This post is a material demonstration to support arguments presented in Apostate Cosmology. The general thesis there, and underlying much of my work, is ‘If God is, and is both the creator and continuing sustainer of the cosmos, we must be able to see His presence in material observation and contemplation’; we should see then metaphysical—or pre-material—affects—forces or substances—for the physical effects we see about us. The following section is from my book The Restoration. In this demonstration I prove that Space and Time are a metaphysical substance of material being. The book has very limited distribution so far. I have not made it available online, and have only shared some personally handbound copies to a few people. The work on this blog is to promote interest in my ideas. Which though I understand are singular, are also of sound reason, and mean to restore natural philosophical contemplation to the tradition of the great Saints of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. I, though, am a sinner unworthy of the company of men of such faith, and depend for all I am and do upon the patient grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who along with the Father and the Holy Spirit are one God now and for ever, Amen.
Space implies time, as it implies movement, and not mere extension. We can imagine a cube of some set expression of substance, a salt crystal, say. Our cube is extended, it occupies a space that could be defined as a particular scaled volume, but is it fixed in time? Can it be? We know from molecular and atomic theory that expressions of material substance require time as an essence of their being. We cannot understand something even as rigid as a crystalline molecular structure as ‘timeless’, frozen in a static state. If our knowledge of atomic and subatomic organisation is even somewhat like the truth, then the idea of any extended substance as timeless in its being is quite impossible, for the very bonds of its being act through time, even a still object is in ‘motion’. So, our salt cube can only exist in space and not simply in a frozen state of its own extension. That is, it seems it cannot be the cause of the space it needs to hold its extension, but that it depends on an underlying space-state, or condition of Being for its own being, as its very existence implies time through the movement of its molecular parts. Space must then be ‘extension through time’. As different molecular objects pulse or orbit at different rates, and yet coexist without contradiction, an underlying Spacetime state is implied. I will examine atomic and molecular structures in ore detail in time. Here we simply assume what is given by the current orthodoxy.
Let’s consider another example. We can artificially change the mass volume of a substance in a given space by either compression or rarefication. And this happens in nature as soil compresses over time, or as we go up in the atmosphere and the air thins. Since air is an easy substance to conceptualise through these transformations, we will use it for our next thought experiment. Though it is a mixture of gases, we will consider air as a single substance in our demonstration. We have two conditions to consider, one where we are compressing the air in a chamber, and one where we are reducing the air volume. In both cases we have a means of changing the mass volume of air in the chamber by a pump and a seal against leak. We will take the resting air
pressure around our chambers as 15 lb per square inch. We will say that our chambers are each 1 cubic foot and will define that space as 1 Standard Air Unit (SAU). Air pressure is non-linear as it changes up and down in volume in the chamber, but we do not need to confuse things with such detail. We will keep our discussion as simple as possible. Let’s say our compressor doubles our air volume such that we have 2 SAU in that chamber. And let’s say we achieve half the standard volume, or .5 SAU, in our vacuum chamber.
We have no reason to assume there has been a change in the ‘space’ of either chamber. In fact, we assume it remains the same, and that this is a causal condition of both the compression and the rarefication. That is, the chamber defines the space and is sufficiently strong to maintain the pressure difference with the surrounding air. If we open the seal, we will find that the air pressure will quickly balance itself to the surrounding 15 lbs/square inch—nature abhors a vacuum. The basic conclusion we can draw here is that space is not identical with the extension of material substance. That is, we can, perhaps, have space without stuff, but certainly not stuff without space. Yet, as space cannot occupy its own place empty unless there is absolutely nothing in existence, it seems to coexist with matter, or even exists for the sake of matter.
Space is the primary thing, but not much can happen in it without the constant Becoming of Time, and neither Space nor Time exists for itself but does so to provide the necessary conditions for Matter to be, move, and transform continually.
So, we live in a coexistent triune state for material being:
1. We have Space as extension, the house of all Being.
2. We have Time the continuous Becoming of all Being. And,
3. We have material substance in Space through Time: Matter which is and is continually becoming.
We can see the coexistence of the blessed Trinity in these three material elements:
1. The provisional Father holding all possibility open.
2. The animating Spirit allowing all things to transform without compulsion.
3. The incarnate Son, manifest in the material world.
Each physical condition is understandable as a state of being in its own right, but each is inconceivable without the others. I do not mean to imply pantheism here. The Word-Son has a presence in Matter different than His personal presence in Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, as the Church has always taught. The point here is to show the mysterious nature even of material being. We are, by the naturalistic worldview encouraged to see matter as mundane, the kind of thing that just happens. Yet, when we contemplate Space, Matter, and Time as we have above, we have a mystery as confounding as the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Though we would never doubt the existence of the material world! I realise only as I edit this that I have been biasing my presentation in the order Space, Time, and Matter because this matches the orthodox physics of Spacetime and matter. Yet, Space, Matter, and Time matches the Church formulation Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So we have Space as the progenitor of Matter and then Time proceeding from them both, as Space allows for material movement through its governance, and Matter not only makes gross movements through Space, but transforms in many ways, both chemically and mechanically of itself. Whether the reader likes my triune mystical physics or not, It is not necessary to realise the interdependent coexistence of Space, Time, and Matter. Consider though that there are just three essential conditions for material being, and two, Space and Time, are not material at all. And Matter is far more metaphysical in its conceptual structure than materialists like to admit.
We have come to a big conclusion by a few examples, primarily that of air compression and rarefication. There was much to learn through this example about Space, and Time was certainly implied by the movement of the air in and out of the chambers. We made a case for the metaphysical entity Space-as-extension, but of course we can only create air compression or a vacuum over time. And we can only release these pressure differences over time as well, even the fixed states of pressure and vacuum take place through time. So, Time must be implied in the metaphysical being of Space. For unless both states of being are the structures in which matter moves, then matter cannot move. Otherwise, we need to imagine that each particle of material substance physically implies the space it occupies and carries in itself the ability to perpetuate its own existence forward through its transformations, and this through space and time that it has not yet occupied. This seems a most absurd state of things, especially from the hard materialist view where all these accidentally becoming bits of matter should also be accidentally and universally imbued with such power, without exception or contradiction.
Time is a thing we can conceive of as a non-identical coexistent being with space-as-extension, for we can imagine an object, even a line, existing as a frozen extended thing. And only by time, or becoming, can we have a point move along that line at the rate of 2 ft per second:
Extension itself does not make this motion possible, nor does the point provide the being of its location or motion. Let’s look at a more complex real-life example to illustrate this.
Projectiles
When a ball is thrown through the air it follows a fixed parabolic arc based on the angle and velocity of its throw, known as its vector. A heavier ball will require more force to reach the same velocity as a lighter one. Yet, once in motion at the same vector, a 10 lb ball will tell the same physical tale as a 100 lb one. Only air resistance and wind will tend to make it so the 10 lb ball travels less distance than the 100 lb one in still air and against a headwind, and somewhat farther in a good tailwind, but these variable conditions only confirm our space-time hypothesis. This state of projectiles is the orthodox position, and I concur because it is known by direct observation.
The reason for this is by the Law of the Conservation of Momentum: ‘An object in motion remains in motion unless acted on by an outside force’. In truth, the only outside force that stops our ball’s flight is the overwhelming material resistance of Earth at impact. Earth’s Intention (what is usually called gravity) redirects the vertical location of the ball, but has no effect on the horizontal, or range velocity. And while it effects the vertical location of the ball, the Intention overwhelms the initial vertical portion of the vector over time, rather than depleting it; The ball still travels ‘up’ the same distance each time interval, only its downward motion increases each interval exponentially.
The following projectile geometry holds true and is uncontroversial. The continuous straight vector of our ball is implied at each time interval. That is, in free space, not under the influence of Earth Intention, the ball would follow that path indefinitely. It is quite mysterious to see that the fall formula we have been looking at calculates the ball’s location by where it should be in free space based solely on its initial vector, and not from its previous time iteration. Is this what we would expect from a physical force? A physical force could follow this arc in free space, but only through mimicry. It would have to adjust the force of its intention on a continuum mass to mass in order to scribe the same arc that the earth’s intention (gravity) scribes for all objects by a single constant and continuous motive.
Projectile vector geometry
I have gotten a bit ahead of myself by suddenly introducing Earth Intention, I will demonstrate this re-conception of gravity in time. Let’s first consider the movement of the ball in its own right or, more to the point, in its dependency upon the metaphysical container of its being and becoming. The ball can no more ensure of itself that there is space before it to move through than that there is time to move into. The ball displaces the air it moves through because they both occupy a space which allows for the free movement of objects within, such that by force one object can replace another’s location with only the physical properties of mass, momentum, and the material composition of each considered. Space and Time do not offer any resistance to this movement and interaction; they only make free provision for the being and becoming of the ball over its parabolic path. We see the motive-will of the ball easily overwhelm the air molecules in its path. We know that a ball projected through the air produces both compression and rarefication in the air it passes through, compression on the lead side of the ball and a lower pressure or volume of air on the hind side. This would not be possible if each particular unit of matter was responsible for its own space. Even at the relatively fine resolution of air molecules, if each contained its own ‘space’, how could it move into the location of another molecule’s space? Without a universal underlying space-time state the material world would be in permanent gridlock. Hence, Space and Time offer Matter all the freedom for being and becoming without hindrance, except in the case of Earth’s Intention, as we have seen. In this way, we see a context for freewill in the very physical being of material things.
I make some concluding comments after the above entry from ‘The Restoration’ on Space Time and Matter. We need to see that there are two principle means of accounting for the materialist assertion. By the dominant school we have atheistic materialism: the cosmos is spontaneously autogenetic, there is no conscious wisdom behind or within material being or organisation in the cosmos. By this account Space Time and Matter must come into being together, all at once, though myriad individual instances of becoming, and each atom must come into existence in full agreement with, and by the same principles as all other atoms. Within this understanding we must also have Spacetime come to be, either as an emergent property, which we have already seen the folly of, or as a separate metaphysical container for the sake of material being and transformation. This accidental and absolutely necessary convenience is so improbable, without divine intention, as to be impossible. Of course men are free to believe in a spontaneously generated universe. Saints Athanasius, Basil, Gregory, and John of Damascus all dealt with the absurdity of the spontaneous autogenerated universe in their own age. Only, we have been led to believe that this speculation (hypothesis is too good a word for it!) has had new justification through Enlightenment naturalism. I have only dealt with one aspect of material being here, yet, we found that the very conditions of material being are too conceptual to be convincingly of atheistic origin. If I have not convinced any atheists to change their thinking by this, I hope at least to have encouraged Christians in their faith in the one true Triune God in whom we live and move and have our being.