Concepts of God: God does not exist in time (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Monday, March 01, 2021, 13:06 (1362 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: It is obvious you do not understand Feder's point in any way. It shows why you have no clue why I tell you you are humanizing God. We live in time, God does not. You are using what happens to us to apply the use of time to God as if He lives in our time. Feser is a Thomist, whose philosophy I have accepted in large part, but not the trinitarianism. Have you forgotten that when the universe appeared, time started? That alone makes God timeless. So don't do some reading for yourself, especially when you assume the imagined role of theist.

dhw: What is your definition of time? Mine is the sequence of before, now, and after - of past, present and future. It is not one o’clock, two o’ clock, three o‘clock rock. The division of time into units is a human invention based upon natural cycles. But you have agreed that there must have been a “before” the Big Bang (since your God is eternal and created the universe), and you insist that your God created a sequence of befores and afters, fine-tuning the universe for life, then creating life, and then continuing to fiddle with it through a sequence of life forms until – according to you – after 3.X billion years he achieved his one and only purpose of designing H. sapiens, having operated on pre-sapiens brains IN ANTICIPATION of future usages. The figure of 3.X billion years is our invention, but the history of the universe is a sequence of befores, nows, and afters. And so if you think your God did absolutely nothing before the Big Bang but simply existed as a totally inert blob of pure energy (but remember, nobody knows what sequences he might have created before the Big Bang ), then you can certainly argue that he created time when he created the universe (i.e. “when the universe appeared, time started”). But unless he is now dead, he lives in and uses – or used - the time he created. Please begin your reply with your definition of time.

DAVID: Your exposition of the human version of time is right on. Yes God has worked in our universe while our time passed by. Absolutely correct. But again you are off the main point. God is timeless. What He created before this Big Bang is a time concept as we see it , not as God would review it. God is timelessly eternal. Only when He creates a species that can understand the passage of events does the concept of time appear. I am a panentheist, and understand that God's consciousness enters our universe's time to act. Yes God acts in our time but He Himself is timeless. A distillate of my theological readings.

I asked you for your definition of time. If you accept my definition, do you think your God is ignorant of the fact that his work DEPENDS on there being a before, a now, and an after, although according to you it was he who created a beginning – the universe – and a sequence of befores, nows and afters from that beginning to our present? You even have him programming events and acting in anticipation of future events! What do you mean by “timelessly eternal”? The only possible meaning of “timeless” in this context is eternal, so yes indeed, an eternal God is eternal. But an eternal God who is eternal still “exists in time”, unless of course he is now dead, in which case he is not eternal. Without a definition of time as something that negates sequences of cause and effect, of before, now and after, and of past, present and future, this argument is pointless.