Introduction to the Blockworld for Christians

There is an important result from modern physics that Christians and others really need to be aware of. It's been "hidden" for a long time for various reasons but it is now popping up more and more in scientific and philosophical books and journals. This important result does many things that are important for Christians. It gives you the best ever proof for the existence of God and a human soul. It gives you the best ever interpretation of Genesis chapter 1. Plus, currently the world has an understanding of the world that comes from 19th century science where everything that happens in the world happens by random chance as particles move around. It's random chance that produces the first cell. It's random chance that creates higher forms of life by evolution. It's random chance that makes some people poor and some people rich. With this 19th century understanding of the world it looks like humans can go around fixing absolutely everything in the world without God. This result from modern (20th century) physics shows that nothing is happening at random and God has a plan for everyone in the entire world. Promoting this new view of the world can therefore really turn the world's beliefs and culture around.

To start with, it is pretty common for Christians to say that God has a "God's eye view" of all of creation. That is, God sees the future that to Him is already out there. Also, God sees the past that we think has gone away. The future and past are as real to Him as the present is to us. Christians SOMETIMES apply this perspective to their interpretation of the Bible, such as when they say that God knows all about your future sins and He has already forgiven all of them. They don't always apply this perspective at other times, such as when they interpret the creation story in Genesis 1. Instead, Christians typically use the idea of what philosophers call presentism when interpreting the Bible. In presentism, only the present exists, the past is gone and the future is not out there yet.

In physics, there is the revolutionary idea that the universe is a block universe. In a block universe, everything, the past, the present and the future all exist and they are all equally real. We can't see the past and the future the way God can, but even so, physics tells us that they're still there even if we can't see them. This idea from physics is actually over 100 years old but it has only recently been getting more attention. The original idea comes from the physicist and mathematician, Hermann Minkowski and the idea shows up in Einstein's special and general relativity. In philosophy, the idea is called eternalism and it goes back to the old Greek philosopher, Parmenides of Elea. The whole universe is frozen in place forever. Nothing moves, nothing ever changes. We think things are moving around because our consciousness is moving through the block universe to see what God has put there.

Getting to the block universe result from a scientific approach is fairly painful for non-scientists but then there are easy ways to describe the results and thereby come to a better understanding of what is going on. So, first, consider an amusement park ride such as the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyworld. The whole ride was built in advance. When you start out at the beginning of the ride everything you are going to see in the future is already out there. It has all been prepared for you. Then when you are halfway through the ride, the part you have already seen is still there, just like the past of our real world is still there. And when you finish the whole ride, the whole past of the ride is still there and it is the same as when you started your ride.

For another analogy, there is a physicist in the UK, Edgar Andrews, who has written a very nice, very entertaining, down-to-earth book called Who Made God?: Searching for a Theory of Everything. In chapter 8 he says this:

This implies, of course, the intriguing concept that all time still exists. In the three dimensions of space, I can travel from London to Manchester and onwards to Glasgow. In terms of my experience, once I reach Manchester, London lies in the past and Glasgow in the future. But this doesn't mean that London has stopped existing or that Glasgow is still a green-field site. So with time. The fact that we are confined to 'now' and can visit neither yesterday nor tomorrow, doesn't mean that yesterday has ceased to exist or tomorrow doesn't yet exist. It is, in fact, one of the inevitable conclusions of relativity theory that the whole of space-time must have a real and continuing existence - regardless of our perception of time as being divided into past, present and future. If you doubt my word, physicist Brian Greene sets out detailed arguments to prove this and concludes: 'Just as we envision all of space as really existing, we should also envision all of time as really being out there, as really existing, too' (his italics). The biblical idea that God surveys all time is therefore predictive of what has only recently become apparent to science. ¹

I would say, however, that this result has been apparent to science for over 100 years, so it is not really recent. But of course it has only recently started to get the attention it deserves. Notice that his trip around the UK is the equivalent of my Haunted Mansion ride.

There are more analogies that apply. There is the analogy of reading a book. First, the author has to prepare the entire book in advance and when all the details have been taken care of, the book is published. When a reader picks up the book and starts reading at chapter 1, the whole future is out there ahead of the reader. As you move through the book, going page by page, the page you are reading now is the present, the pages you have read are in the past and the pages you haven't read yet are still there in the future.

Another analogy that applies is that the block universe is like a movie. The movie has all been prepared in advance. As you watch the movie, the place you are at now is the present, the frames of the movie that you've seen are in the past and the future frames are still out there in the future. In an animated movie, the artist needed to prepare a series of images on film. Each frame in the series is slightly different so that when you view the film it looks like things are slowly, but continuously, moving around. Also, when making a movie, you have to do quite a lot of planning in advance before you start filming. You have come up with a script and then pick the right actors for each role. The script needs to make sense. So, for example, if at the beginning of the movie, the character, John, does not have a car and a little later in the movie John drives his car off a cliff. Before you get to the part where he wrecks the car, he somehow has to get a car. You have to decide if he steals it, or buys it, or rents it, or borrows it, or someone gives it to him as a gift. In murder mysteries you have to have scenes at the beginning of the movie where clues are presented that are used to solve the case at the end of the movie. When producing the script for the movie, perhaps in the middle of the movie, you must arrange for the murderer to try to cover-up some detail of the murder and it's the attempt at a cover-up that gives the chief detective the clue necessary to solve the case in the end.

If you think the block universe is crazy, I have an article: Science Points to the Block Universe that links to web pages, articles, books and videos where well-known physicists will tell you the block universe is for real.

It turns out this "new" block universe idea from modern physics shows up quite nicely in the Bible, so the Bible had it right long before science came along. Just to show a few examples of this idea in the Bible I'll use a few quotes (from the New Living Translation (NLT), unless otherwise mentioned) to support the idea. First, one of the neatest quotes comes from psalm 139:16 where we have David saying:

16 You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.

This makes it quite clear that all of David's life was set in stone before he was born. Of course, it wasn't just David's life that was set before he was born, everyone's life was fixed before everyone was born. Your life was fixed before you were born and your personality, all your hopes, prayers, dreams and relationships with other people needed to be taken into account. Then, in Jeremiah 1:4-5 it says:

4 The Lord gave me this message: 5 "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 prophet to the nations."

From Galatians 1:15 we have the apostle Paul saying:

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

Then from Ephesians 1:4:

4 Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes.

From 2 Timothy 1:9 we have:

9 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.

In Isaiah 22, Isaiah is given a message from God for the people of Israel about an invasion that will be happening in the future, how terrible it will be and how the Israelites will respond:

11 ... But you never ask for help from the One who did all this. You never considered the One who planned this long ago.

Here in Psalm 148:5-6 it mentions how everything that came into being will last forever and that's exactly what you would expect to see in a block universe:

5 Let every created thing give praise to the Lord, for he issued his command, and they came into being. 6 He set them in place forever and ever. His decree will never be revoked.

Here in Revelation 13:8, in Young's literal translation, and in many other translations, there is this phrase where it speaks of Christ as:

... the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

Or in other words, when the world was made, Christ's crucifixion was already present. There are many other statements in the Bible that also come from the idea of the block universe.

So, we're in a block universe, so when you read Genesis 1, you have to keep in mind that God is creating a block universe. What's been going on is that people have been interpreting the text from the standpoint of presentism and that's all wrong.

Then there is the matter of consciousness. With everything frozen in place forever, how are you going to produce consciousness? People who believe in presentism ASSUME that somehow or other particles moving around in your brain according to the laws of physics can produce consciousness. But in the block universe nothing is moving around, so how are you going to get such an effect? This is a great argument that consciousness has nothing to do with matter. Consciousness has to do with something outside the material universe, you know, something spiritual, like a soul.

In the world, especially in science, there are paradigm shifts. The old conception of the world fails to work, fails to properly explain things and a new conception of the world comes about. Getting people to believe the new paradigm is hard. For example, it was hard for people to accept the idea that the Earth was not flat. And it was hard for people to accept the idea that Earth was not at the center of the universe and that the Earth went around the sun instead of the sun went around the Earth. It was hard to accept that the continents moved. The block universe idea is the worst of them all. It will be very hard for people to get used to the block universe idea, especially in this day and age. In this day and age, people have accepted the 19th century view of the world that the world is simply three-dimensional and things are happening at random. And, because of this belief, it has become widely believed that mankind can make the world a better place through science, education and political action. This is today's politically correct position. The world needs a paradigm shift, a shift to understanding the block universe, a shift to the belief that things are not out of control, that there is a Creator in charge and there is a reason the world is the way it is.

1. Andrews, Edgar, Who Made God?: Searching for a Theory of Everything, EP Books, Faverdale North, Darlington, DL30PH, England, 2009. At Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product//0852347073 (accessed January 16, 2017). (I don't have a physical book so I can't give you a page number. In a Kindle, look around location 1761.)