If god is eternal everything else is eternal, too

[quatona]

This is a split off from the "Sexy Christians" thread.
I don´t want to derail this thread any further, but I am highly interested in continuing the conversation with cantata that we started there.

Revisiting the initial issue: For god, people would not only be eternally naked, but they would also eternally be dressed, and they´d even wear eternally every single piece of garment they (from our temporal perspective) have ever worn at any point in time. So for god I am naked and dressed in multiple ways, eternally.

Well, only in the same way that, as far as someone would be concerned who could look at all the frames of a film simultaneously, a character in the film wears all of her outfits eternally.

Why „only“? That would be god´s perspective, after all, and I keep hearing that god´s perspective is not only the most relevant one but the „true“ one.
Whilst, if looking at things from my perspective and from within the realm of my existence, eternity is a non-concept.
On a sidenote (that may become important at some point, though) I´d like to point out that the „looking at the frames of a film simultaneously“ does not quite catch the issue. For the eternal being there is nothing but this one unchangeable picture. It´s the only thing it can see – eternally, completely statically.

Let me put it differently: If we consider god on the premise that he is eternal we can´t arrive at the conclusion that he did anything. If we work from our paradigms (time and space) god can appear to be creating, to act, to change. However if it´s the "true" way of looking at it is that god is eternal, then saying "he created" is not reconcilable with this "true" way of looking at things. It may, however, appear that way from the very pov that is actually declared "flawed".

Imagine a train travelling at six tenths of the speed of light. Person x is on the train; person y is on the platform. As the train passes her, person y sees a bolt of lightning hit the front of the train, and, simultaneously, another bolt hit the rear of the train. But because person x is travelling so fast, she sees the lightning bolt at the front of the train strike first (because she is travelling towards it), and the bolt at the rear strike a little later (because she is travelling away from it).

You might feel inclined to ask: did the lightning bolts really strike simultaneously, or did they really occur at different times? But in fact, the question is meaningless. From person y's point of view, they struck simultaneously; from person x's point of view, they did not. Neither is correct or incorrect, because there is no such thing as a neutral interpretation of what happened.

So our temporal perspective of the world is not false or flawed; nor is God's eternal one. We are both right.

Just for clarification: The „flawed“ part was not my opinion, but what I keep hearing from god believers.
My point is: From within the existence of a sentient eternal being absolutely nothing ever happens. There is only one DVD for it to look at, and this DVD does not tell a story to it, but is a still picture, with there not even being an option of „no DVD“ or „another DVD“.
And here is the key point (which is completely new to me – it came to me during this conversation, and I hope you help me get that sorted):
From the pov of an eternal being everything that exists is necessarily eternal. Nothing comes into being, nothing changes, nothing ceases to be. If the being is eternal, everything else must be eternal for it, too. From god´s pov the universe is just as eternal as god himself is.

I agree with that. He wills; things happen for us. As far as God is concerned, nothing happens; things just are.

I conclude that god is incapable of perceiving things my way (or even only fathoming or conceptualizing what it´s like to be temporal), whilst I am easily capable of fathoming and conceptualizing eternal, static existence. Strange, isn´t it?
And, even more strange, once I put myself in god´s shoes I must conclude that everthing else is just as eternal as I am.

"Responsible for" in the sense that, were God not to exist, nor would anything else.

And vice versa. Would you agree?

From within the perspective that god is eternal it must follow that everything else is eternal, too. I guess what I am expecting is a consistently applied perspective.

God's knowledge of everything else is eternal. I don't see why that has to mean that everything is itself eternal. After all, my father's godmother certainly was not eternal, but my memory of her is quite capable of surviving after her death. Remember that for God, there is no "after", in any case.

Well, that´s exactly my point.
For god, there is no difference between existence and memory of existence.
You actually were the one who brought this up when you said that once (speaking from our temporal perspective) we have been naked we are eternally naked for god.. Likewise, once anything has ever existed (again, speaking from our temporal perspective) it exists eternally for god.
For me and from within my realm and perspective, eternity is not a concept. Toying with it requires me to deny the validity of the paradigms of my existence.
Now, either I look at it from my perspective – in which nothing can be eternal, and even god is permanently changing, or I am trying to look at it from the perspective that denies the validity of the paradigms of my existence – in which case I necessarily end up concluding that along with god everything else must be eternal, too.

God doesn't act, in the sense that we understand the word, I shouldn't think. But it's easiest to talk about God in terms of acting, because it's more immediately comprehensible.

To be honest, I find that destroying the last bit of comprehensibility - seeing that the irreconcilability of being eternal and acting jumps in my face immediately. (And, of course, I use „acting“ in the way I understand this word. I stubbornly refuse to use words in a way I don´t understand; or, at least,.if I did I wouldn´t pretend that my words were meant to communicate anything. ).

No, God can't hope or desire. Hope requires an unknown future; God knows everything and has no future. Desire requires that there be something one wants that one has not.

Ok, that´s common ground for us, then.

But I think that, if God is, one might say, the sustainer of everything that is, his eternal willing that it exists is the process whereby it can exist. I think this is a case where I might be allowed some special pleading. He is God, and his will has special properties.

Uuhm, I mean I like you a lot and all, but I´m not sure that my love for you goes so far that I would allow you special pleading.

In a sense, yes. As I said above, perhaps you can imagine him as sustaining the Universe.

Well, in the same way as I can imagine the universe as sustaining god. Seeing that god´s and the universe´s eternity are interdependent...

God can, however, perceive himself as the sustainer of the universe, I should think.

In my understanding „sustaining“ is a temporal concept, in that it refers to duration. I have no idea what „sustain“ might possibly mean in the absence of time any more than I have an idea what „acting“ might mean in the absence of time.
From god´s perspective, there´s god and the universe, and both are eternally and statically there. There is nothing to sustain. None is nor can be without the other.
The more parsimonous version, however, is that the universe is eternal, and that time and space are just our ways of perceiving it. The idea of a god turns out to be completely redundant.

 

[cantata]

This is a split off from the "Sexy Christians" thread.
I don´t want to derail this thread any further, but I am highly interested in continuing the conversation with cantata that we started there.

Yay! Me too.

Why „only“? That would be god´s perspective, after all, and I keep hearing that god´s perspective is not only the most relevant one but the „true“ one.

Ah, okay. Well, here, I'm being a philosopher. As a philosopher (and an atheist, at that!), I don't expect to agree 100% with lay Christians, just as I'm sure lay Christians don't expect to agree 100% with me.

I don't believe in God, and I find God-concepts rather silly. But personally I find eternity one of the less silly elements of the God-concept. However, I am firmly of the opinion that it can only work with an understanding of time which acknowledges general relativity. An eternal being is, so to speak, outside of time. So his paradigm is different from hours, but not more correct than ours.

Whilst, if looking at things from my perspective and from within the realm of my existence, eternity is a non-concept.

Are you sure?

What about numbers? Are they eternal? How about the idea of a perfect circle?

On a sidenote (that may become important at some point, though) I´d like to point out that the „looking at the frames of a film simultaneously“ does not quite catch the issue. For the eternal being there is nothing but this one unchangeable picture. It´s the only thing it can see – eternally, completely statically.

That is correct.

However, again I think it's fair to actually make an argument that this is God we're talking about, so his "vision" may be kind of weird. He could have some way of viewing causal relations between events in the form of little arrows, for example, and perhaps each image also has a timestamp attached to it. Of course, God must be able to see all the infinite frame simultaneously (as opposed to flitting from one to the other as we would do), but he's infinite, so that's okay.

Just for clarification: The „flawed“ part was not my opinion, but what I keep hearing from god believers.

Again, I simply disagree with them about that. They're shooting themselves in the foot there.

My point is: From within the existence of a sentient eternal being absolutely nothing ever happens. There is only one DVD for it to look at, and this DVD does not tell a story to it, but is a still picture, with there not even being an option of „no DVD“ or „another DVD“.
And here is the key point (which is completely new to me – it came to me during this conversation, and I hope you help me get that sorted):
From the pov of an eternal being everything that exists is necessarily eternal. Nothing comes into being, nothing changes, nothing ceases to be. If the being is eternal, everything else must be eternal for it, too. From god´s pov the universe is just as eternal as god himself is.

Well, again, only in the sense that, in a film of a man making a vase, the vase both exists and does not exist eternally to someone looking at the frames of the film. I can look at a timeline of the history of Britain, and see that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066. And if I could "zoom in" to my timeline, so to speak, I could see perhaps several frames from the Battle of Hastings with the timestamp "14th October 1066". God can quite comfortably, I think, see time-for-us as a linear diagram and apprehend that entire diagram statically and for eternity.

(The only suspicious part, which I freely admit is problematic, is that God can't know where we are on the timeline at any given point, as that would compromise his immutability. That's tricky for God's omniscience.)

I conclude that god is incapable of perceiving things my way (or even only fathoming or conceptualizing what it´s like to be temporal), whilst I am easily capable of fathoming and conceptualizing eternal, static existence. Strange, isn´t it?

I think God can see things your way metaphorically (as I describe above), just as you can see things his way metaphorically (again, as I describe above). I don't think, although forgive me if I'm wrong, that you really have a precise idea of what it is to be eternal. If you do, please tell me about it! I've spent a lot of time thinking about it and it's still very confusing

And, even more strange, once I put myself in god´s shoes I must conclude that everthing else is just as eternal as I am.
And vice versa. Would you agree?

Why, no. God knows that he exists in every frame of our linear time, but that other things do not. Virginia Woolf is in the frames with timestamps between 1882 and 1941.

Well, that´s exactly my point.
For god, there is no difference between existence and memory of existence.
You actually were the one who brought this up when you said that once (speaking from our temporal perspective) we have been naked we are eternally naked for god.. Likewise, once anything has ever existed (again, speaking from our temporal perspective) it exists eternally for god.

Not just "once anything has ever existed" - God has apprehended the existence of anything not only "after" it has existed, but also "before". God eternally apprehends the existence of everything that ever was, is, and will be. But as I explained above, that doesn't mean he's of the mistaken opinion that for us, those things exist eternally.

For me and from within my realm and perspective, eternity is not a concept. Toying with it requires me to deny the validity of the paradigms of my existence.

Again, I'm inclined to point to other eternal things, like Pythagoras' Theorum, for example.

Now, either I look at it from my perspective – in which nothing can be eternal, and even god is permanently changing, or I am trying to look at it from the perspective that denies the validity of the paradigms of my existence – in which case I necessarily end up concluding that along with god everything else must be eternal, too.

Remember that God is outside of time. You are quite right that an eternal being couldn't exist in the temporal Universe. The Universe can be, at best, sempiternal. But God doesn't exist in the temporal Universe.

To be honest, I find that destroying the last bit of comprehensibility - seeing that the irreconcilability of being eternal and acting jumps in my face immediately. (And, of course, I use „acting“ in the way I understand this word. I stubbornly refuse to use words in a way I don´t understand; or, at least,.if I did I wouldn´t pretend that my words were meant to communicate anything. ).

What I mean is that for the purposes of religious language, metaphor is very useful to put across ideas that would be extremely difficult to articulate otherwise. Just as language is not ideally suited to discuss things which are extremely large or extremely small or extremely old, nor is it very well-suited to discussing something which is outside of time. Our language is very temporal in nature. We can barely write a sentence without it having a tense. If you want, we can call God's eternal-willing-which-makes-it-appear-to-us-that-he-is-acting-temporally "G-acting".

Ok, that´s common ground for us, then.

Yep!

Although I would add, of course, that I am to a certain extent playing devil's advocate. I don't believe in God. But I do think eternity is an interesting concept and it deserves to be discussed. This is fun!

Uuhm, I mean I like you a lot and all, but I´m not sure that my love for you goes so far that I would allow you special pleading.

Well, let me put it this way: if God exists, he must be fundamentally different from us. He's going to be weird, right? So I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that this weird being has some special powers.

Well, in the same way as I can imagine the universe as sustaining god. Seeing that god´s and the universe´s eternity are interdependent...

I do think this position is incorrect. The Universe does not need to be eternal at all. (And it isn't.)

In my understanding „sustaining“ is a temporal concept, in that it refers to duration. I have no idea what „sustain“ might possibly mean in the absence of time any more than I have an idea what „acting“ might mean in the absence of time.

Sustaining from our perspective. From God's perspective, eternally, statically, willing that it should come into existence.

From god´s perspective, there´s god and the universe, and both are eternally and statically there. There is nothing to sustain. None is nor can be without the other.

Certainly there is nothing to sustain, because God apprehends it in every state as existing eternally and statically. But what I mean to say is that, were God not there, nor would be the Universe.

The more parsimonous version, however, is that the universe is eternal, and that time and space are just our ways of perceiving it. The idea of a god turns out to be completely redundant.

The Universe, I feel, cannot be eternal. It is sempiternal, I should think - it exists as long as time does - but eternity requires atemporality, and the universe is fundamentally temporal.

God's eternity is a solution to other problems that arise if you think of him as temporal. It's only worth discussing if you assume, for the sake of argument, that he exists, and then try to make the concept work. He needs to be eternal, some claim, in order to be immutable. And he needs to be immutable because that is a perfection, and God is supposed to have all perfections. Call that silly, if you will; I do.

 

[quatona]

Cantata, allow me to get back to this part of your post – hoping I am not reading too much into our analogy.

Imagine a train travelling at six tenths of the speed of light. Person x is on the train; person y is on the platform. As the train passes her, person y sees a bolt of lightning hit the front of the train, and, simultaneously, another bolt hit the rear of the train. But because person x is travelling so fast, she sees the lightning bolt at the front of the train strike first (because she is travelling towards it), and the bolt at the rear strike a little later (because she is travelling away from it).

You might feel inclined to ask: did the lightning bolts really strike simultaneously, or did they really occur at different times? But in fact, the question is meaningless. From person y's point of view, they struck simultaneously; from person x's point of view, they did not. Neither is correct or incorrect, because there is no such thing as a neutral interpretation of what happened.

So our temporal perspective of the world is not false or flawed; nor is God's eternal one. We are both right.

I notice that we need to be clearer:
Does „being temporal“ and „being eternal“ mean anything beyond „perceiving in terms of time“ and „not perceiving in terms of time“?

You seem to reduce the statements „is temporal“ and „is eternal“ to a description of ways of perceiving/interpreting. Not that I disagree, but doesn´t that mean that
-for god everything is necessarily eternal
-for us everything (including god) is necessarily temporal

and that´s that?

God, as well as everything else, is eternal on god´s own terms, and god, just like everything else, is not eternal on our own terms?

What then, does it mean for god to will something? All that god wills and could possibly will is there for him anyways. Including things that are irreconcilabe in terms of our temporal understanding. A naked quatona and a dressed quatona. An existing quatona and a dead quatona. Both are what god statically wills and what is statically there in his perception/interpretation anyways. For someone who does not distinguish between options (because everything we perceive as options is statically there, including that which we perceive as contradictory) - what does it even mean to "will" something?

How can a temporal (as in necessarily perceiving/interpreting in terms of time) being possibly come to the conclusion that something is eternal (other than as just another way of saying „I have absolutely no clue what I am talking about.“ ?