The Science of God - how a lover of physics found the truth in Christianity

Chapter 9

Now that we (almost) have a grasp on the theory of time as non-linear. let's investigate some other possibilities. It's no secret that the debate between Christians and scientists over the age of the Earth has been a major source of contention. Is the Earth billions of years old or thousands?

If you've read this far, then you've probably got a good idea where I'm going with this. The time unit of a "year" is linear, as is a second, a minute, a week, a month, etc. So when we say a billion years, we're talking about a billion years as we understand that measurement from our linear-time perspective. Assuming we can imagine such a number at all.

But what if we remove the linear unit? If time is made up of multiple dimensions, then we cannot even use the unit of a year any longer. It would be like trying to measure the volume of a box in linear inches. How many inches is that box? Well...I don't know. I can measure it once and give you that answer, but that would be incorrect, right? Simply measuring the side or all six sides will only give me a linear total. I can't measure a box with 10 inch sides and inform you that it is 60 inches. Try that on a math test.

So use the same logic with time. Can we have time squared or time cubed? Or how about time to the power of one trillion. Okay, I'll back down. I loved calculus, but this is giving me a headache. Let's stick with a cube.

If you took your ten inch sided box and calculated the volume, you'd get 1000 cubic inches (10x10x10). Each one inch layer would contain 100 cubic inches. What happens if we number them? Cube 1 would start in the bottom corner, and then we'd just number them is some meaningful sequence. What happens? Cube #1 is right next to cube #2, but it is also right next to cube #101. In fact, it's closer to cube #201 than it is to cube #6.

Got it? Simple enough, right?

So what happens when we apply the same principle to time? We use years cubed as our unit of measurement. Year #1 is next to year #2, but it also next to year #3,013,584,308,551. Here comes that headache again.

But don't overthink it (if possible). Imagine. yourself outside the limitations of linear time. You can look in and see these little time cubes in what appears to be random order. No doubt they are not random, but since we are probably not talking years cubed, but years to some near infinite power, then the geometric design will look random. If you like codes, you understand. Numbers and letters can seem random as well if you don't know the code.

So when we discuss the age of the Earth, we limit ourselves to the use of linear time. Again, imagine measuring a box if you can only use linear inches (inches to the first power). If you were to do that, the answer could easily measure in the millions, depending on your patience. What if are attempting to measure time under that same restriction? I submit to you that is exactly what we're doing. But, since we are trapped in this single dimension of time, we have no way of "seeing the box."

Next time I'll talk about the Big Bang, black holes, and the effects of gravity on the length of a second. Now go take a Tylenol.