God and Time

[Achilles6129]

See that's not really an argument. That's a statement, that is apparently the conclusion of an argument. So the only thing I have to point out is that you have presented absolutely no evidence to support that claim. There might be good evidence, there might not be, but in your posts you have presented none except a link to a bunch of other arguments, some of which contradict each other.

If you want me to discuss this with you, you're going to have to put more effort into it.

OK, well let's start out with "God is timeless without creation." If no time exists at all, then obviously God is outside of time and therefore timeless.

 

[Moral Orel]

If no time exists at all, then obviously God is outside of time and therefore timeless.

Why do you believe that time came into existence rather than always existing? God didn't create intelligence or life either because those concepts have always been a part of him eternally. Perhaps time is a staple of existence just like those qualities of God.

 

[Moral Orel]

You said this:

All God has to do is act or move and time is created as a result.

I responded with this:

So then God did nothing until he created time?

And then I caught myself doing it again. Without the existence of time "until" is nonsense. The better way to phrase the question is thus: So then God does nothing in the absence of time?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

First, the reason that temporal terms cannot legitimately be used in the context noted is because all parties involved in the discussion are intentionally talking about a possibility where time does not exist. I noted some concepts that implicitly rely on temporality and thus cannot be legitimately used in such a context (e.g. successive ordering, successive decisions).

You are proposing the idea that all causal activity also implicitly relies on temporality. Effectively you are claiming that all of our causal notions are limited to the realm of physics rather than metaphysics. Philosophers have traditionally distinguished between different kinds of causes, some of which operate only on the level of physics and some of which operate even on the level of metaphysics.

I am not going to get into an argument about the categorization of different causes, in part because it is highly complex and in part because it would take me some time to review the details. It should be noted, however, that your claim contextualizing causality within the temporal (and material) realm is not privileged with any clear burden of proof. Even the claim that we are not privy to extra-material causality depends on the controversial premise of materialism--a premise which cannot even make sense of causality within the material realm (a la David Hume). Claiming that human beings are fully subsumed within the temporal and material realms is a controversial move, to say the least.

It's no more controversial than claiming that our causal intuitions must continue to function in the absence of the very context in which they were derived and served a function. In fact, I would think that that would be more controversial a claim given that we have no experience of things "coming to be" ex nihilo or of supernatural entities causing anything to begin existing either ex nihilo or ex materia.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Honestly that's not the question of topic and I'd rather not get into it.

But it does relate to the topic. You could cut god out of the picture entirely and still have a beginning to time.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Why?

Because one cannot make sense of what is being proposed. But perhaps you could explain it better than Craig?

 

[elopez]

Do you believe God is immutable? Immaterial? Eternal?

Yes.

You are claiming that God had to stand very, very still lest he accidentally set off the entire time-space continuum!

Stand? No. Very, very still? No. Accidentally? Definitely not. God simply existed without time. The question is what existence consists of for a timeless, immaterial, eternal, being. The very definition of timeless is for no events to occur. God had an unchanging desire to create.

The bottom line is that God existed without the universe and time.

Yet that's faulty from the get-go. A rock, even if it doesn't move or change at all, is still temporal. Being-at-rest as well as change implies temporality, given the proper substance.

A rock isn't alleged to creating time. Huge difference there. In a timeless state, God does not change and does not move. If He does, time exists alongside Him, and is therefore eternal and not created.

It is wholly unclear what you're suggesting. Is it, God is not timeless? God is timeless yet in some way that He can move? I think either is more faulty than my position....

Strictly speaking, it is not the existence of change but rather the possibility of change that inaugurates the temporal realm. Time exists once a being that can change exists--it need not go through all the trouble of changing!

Anything to support these claims?

I'm sorry, but your theology seems to be heavily riddled with anthropomorphisms. I hope it is clear to your interlocutors that you are not attempting to represent the tradition of Catholicism?

No one should deny anthropomorphisms. I am stating God is timeless. That eternalness gives way to timelessness. That is what Catholic doctrine states on the matter.

 

[elopez]

So then God does nothing in the absence of time?

What is there for Him to do?

He doesn't need to think about how to create. Or why. He knows eternally. He doesn't need to prepare Himself for He is omnipotent.

Without the universe God simply exists. If there is something more you think Id really like to hear, and hear an explanation. Since indeed you are too claiming God is timeless without the universe.

 

[elopez]

But it does relate to the topic. You could cut god out of the picture entirely and still have a beginning to time.

Yes. You could. And Im sure a lot of people do.

 

[OliviaMay]

No, we cannot exclude God as he is the Creator. Creation cannot be without a Creator. Matter and energy did not create themselves.
As far as the stretch theory, that is pretty silly in that it is merely an attempt to avoid having a center of the Universe or a starting point. It makes less sense than a point where it began, and also contradicts observed space. As science it is a joke.
Science cannot explain what it does not know. If you leave God out you have even less to go on. Without God there is no explanation that makes any sense at all.

The first law of thermodynamics states matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed. That means they are eternal. No beginning and no end.

 

[OliviaMay]

It's no more controversial than claiming that our causal intuitions must continue to function in the absence of the very context in which they were derived and served a function. In fact, I would think that that would be more controversial a claim given that we have no experience of things "coming to be" ex nihilo or of supernatural entities causing anything to begin existing either ex nihilo or ex materia.

Things pop into existence from nothing all the time. It has even been observed by science.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/...foam-virtual-particles-and-other-curiosities/

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Yes. You could. And Im sure a lot of people do.

So why include a god in the model at all?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Things pop into existence from nothing all the time. It has even been observed by science.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/...foam-virtual-particles-and-other-curiosities/

I don't think that technically counts. They didn't pop into existence from "nothing," did they?

 

[elopez]

So why include a god in the model at all?

Again I did not intend to debate such in this thread. Honestly I am not interested.

 

[elopez]

The question relates less to the topic at hand and more so towards a debate on the existence of God.

 

[OliviaMay]

I don't think that technically counts. They didn't pop into existence from "nothing," did they?

From nothing.

 

[Archaeopteryx]

Again I did not intend to debate such in this thread. Honestly I am not interested.

So you recognise that adding a god to the equation doesn't explain anything, but you're going to do it anyway?

 

[elopez]

So you recognise that adding a god to the equation doesn't explain anything, but you're going to do it anyway?

That's not what I'm saying.

 

[zippy2006]

Yes.


Stand? No. Very, very still? No. Accidentally? Definitely not. God simply existed without time. The question is what existence consists of for a timeless, immaterial, eternal, being. The very definition of timeless is for no events to occur. God had an unchanging desire to create.

The bottom line is that God existed without the universe and time.


A rock isn't alleged to creating time. Huge difference there. In a timeless state, God does not change and does not move. If He does, time exists alongside Him, and is therefore eternal and not created.

It is wholly unclear what you're suggesting. Is it, God is not timeless? God is timeless yet in some way that He can move? I think either is more faulty than my position....


Anything to support these claims?


No one should deny anthropomorphisms. I am stating God is timeless. That eternalness gives way to timelessness. That is what Catholic doctrine states on the matter.

I don't think it is what Catholic doctrine states. Consider what Cardinal Ratzinger, later to become the prefect of the CDF and then Pope Benedict XVI, says on the matter:

If anyone, following our train of thought, says, "Good, he can hear", must he not go on to ask, "But can he also answer our prayers?” Or is not the prayer of petition, the call of the creature up to God, in the last analysis a pious trick to elevate man psychologically and to comfort him, because he is seldom capable of higher forms of prayer? Surely the whole thing serves solely to set man in motion somehow or other toward transcendence, although in reality nothing can happen or be changed as a result of his prayers; for what is eternal is eternal, and what is temporal is temporal—no path seems to lead from one to the other. This, too, we cannot consider in detail here, because a very searching critical analysis of the concepts of time and eternity would be required. One would have to investigate their foundations in ancient thought and the synthesis of this thought with the biblical faith, a synthesis whose imperfection lies at the root of modern questioning. One would have to reflect once again on the relationship of scientific and technical thinking to the thinking of faith. These are tasks that go far beyond the scope of this book. So here again, instead of detailed answers, we must settle for an indication of the general direction in which the answer is to be sought.

Modern thinking usually lets itself be guided by the idea that eternity is imprisoned, so to speak, in its unchangeableness; God appears as the prisoner of his eternal plan conceived “before all ages”. “Being” and “becoming” do not mingle. Eternity is thus understood in a purely negative sense as timelessness, as the opposite to time, as something that cannot make its influence felt in time for the simple reason that it would thereby cease to be unchangeable and itself become temporal. Fundamentally these ideas remain the products of a pre-Christian mentality that takes no account of a concept of God that finds utterance in a belief in creation and incarnation. At bottom they take for granted the dualism of antiquity—something that we cannot go into here—and are signs of an intellectual naïveté that looks at God in human terms. For if one thinks that God cannot alter retrospectively what he planned “before” eternity, then unwittingly one is again conceiving eternity in terms of time, with its distinction between “before” and “after”.

But eternity is not the very ancient, which existed before time began, but the entirely other, which is related to every passing age as its today and is really contemporary with it; it is not itself barred off into a “before” and “after”; it is much rather the power of the present in all time. Eternity does not stand by the side of time, quite unrelated to it; it is the creatively supporting power of all time, which encompasses passing time in its own present and thus gives it the ability to be. It is not timelessness but dominion over time. As the Today that is contemporary with all ages, it can also make its influence felt in any age.

-Introduction to Christianity, p 315-7

Granted, the context is slightly different, but he is addressing an objection to petitionary prayer that is based on precisely the kind of "timelessness" that you are asserting. God is not some being trapped outside the confines of time, constrained from movement lest he "set off" the temporal realm. Aristotle even saw this, dubbing him the "Unmoved Mover."

 

[Chriliman]

That doesn't make any sense to me. If God creates something surely he can destroy it. It says many things will pass away in the Bible. Heaven and Earth will pass away. I don't understand your limitations on what God can do especially since it contradicts the Bible in many places.

Right, if God creates something He can destroy it, but does destroying it mean he takes it out of existence? If so then it would be like what he destroyed never existed in the first place, thus no need to destroy it. I believe God has destroyed evil through the power of Jesus Christ and since I've accepted this as truth, God will destroy all evil within me and when I physically die, I will live forever with God devoid of evil. So, from our perspective in the new Jerusalem it will be as if evil never existed, but this cannot change the fact that Jesus had to die and conquer death in order for us to be able to attain this perfect existence. There was a price paid for those chosen by God, in order that they may glorify God for all that he has done. You can't just take that price out of existence, otherwise all meaning of what the price paid for is lost.