Philosoft

2 Peter 3:8
But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day [is] with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

I don't suppose this passage is subject to the same translation issues as that other passage about "days"? Anyway, this passage suggests several things to me, not one of which has anything to do with God "existing" outside of time, able to see all moments at once.

<strong> I strongly dispute the alleged scriptural support for this. Before you blithely assume this concept is well-founded in your further argumentation, I'd like to see all the Biblical evidence for this.

<strong> Because you keep leaving out important parts and adding others that aren't in evidence! If God had a "plan" before God created humanity, and that plan included foreknowledge of the decisions individual humans would make, it is impossible to argue that those decisions are freely chosen and God isn't responsible, regardless of how it appears we make decisions.

[snip bank robber analogy which, like every other analogy about knowledge and free will, leaves out the crucially important part about the nature of God's knowledge when he created humanity]

<strong> I grow tired of this evasion, Luv. Does God know, or does God not know what decisions we will make before we make them? If he does, how soon before we make them does he know?

<strong> Once again, if the decisions we make are the only possible decisions we could have made, it is incorrect to say those decisions are freely chosen, regardless of how it appears.

Philosoft

It appears that I accidentally replied to the part of Luv's post directed to Non-Praying Mantis, so...

<strong>Quoth the Luvster:

All representatives of God have consistently stated that there were aspects of God's attributes that were beyond human understanding. If there is a God, and He has the attributes ascribed to Him, He is necessarily beyond explanation.</strong>

How do they know there are attributes that are beyond human understanding if they are actually beyond human understanding? What kind of attributes? How many do they think there are?

<strong>Is there a good reason to believe that a thing cannot exist if humans cannot conceive of it? Can you really conceive of, say, a singularity?</strong>

No, that's why a singularity is a mathematical construct and not the product of theory or a thought-experiment.

Theli

Luvluv...

Do you mean that you could have ended up not bying the DVD?
1. If you couldn't, then what excact choice did you have?
2. If you could, then gods knowledge of your future is false. His knowledge would be recorded as our time pass. God would change simultainesly with our time, and would therefore be a part of it.

Besides how can god exist simultaneous to us when he doesn't exist in our time. Couldn't he just aswell "have existed", or "will exist"?
To say that something is not "in our time", but still claim that it exist now, isn't that illogical?

One-eyed Jack

luvluv: God certainly has "temporal omnipresence." My argument was against the idea that he "discovers" or "observes" the results of freewill decisions by humans as they happen. I think most fundamentalists hold that God does not have to observe these decisions happening within time; He has known for all time what they would be.

Non-praying Mantis

Luvluv:

No, I am not! I understand how God and time are supposed to work together.

Imagine that the universe is a long football-shaped piece of clear Jello Pudding (insert your favorite Bill Cosby impression here...). The long axis represents time, and a "slice" across that axis represents the three dimensional universe, at one point in time.

Now, Christians assert that God is not associated with our linear time, and that he is outside of our universe. OK, now picture God sitting outside of the jello football, and you have God's relationship to time. If God moves, or does an action outside of the universe, it does not affect the pudding. He moves in his own "time". Without God's time, God would be unable to act AT ALL!

However, Christians also assert that God can cause effects in our universe as well (miracles, guided evolution, creation, etc.). When God does this, God reaches into the pudding and creates an effect (symbolized by a grape) in the universe. This effect will change the slice across the pudding, for a period of time (our time). Before (God's time) God's action, the grape did not exist, now it does. Let's say that grapes in the pudding represent our lives in time.

Our universe is full of people, with each person's actions affecting other people, and those actions affecting other people, and so forth. In other words, the grapes overlap each other.

</strong>

This translates (roughly) to God being able to examine the pudding at any point. God's "time" being different from ours (the pudding), this action takes up none of our time. He can also see our future by looking at another slice of the pudding, and also see how the events (grapes, bananas, cherries, etc) interact with each other. God can also examine a single grape (one human's life) all at once.

</strong>

I never said that God influences our actions. I said that God knows what we will do in the future.

</strong>

I think that YOU are the one that cannot grasp this concept, so let me lead you through it, using your bankrobbing example:

</strong>

OK. The bank robbery in this man's life is represented by a seed inside the grape.

</strong>

When God watches the tape, it is as if he is examining the seed that is the bank robbery. This includes all of the events of the robbery.

</strong>

If the bank robber made the decision to not rob the bank, then the video tape would be different, and this translates to the seed being much smaller. That means either one of two things:

1) the seed was small in the first place: the robber wanted to rob the bank, but did not go through with it. How could the seed be long then, if it was small in the first place? Remember, all of history is recorded in the pudding, and the grape represents all of the robber's life: past, present, and future. If the robber did not rob the bank, the seed would be small, or large, if he did. Now, the seed cannot "change" in length in this possibility. It either is short or long.

This possibility prevents the robber's free will: either the robber would rob the bank, or not, but the result was known by God "beforehand"

2) the seed is simultaneously short AND long, or oscillates between short and long. Let us suppose that during the bank robbery, the robber shoots several people, and kills them. Their "grapes" (lifetimes), which intersect the "seed" (robbery), would be "sliced off" at that point. Presumably, their future actions could affect other "grapes" (or possibly bananas or cherries, or seeds of these fruits). And, these grapes would oscillate between being cut off and not cut off. After a while (in our time), this effect would create something like a big "fruit smoothie" of possibilities! In this possibility, there is no knowable "future"

Man's actions would eventually be "unviewable" by God, because of our free will, and this would eliminate God's omniscience. The best God could do would be to "guess" our most likely universe, but without the certainty required for "omniscience".

</strong>

As you should be able to see from my above explaination, this would mean that the videotape of the robber, that "you" would be watching, would be different, i.e. no robbery.

</strong>

The observation did not, but his "decision" would alter your viewing of the videotape.

Why? Does God not control our actions, as opposed to only controlling those not caused by man?

Before you say "no" to my question, answer this one first. If I (or another person) do something good for you, or if something built by another person helps you out, would you never say "thank God", or words similar to that?

If you say "thank God" for my actions, or consequences of my actions(or any other person's actions, or consequences thereof) then you would have to answer "yes" to my question.

NPM

[ July 29, 2002: Message edited for clarity]

[ July 29, 2002: Message edited for clarity, again! ]

[ July 29, 2002: Third time's the charm! ]

[ July 29, 2002: Message edited by: Non-praying Mantis ]</p>

Jamie_L

Mantis:

Okay, now someone is getting at what I was getting at. Let's stick with the pudding terminology.

The whole pudding is the universe. If God exists and God made the universe, God made the whole pudding. Since all of our actions are part of the pudding, God made all our actions. Though we might perceive free will, we would have none.

Jamie

Non-praying Mantis

Correct. This corresponds to my possibility 1).

Allowing God the possibility to change the pudding, if God does this, it makes an instantaneous change throughout the pudding, changing all of the parts that are affected by God's change.

NPM

luvluv

Philosoft:

Fine, I'll get it for you. But, with all due respect, we both know this is a delaying tactic. There isn't a poster on this board who is not fully aware that Christians consider God to exist outside of time.

That's the linear time thinking I was talking about. "How soon before" makes no sense to God. He has always known, but more importantly to our conversation, He has always SEEN. In a certain sense, He doesn't know them until we make them, but then you have to remember that to Him we are always making them and always have made them. The actions that we have to wait to intersect in the time line have always existed to Him, have always been within the realm of His perception.

He knows what we will do because we do it, and because what we will do has always been observable to Him in one ever-present moment.

This is what I was trying to show you with the VCR analogy. The fact that you observe the robber robbing the bank in the video tape does not in any way, shape, or form mean that the robber never had a choice but to rob the bank. You wouldnt take the video tape into the courtroom of the mans trial and say "Your honor, let him off the hook. I've seen the tape and therefore it was impossible for him to not rob the video tape."

This is where we can't seem to come to any sort of an understanding. You seem to believe that because God knows what we will do, that that is the only possible thing we could have done. I say that we could have done anything we chose to do, but God can only see what we actually do. The other things that we do not end up doing don't exist in this universe to be observed, therefore God can't see those (because they will have never happened). God sees the choices we will make but that does not mean that the choices were not genuinely our own.

I think, since this is the case I presume you are making (that a pre-observed action is no longer free because it has already been observed) then you need to explain why this is so because I can't see it. I don't see why that our choices are not still freely made by ourselves just because God observes we will make them. We could have done something other than what we did, we just didn't. God's observation does not form a barrier that makes certain actions impossible.

Well, as much as can be comprehended is revealed through revelation. God has revealed to us that He lives outside of time, but you seem to have been objecting to that on the grounds that it is inconceivable when you said this:

I am simply stating that an argument is not refuted because you cannot conceive of it. Isn't it axiomatic that an entity cannot conceive of realities that require more dimensions than the conceiver exists in? The extra temporal reality available to God would fall under this category.

Theli:

I would choose 2, but you're statement "His knowledge would be recorded as our time passes" is again a linear concept. God does not have to wait for our time to pass because He is present at every moment in our history: past, present, and future. I could have chosen not to buy the DVD player, but God's observations do not deal with "could have's". What I have been trying to say is that God's observations do not make "could have's" impossible. I'm still not understanding what makes you folks believe that it does. The could haves are possible, they just didn't happen. God's observation is not an outside force restricting what is possible. It is simply observation of the free choices we made/are making/will make.

One-eyed-Jack:

I don't know how you can divorce knowledge from modes of perception. That is like saying that even if I did not have eyes, I would still know that a fire truck is red. If I didn't have eyes, I would not know what red was. I don't know how you can divorce God's knowledge from His modes of perception. Granted, He is omniscient, but I am not sure you can take away His omnipresence and have Him still be omniscient. I don't know how you can divorce omni-qualities and have them still apply. Can something be omnipotent if there are things outside it's awareness? So how can something be omnipotent if it is not also omniscient? I think (but I am just speculating) that even God has an epistimology. God does know everything, but there is a how to His knowledge. There is a way He knows, if you will, even if that way is inconceivable to us.

I agree that some Christians would say that God would still know our actions even if He weren't omnipresent, but that's something like saying "I would have been a man, even if I had never been born." It is like saying God would still be God even if He weren't God.

Taking away His T.O. would effectively make Him cease to be God. He would become a finite being confined to time. And this would also do away with his omniscience, because a being confined to linear time cannot possibly know the future. So, under this scenario (God has no temporal omnipresence) He would immediately cease to be God as He would cease to know everything.

Non-praying-mantis:

I don't completely agree with your analogy as my own theology maintains that God is not only unconstrained by our time He is unconstrained by ANY time, including the time of his own dimension.

Your analogy suggests that in God's own time, there was indeed a "moment" when He created our universe. I argue that He always was, always is, and always will be doing everything that He does, even in His own time. There was no point where He was not creating our universe. So even to say, by way of analogy, that He dips His hand in at certain times is against my theology. I believe He is always doing everything He has ever done or ever will do. His own action, is part of His creation. It's impossible to explain, but as He is creating the universe He is also creating His own actions simletaneously. He does not observe things going on in our time line and decide to stick His finger in at a certain point in His own time to intervene. He was always intervening. I argue that to God, time simply doesn't exist. There is simply no dimension of time that constrains His actions at all.

Non-praying Mantis

Luvluv,

I don't see how my analogy of God's relationship to time goes against your theology, except that you refuse to allow God to change.

Using my analogy, God appears unchanging to us. Remember, God's actions affect our universe all at once. Past, present, and future are all affected by God's "miracles". Now, perhaps my analogy does not quite measure up to your expectations, but at least it can be understood by us linear-time humans! We exist in a linear time, and that affects our thinking to a great extent. I am just trying to wrap my mind around the problem in a way that I can understand.

As Arthur's page said in Monty Python and the Holy Grail: "It's only a model"

Unfortunately, this turns God into a powerless being, incapable of doing ANYTHING! And, I think there is plenty of biblical support for God performing actions.

In your situation, with a "frozen" God, mercy is impossible. God cannot "change his mind," which is required for mercy.

Even so, you can still apply the "frozen" God to my model, it would just change things a bit.

That's the problem!

Anyway, your objections to my model have no bearing on the problem of free will vs omniscience!

NPM

luvluv

He's far from frozen. He is constantly acting.