. It is one of those rare mind-boggling ideas that is as shocking as discovering that the Earth is not flat or that the sun does not move around the Earth. To appreciate how widely held beliefs about the world can be wrong and how they come to be changed recall the old idea that the Earth was the center of the universe and that the sun and all the planets and stars were moving around the heavens. One reason people had this belief is that when you're standing on the Earth you don't feel it moving. Second it is easy to see the sun moving across the sky every day. It all seemed so obvious that the sun moved around the Earth. But people were viewing the situation from a lousy perspective. If those people long ago could escape the Earth and take up a position above the solar system they would find a better perspective. They'd find the Earth moving around the sun and the Earth spinning on its axis. It is a much better perspective on what's really going on. What did happen on Earth of course is that scientists made some careful measurements and did some reasoning and found that better perspective without actually escaping from the Earth. Now just as careful measurements and reasoning led people to the idea that the Earth goes around the sun, careful measurements and reasoning led to the block world perspective that explains things better than our old perspective.

The first idea we will look at that needs to be changed is our idea of the how the creation of the universe took place. People these days have become used to the idea that the universe came about by a huge explosion some 13-15 billion years ago called "The Big Bang". After the Big Bang matter moved out from the explosion and stars and galaxies were formed, then planets formed and then on Earth life appeared. These things appear one after the other. As new things appear old things pass away. By the time the first galaxies formed you could not see the Big Bang anymore, it was long gone. By the time you saw life first appear on Earth the galaxy formation you saw before is gone. But you're seeing things from a lousy perspective inside of the universe. From this perspective you get the idea that there was a past, there is a present and the future is not out there yet.

Superdeterminism or the block world model produces a whole new idea about how the universe came about. The block world model shows us the universe is a package deal. The universe had to pop up all at once. The past, present and future must all be there, the past, present and future must all have popped up at once. The universe is not something that began at the Big Bang and then evolved as the matter moved out from the explosion. As for the Big Bang itself you might say that the Big Bang at the "beginning" of space and time is just a tiny fraction of what was created, it is merely a sort of fireworks display that is "celebrating" all the creation from there out to infinity. Here is what a physicist B. Dainton has said about the creation of a block world type universe (from page 9 of Reconciling Spacetime and the Quantum: Relational Blockworld and the Quantum Liar Paradox by Stuckey, Silberstein and Cifone where they quote another physicist B. Dainton):

Imagine that I am a God-like being who has decided to design and then create a logically consistent universe with laws of nature similar to those that obtain in our universe...Since the universe will be of the block-variety I will have to create it as a whole: the beginning, middle and end will come into being together...Well, assume that our universe is a static block, even if it never 'came into being', it nonetheless exists (timelessly) as a coherent whole, containing a globally consistent spread of events. ...

Now if you watched this block universe for a little while or even a very long while you would not see anything moving or changing at all! As Dainton said it's a static block. It is a frozen block of everything that "just is". Like a statue carved in stone it stays the same forever. Here on Earth we don't see everything frozen in place. On Earth things are moving around. How can you get movement or the appearance of movement in the world? It is really rather simple. Your consciousness is just moving through the frozen block of everything. Consider for instance an amusement park ride like the Haunted Mansion at Disneyworld. First a lot of planning had to be done. Second a hole had to be dug so the foundation could be laid. Third the foundation had to be laid. Fourth the building had to go up. Fifth the mechanical parts on the inside had to be put in. Sixth the whole thing had to be decorated properly. Then it was ready for people to move through it. When you get on the ride at the beginning in what we could call the present, the rest of the ride is still out there in front of you "in the future". Everything in the future exists as something just as real as the place where you are starting out in the present even though you can't see it yet. As you move through the ride you only see one place at a time. You only see "the present". You experience what you call "now". But the future is still out there in front of you and it is still just as real as where you are in the present and even the past where you started the ride is just as real as the present or the future. When you finally reach the end of the ride all of the past is still there and it is just as real as the now that you are experiencing "now". And the whole ride is completely unchanged, it is still a sort of frozen block of everything. This situation is also similar to watching a movie. The movie film is like the frozen solid block of everything. At the start of the movie everything you are going to see in the future is already there. As you "move through" the movie you only see "the present" and experience "now". At the end of the movie the movie film is still there and it is completely unchanged just like our real physical universe is unchanged.

One key difference between the haunted mansion ride and our real universe is that everyone taking the haunted mansion ride sees exactly the same thing. The universe is more complicated though in that everyone gets their own unique trip through it. You could say that your consciousness is moving through the material universe while the matter in your bodies actually just stays in place. That is to say that over all of time you have a very large number of bodies, one for each instant of time and your consciousness occupies each one for just a moment before it moves on to the next body. The bodies just hang around "forever", they are things that "just are". You (your consciousness) is what's moving, the physical universe is just sitting still frozen in place.

Another useful analogy is as follows. The Haunted Mansion ride also consists of chairs pulled along by chains that are connected to wheels that turn. Now think of the chair that you are in as "the present". Just below the floor and ahead of your chair "in the future" is a wheel used to pull you along and below the floor just behind your chair "in the past" is a wheel that is used to move the chain around. The past, present and future all have to be present at once in order for the ride to work. The whole haunted mansion ride would not work at all unless there was "a present", "a past" and "a future" all there at the same time. Likewise physicists have found out that the whole universe just would not work unless the past, present and future are all out there at once.

To briefly summarize the ideas so far, all these years people have been using the perspective of presentism. This perspective works pretty well for most things but modern physics has found the new, better block world perspective and this perspective explains things better. In the block world the past, present and future all exist at once and all those places in space and time are as real as the place we are at "now". The idea that the past is gone, the future does not yet exist yet and only the present exists is the result of viewing the world from a bad perspective.

This new block world perspective has a lot of consequences. Now one of the things we notice about the universe is that here on Earth at least some things are fairly complicated. Here on Earth we find living things, TV sets, computers, telephones, cars, books, etc.. How is it that these complicated things showed up? Why shouldn't the universe look like an absolutely bland and boring collection of particles moving around at random with no intelligent designs present at all? If the universe came about by chance the odds favor exactly that. The odds favor no order at all. Or maybe if the universe had stars and planets why would there be something as complicated as life? Long ago people would look at the world and conclude that it must have been created by some very powerful gods. In the Bible creation came about through one all-powerful God.

In modern times many people have come to believe in the evolution of life by chance. In evolution by chance chemistry just naturally produced some organic compounds that by chance evolved into a living cell. Afterwards chance mutations in the DNA of the single living cell produced more complex living things. The block world kills this idea in a single stroke because there is no such thing as chance. Everything throughout time from the Big Bang out to now and out to some distant future time had to be in place from the very beginning or you wouldn't have a universe at all. Now if you talk to an evolutionist about the origin of the first living cell they will tell you that it had to evolve from simpler things. If the cell just popped up out of nowhere it would have to be a miracle. The bad news for evolutionists is that not only did simple cells just pop up out of nowhere, complex life forms including human beings just popped up out of nowhere. Even man-made things like cars, television sets and computers had to flash into existence all at once as well as the life forms. What is the chance that all the life and all these complex "man-made" objects we now have on Earth, and have had in the past and will have in the future just flashed into existence across all of space and time? It is ridiculously small. The odds don't favor these intelligent looking designs at all, the odds favor absolutely boring, bland and unremarkable chaos. When you view the world in the classical old physics way where the world is developing step by step you can imagine evolution happening by chance (even though the math says it is wildly improbable) but since everything just is and it is out there "at once" there is just no time for evolution to act. All the intelligent designs we find in the world had to just happen instantly because they all have to be there at once. The world simply is not the way evolutionists imagine it to be because nothing is happening at random. It is only our warped perspective on the universe that makes us think that things can happen at random.

Notice that superdeterminism does not prohibit a pattern where living things evolve from the past into the future it is just that whatever pattern of evolution through time shows up was already present from the very beginning of the universe. Thus with superdeterminism evolution by design may be true but evolution by chance cannot be true. Also please notice that whereas these results from modern physics are telling us that creation happened by design it does not imply that young Earth creationism is true only that some sort of creation by a powerful intelligence is true. Also whereas modern physics is telling up that there is a Creator, it does not automatically follow that the God of the Bible is the Creator although you can make a good case that He is the Creator based on what you find in the Bible. Superdeterminism doesn't directly tell us how old the universe is either, it could be young or it could be very old. If it was very old Darwinian style slow evolution could still be true as far as the modern physics is concerned but it would have to be evolution that was done by design, not by chance. Of course EVEN IF old Darwinian style evolution is true it really isn't important because it doesn't answer the the very important question about where we came from. The answer that is important is that we were created by a very powerful and very intelligent Creator.

Of course a lot of people would still really want to believe in evolution by chance and they'd be looking for a way to evade the conclusion of intelligent design. One recourse is that they could propose that some sort of organization took place behind the scenes in some extra dimension(s) of time and space and then for some reason or reasons a design there was finished and then that design flashed into existence as our universe (our universe from beginning to end). But this produces two new problems. First they'd still be stuck with trying to explain how the complex DNA code was embedded in these unknown laws of nature that produced the physical universe. Also how did this process know how to build cars, television sets and computers and all the other machinery you find in this world? There is just so much complexity found in DNA and the rest of the world it is impossible to believe that some simple unknown laws of nature could produce them.

Second of course if you have to resort to something happening behind the scenes before the physical universe appears you have in effect proposed something like the spiritual world that you find in the world's various religions. This spiritual world would be necessary to produce the physical world. Plus this spiritual world must be radically different from the physical world and the laws of physics that we have in this physical world since a physical world like ours simply can't produce the designs that we see. For some reason intelligence can occur spontaneously in the spiritual world. The most zealous evolutionists are typically atheists and proposing a spiritual realm to account for the physical universe would be deeply disturbing to them. And so we have the surprising result that superdeterminism and life taken together argue for the existence of some realm other than the physical universe. It implies something like the spiritual world that the world's religions have always believed in. And of course it follows that there must be at least one very great and powerful intelligence in that spiritual world.

Another way for atheists to try and evade the problem is of course is to deny the physics. They can just ignore the facts and hope that something will come along to disprove superdeterminism. This is extremely hard to do. The physics that implies superdeterminism has been around for over 100 years. It has been verified over and over using objective numerical measurements. Special relativity fits in with the rest of physics and it even produced the famous result, E=mc² that made possible the atomic bomb and nuclear reactors. In fact special relativity is so well-established that some people will say, as it does on the page: Experimental Basis of Special Relativity:

being inconsistent with SR may be considered to be an indication that the experiment is not acceptable.

True believers in atheism might also try to take refuge in an interpretation of quantum mechanics called the many worlds interpretation. In the many worlds interpretation every possible different world that can happen does happen. This is a common subject in science fiction stories. Someone leaves their own familiar world and finds themselves in a world much like their own but just a little bit different. For instance there is the Star Trek episode where Kirk is on a planet and beams up to the Enterprise only to find out that he's in a parallel universe where there is a brutal empire on Earth that rules the galaxy and Spock has a beard. The problems with the many worlds interpretation are that first of all the many worlds interpretation was invented to account for the strange results of quantum mechanics but since the strange results can be accounted for with the relational block world model there is no need for the many worlds interpretation. Second, there are recent experiments that argue against the many worlds interpretation. Third, when you have to invent the idea that there are all those other universes out there yet there is no way to detect them it's just like proposing that there are invisible pink elephants flying around the room. The most zealous evolutionists are typically atheists and they will go around telling you that there is no need to invent God or spirits or a spirit world to account for life on Earth, material evolution is all that is needed. Then they go and quote the principle of Occam's razor where it says that the best explanation is the simplest one, the one with the fewest number of additional assumptions. They'll tell you that since life can be explained without inventing a God or a spiritual world that's the best explanation. So if they have to invent the idea that there are all those universes out there that we can't detect they are simply violating Occam's razor, one of the principles they are very fond of using. Claiming that there are all those universes out there should be just as disturbing as the existence of God.

There is yet another theory where atheists could try to seek comfort. Some physicists propose that every so often space-time thins out to the point where another Big Bang type explosion takes place. They propose that in each Big Bang a different universe with slightly different characteristics pops up and since this goes on forever and ever eventually one like ours with life in it will pop up. The problem with this idea is that this proposal still does not take into account the block universe. Every "new" universe still has a connection to an "older" universe so the whole package of them must all pop up at once, it is not a one at a time thing at all where each universe is separate.

The last option for atheists is to simply stonewall it. That is they can say that OK, the universe is just a frozen solid block but we're not going to bother with how it came to be. Of course most people would find this to be a pretty unsatisfactory position, most people would like to know how the universe came to be. Almost everyone will understand that the universe had to be made by some powerful and intelligent Creator and avoiding the issue means denying reality. So all in all there is just no way for believers in atheism and evolution by chance to win.

This new result from science produces an interesting situation for atheists and many scientists to deal with. Atheists and some scientists often like to bring up the case of Galileo vs. the Catholic Church. Galileo and other scientists had found evidence that the Earth was moving around the Sun. The authorities of the day happened to be in the Catholic Church and they were sure it was the other way around. The conclusion that many scientists draw from this incident is that the religious community should get out of the way and let scientists do their job, that Science will finally figure everything out while the backward people in religion just keep on believing in their fairy tales. Atheists and many other scientists are now in the uncomfortable position of either accepting the new results from science or being like the old authorities of the Catholic Church who persecuted Galileo. What will they do? The first reaction people have to a crisis like this is denial. The next reaction is anger. It will be years before people can accept the new perspective. Some never will.

The block world has more interesting implications. Before the Creator could make anything of course It would have to do some planning. For the creation of the universe from the block world perspective you can use the analogy that creating the universe must be like writing and publishing a book. Suppose you're writing a novel about a person named John. Suppose John does not have a car in chapter 1. At the beginning of chapter 3 John wrecks his car. This means that somehow or other John acquired a car in chapter 2. Notice then that what happens in chapter 3 has an effect on what happens in chapter 2. If we're reading chapter 2 and we call that "the present" then what happens in the future in chapter 3 has an effect on the present in chapter 2. Normally people think that what happens now can only affect the future but here we see that the future can affect the present and the past. (Physicists call this type of effect backward causation.) Of course a whole lot of details like this must be worked out before the writer of a book is done with the book. Only after all the details have been straightened out can the book be published and made real for people to read. For the Creator of the universe our whole universe has to be planned before it is created.

The powerful intelligence isn't just placing matter at specified locations. It is designing lives. For instance there is the well-known composer Ludwig von Beethoven. In 1826 he was a great composer, but then to be a great composer in 1826 you have to be a pretty great composer in 1825, almost as good in 1824 and so on, back in time to the point where Beethoven the child first hears music from a piano. At that time the child Beethoven has to fall in love with the piano so he can do what it takes to become the great composer he will be in the future. Some person had to be prepared to be Beethoven's piano teacher and that person needed a teacher as well. Beethoven's love for music and his talent for music is actually a gift.

There are other examples of designing lives as well. From time to time wars happen on Earth. One side wins and the other other side loses. The outcome was chosen in advance so that the matter could all be placed in the right places at the right time. This means that for the generals involved in fighting the war the winner will have to make the right choices and have all the right resources to win the war and the loser will have to make one or more wrong choices and/or not have all the right resources needed to win. So it follows that some of our decisions now are based on what will happen in the future. (Recall that physics seems to tell us that the tiny sub-atomic particles also know the future.) The great intelligence then appears to be a source (maybe THE source) for intuition, inspiration, talent and "luck". For a less violent example say there is a person with a lot of money they want to invest in the stock market. If in the future the person is going to be rich then in the present the person will "have a gut feeling" or a "hunch" to buy a particular stock that later on will skyrocket in value. The gut feeling and the subsequent fortune that is made are once again gifts. Of course, if in the future the person is supposed to be poor the person will get a gut feeling to buy a particular stock that crashes! Since the pursuit of money just for the sake of money is an empty thing the person who loses all that money may be getting the gift of understanding that trusting in money is not a good idea. In other cases some people will be given the gift of hitting 60+ home runs in a year. Another will be given the gift of making the winning touchdown in a Super Bowl. Other people will be given the gifts of intelligence, curiousity, free time and education necessary to get Nobel Prizes for "their" great discoveries, discoveries they were set up to make from the very beginning. Many people get better gifts than riches, intelligence and Nobel Prizes, they get a loving family. Some people might say they don't get any gifts at all.

One other thought on gifts. I was at Millennium Park in Chicago for a wonderful free evening concert by the Grant Park Symphony playing Beethoven's Symphony #9, Ode to Joy. And I was thinking, who provided all the big tall buildings that are so beautiful? Who provided the park itself? Who provided the stage? Who provided Beethoven and his music? Who gave me the time and the opportunity to go there? From today's conventional perspective on the world you would say that people did all these things. However once you understand the new perspective from the Haunted Mansion you realize that people - and you - did not do all these things, the Creator of the universe ultimately did all these things by inspiring people and providing the funding. While the people putting all these good things together can be thankful for these good things they actually have no reason at all to be proud of what they've done because ultimately it wasn't their doing, the Creator wrote all this into the script. This new perspective on the universe is humbling. Yet it is also comforting because now we know that things are under control.

As Science marched on the early human idea that the world was created by a God or gods was discredited for a while but now the results of modern physics take us right back to the idea that there is a spiritual world with a God or gods who are responsible for creating this world. The physics does not tell us who created it and why. As far as the science goes you do have a choice of gods. The next item to think about then is to wonder why this great intelligence created this world. We will start by looking at the problem of free will.

Free will is a big reason why physicists have been reluctant to embrace the new perspective of the world that we have from modern physics. People think they are free but the physics says they are not. These people are exactly right, IF people are composed of just matter. For instance here is what Professor James F. Woodward says at the end of his Killing Time article concerning the results of modern physics:

The almost universal reaction I have found to the irrelevance of "free will" entailed by the physics presented here is: "If the future already objectively exists, why should I bother to do anything about it [exercise judgment and discretion in my actions]? It will happen however it already is anyway." The exception to this response is that of lawyers, who see a novel defense ploy in claiming non-responsibility due to the inevitability of reality. ["I couldn't help it; it was my fate. The laws of physics are responsible for my actions."] Does the inevitability of the future absolve us of responsibility for our actions? Of course not. Should we all stop striving to secure whatever future we want, because the future that will occur objectively already exists? No. What we are -- past, present and future -- is our choices. Choices, however, that in some real sense we have already made. Sounds positively Calvinistic, doesn't it?

The fact is though that it is only the placement of matter that is fixed, but if people have a soul, something not made of matter, the soul can still allow a person to be free. One good argument for the existence of a soul is that it is what is moving through the block world and this makes it look like things in the block world are moving around. Then if you think you are free then your freedom is actually another argument that people really do have a spiritual part or soul, something that is radically different from matter.

Now if you choose to assume that the conclusion is that the world is fixed and there is no free will you can stop there. Well, almost stop there. You do need to explain a few details. If the Creator's purpose was to, say, simply do an artwork that it could admire for all eternity you'd have to say it failed at certain places. There are many beautiful features of this world, there are animals, plants, flowers, butterflies, sunsets, beautiful beaches and mountains with snow on them that are indeed worth looking at for a while. There are inspiring human stories of people overcoming terrible situations and living fairly happily ever after. But there is also a lot of ugliness in this world too. There's death. There are diseases that make people suffer a lot before they die. There are people hating and killing each other. There are a great number of natural disasters. Why is there so much pain and suffering? Why doesn't that super intelligence care about us? I suppose someone could just answer that the great intelligence in creating the world was simply "writing a book" or "painting a painting" to amuse itself and that would be the end of it.

Or something more could be going on. When a person goes and writes a book it is not normally just for themselves, normally it is for other people to read and enjoy and perhaps learn from. Of course the Biblical answer is that God created people to have fellowship with Him for all eternity but that all people here reject Him at least to start with. His purpose for this world is then to teach us about God and ourselves and to give us a chance to choose to have fellowship with Him or to go off on our own and do our own thing. You know if God is really a nice guy and He cares about us (and He should be a nice guy and care about us, right?) He's got an awful lot of explaining to do. And the God of the Bible does exactly that in the Bible. This is the definitive source about God and life on Earth. It tells what God is like and why things are so bad here on Earth. It provides comfort for people who are suffering. It tells us how to behave. Plus there is proof that this source is reliable. The proof comes in the prophecies that are found in the Bible, many have already been fulfilled and there are many others that closely describe the world of the present and what will be coming soon. And remember there is no other source that does all this, and all of this should be done if God is out there and He really is a nice guy.

The details of what the God of the Bible is up to is a long story and the answers come up in the following chapters. Before looking into that let's take a brief look and see what the God of the Bible has to say about His creation of the world and whether or not it matches up with the results of modern physics. One of the nicest indications of superdeterminism comes from Psalm 139:16 where King David says:

You saw me before I was born and scheduled each day of my life before I began to breathe. Every day was recorded in your Book!

The Lord gave me a message. He said, "I knew you before I formed you in your mother's womb. Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as my spokesman to the world."

15 But even before I was born, God chose me and called me by his marvelous grace. ...

4 Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. 5 God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.

So here we see that EVERYTHING was planned in advance before the world was even made and this is consistent with how creation in the block world takes place. In verse 2:10 we have:

It is God himself who has made us what we are and given us new lives from Christ Jesus; and long ages ago he planned that we should spend these lives in helping others.

Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before God made anything at all and is supreme over all creation. Christ is the one through whom God created everything in heaven and earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can't see - kings, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities. Everything has been created through him and for him. He existed before everything else began, and he holds all creation together.

God chose him for this purpose long before the world began, but now in these final days, he was sent to the earth for all to see. And he did this for you.

From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand when they should rise and fall, and he determined their boundaries.

... But all your feverish plans are to no avail because you never ask God for help. He is the one who planned this long ago.

For God saved us and called us to live a holy life. He did this, not because we deserved it, but because that was his plan from before the beginning of time - to show us his grace through Christ Jesus.

This truth gives them confidence that they have eternal life, which God - who does not lie - promised them before the world began.

Another feature of the Bible is that God tells us what will happen in the future as it says here in Romans 4:17 where we have:

... [God] speaks of future events with as much certainty as though they were already past.

The Bible has some extra additional comments that are important. In places God tells us what happened long ago, so long ago that there were no human beings around such as the account of creation in Genesis 1.

To summarize, this new view of the world that we get from modern science is telling us that our view of the world called presentism is false. Instead, past, present and future all exist at once as a sort of block of everything, the block universe or the block world. The idea is also called super-determinism. It also follows that there is a spiritual realm "out there" outside the physical universe and that spiritual world has at least one great and powerful intelligence in it. There is evidence that the great and powerful intelligence is the God of the Bible. It suggests that if you think you're free it is only because you have a soul or spirit and it tells us how God can know the future. In the next chapters we will be looking at what the God of the Bible is up to, why He created the world, why He created us and why the world is such a mess. Strictly speaking the science only tells us there is a Creator, people can still go around debating Who the Creator is and what He is up to and in a later chapter we will look at the major alternatives to Christianity and show that they don't really make sense.