I was reading Bill Bryson's 2003 A Short History of Nearly Everything recently.
He explains early on in the book that to say the 'Big Bang' occurred 'in' space or 'early / prior in time' is a confused statement. Rather, the big bang created space and time, and space expanded as the big bang did, 'filling' it along the way. Unfortunately the book is downstairs in my cold car, and I am upstairs in my warm bed, so I can't quote the book exactly for clarity.
Luckily, another scientific article on the web articulates the same idea:
"According to modern cosmological theory...the big bang did not occur somewhere in space; it occupied the whole of space. Indeed, it created space...Space is itself infinitely elastic; it is not expanding into anything."
It reminds me of when Nick Land, in some New Center for Research and Practice lecture, reminded his class that 'there is no time in time,' and that to say as much is to contradict Kant and commit a 'transcendental error.' He is referencing the fact that for Kant, space and time are categorical intuitions that without which we could not think or experience anything.
What stuck with me here is that space expanded at the same time this imperceptible singularity event did. The event grew its own space to fill. Self-generated its own sandbox to mess around in.
Reading this description in Bryson's book trigged a sort of flashback.
It's nearly 9 years ago in my first year of undegrad. My philosophy teacher - a really cool progressive Rabbi who wrote a two volume dissertation on Nietzsche, who first introduced me to Kant by suggesting I read Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics for summer reading, and who would go on to teach me everything from Anselm and Maimonides, to Nietzsche, to Jewish Mysticism etc., - is teaching us the below problem:
“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”
This is known as Epicurus' trilemma.
It is in part predicated on the problem of free will.
Malevolence and omnipotence can be summed together as omniscience - all knowingness. Epicurus' argument here is 'If God knows someone is going to do something bad, why doesn't he stop it?' So, in other words, how can God be omnipotent and malevolent and still allow bad things.
So it's a question of 'How can we solve the problem of God knowing of human's evil deeds?'
My answer was that most if not all - including Epicurus' here - understandings of God's omniscience are predicated on the assumption of God knowing in advance the things that occur, and that if we instead assume God knows all things not in advance, but only as they occur in real time, then this trilemma is solved.
That is, God is all knowing - he knows all things the very second they occur - because you cannot know what does not yet exist; you cannot know virtual but unrealized aspects of a process. God knows becomings, and processes of becomings, he does not have advance knowledge of static beings. Like a security guard who watches many videofeeds from many cameras - he knows of things as they occur, but not in advance.
I illustrated this for my professor as a circle emanating outwards. The outer edge of the circle signifies the point at which both the human and God continually gain knowledge at the same time. The significance of the circle is that the area it covers as it expands is equal and infinite. As new becomings continually emerge, so does God's knowledge, in real time. Like ripples on the surface of a lake, emanating outwards. The circle captures unity, and removes temporal linearity, opens up multi-directionality, etc.
Not unlike the modern cosmology of the Big Bang that created its own space while occupying that space with 'substance' at the same time, my circular 'God' is the becomings of the universe manifest in the bodies of the world becoming aware of themselves as they occur in that singular moment.
"That's kinda like our friend Whitehead's theory of God" my professor cheerfully responded (thus starting my intrigue into Whitehead).
I've read most of his works and still don't know where this shows up, and I can't remember what he told me years ago, but I believe him.
In this rough sketch of God there are abundant connections to Deleuze and Guattari's Body Without Organs, Deleuze's interpretation of Nietzsche, or Nietzsche's own eternal return of the same, Kabbalah, the CCRU and Accelerationism, etc. which are all recapitulated nicely in Liturgy's theological conceptualizations (she can be found applying the numogram and attending old New Center for Research and Practice lectures).
I wonder if someone else will - or has already - make these connections...
Anyways, I end with this:
To know everything is not necessarily to know in advance, but to know that immanent, single moment as it unfolds. To the let the immanent and singular know itself.
