Balki

I've never seen anyone mention this before, so I'll share a thought I recently had.

If God is eternal and omniscient, then "infinity" years ago, God already knew the exact time in the future when he would create the universe. What did God do for all that time? Why did he wait eternity to create something? Just think, 999,999,999,999 years ago God knew that in 999,999,999,999 years he would make the universe. Why wait all those years? Wouldn't the good lord get bored? Maybe he sang to pass the time; "Infinity bottles of beer on the wall...take one down, pass it around, infinity minus one bottles of beer on the wall!!"

*God checks his watch*

"Just a hundred trillion or so years until I create a son and send him to die for a race of humans I've yet to create to save them from a hell I've yet to create where demons I've yet to create shall reside."

Anywho, feel free to discuss...

Yossarian

I may be wrong, but eternity is timelessness--the absense of time, not unlimited time.

God does not function within space/time--we do. That's why we need a cause, and he doesn't. He's above it, independent of it. He created time for us, but he himself exists outside of it. Past, present and future are all the same to him--they don't exist. God doesn't wear a wristwatch.

Balki

God sounds like my grandpa with alzheimers. He has no concept of time either...today, last week, all the same to the poor man. I don't even know why he bothers wearing a watch, habit I guess

SingleDad

I don't know... To me, "eternity" seems to denote an infinite quantity of time, not the absence of time. Without time (spacetime) it seems completely opaque what it means for something to actually exist.

Balki

There can't be a limit put on time, whether you're going into the past or into the future. One can't say that time is only "X" years old, which is what I think Yossarian was saying. There has to exist an "X minus one" years.

This is why I said that a god would have had to existed for an infinite amount of time (going into the past infinitely) before creating the universe, which leads to a mountain of questions: Why would God have created a universe when he had existed for an infinite amount of time without one?

This is the line of thought I was putting out for discussion. I hope I'm getting this across clearly enough, but this is where I was heading.

Yossarian

This may not be the only universe God ever created--who knows how many experiments he keeps conducting? What else would he do with his unlimited powers of all sorts? Play around, of course! Makes me feel damn special.

Mageth

I'm a YGC (Young God Creationist). Man created God @6000 years ago.

Kenny

There is an apocryphal story in which St. Augustine was asked the question as to what God was doing before He created the universe. St. Augustine supposedly answered, “Creating Hell for people who ask such questions.”

While amusing, this story is false. St. Augustine did address this question, but his answer was much more intelligent than the one above. According to St. Augustine, time does not exist independently of the universe. Instead of being created in time, the universe was created with time (i.e. time itself was created along with the universe). In this respect, St Augustine’s assessment is in agreement with General Relativity. The question as to what God was doing before the creation of the world, then, is meaningless. There was no “before” in a temporal sense. God is ontologically prior to the universe, but not temporally prior.

God Himself, in classical theism, is understood to be above time. The relationship between His knowledge, His will, and the creation of the world follows a sequence of ontological dependence, but there is no temporal sequence involved. In a single eternal act, God comprehends the fullness of His own divine nature and as a consequence obtains knowledge of everything which it is possible for him to do, including the possible worlds He could create. This is called God’s “natural knowledge.” In addition to comprehending everything that He could possibly do, God is also aware of His own desires, goals, and aims, and, given His omniscience, is fully aware of the best way to accomplish them. Consequently, God’s choice to create the world He does immediately accompanies His knowledge of all the possible worlds He could create in conjunction with His knowledge of His aims and the best way to accomplish them. In addition to knowledge of all possible worlds, then, God also knows which world He chose to create -- this is referred to as God’s “free knowledge.” Since there is no temporal sequence involved in any of this, for God it all happens “at once.” There is no subjective before or after as far as God is concerned, only an eternal subjective present that encompasses all of existence.

Now, there are many Christian philosophers and theologions in our day who challenge classical theism at this point and maintain that God is, in some sense, in time. I basically agree with the classical position although there are a few nuances I would add -- none of which, however, I want to address at the moment.

Unfortunately, this is finals week so any responses on my part are likely slow in coming.

God Bless,
Kenny

[ December 10, 2001: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p>

Guttersnipe

I wonder, will we ever actually understand what this statement means? It is one thing to state that God exists independently of time, but yet quite another to understand how an entity could exist as such. Given that we can have no real concept of a God existing independently of space/time, is it meaningful to discuss the nature of such a creature?

Do we really know the universe needs a cause? I think to say that it does incorrectly assumes the existence of cause and effect prior to the universe's creation. We don't know that it existed in the manner it does now. Further, most physicists ascribe to the notion of quantum indetermination, which (if we assume existed for the 'pre-universe') would have been a major factor during the formulative process of the universe.

[ December 10, 2001: Message edited by: Guttersnipe ]</p>

Yossarian

Guttersnipe,

Thought it was clear: I was giving the theological view, better explained by Kenny above. Not my personal opinion.