Are we gods to the characters in the film that we see inside the film cannister? (Actually, they might see us that way if the construction of their world was complex enough to allow it. As is, they only get one timeline and no freewill so they can't even think about it unless the script writer wants them to.)
If you have a life simulation on your computer and you can rewind and so forth, and view it from outside it's timeline, then time is a static thing with relation to that simulation. It's simulated denizens only experience it as a function of the program, and all of their activities could be charted out on a complex diagram. So does time exist for them? It does for us, outside their timeline.
So, the guy who owns the workbench experiences his own brand of time. Call him god, if you must, but in this case he only exists as a part of the analogy. The structure may have spontaneously formed without him and may be sitting by itself in some extra-cosmic space. That extra-cosmic space may have it's own brand of time, but that doesn't mean that the universe we know is a changing one. It just means that things around it can change.
And what if there is no extra-cosmic space? The same several-dimension structure could still exist as filling the entire area into which it formed - in which case there is no extra-cosmic space to have it's own brand of time passage.
I just like having the guy and his workbench because I happen to be Catholic, and it is a model that fits well for me in both my religion and my understanding of physics. (The priest who baptized me had a PhD in solid state physics and two bachelor's degrees: Electronics and Biology. I figured if he could get over his scientific hangups, I could too.)
W
