St. Augustine believed that the world was created sometime in the 5000 BC. The reason for the assumption being that our civilization is in progress and that the builders of our civilization remain in our memory. Thus the world could not be that old. The real basis for his theory seems to be the book of Genesis.
He was credited with many amusing stories by people. But his reply to some of the sensitive questions seems quite serious. For, instance he wrote about “time” that “ up to the moment some one asked me what time is, I was pretty sure what it was. But when I tried to answer the question I was not at all sure”
He can’t be blamed the humorous side of the tale not -with -standing, for that’s what we all believe. Can any one explain what time is? None has done so satisfactorily till now. How did time begin, is it linear as the westerners believe or cyclical as the Orientals believe? What is its relation to matter, are they the same or one an extension of the other? How could we say the world began if time did not exist then? Did the time begin with the beginning of the world? What is the nature of time, why does the clock sow down inside fast bodies? Why does it get affected by Gravity? Why does every system have a time of its own?
In short what in the god’s name is time?
St. Augustine is credited with yet another story on the subject of time and God, soon after he propounded the theory that the God created the world in 5000 BC some one asked him:
What was god doing before that?
The rumor says that he replied “He was preparing hell for people who asked such questions”
Joking aside he seems to have considered the question quite seriously for he actually replied that the time was a property of the world the God created and it did not exist before. This is roughly the modern idea of time too. We believe now that the time was created at the moment the big bang occurred. We just can’t say if there was time before that, even if there did exist any sort of time before that we would not know about it, for we are limited by our perceptual capacities to understand any such thing. We are the children of this world, this universe, and it is beyond us to know anything that is not contained in it.
The theory of the beginning of the world gained considerable momentum with Edwin Hubble’s discovery of the expanding universe. He observed that the galaxies at the fringe of observable space are receding from us at unimaginable speeds. This was a uniform phenomenon at all points at the fringe. Reckoning by the speed at which they are moving away there must have been a time when these were closer, much closer in fact. This is largely based on the big bang model of the beginning of the world. This theory states that at one point the world was condensed into an object of infinite mass it exploded and created the world as we know it.
It was also the beginning of time, for time is inseparably linked to space; it would be meaningless to consider time in the absence of space.
The expanding universe sort of curtails God’s freedom to create world any moment other than at the time of big bang or after it. If the world is expanding there could be a reason for it and this reason can be found. It denies the god the freedom to create the world as he likes.
Poor God!
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