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

by dhw, Wednesday, March 03, 2021, 11:11 (1147 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: All you have done is discuss the human concept of time and tried to apply that to God. God is unchanging all through eternity, and not being different ever He is timeless.

dhw: Why do you refuse to define time and timeless? And unchanging in what way? For instance, do you think he is incapable of learning? You believe he is interested in us, so does that mean he watches us but his mind remains a total blank?

DAVID: I refuse nothing. You don't like my answers. God works in human time. Is that difficult to understand?

I have defined time as the sequence of cause and effect, of past, present and future, of before, now and after. I have suggested that timeless means eternal, i.e. with no beginning and no end. This leaves us with an eternal God who created all the causes and effects that depend on the sequence of past, present and future and which constitute my definition of time. (Humans did not exist when this process began.) “Is that difficult to understand?” If you disagree with my definition of time, then please supply your own.

DAVID: Your questions do not fit the quality of this discussion. God doesn't need to learn. His mind is so much more than ours.

Nobody could possibly doubt that if he exists, his mind is “so much more than ours”. How does that mean he can’t learn? Supposing, for instance, he had never created humans before. Is it not possible that he would have needed to experiment? You have no more idea of God’s “mind” than I have, so I don’t know why you come up with these authoritative descriptions of what he does and doesn’t need or want.

dhw:. We have no idea what your God got up to before the Big Bang (if it happened), but he did not “recognize” the passage of our time – according to you he created it! So it's HIS time. And he used it. And if he is still alive, he exists in it.

DAVID: No. He works His creations in our time, but outside our time He is timeless. The time He created is for us, not for him.

We did not even exist when he started to “work his creations”, i.e. to build effects upon causes, i.e. to proceed from a before to a now to a future (which according to you he constantly “anticipates”). What do you mean by “timeless” if you don’t mean eternal? And what do even mean by “outside our time”. What is “our” time? Do you mean the human classifications of days, months, years? Then I agree – I don’t imagine your God saying “I’ll do such and such on Friday”. All this is meaningless unless you define your terms, which you keep refusing to do.

DAVID: God created our time and entered it for His creations of our reality. Outside the universe there is no time and God is there, timeless. Pure panentheism.

If your God created and entered our time, then he exists in his/our time and has worked through all the sequences that make up my definition of time. I’m reluctant to speculate on what “outside our universe” might entail, but if he’s there as well as here and is doing nothing, then time is irrelevant and he might just as well not be there. You still have him here, though, and since you think he is here, inside the time he created, he “exists in time”. So what? I still haven’t got a clue what you and Feser are trying to prove.