Yes. And in fact in the generally accepted understanding of the origins of the cosmos is, as others have pointed out , similar to the "solution" to the problem of God-as-Creator (what was God doing before he created the universe? Why did he decide to do it then? etc.) given by Augustine: god exists outside of time.
I think the challenge is that when someone gives a description of the divine as that of timelessness, which is a valid description of it, if it is then taken as a definition of God and applied to arguments of physics it changes the nature of it from something apprehended interiorly to an externalized object in a scientific sense. In other words valid descriptions of the experience of God become distorted by reducing God to an object, a "cause" outside effects, or "outside time".
I think to say God exists "outside time" is valid, but to say that is "where" God exists is invalid. For God to be God it is everywhere and nowhere. It is not a positional "outside". Nor is it a positional "inside". It is both and neither. It excludes nothing, nor is defined by anything. It is
nondual. God is not a cause in the sense of cause and effect in a linear, or in downward causation or retro-causation of effect preceding cause, as it makes the effect
outside God. It all really comes down to language, and language itself limits what we are in fact able to conceptualize simply because we take these models of reality as actual reality and our brains don't allow in what doesn't fit it conceptually. Dualistic language separating subject from object to speak about God in any sense as either inside or outside anything makes God an impossibility. But in reality when someone cries, "It's not possible!", aren't they really saying it just simply doesn't fit into what the models of reality constructed by their dualistic languages will allow? To say, "I can't conceptualize that", is accurate versus saying "It's not possible".
And that was my point about metaphor. It doesn't define it, which is what people do so often when confronted with metaphors attempting to express paradoxes. Their linear minds cannot allow metaphor, it cannot allow the dualistic modes of thought to be transcended even for a moment. It is as someone expressed well, "Poetry is turned into prose, truth into statistics, understanding into facts, education into note-taking, art into criticism, symbols into signs, faith into beliefs.". The problem isn't God, the problem is believing reality is only valid if we can
conceptualize it, fit it into our current models. And trying to take what I hear as metaphor of "Uncaused Cause" (which is a paradoxical statement), into part of a formula, into part of a linear, dualistic model, misses the boat entirely. It's metaphor. God understood in terms of linear models is a caricature of reality.
Hell, the same is even true of using scientific models. Drawing a line connecting dots laid out on a page hardly reflects the true reality of what is being mapped out. Maps are not the actuality of the thing, and can easily be redrawn another way. Even the terms of science itself are metaphors. They are not the thing itself, but drawings, facades placed upon that which transcends understanding. To me the whole problem lays in people trying to understand reality as something outside themselves, something external to them, be that the world itself, or be that ultimate reality we typically call God.
We have to deal with acausalities on a regular basis. The standard example is particles which appear out of nowhere all of the time (and which then vanish without a trace as well). The main issue, though, is that all causal models somehow invoke directionality (which, for convenience, I will simply call "time"). Causes must precede effects, effects must come after causes, etc. Without time, our entire conception of causation goes out the window. Whatever terms might be appropriate to refer to the act of creation, or evidence/reasons for supposing god created the cosmos, or the state in which the universe was not, or in general the emergence of the universe, "cause" is at best highly problematic and at worse just meaningless.
Agreed.
I think we are all, more or less, stuck in a way of thought somewhat similar to what I described. Tense is intrinsic to language in a variety of ways, we conceptualize things as unfolding in space and time (particularly causation), and here we are dealing wit a reality unlike anything we can experience or picture. The problem, however, isn't so much with the conception of causality (even the linear, naïve one, although I take issue with such a conception or other reasons). It's with the double-dipping. If one wants to point to evidence in physics that the universe is not past-time eternal (that it "began" in some sense) as evidence for god, they can't then point to "first cause" arguments which are incompatible with the big bang scenario as described in the actual physics that is pointed to as evidence.
Well, I certainly do agree. I like what you say about double-dipping. There is a certain hypocrisy that occurs where they want God to be "outside" science, but then turn around and use God to explain science.
It's not just in this area but many I see those in religion struggling to take what are inherently metaphorical expressions, or simply naive models of the past if they weren't capable of understanding metaphor and try to make them fit into and compete in the arena of scientific inquiry. They are either flattening metaphor into facts, or are arguing for out-dated models of inquiry excused under the guise of "divine revelation". What you are demonstrating correctly is how that fails. Again, I agree.
In short, either one can appeal to "first cause"-type arguments, or one can point to the evidence from physics in the form of the big bang, but not both. The latter involves a scenario in which the entire causal change as an origin point beyond which no causal chain can reach. I'm not even saying that the universe must be uncaused (I'm not even contending here that we don't need a creator to explain it), simply that if one appeals to the big bang as evidence, one must describe the need for a "cause" in a sufficiently nuanced manner that is unlike anything found in "first cause"-type arguments.
I would say a third alternative is to not mistake how we describe reality as actually defining reality, be that the natural world through eye of rational thought, or the examining the nature ultimate reality or ultimate being through the eye spiritual awareness. Anything put into words changes the reality of it to us, infusing it into the word-sign we ascribe to it, if we allow ourselves to look to that alone as authoritative to tell of the truth of ourselves. We end up living on the surface of maps, rather than touching the actual soil with our feet.
