GunnerJ

When I was a theist, I asked this question of a preist, that is, if god created the universe, what did he do before we were around? and he said, "God doesn't do, God is." As a non-theist, I roll my eyes at such an answer, as a theist, though, I was more inclined to roll my eyes at myself. It made sense that God wasn't some temporal being, that he was a steady, solid, unmoving Force, and that all time was a contrivance of this existance. As a theist, I never went farther. As a nontheist, I did.

If God is somehow a non-temporal being that has no chronological existance, and he is omnipotent, then he must see the time dimension of this universe the way we see the three spacial dimentions; thus he observes every instant as a snapshot of reality, and knows each part completely. Thus, there can be no free will. Actually, there can be no existance, as "creation" is, to god, a picture of four dimentions, and we just move from one frame to the next like film on a projector.

Kenny

I see nothing contradictory in imagining something which is not limited to time, nor is it all that difficult for me to conceptualize a timeless reality. In fact, to me, the existence of time is the weird thing when I think about it, not the absence of it. For example, does that kindergartner I used to be long ago still exist in some sense? I am certainly much different than he was. What happened to him? Do those moments of sitting in kindergarten class and learning to write my letters still exist somewhere; where they annihilated somehow; if they were annihilated by the passing of time, then what is this mysterious force called time that is capable of killing kindergartners and replacing them with adults? To me, it is time and the changing of the past into present that is the real mystery.

Truth be told, I doubt very much that time has any real sort of metaphysical primacy. Rather, I think that time is likely an artifact of causal and logical relationships. I do believe that the kindergartner I once was still exists somewhere writing his ABC’s. It doesn’t make any sense to me to think that those moments were somehow just annihilated from existence by some mysterious entity called “time.” What distinguishes me as I am now from me as I was and also connects the “me” in both times, then, is merely a series of causal relationships. From those relationships, the perception that “time” has passed for me subjectively emerges. I would point out that this view is consistent with and strongly implied by Relativity which describes the universe as a single space-time manifold in which coordinates for every event can be assigned and “space-time separations” between events in space-time can be calculated. There is, for instance, a quantitatively defined “distance” between myself right now and my self as a kindergartner.

Since God is omnipresent and therefore fully related to every aspect of existence, it makes sense that God sees the whole of space-time all “at once” without experiencing any subjective passage of time.

God Bless,
Kenny

[ December 11, 2001: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p>

SingleDad

This is not the case. Since spacetime is curved (and thus time is curved along with it), it could exist in a finite unbounded loop, sphere or other such multidimensional analog. Of course, it could also be simply finite and bounded.

SingleDad

I find it difficult to understand the meaning of ontological existence without spacetime. The conceptual difficulties you so blithely handwave over in this and your following post are not so obvious to me.

Kenny

Yep.

I don’t think that such a view is incompatible with any philosophically coherent concept of freewill. Freewill requires that we are in some sense causally responsible for our actions, not that those actions are indeterminate.

Actually, we wouldn’t “move” from frame to frame at all. Each frame just “is” being connected to all the other frames via causal relationships. I don’t see how the affirmation that each moment in time exists as part of a single space-time manifold negates existence, but if it does, then we’d better rid ourselves of Relativity.

God Bless,
Kenny

Kenny

Why? I’m not trying to be glib here, but I am different from you in this respect. I find the “passing of time” to be a philosophically difficult concept to get a handle on which is one of the reasons why I suspect that time (or, rather, space-time) is an emergent property of the universe, not a metaphysically primary one, and that “the passing of time” is only a subjective reality. In keeping with Mach’s principle, I hold that space-time is defined by and dependent on the relationships that exist between things in the universe, and not something which exists on its own.

What, specifically, are those difficulties. I’ll do my best to explain, but I need something to grab a hold of. And like I said, its finals week, so I may not be able to respond again until the weekend.

God Bless,
Kenny

[ December 11, 2001: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p>

jpbrooks

I hope you guys don't mind my input here, but if we assume that the universe had a beginning, then there would be two ways in which time could be viewed. We could view time as a purely universal phenomenon which would not exist outside or before the existence of our universe. Or we could view time as something (loosely) analogous to a "number line" in mathematics that extends from eternity past to eternity future and includes, as a subset, our "stretch" of universal time. It is in this latter sense that there would be an infinite number of units of "time" before any universe comes into existence. The former sense would seem to be more applicable, as Kenny seems to suggest above, to this issue from God's (possible) perspective.
My problem is that I can't differentiate the idea of God's "experience" from God's "knowing". So to me, it is possible that God could "see" things from both a "timeless" perspective and from a "time bound" one.

On the issue of God's "boredom", boredom results when one's circumstances in some aspect of life doesn't meet one's desires, expectations, or abilities.There is no reason to suppose that a being that possesses the atributes that God is held to possess, could ever "experience" such "boredom", since he existed for an infinite amount of time without creating anything to end that "boredom".

Have a good week.

jpbrooks

I hope you guys don't mind my input here, but if we assume that the universe had a beginning, then there would be two ways in which time could be viewed. We could view time as a purely universal phenomenon which would not exist outside or before the existence of our universe. Or we could view time as something (loosely) analogous to a "number line" in mathematics that extends from eternity past to eternity future and includes, as a subset, our "stretch" of universal time. It is in this latter sense that there would be an infinite number of units of "time" before any universe comes into existence. The former sense would seem to be more applicable, as Kenny seems to suggest above, to this issue from God's (possible) perspective.
My problem is that I can't differentiate the idea of God's "experience" from God's "knowing". So to me, it is possible that God could "see" things from both a "timeless" perspective and from a "time bound" one.

On the issue of God's "boredom", boredom results when one's circumstances in some aspect of life doesn't meet one's desires, expectations, or abilities.There is no reason to suppose that a being that possesses the atributes that God is held to possess, could ever "experience" such "boredom", since he existed for an infinite amount of time without creating anything to end that "boredom".

Have a good week.

critical thinking made ez

I have a problem when someone tells me something exists outside of time.
Something outside of time would be incapable of movement or change. It must be static otherwise its movement or change would fall under the measurement of time. The beginning of even a thought to the end of a thought, can be measured in time. So a God outside of time must not be capable of thought, movement, or change.


Which may help to explain why no thought was placed into the logic of the various holy scriptures, thus proving the existance of your mindless God.

Kenny

A quick response and then back to studying (procrastination, isn‘t it great ),

Some Christian philosophers have challenged the notion of God’s timelessness for precisely the reason you suggest. A timeless being, they argue, would be incapable of action and therefore, were God timeless, He too would be incapable of action. I disagree because I do not see causality as being dependent on time; rather I see time as an artifact of the causal relationships between the things which exist in the universe. Causality itself, I believe, is a matter of logical dependence, not temporal priority. When we say that A causes B, we mean (very roughly) that B obtains because A obtains.

To say that A happens because God wills it, then, is equivalent to saying that God causes A through the agency of His will. As I explained above, through God’s perfect self knowledge of all possible worlds He could create and God’s perfect self knowledge of His desires and aims, God wills the universe to be as it is in accordance with those aims. This, in turn, results in the universe’s existence and God’s perfect knowledge of its existence. Thus, God acts to create the universe and is causally responsible for its existence, but none of this requires any sort of temporal sequence. Likewise, in relation to God’s thoughts, God’s thoughts are logically dependent on God’s mind in conjunction with His will, but they reside eternally within that mind. There is not a time before God had a certain thought and a time after God had that thought. Rather, God’s thoughts follow immediately as a logical consequence of God’s mind and will whereby they are eternally present to God’s perfect self awareness.

Now, I admit that it is conceptually difficult for us to mentally divorce causal actions from temporal sequences because we are used to conceiving of causality in temporal terms, but if causality primarily reflects logical relationships, and time is just an artifact of some sort, then there is no reason to suppose that acting in causal ways requires time.

God Bless,
Kenny