Choice or illusion?

TheWhat? said:

So according to this it appears Aristotle, who precedes the theology of the Church, and Augustine, are understandably presentist. This would seem to be problematic for the foreknowledge of an all-knowing and wise God, and as for predestination, not to worry, however, if even time does not exist as we would consider it to under eternalism, the future can and would if it has been fashioned by an omnipotent Creator.

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Others, specially the ancients, I think, did not think of time as the Science community has taught it so many years. We have grown to accept time as a constant, and part of very reality. Look how many arguments we have gotten into between us as to matters such as soul sleep, Purgatory, the meaning of eternity in Hell, and so many others, all because of our insistence on the reality of time!

Understanding that God is, by being First Cause, the source of time, and uses time as a tool, has led me to believe that he sees things completely differently from us and from Aristotle and from anyone else. I like, for example, to say that when he spoke Creation into existence, he relegated it to subjection to time, so that the product could mature, but he already sees, has, and enjoys the finished product. But I have a strong urge to say that has to be a very small view of the fact.

The fact of Christ coming in due time, as was necessary as part of that creation of the Bride of Christ, doesn't make time any more real than a vapor, though his sacrifice on our behalf is as real as God himself —I barely can even contemplate this, but God's creation shows God's very nature, so time is of his nature, his personality, perhaps. When what is partial is done, the real will be seen.

Time teaches us much: God's steadfastness and faithfulness, even his love for us, among many other things. But we see as children.

TheWhat? said:

Timelessness or space-time? Presentism or Eternalism?

Of Augustine's position, one brilliant writer reports:

Talking about distant past or the near future is sensible and rational, but talking about distant time or near time for present, is irrational. For that, Aristotle mentions present as a knife edge of time not a part of it. On the other hand, among these three parts, only present exists by some means, Past and future do not share the same characteristics. How must realize the time? Something that is composed of nothing can not be something (Aristotle,1984, 218A).

Augustine fully explains this paradox, and apparently accepts it, but he does not try to respond to it. In addition, he also desires to answer to the doubts about creation and related issues. He provides an innovative and interesting approach for solving the problem based on principles and method of his philosophy. Between considering theory of time being an illusion (paradox) and theory of reality of time, he chooses a conservative approach, that is; the time is an aspect of human soul, and he tries somehow to reject time as an intrinsic reality (Karim Mojtahed, 2000, p74). Augustine admits that time is kind of duration and extension, but it is not extension of past, future and present; Hence the past does not exists more, so time is elongation of what? Augustine believes time is an aspect of human soul and extension of the mind itself: It seems time is nothing but an extension, but extension of what? I don't know. Gradually, it comes to my mind that may it is extension of the mind itself. (source)
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And on this point, I find myself in 100% agreement. So according to this it appears Aristotle, who precedes the theology of the Church, and Augustine, are understandably presentist. This would seem to be problematic for the foreknowledge of an all-knowing and wise God, and as for predestination, not to worry, if even time does not exist as we would consider it to under eternalism, the future can and would if it has been fashioned by an omnipotent Creator.

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I'm trying to figure out why you titled this "Choice, or illusion".

TheWhat? said:

You are of course, entitled to your opinion. Though, bear in mind relativity does not dictate that anything can necessarily slip out of the present state of reality, or cease to exist from a relative point of view. Circular time lines as in Godel's model of the universe, and the similar escape points or wormholes that would be needed to prove eternalism, have not been found. We like to believe it because it is so ingrained in popular thought, and it has been for centuries, but nonetheless, we don't know that presentism is wrong.

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We do know that God is "above all that"; being of necessity First Cause, and Omnipotent, he is not subject to any principle exterior to himself. Furthermore, we know that what is exterior to himself is not himself. His creation is from him, but is not him.

TheWhat? said:

You must not be very familiar with the thought of the "new atheism." I won't fault you for that. Best to stay away from that -- it's destructive spiritually, and frankly, it's grounded on false assumptions, if you ask me.

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Thanks. No, I'm not likely to fall for anything like that. Too old and set in my ways.

In case I understand this discussion, somehow . . . I'll try, if I may

First, in general, there can be different definitions of time, I suppose.

Time is what you experience to be part of your day . . . a point or a portion.

Time can be the name given to the relative position of the sun and where you are on earth. The time can be called "noon", for example.

And my opinion is time can be simply eternity. And then there are points in eternity or portions of eternity that humans call time or experience as time.

TheWhat? - your quoting said:

Aristotle mentions present as a knife edge of time not a part of it.

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So, the present is an eternitieth of eternity, possibly we could say. Except > our experiencing of the present is not some exactly pinpoint-able moment.

What matters, though, is timing. You can do all the philosophical name calling of things you want, but God is managing things in timing with each other. And past items do effect us now and things now, and there is timing of people and things effecting each other.

TheWhat? - your quoting also said:

How must realize the time? Something that is composed of nothing can not be something

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As far as technical philosophical definition is concerned > each point in time was/is/will be part of eternity; so it was/is/will be something, but very quickly indeed.

And there is experiencing, which each human does and which God does. We do feel and experience. Time experienced is in relation to various things we are conscious of. And we pass from one experience to the next, using the amount of eternity that we do while doing things, hopefully with relating with God and people in love.

It's just a marvelous wonder. We have words for things, but maybe we can say our actual experiencing can not be told in words. I would say there is objective time and subjective. And we humans have some capability for understanding objective time in theory, and each of us has subjective experience of time.

TheWhat? - your quoting said:

time is an aspect of human soul, and he tries somehow to reject time as an intrinsic reality

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Maybe we could say this is talking about subjective time. And it could be it is what we humans experience because of not being like God. Instead of being consciously so busy with loving, we maybe can be lazy by slowing down so we are paying attention to time going by, versus being first conscious of the loving we could be doing . . . in sharing with God.

So, the subjective experiencing of time . . . ? ? . . . could be a knowledge of good and evil problem, with us too busy judging what is happening to our time, because we are trying to use it for what we want only or mainly for our own selves and people we are trying to use and possess. Instead, we could be doing all the relating and family sharing and enjoying and good we can be doing that makes time "fly", especially while we are with God.

TheWhat? - your quoting also said:

Augustine admits that time is kind of duration and extension, but it is not extension of past, future and present; Hence the past does not exists more, so time is elongation of what?

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I think time is eternity, philosophically. And there is eternity past, always a present point or portion of time, any subjective experiencing of time that we might do, and future eternity.

It can't be shortened or elongated. But we can subjectively experience what each of us calls time, while we can make up our own, therefore subjective, philosophical ideas about it.

TheWhat? your quoting said:

Augustine believes time is an aspect of human soul and extension of the mind itself: It seems time is nothing but an extension, but extension of what? I don't know. Gradually, it comes to my mind that may it is extension of the mind itself.

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We humans have conscious experience, and we are aware of things happening in timing with each other. And each of us has some subjective experience of this time going along. We might measure it by things in relation to each other, or a clock, or sense.

Now, if God does not experience time the way we do, may be our experiencing of time can be an extension of our problem of having eaten that fruit of the knowledge of good and evil . . . so now we can be overly conscious of how time is going by, instead of simply sharing with God in loving. Often enough, how much do you concern yourself with time while you are loving? Therefore, may be our subjective time experience is an extension of worrying too much about if we can control our own lives for what we want to use people and things to get.

And your own comment said:

So according to this it appears Aristotle, who precedes the theology of the Church, and Augustine, are understandably presentist. This would seem to be problematic for the foreknowledge of an all-knowing and wise God, and as for predestination, not to worry, if even time does not exist as we would consider it to under eternalism, the future can and would if it has been fashioned by an omnipotent Creator.

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Well, I can see that God never came into existence, but always exists. And eternity has always been with God, not created. But He has created humans and things and nonhuman beings, and they live and move in timing.

But if "with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" (see 2 Peter 3:8), then possibly God does not have subjective consciousness of time like humans do, but I see He simply is aware of how He is timing. And in His love we have the most and best awareness of all He is doing, the most sharing with Him.

What God may be experiencing may not be what is concerning us, then. So, beware that we are not feeding on some sort of knowledge of good and evil that is not what God is busy with in His love and caring and family sharing so creative.

TheWhat? said:

time-travel,

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Yeah, I do not buy that we can travel to past and future, in reality. But our imaginations can do things.

We have now, with God or not with God in His love.

Central to the question is whether our experience of time is time as it is, or an interpretation of something that is called time. It would seem to me from observation that there is an objective reality, but our perception of it is not the thing in itself. Neither our measurements nor our sensory perceptions are sufficient to capture anything more than a cross-section, and that cross-section naturally leads to point-distortions and illusions that cannot be distinguished from the object in its own right.

com7fy8 said:

Yeah, I do not buy that we can travel to past and future, in reality. But our imaginations can do things.

We have now, with God or not with God in His love.

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We can do time travel to the future, but it's gonna take awhile.

If there is an infinite amount of time since humans came into existance then Humans have not come into existence since an infinite amount of time has not been completed, yet?
It is hard to imagine not having a sequence of events and truully nbeing outside of time.
God may have created time for humans or maybe God has a sequencing of events in the Spiritual realm different from man's?
If God is outside of time then God at the end of time knowing everything that happened throughout human time could send that inforamtion back to Himself at the beginning of time, thus having perfect forknowledge, yet this would not prevent humans from having free will choices.