Vorador

I hear a lot about how God is unchanging, and all that great stuff. How he is constant and his nature has never, ever changed because he is perfect in and of himself, and so for him to change, he would be imperfect.

However, by common scientific thought and by Christian Thought, the Universe has origins in time. The Universe came into existance, according to science and according to the Bible, right? Right. The whole Seven Days thing in the Bible says that right there.

However, if God was complete and perfect and unchanging, he had to make a big decision. He had to decide to make the universe, where there was no universe before.

This, of course, would make a fundamental change in Heaven. Instead of God and Angels there would be God and Angels and human souls (eventually). Thusly, if God was omnicient, he would know such a thing. Which means, for God to create the Universe, God himself had to go through a substantial change in nature, or in thought, or something. Which means God is not unchanging.

It's perfectly fine for God to be omnicient and decide to help people here and there like in the Bible because these events have not taken place yet, but he supposedly knows when they will. Thusly, God had already made certain decisions long befor they were all played out. However, God, being omnicient unto himself? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. "I will undergo a substantial change... right about.... here." Because to be omnicient is to not undergo any change at all. To know everything is to be perfect, because it's events that change things in certain people, isn't it? But if God always existed and was always omnicient, and created the Universe at a specific point in his existance, he is either NOT omnicient, or is dynamic. Which means he STILL couldn't be Omnicient.

Granted, I dont believe any of this Bible stuff, but it's an interesting train of thought, IMO. Comments?

advocate_11

One Christian view on the matter is that although we percieve the passage of time, God, 'experiences all time and performs all interactions for all eternity in a single instant'.

A second popular Christian view on the matter is to make simply the statement, 'God is unchanging in his attributes'.

I believe that the source of the problem is that one aspect of the Biblical portrayal of God is of a being with thought-processes and emotions very much like ourselves. It seems to border on deception to say that God possess such things if God 'experiences all things at once'.

On the other end, it is not clear the extent of the sacrifices that must be made to say only that 'God is unchanging in his attributes'.

Certainly also, while these things are very easy to say, it is not clear how to translate them into more technical language.

[edit: spelling]

[ June 21, 2002: Message edited by: advocate_11 ]</p>

Ruy Lopez

Vorador: You appear to have cited one of the inconsistencies between the Bible/Christianity and the concept of an eternal immutable supreme being. Another one involves Jesus who supposedly suffered and died. This is not logical as well. In both cases, the explanations made by Church apologists fall short.

When the myths of creation and the dying god-man were conceived and popularized, the term "god" meant an entity with anthropomorphic qualities who loved to intervene in man's world. Then Thomas Aquinas and Anselm came together with the rediscovery of Aristotle's god. The two concepts of god were not compatible.

seebs

I think "unchanging" refers more to underlying nature, than to every little detail. Within our sense of time, if God says something, He has just "changed" from being about to say that thing, to having just said that thing... but that's not the kind of change people are generally talking about.

The "unchanging" God is, the theory goes, by contrast to the pantheonist gods who come and go, are born, die, and so on.

Jobar

You'll see Perpetual Change
You'll be Perpetual Change!- Yes

seebs, would you agree that the very nature of the observable universe is change? (I in fact would say that the only thing unchanging is that things change- a Zen riddle if ever there was one!)

If so, how can we creatures of change speak about something unchanging? We can extrapolate, of course- we talk about the unchanging mountain, or the stars immutable in their courses, or the ever-constant shining of the sun.

None of those things are *really* permanent though. Given time- a few thousands of years for the mountain, a few millions for stellar positions, a few billion for the sun's lifespan- everything changes. Only our own short lifetime makes them seem unchanging. We have no true physical examples of unchangingness.

Given this, we have no way to talk about anything unchanging. How can the unchanging give rise to change?

Vorador

well, you could say that it isnt every underlying detail, but they often speak of this 'perfect God'. Perfection is, uhm... perfect. There would never be any need to change, because to change would be to be imperfect. Moreover, omnicience lends itself to being unchanging, because all events are experienced at once, or at least, are known to occur. Thusly, one's nature would change to accomodate what they know. After all, it's experience and knowledge that change the characteristics of a being, right?

Thusly, a perfect God, an omnicient God (or both) are unchanging. It's in the very nature of such a being, if it exists, to be unchanging. How, then, could such a being create a universe, if it is unchanging? For it to decide to take on such a monumental task, it would need to undergo a strong change. Thusly, a perfect, unchanging God could not create the universe. It's not in the nature of such a being to do so.

tronvillain

I think the obvious solution to the problem is that God did not create the universe - it simply depends upon him for its existence.

seebs

I think it's like that at some levels. At other levels, it isn't. It's a question of abstraction. The exact gravitational pull of the earth has probably changed over time as stuff has smacked into the planet and made it heavier. (Yeah, I know, that's 20 digits out.) On the other hand, so far as we know, the *RULES* by which the gravitational pull is formed have not changed.

We can talk about it by contrast to ourselves, for one thing.

So? What's physical got to do anything? Mathematics doesn't change; we may not always understand it, but the stuff is always there. e^(i*pi)+1 was 0 before we knew any of those numbers to exist.

I dunno. Is this gonna be on the test? They said we'd only be tested on the stuff in the syllabus.

Anyway, for a nice solid example, imagine, if you will, Conway's game of Life. Now, *for purposes of a given simulation*, we can refer to those rules as "unchanging". And yet... the layout of the board *does* change. Thus, the unchanging has given rise to change.

advocate_11

I may say that a Gahzu is defined fully as a sphere orbiting another sphere at a constant speed in a single orbit. If I possess such a thing, then I could presumably be said to possess a perfect Gahzu. Would you say that I infact do not have a perfect Gahzu because you perceive this orbital motion? To do so would be to deny the possibility of there being a perfect Gahzu.

Further, if I also possess an otherwise perfect Bing, you would not say that my Bing is imperfect because it does not satisfy the requirements to be a perfect Gahzu.

Beyond this, your misunderstanding is justified. It is not reasonable to define God as a perfect being, or as a being the possesses every perfection. Doing so is rather meaningless until the characteristics that we should expect to find in a being possessing each and every perfection are enumerated.

Yet you exclude the assertions of Process Theologians and Open Theists.

HRG

But these numbers themselves "exist" only as concept within the minds of sentient beings. There is nothing in the inanimate universe which corresponds to pi.

Regards,
HRG.