Cosmological Continuity Presentism (CCP): A Generative Spacetime Ontology Compatible with General Relativity

Cosmological Continuity Presentism (CCP) develops a presentist interpretation of relativistic spacetime in which reality exists only in the present while progressing through continuous causal-temporal evolution. Rather than treating spacetime as a completed four-dimensional block, CCP interprets reality as a continuously generated causal structure in which each present state emerges through lawful transformation of immediately preceding states and in turn contributes to the emergence of subsequent states. Earlier states no longer exist as independently real regions of spacetime, yet their causal consequences persist through ongoing physical continuity embodied in later matter-energy configurations, fields, structures, and information-bearing records. The framework introduces a generation parameter σ that, at the fundamental level, functions as a primitive pre-geometric generative ordering parameter. Only within the emergent geometric regime does σ admit representation as an effective scalar field whose gradient structure is calibrated by the local matter-energy distribution through a constrained variational formulation without modifying the Einstein field equations. CCP employs a generated-domain formalism M(σ) as a mathematical representation of the causal history leading to the present state. M(σ) is not interpreted as an ontological accumulation of co-existing past stages but as a formal representation of the continuously evolving causal-temporal process through which reality progresses. Within this framework, earlier states persist neither as independently existing spacetime regions nor as preserved organizations. Instead, their causal consequences continue through lawful physical transformations constrained by conservation laws and symmetry principles. Present systems inherit transformed physical continuities, distributed consequences, and causal records originating in prior states. CCP therefore distinguishes between ontological persistence, which is restricted to present physical structures and their encoded causal records, and determinate historical truth, according to which past events remain true as events that occurred even when aspects of them are no longer physically recoverable. Present encodings function as partial physical persistence and evidential traces rather than as the total grounding of all truths about the past. The formal development employs globally hyperbolic foliation, causal-structure reconstruction theorems, ADM decomposition, and a constrained action principle to demonstrate compatibility with local Lorentz-invariant dynamics, diffeomorphism invariance, and the standard Einstein field equations. In the emergent geometric regime, the effective σ field possesses a timelike gradient whose structure is determined by the local matter distribution and gives rise to potentially observable cosmological signatures. CCP predicts a causal-skew parameter ε(σ) in cosmic microwave background multipole correlations together with a dipole-modulated parity asymmetry derived from the gradient structure of ∇μσ. The framework further predicts that a preferred dipole-aligned orientation associated with the generation field should remain directionally stable across redshift slices in 21cm cosmological tomography, reflecting the role of neutral hydrogen as a distributed causal archive spanning cosmic history. CCP does not claim that standard ΛCDM cosmology or block-universe interpretations cannot accommodate similar asymmetries through particular initial conditions or dynamical histories; rather, CCP derives a specific dipole-aligned angular structure as a lawlike consequence of its spacetime-generation formalism. CCP further examines connections with quantum interpretations, causal-set growth approaches, causal reconstruction programs, and the phenomenology of temporal experience. It proposes that the asymmetry of temporal experience is naturally accommodated by an ontology in which reality progresses through a continuous generative flow whose present boundary advances along a timelike generation direction, while remaining agnostic regarding any unique theory of consciousness. By grounding temporal becoming in continuous causal-temporal evolution and the causal structure of relativistic spacetime, CCP offers an interpretive extension of general relativity that preserves established local physical laws while introducing potentially falsifiable cosmological signatures associated with spacetime generation.