by Terry 92 Replies latest watchtower bible
Is it possible that God has always existed but wasn't aware of himself until much later?
No wonder the universe is #^(+ed up. No wonder christian theologians have been arguing for 2000 yrs, now.
Western religion/gods are so artificial and mechanical. Eastern religious thought is more organic, natural and evolutionary.
S
I remember thinking:
"So what did God do before He started creating? Did He "sit there" for billions and billions and billions of years and suddenly started creating "one day"? No, that doesn't make sense. With eternity, there is no time, because no matter how many billions of years you would go "back", there would be an infinity of time before that. God therefore must be outside of time. Time started the moment He started creating. Time is only a property of our universe". The only way I could make it work, was to put God in a dimension without time - a place where totally different laws work and we wouldn't and couldn't understand. So perhaps He had been doing lots of stuff in this other dimension, and our universe was just one of His many little projects.
That's how I used to think.
Great post Terry!
It continues to baffle me why some humans have this need for there to be a god and others don't. In this part of the world permeated with Christianity, those that need it center their beliefs around one thing, a bible, as truthseekers comments highlight. The fact that your place of birth has everything to do with how you believe tells me this, it's all just man made
Time is a concept, the period from one defined interval to the next, i.e. seconds, minutes, hours. We have the year of 365 days because that's how long it takes for the earth to orbit the sun. But...you could redefine time for whatever planet you lived on, depending on the planet's rotation and its orbit around the parent star. I think time exists outside our universe. If you were present in another dimension, you would still be aware of intervals between doing nothing and doing something and it would be useful in context to develop a standard definiton of how much "time" had elapsed to chart your existence.
Awakened, I don't think it's possible for anyone to be "outside of time" - time after all, is a concept that we have to measure periods between events. Time gives us a sense of where we are. Time is past, as in yesterday; it is present as in now and it is future as in tomorrow. By the time I submit this post, the present becomes the past...
My own worldview is one in which there is nothing supernatural (be it gods, ghosts or goblins) and the only fundamental worldview other than that is one where you believe in the supernatural to some degree or another.
But the supernatural worldview is based upon human imagination, after all what is the supernatural other than what we imagine made 'real' (in the minds of the believer).
What is god? god is what we imagine it would be like if we were able to shape reality using only our imagination (rather than tools). god is our ultimate genie in a bottle granting us unlimited wishes. god is our own egos, if they were able to shape reality in the same way they shape our dreams and aspirations.
The whole of this thread is built around the premise of "BEFORE"
As believers in God build around the premise of "ETERNAL" this thread is being argued on completely different premises.
The assumption here is that believers in God haven't considered the premise of "BEFORE"
Frankly that's a bit patronising, very much a blanket statement and suggests that the concept of "ETERNITY" and perhaps more relevantly an "ETERNAL BEING" needs exploring by the author of the thread.
I say "suggests" because I don't know "Terry"
Awakened, I don't think it's possible for anyone to be "outside of time" - time after all, is a concept that we have to measure periods between events. Time gives us a sense of where we are. Time is past, as in yesterday; it is present as in now and it is future as in tomorrow. By the time I submit this post, the present becomes the past...
Yes, I would agree with that. The problem here is in talking about the biblical God (I would guess), who is from eternity to eternity as I have understood it. So if time was present before the universe, and God was there "spending time", that would mean there was an eternity of time before He started creating the universe, as I said. No matter when He started creating our universe (or the angels for that matter), there would be an eternity of time before He started creating. That's the problem of God and the existance of time before the universe, as I see it.
Pubsinger's right - we are arguing about BEFORE...
http://www.siue.edu/~evailat/ml12.html
Eternity
1. Traditionally, eternity has been understood in two ways:
1. Eternity1: sempiternity, i.e., existing at each time. For example, perhaps energy/mass is eternal in this way.
2. NOTE: Detensers deny that tomorrow's sea battle or meta-facts about it (e.g., the fact that tomorrow there will be a sea-battle) are sempiternal. Eternity2: eternity proper, i.e., totally independent of time because a thing eternal in this sense is not in time, doesn't exemplify temporal items, and doesn't involve temporal items. For example, Augustine thought of God in this way; probably Plato thought of Forms and their relations this way.
NOTE: Meta-facts involve temporal items (i.e. facts or events); hence, they are not eternal2.
To these two traditional notions, one might add a third:
Eternity3: a thing eternal in this sense is not in time, but it depends on time because it involves temporal items. For example, meta-facts, including the fact that the whole B-series is the way it is, are eternal3.
2. Some reasons for holding that God is properly eternal (eternal2):
* if time has a beginning, then God cannot be in time, otherwise God would have a limited existence.
* if God were in time, then we would not be free because God would foresee our actions.
* if God were in time, then God could, at least in principle, change.
3. Boethius: “eternity is possession all at once of unlimited life”. Hard to make out what Boethius had in mind.
4. Possible accounts of eternity:
1. First definition: Eternity as a non-temporal, non-successive, partless duration. Hence:
* God not in time
* no succession in God (divine simplicity)
* Problem: how can duration be non-successive? all worldly events simultaneously present to God
Problem: since simultaneity transitive, some world-events both simultaneous and non-simultaneous.
Second definition: Eternity as tenseless successive duration, while time is tensed. Hence:
2.
* no past, present and future for God. In this sense God’s life “all at once”.
* succession in divine duration.
* non-simultaneous parts in divine duration
* God not in time, because time is tensed
Problem: Dates apply to God; but some dates simultaneous with, say, past events. Hence tenses apply to God.
Third definition: Eternity as a present (tensed) instant outsidet ime (nunc stans), while time is tensed. Hence:
3.
* no successive parts in eternity because instants are partless.
* eternity unlimited because no instant before or after
* eternity is a permanent present, nunc stans (tensed)
Problem: “remaining present” entails presence through some instants. So, how can an instant have any permanence?
1. Fourth definition: Eternity as a tenseless instant outside time and time is tenseless. Hence:
* no successive parts in eternity
* eternity unlimited because no instant before or after
* eternity not a present instant (nunc stans).
* all moments in tenseless time exist equally for God.
5. Objections to view that God is outside time, and hence has no temporal relation to the world.
* If God creates X at time t1 and Y at time t2, then God changes. But if God changes, then God is in time.
* Reply: God timelessly creates X at t1 and Y at t2. Hence, God doesn’t change. God has extrinsic denominations. Hence God changes; hence God is in time.
* Reply: extrinsic denominations not real changes. If God isn't in time, then God doesn't know what time it is now. Hence, God is not omniscient, which cannot be.
NOTE: this objection presupposes a tensed view of time.
Do 'theists' have a greater awareness than 'non-theists' of something 'other'?
Could it be that the 'theists' are using a part of their brain/consciousness that 'non-theists' have chosen to switch off or not exercise?
Is it one of the many possibilities? Truth is relative...
Still thinking aloud...
