Time and Creation — A.E. Wilder Smith

I'm not quite 95, but I do find this, that if you would be so kind, when I've finished the first lecture, just let me have a moment's pause in the jaw work, you see, so that I don't have to answer questions immediately after I've finished.

It takes away my strength for the second part, and my son-in-law telegraphed me after I'd had this operation on the brain, and said, you are now qualified to be Prime Minister of all Great Britain and Northern Ireland, because they've cut out half your brain.

So that's what I woke up to in the hospital when they'd done that. So if you'd be so kind afterwards, just let me have a pause for ten minutes, I'd be able to do better in the second half. I'll try my best for the first half for you, but let's just have a look at what God's Word says about the creation of life tonight, and its connection with time.

Creation, Humanity, and the Six Days

That's what is our subject tonight. God said, let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds. Cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth, according to their kinds. And it was so.

Thank you, the commentary was not necessary really. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, and the cattle according to their kinds, and everything that creeps upon the ground according to its kind.

And God saw that it was good. And he said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.

So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. And there was evening, and there was morning, a sixth day. There you've got the time reference in, just to keep you straight on that point.

Time, Creation, and Biblical Interpretation

Now, I want to talk tonight about the relationship of time to the creation of the universe. And we'll start on that with reference to the fact that one of the great divisions that has split, and is splitting Christian people today, is whether you can take the word of God at what it says, to be what it says.

When it says six days, does it mean, in secret, six ages, long eons of time, or does it mean six 24-hour days that God made the creation? I think, actually, that the question is ridiculous. Because, you see, God has made us by conceptual, conceptual thought.

I mean, when you are wanting to make anything, you sit down and make a concept of it in your mind, don't you? If you're going to write a story, you have an outline of the story that's going to be. And then you put that down in an ordered form.

But it's all formed in your brain, first of all. And you must remember that we're made in God's image. When we were made to think in God's image, we think in a very small way, in the same way that God does, in principle.

Now, I'm not saying that our thoughts reach his thoughts, because we know that our thoughts don't reach his thoughts, and our ways are not his ways, we know that. But it's a very, very faint image, what we do in our mind, as to what God has in mind.

Because God had us in mind at the start. Now, it's quite clear that the human mind is capable of thinking in time, one thought after another. We do that, don't we? But it's also capable, as I said last week, that the human mind can think without time.

I mentioned that Mozart could read through a score of music, Eine kleine Nachtmusik, or something like that, and it would take, say, two or three hours to play it through. But he could think it through in his mind, in a flash, and correct it.

You want to read those things in the Emperor's New Mind, by the mathematician Penrose. Well worth reading for every Christian person. He's not a Christian himself, I believe, but it's worth reading, because he's got some very good thoughts in that.

Now, what I want to do this evening is to show you that the idea that time can do this, make conceptual images in the way of creation, that that idea is simply for the birds. So we'll have a look at the nature of time, and I want you to learn this, if you'd be so kind.

Don't strive and argue with those who say that the Bible teaches that the earth and the universe is old, because it doesn't. But you've got to give a reason why you believe differently, and I'm going to give you the reasons tonight, because Christian thought, you know, is usually pretty reasonable when you get to the bottom of things.

What I'm going to do then is show you that the idea of God having done things in his eternal mind are above time, because God's mind is not governed by time, because he made time. He made it at the same time as he made matter.

You think what that means? They say, you know, that the Big Bang arose from a singularity. Do I need to explain what a singularity is? Does anybody not know what a singularity is? It doesn't cost any more if I explain what a singularity is, so thank you for...

I don't like bringing coals to Newcastle, if you know what I mean. Do you use that expression here? I don't suppose you do, do you? Well, it's like bringing... I've got another one. It's like bringing sunshine to California, you see, offering things that aren't necessary.

If I give explanations that aren't necessary, then you're bringing coals to Newcastle, because Newcastle is the town where all the coals come from in England, you see, and that's where the expression comes from.

So you don't want to feed people what they already know. Now, if you think, ladies and gentlemen, collect your thoughts just for a second, concentrate them. If you think God's mind is like God himself, my mind is an expression of myself, your mind is too.

Now, God is eternal. He's called in French, l 'Eternel, the Eternal One. Now, if he made us in eternity, how long do you think it took him to make us in eternity, in thought? Come along. How long do you think it took him?

You see, the question of time in God's mind is entirely beside the point. Anybody who gets stuck, the fishhook in his throat, you know, over time, is really showing he hasn't thought the thing through.

That's the real problem. So if we were made in God's mind, I should say that it might be a very long time, it might be a very short time. It was an eternal time, if you can say that. I know that I was made in God's image because he says so.

And I can't consider that eternal concepts, me, because I'm a concept, unfortunately, that that took time to make, because that was made right away back in the eternity of God the Father. Okay? So when he says that the first day was here, it really means, as far as I can see, because my mind, you see, is governed by the laws of time and space, it really means that he got the whole concept out of the whole universe, he took supra-time, above time, and outside time, and then the first day he put in the first concepts into the space and time he'd made.

If you want to read anything about that, read Isaac Newton. Isaac Newton is very good on that, although at some points he was a bit beside the mark, but never mind, he was a pioneer on that subject. So think of God in his eternal wisdom, devoid of time, which hadn't yet been made, because he made time with matter.

Think of him putting into time the thoughts of eternity, and he says he did it. The transfer of time into eternity, he says he did it in 24 hours. Well, I've got nothing against him creating his eternal thoughts in the space-time continuum in 24 hours.

There's nothing against that at all. He created it in time, after having made it in eternity, and put it there. Then the second day he came along and put the second batch of concepts into space and time, which he'd made, and there it was, it was very good.

Then he came along at the last and he put in his own image into space and time, that we could think and produce concepts such as he does in a very, very small way. And he says he did that on the sixth day.

Then he completed all his works, putting eternity into time. On the seventh day he rested from all his works. There's nothing wrong about that, is there? And yet you know when you say, I believe that God made the creation on our space-time continuum in six days, they think that you've come from the Flat Earth Company or something like that.

Because they don't really understand what the nature of the eternal God is, that's the reason. Even if you know Jesus, you won't understand that either. Now let's have a look at the first one. Can we have the first little picture?

Black Holes, Relativity, and the Nature of Time

I'm going to talk to you about some of Oppenheimer's work on the black hole, to show you what this time concept means. Now, we'll have to do some theoretical work, first of all, because this is not capable of being digested in concentrated form.

If you do, you'll get digestion, an acute digestion, which emerges as a headache. And I wouldn't like to give you a headache, you know, tonight for worlds, because I'd reduce your appetite for this very, very important subject.

And this is an absorbing subject, for which you should keep appetite, right to the end of your days. I'm still learning, and as I told you, I'm getting on for the 90s, you know, and still learning. Now look, this is the theoretical basis of understanding time, which they say, in billions of years, made the first E .O .Biont.

E .O .B .I .O .N .T. It's a fictitious word. It merely means the dawn living being. Nobody's ever seen one. But they say the first primeval being was an E .O .Biont. The first primitive, and then they haven't fixed themselves.

They used to say it was an amoeba, you see, but that was too definite. You can get caught if you say anything definite, you see. I don't want to get caught on these things, so I'm going to be perfectly honest with you.

They say that the first E .O .Biont, primitive being, arose by time, without defining it, working on a primeval soup, Fox and Miller. The primeval soup was made by passing an electric discharge through ammonia, methane, and water, steam.

And then the amino acids, one or two of the twenty of which part of our body is made, were formed by the interaction of time on that awful primeval soup. Nobody's ever seen the primeval soup. There's no geological evidence for it whatsoever.

But that's what's taught in all our schools. That time, plus an inorganic, organic mixture of amino acids, out of the atmosphere, worked together till the first primitive organism appeared. Now, of course, if you say that, it's rather difficult to disprove it, because there's not the slightest shred of evidence for it.

It's philosophizing. One of the things that made the Renaissance in Europe was that they ceased philosophizing and went into experiment. That's what made the great transition from the Middle Ages to the modern times.

That man ceased thinking his wrong thoughts and got back to God's thoughts, which you can see in experimental science. And once they'd learned to experiment, they went ahead like a house on fire in getting knowledge.

Okay? So, when your kids come up with these things, you give them a straight answer. There are straight answers to these things, perfectly plain. Well, now, let's get back to Dr. Oppenheimer, who had a rough passage while he was here in the United States, didn't he?

He said all sorts of things about Mr. Oppenheimer, and he had some good ideas. Now, what he worked on, part of his ideas, were this. If you pass a ray of light... Could we put the lights down a bit, if you'd be so kind?

Who has control of the switches? Who has switch power here? If you pass a ray of light over the sun, you see there in the top left-hand corner, from where you're sitting, there's a ray going across. That's right.

Thank you, Beate. There, normally, light travels more or less in straight lines, doesn't it? Now, normally, you see the dotted line goes along there. That was where the ray of light would be. But if you let the ray of light just skirt the sun, the gravitation of the sun will deflect the light and bend the ray.

And you see I bent it down just a little bit there, where the arrow is. So the diffraction of light over the surface of a large body is shown by gravitation with that experiment. Now, that's the first part of the theoretical basis we've got to do for time.

Now, if you notice the thick arrow there, where I've got the gravitational collapse, the sun and other large bodies over the solar mass of one can suffer, quite suddenly, gravitational collapse. That is, they collapse on themselves due to their own weight.

And they shrink, and in shrinking and collapsing, of course, they get smaller. So they get smaller, but have the same amount of mass in them. That means they get relatively very heavy indeed. And gravitational collapse produces the neutron star, the quasar, the white dwarf.

Now, I've put the arrows going in, you see, to show that that's the force, that's the gravitational force, what they call the centripetal force, which makes the object get smaller and smaller and smaller by gravitational collapse, and therefore heavier and heavier and heavier, and therefore a greater gravitational field.

Now, if you take a pulsar like that, that's suffered gravitational collapse, and pass light over it, then you see the light, where I've got the light beam up there, normally would go straight ahead, but now because the gravitational field is much stronger, the light is bent much more strongly, refracted.

So you get your light coming down like that, and diffraction being stronger. Okay? Are we all right on that? Any difficulties? Because if there's the slightest difficulty, now's your chance. Yes. Well, it doesn't alter the mass, but it alters the concentration of mass, that is, the density gets greater, so that it attracts other objects more strongly by the gravitational field.

So you're really concentrating up the gravity by letting the body collapse on itself, smaller and smaller and heavier and heavier. Okay? Now, the gravitational collapse goes on. Once it's started to collapse gravitationally, you can't stop it, and it goes on collapsing on itself.

Are you ready? It goes on collapsing to itself, till it tends towards infinite density, and no dimensions. It gets so heavy, and gets so small, that it can't get smaller, it's infinitely heavy. Okay? Now, that's the formation of a black hole.

And it has certain consequences in respect to time, which we're now going to see. I've built this superstructure up so that you can see it, that's all. The only way to do this is stepwise, because if you get out of time, you can't understand.

So we do it stepwise. Now, if you pass light over a black hole, which has been formed by the tendency towards no dimensions, and infinite gravitational field, you pass light over that, you pass first the light up top, you see?

And the light far away from the black hole is bent a bit, just like it was bent a bit over the pulsar, over the neutron star. Okay? But if you come nearer, there comes a point where you get near enough to the center of this, you ready?

Singularity. Because it is a singularity, you can't call it matter, like this, because it hasn't got the properties of matter. It's called a singularity. If you get it near enough to the singularity, the black hole in the middle, there comes a time when the gravitational field is so strong, that the light goes into orbit.

Just like a spacecraft, when it gets to a certain distance from the moon, its speed will be just neutralized by the gravitational field of the moon, and go into orbit. So you've got light here that goes into orbit.

Now, the speed of light is a universal constant. And once the speed of light is neutralized by gravitational field, so that light goes in orbit, there are some remarkable things happen, with respect to time.

Because at the place where the time, where the light goes into orbit, that's like an orange peel around the singularity in the middle. You see, it's an area, like an orange skin, around the center of an orange.

Okay? At that point, where the orange skin would be, at that point, light goes into orbit. But at the same time, at that point, time ceases to flow. This is the end of the space-time continuum. Here, time has no flux.

It doesn't flow anymore. You've gone out of the space-time continuum, to a continuum where there's no time. And inside that event horizon, inside that event horizon, the orange peel, where light goes into orbit round about it, inside that is an area where time is forever frozen.

If you could get inside that, which you can't, of course, because the gravitational forces there would be immense, you'd be pulled to pieces, just by the gravitational fields. If you could get inside that gravitational area, where the event horizon is, if you get inside it, you could never get out.

Because there isn't any time to get out. Time doesn't flow anymore. No, these are facts with which you've got to reckon. I mean, these things have been done, you know, have been observed. So, there's the place where you're frozen forever in time.

Now, think of this. At the event horizon, no radiation, I might have to modify that in a minute, but very, very little radiation can get out. Because everything that tries to get out gets sucked into orbit, and goes round and round and round and never comes out again.

Just like the people who are orbiting the moon, unless they'd had retro rockets, would never have got out of it. You have to have a retro rocket to reduce your speed, so that you'll fall in or come out, one of the two.

Now, that's the third thing that happens there. There's no information can, on principle, get out of inside that event horizon, because there's no radiation can get out to carry the wave. A carrier wave, to carry information, can't get out.

So you, in principle, can't see anything inside that event horizon. At the event horizon, everything becomes, in principle, invisible. Okay? There is an argument, you know, that as you can't see a black hole, that you can't get any information out of it, and that argument is perfectly correct, you can't.

There's no way of knowing what's going on there at all. Now, you think of modern science, which has purported the idea of hell and heaven, because you can't get any certain information out of hell or heaven.

Here we've got it, mirrored in science. You can't, in principle, get any radiation carrying information out of that area. And in that area, no time flows. Now, think of this. Are you ready? At the center of our galaxy, you know, the solar system and all the rest of it, the center of our galaxy, there's pretty good evidence that the high percentage of mass, which is lacking, according to the calculations of the astronomers, in our galaxy, is concentrated in the black hole.

Now, if the 80 -90 or whatever it is, I forget the exact percentage, of mass which is lacking, according to astronomers' calculations, is at the center of the universe, our galaxy, you think there's no time there, because the black hole, inside it, has no time.

Now, you think trying to arrange to date, I don't mean this socially, I mean to date geologically, the universe. Are you all right? I have to be careful, you see, of American slang, because you use different slang to what we do.

Date would be quite a neutral expression in our country, you know, but it isn't with you, and so I've got to be careful, and I watch you very carefully to see if there's any twinkle in your eyes, to see if I've made a mistake somewhere or another.

So I watch you ever so carefully, so don't think I'm being quizzy in watching you, I'm just feeling my way forward ever so carefully. Now, are we all right so far? You see, anybody who tries to date the galaxy and its age is a quack, not much more, because he doesn't know, he suspects, that there's a black hole in the middle where there's no time.

Let me put it a bit more clearly to you, because I haven't seen that answering aha reaction yet, but it'll come in just one minute. Now look, ladies and gentlemen, if you were to be sitting on the sun, I hope you never will be, but if you were really sitting on the surface of the sun, the gravitational field on the sun is vastly different to what it is on the Earth.

Therefore, time on the sun passes at a completely different flux rate to what it does on Earth. Well, if that's the case, then time on the sun doesn't mean the same thing as time on the Earth. What are all these fools talking about, who say that it's an old, old Earth, an old, old universe?

It's only that they're playing upon the ignorance of their listeners, and I think that's a very bad thing to do. You should try and instruct your listener, if you can, without being a school mom, but try and tell them how things really are, but you have far less difficulty then with holy scriptures when you read it, because the holy scriptures are written from the point of view of eternity, you know, and they're pretty safe there, because there's lots of eternity around us, except if at the center of our galaxy there is a black hole.

Okay? So keep that very carefully in mind when people start to argue with you about mathematical billions of years as the age of the universe. I say, what years? Do you mean black hole years? Or do you mean years on the surface of the sun?

Or do you mean years on the surface of the Earth? Because it's not only the gravitational field alters the flux of the flow of time, it's also relative velocity does that. So you've got two bodies moving away from one another, summating the distance at which they're moving apart.

That affects the flow of time, too. Einstein and Oppenheimer worked this out very completely, and the thing is this, that scientists, if they know their science, and all the subjects which are connected with science, and just don't know how to say 2 plus 2 equals 4, sometimes they come out with the answer 2 plus 2 equals 5, which is rather catastrophic.

But they do it, and they prove it with mathematics, which is perfectly good, but wrongly applied. You can't apply time calculations where no time is. If you do, you're a mutt. Okay, I'm sorry, you have to talk plainly like that, because they'll argue the hind leg off a donkey, you know, over these things.

I've done this, and I learned a bit of wisdom, and said, look, you go your way, and I'll go my way, and we'll love one another, and do good works for one another, but we won't say that the machinery up there works the same way if it doesn't work the same way.

Okay, well, that's the business about the black holes, and the flux of time, and the eternal mind of God, which I wanted to talk to you a little about tonight. Now, let's just have a look at that a little bit further.

The fact is that it's recently been calculated, and I think the calculation is viable, and good, that if you could get into a black hole, there you would find out, if you want to read this in a way that your children understand, read C .S. Lewis's The Magician's Nephew.

He's done this absolutely perfectly, where he found, in an intermediate state, certain holes into thousands of other realities, which he never suspected. It's okay for children. Our children were brought up on this sort of stuff.

From the inside of a black hole, it's well known now that there are infinite routes, I'm sorry, you call them routes, don't you? Infinite routes to an infinite number of other realities and dimensions from that place where there's no time.

Infinite number of routes to other realities from inside a black hole. The scientists used to believe, you know, that we were nuts, or nuts, whichever you like to call it, for believing in heaven and hell.

Because, you see, you couldn't prove them. And they say, because you can't prove a thing, it doesn't exist. But there are other ways of doing it. The Holy Scripture speaks a lot about heaven and paradise and hell, and takes these realities as being things to be seriously reckoned with.

It says, you know, of Jesus, he said, The Son of Man which is in heaven. That is, Jesus as a man, in his heart, was at the right hand of the Father. I am the Father of one. And he was one with Jesus. So our inward life is capable of being one with these realities which we scientifically can't prove.

But we do experience it, don't we? In our minds, if we get forgiveness of the enmity against God through the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, it says our fellowship with him is such that we are one.

And that is fellowship with these things which are timeless. And a person who experiences that life, that new form of life, is entirely different from the person who only knows the rate of the flow of time on the surface of the earth.

Okay? That's how things work out. And the black hole is an excellent way of showing that to be true. What I propose to do is to, for the second half of this lecture series, that is when we're finished here, I'm going to have just a little time of quiet for myself.

And I'm going to go into dimension theory per se. I'm going to go into flatland and the significance of flatland for our Christian life. We'll have a short time, ten minutes rest. Go and have a look at the tables out the back.

Creation, Cloning, and the Image of God

And we'll come back in a quarter of an hour and go and do that. Thank you for being so kind. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon man. And while he slept, he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.

Now, you know, the biologists used to go hopping mad over that because it did sound a bit risky, didn't it? But you see, if the creator wrote it, he knew what he'd done. Now, they would call that cloning today.

You see, if you've got a cell, you don't need to create another cell to make another human being because the information is in the one cell to make everything. All cells contain the information to make our old woman or a man.

The only difference between the man and the woman is, of course, you've got the 46 chromosomes and then the XY chromosomes which decide the sex. And it's the Y which makes the man. And it's the XX which makes his lady.

Now, if you were wanting to clone a man from a man, a woman, you'd think how little you'd have to do because we are the same species, you know. There may be some doubt in some minds, but we are. Because men don't understand ladies' psyche sometimes.

But they do think differently, don't they? But grosso modo, we're one species. Now, you think how you'd do it. If I were going to do it in the lab, say I only had a bit of your nose to work on, to make another human, and say you, dear sir, were the gentleman.

If I wanted to make an Eve for you, all you'd have to do, do you think how easy it is to avoid having to do unnecessary creative work? Because God doesn't unnecessarily create anything. How do we know that?

I don't hear the whirring of those cogwheels going round. How do we know that? Well, when Jesus fed the 5 ,000, what was left over from the meal, by his creative act, he didn't waste. He made them get the baskets.

What was it, 12 or was it 7 in this case? I forget which it was. And made them collect it all. But nothing should be lost. And in the throwaway society, you know, it often hurts to me to see how good food is thrown away.

Jesus didn't allow it. Because it's all from his creative effort. Now, if you wanted to do what God had done there, you got the cells from the rib of Adam, which of course has the bone marrow in it, and the bone marrow are very undifferentiated cells.

All you'd have to do, all, is knock out, destroy the Y chromosome. And the X will divide automatically and make another X. And then you've got X, X, from the XY, the Y which you've cut out, and there you've got Eve, just as perfect as he was then.

So there's reason in all these things, you know. And the things they laugh at most, make them laugh on the other side of their face, when they think about it. So that's how God did it at the start. Now there's one thing my dear better half whispered in my ear.

She said, you didn't show about the effect of velocity on time. You did it for gravity. And she's absolutely right. You see, she is a help mate for the failings of her husband. And I'm very, very, very glad of it.

Velocity, Gravity, and Relativity

Now, Sebastian von Hörner, who is a professor at the University of Heidelberg, where our two youngest sons studied medicine, he published a paper in Nature some years ago, of a man and his wife, who wanted to test out the effect of gravity on the flux of time.

So he got into a rocket, and it was a very special rocket, when he was about 30 years old, and his wife, what was she, 28, something like that. And you know the old German rule of thumb, don't you, for matrimony?

The lady at matrimony should be, this is not ex cathedra, what I'm saying now. You know what ex cathedra means, don't you? This is not official Calvary Chapel doctrine. But you see, they say that the lady should be half the age of the man at matrimony.

If the man was 30, she should be 15, plus 7 years. That was the old rule of thumb, which the Vikings used. Okay, I'm not advocating it, but there's something to say about it. Well, this Sebastian von Hoerner, my wife is looking at me and I don't forget my lines, you see.

He got into this rocket, which remarkably enough, travelled at the speed of light. How he managed that, I don't know. But he did his calculations on that basis. And he flew out from the earth, at the speed of light, and turned around and came back after, I think it was 10 years.

But you can look it up in the paper in Nature if you want to. It's in Man's Origin, Man's Destiny, the book which Chuck Smith is bringing out yesterday at lunchtime. Be coming out as soon as possible.

And he came back, so he came back after 20 years. 10 years out, 10 years back. When he got back, he was, I think, it was 37 years older than his wife, who'd stayed on earth. Now he went out again, just to repeat the experiment, at the speed of light, and was out for 30 years total.

15 out and 15 back. And when he got back, he found that the earth, and all people on it, including his wife, had aged about 300 years more than he was. He went out for 30 years, the next time, third time, and came back 30 years, so he was 60 years away.

And the earth had got about, oh, some hundreds of thousands of years older, and they were all dead and buried when he got back, his old friends. So that was just to show you that it's well known that the gravitational field alone doesn't determine the rate of flux of time, but also the relative velocities of two bodies.

Now Einstein was very careful to point out that the time frame that you use for making time is not specific. There isn't a preferred time frame. All you do is take the relative velocity between two bodies, and do the experiment which Sebastian von Hoerner reported on in Nature.

So the relative speed, particularly the speed of light, at the speed of light, time doesn't flow at all. If you could take a photon, a particle of light, or a light wave, whichever way you'd like to look at it, and go out on that, round the whole universe, you would get back to your starting point, space being curved, at exactly the time that you set out.

So it solves quite a lot of questions about this old, old question, you know, about when, if light was made, and it takes eight minutes for light to get from the sun, how about all these stars that were made millions of light years away from us?

You've got to think of these things in the general theory and the special theory of relativity, which we improved experimentally. I don't believe in philosophizing a lot, you know. I believe you've got to do the experiment and see.

I told you yesterday about the gravitational field and the tower and the clock on it, didn't I? One tower, one atomic clock on the top and one on the bottom. And because of the difference in a tower 300 yards high of gravitational field, the clock in the higher gravitational field at the bottom ran slower by a number of nanoseconds than the one on the top.

That's the other side of the picture. Now, let's leave that, because I've got the I've got the dimension theory to do today, tonight, and that's a very, very important one for us spiritually, if we love the Lord.

Dimension Theory and Flatland

Let's have a look at that. They used to teach, you know, when, just before I went to school, I won't say when I went to school, because you'll do some calculations and that'll disturb you if you get your calculating machines out when I talk to you.

They used to have lots of books out. In my days, one of the professors who wrote these books was a man called Everett. And on dimension theory. Now, I want to talk just a little bit about dimension theory because it's just as important as the question of time that we've been talking about in the first hour tonight.

Dimension theory. Scientists used to say, they do today, those that don't do their reading, that there's only one dimension. This is what the communists have stumbled on. Why they've gone, partly. They used to say that there was only one dimension and that's the here and now.

And many people live in that dimension, don't they? The here and now, and nothing else. I'm going to get what I can for now and leave it at that. Now, scientists don't do that today. You take Paul Davis.

Paul Davis, for example, who's a professor of physics, theoretical physics at the University of Newcastle. He's written a book which is called God and the New Physics. Now, there are lots of things in that book which you can't swallow.

But there are some useful hints there. He goes very specially into the subject of the number of dimensions that there are. And he reckons there are 11 separate dimensions all separated by event horizons.