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

by dhw, Thursday, March 04, 2021, 11:16 (1149 days ago) @ David Turell

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

dhw: 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 definition is just fine.

Thank you. First step towards agreement.

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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Again the difference between us is our individual perceptions of God. God knew exactly what He was producing when humans arrived as I view Him. You have again described Him as learning, a human characteristic.

This exchange arose because you said your God was unchanging, and I have challenged your definitive statement. You are simply answering with another definitive statement, as if you knew God personally (whereas I offer alternative possibilities – not rigid beliefs.) And the fact that learning is a human characteristic ties in with your agreement that he and we may have thought patterns etc. in common, though you keep trying to forget it.

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: [….] 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.

dhw: 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.

DAVID: Obviously. Simply, God is timeless (eternal) but despite that, He can and does work in our time in our universe which is time as you define it.

Thank you. Let’s summarize our findings: God, if he exists, is eternal. He created the universe and life in a sequence of causes and effects continuing through the sequence of past, present and future that we call time. We do not know what he might have done before he created the universe, but since there must have been a “before” if he is eternal, he exists in time (contrary to the heading of this thread), although his time has no beginning and no end. We appear to be in total agreement, though whether this leaves us any the wiser I leave you to judge.