Theism and the absolute present

Some people believe in an absolute present. An absolute present would define a privileged absolute reference frame. Suppose that there is an absolute present. Would we have any reason to think that the privileged absolute reference frame is anywhere close to our reference frame? If not, then for all we know, the things around us have an absolute geometry quite different from the one we think they have: that clock on the wall isn’t absolutely a circle, but an oval, say.

If the reason for accepting an absolute present is doing justice to common sense, then we not only need an absolute presnet, but an absolute present that defines a frame close to our frame. And that would be almost literally a version of anthropocentrism.

Of course, if we are in the image and likeness of God, the anthropocentrism may be defensible. And maybe only then.

If this is right, then the A-theory of time (which seems to require an absolute present) makes a lot more sense on theism. (Anecdotally, there is a correlation between being a theist and accepting the A-theory of time.) But on the other hand, the A-theory of time requires God’s beliefs to be changing.

Antipastism

Antipastism would be the view that the past is unreal, but both the present and the future are. I asked my six-year-old son whether he thought the past was real. He was quite sure it wasn't. One of his reasons was that we can't get there. I then asked him if he thought the future was real. He was quite unsure either way. In other words, he vaccilated between presentism and antipastism.
This is interesting, because if presentists feel a pull away from their theory, I would expect that it would often be towards an open future view on which the past is real but the future is not.
Anyway, one can take my son's reasoning and formalize it into a plausibilistic argument:

1. If you can get somewhere, it's probably real.
2. You can get to the future. (It's easy, just wait a moment.)
3. So the future is probably real.

In an earlier post, I called antipastism "Shrinking Block".

One problem for a moving present

Suppose that we think that the present moves, ever pushing into the future. Now the present is within a Friday. Tomorrow the present will be within a Saturday. On this theory, it is the same thing, the present, that today is within a Friday and tomorrow it will be within a Saturday.

It follows that the present is something that has always existed and will always exist. After all, if a rock will tomorrow be found in one cave, and today is present in another cave, then the rock exists both today and tomorrow. The present on this view has the same temporal extent as whole time sequence.

But this is absurd. Clearly, the present does not extend back to the Battle of Waterloo. Hence an A-theory on which the present relentlessly moves forward must be rejected.

Moving spotlight theorists should, thus, not reify the spotlight. So what should they do? Well, maybe they can say that events that are presently occurring have a special property, let's say L, for being lit up. And which events have this special property changes with time. Right now the writing of this post has L. In an hour, the writing of this post will no longer have L. This, I think, leads to the McTaggart paradoxes. Here's how. Let's ask: Is having L intrinsic or extrinsic to the writing of this post? If extrinsic, then there will be something else that has an L-like property in a more basic way, and we have failed to account for the present in terms of events having L. Let W be the event of the writing of this post. Suppose then that W intrinsically has L. But in an hour, W will not intrinsically have L. I think this is what triggers the McTaggart paradoxes: the idea that events change in respect of what intrinsic properties they have. Anyway, in an hour, the writing of this post will have L₁, the property of having been lit up an hour ago. The writing of this post will gain L₁ only at a time when W no longer exists. Hence, while L is intrinsic to W, L₁ is not intrinsic, since only extrinsic properties can be gained when one does not exist. Therefore, we need to define L₁ in terms of L and a B-relation of some sort.

OK, that's all I want to do in the way of helping moving spotlight theories.