Can a timeless God exist?

Cmass · Post by **Cmass** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 10:26 pm

I am starting a thread based upon a comment I made in another:
Change and time go hand in hand.
Without time there is nothing. You cannot go from one event to another. That is why there is no God. (beyond the multitude of other reasons) If God is "timeless" then God is changeless. If God is changeless, then he cannot change anything.
Nothing to nothing from nothing.
Can a timeless God exist?

jjg · Post by **jjg** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 11:09 pm

God is eternal by nature, but God's power is immanent with time. Just like a star outside time and the stars rays shining through the time and affecting it. It does not follow logically that God as first cause changes in order to cause change.

Cathar1950 · Post by **Cathar1950** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 11:13 pm

A timeless God makes no sense.
The God could not act but once and would have no free will and would be less then us. Yet this is the historical God of the Christians.

jjg · Post by **jjg** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 11:53 pm

The whole logical argument for a first cause uncaused by anything else is that the first cause is pure act and therefore must be outside time. There is no reason that pure act cannot act.

Only contingent things in time change to cause change. God can cause change while remaining immutable.

Cathar1950 · Post by **Cathar1950** » Thu Oct 12, 2006 11:55 pm

jjg wrote:The whole logical argument for a first cause uncaused by anything else is that the first cause is pure act and therefore must be outside time. There is no reason that pure act cannot act.

Only contingent things in time change to cause change. God can cause change while remaining immutable.

Then God didn't change anything.
Also God is not YHWH.

Cmass · Post by **Cmass** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 12:41 am

Good effort JJG!

God is eternal by nature, but God's power is immanent with time.

"Eternal" if not measured against "time", has no meaning.

Just like a star outside time and the stars rays shining through the time and affecting it.

Try a different analogy. Stars exist in time. They ignite, shine and dim (or supernova) based upon physical laws acting within time.

It does not follow logically that God as first cause changes in order to cause change.

Yes, it does follow logically. If God has a hand in what is going on in a world with time then God is acting within a sphere of time - thus, he must change. A thing - God or not - must change in order to create change.
I think you are confusing "must change" with "change who he is". He does not have to become a different God - as in not be so cranky - but He does have to alter in some way.

jjg · Post by **jjg** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 1:19 am

Eternity is the simultaneuos possesion of all limitless life.

hence why the star is just an analogy. I'm mot saying God is a ball of hot gas.

You just answered your own argument against God in this context.

God doesn't change who he is.

God is not a physical agent and therefore does not need physical change but is the foundation of beauty truth etc.

Cmass · Post by **Cmass** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 2:43 am

Eternity is the simultaneous possession of all limitless life.

(This is quite poetic & thus I will keep it in my collection of phrases for songwriting!)
Life occurs in time. It cannot exist without change otherwise we might as well be frozen in a block of ice. "Possession" of life - even "all" of it - does not negate time. At some point, God has to step out of the anti-time-all-possessing-eternity-machine and interact with the creatures It "created". If It interacts with these creatures then It is acting within time. These 2 entities have to affect each other in some way or there is no meaning in God - He can't "do" anything. If God reacts to anything you do, he is acting within the sphere of time and changing (his mind etc..) in reaction to your behavior.
Besides, it is written that "God moves in mysterious ways"!

hence why the star is just an analogy. I'm mot saying God is a ball of hot gas.

Why not? I thought He was everything simultaneously? Is He male? If not, why not refer to Him as "It"? (You don't have to answer this, it is off topic)

You just answered your own argument against God in this context. God doesn't change who he is.

Arrrg. No, that is not quite it.

"change who he is" - I was trying to put some meaning into what you were saying and give you the benefit of the doubt by agreeing that your God could indeed keep his personality in the midst of change - kind of like saying "my broken foot won't change who I am". It's just a common way of saying that I am a steady person. However, my broken foot does indeed cause change in me: I do one thing instead of another. I have to heal and I can't run and I alter my schedule etc..
In the God world view, I cannot heal without a God since He/Her/It is running the entire show including the neurons in my brain. (what's left of them) So, there has to be some form of interaction - and healing takes "time", it occurs in time.

God is not a physical agent and therefore does not need physical change but is the foundation of beauty truth etc.

I like the poetry of the second half of this "...is the foundation of beauty and truth...". very nice.
However, the 1st half and 2nd half don't go together. If God is not a physical agent of any kind then he cannot affect change on a physical world.

You do realize, of course, that your statements are not at all in line with fundamentalist or Catholic Christianity, right? You sound more like a "spiritual" Christian with a very broad, liberal view of what God is. The God in the bible is a VERY physical, manly brute, often pissed-off. He does not hesitate to get down and dirty with his creatures - even going so far as impregnating one of them, killing and torturing thousands. The authors of the bible clearly saw Him as a very real, present creature - in many ways, just like them. (Gee, what a surprise!)

How about this: Does God get pissed off or not? Is the bible correct to speak - very clearly - about angering God? If you do one thing and it pisses off God, can you then do something else that will get God to forgive you? If God "answers" your prayers I would have to assume He did something (forgave you or bought you a new car) because of something you did or said or thought. Right?

jjg · Post by **jjg** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 3:59 pm

Again, I say God is transcendant by nature not in place. He is here now, present to this place and time and to all places and times. God is transcendent in his nature and immanent in his presence.

We can understand eternity in a negative sense. We know and experience temporal life, but we can know eternity is the oposite even if we don't experience it.

Your statement still backs my opinion. You have not shown at all how God interacting with a temporal world affects his transcendant nature.

No, my theology I'm presenting is Catholic. It is Aquinas theology.
Aristotle had a philosophy of a God of eternal thought and Aquinas based a lot of his ideas on this.

It is a philosophy that God is the artist painting a picture of the world for us to enjoy.

The Old Testament uses much metaphorical language to describe God, but the Jewish people believed God to be transcendant. That's why Christ was a stumbling block for the Jews when he said he was the literal Son of God.

Cmass · Post by **Cmass** » Fri Oct 13, 2006 4:16 pm

Again, I say God is transcendant by nature not in place. He is here now, present to this place and time and to all places and times. God is transcendent in his nature and immanent in his presence.

Once again, poetic but with no substance.
You still have not addressed how something can interact in a time sphere without being part of it. That is essentially what you are saying: God is timeless because he is timeless and doesn't have to be in time because he just doesn't. He "transcends" time - which is one of those catch-all flaky worlds that is used to describe something that otherwise makes no sense. He is either interacting with us or he is not interacting with us. If he is, the he is in time because we are in time. The only way out is to say he is all things simultaneously - in which case he could not "take" the "time" to interact with us!
I would also (re) submit to you that the authors of the bible were NOT thinking in such grand philosophical terms as you. God of the bible is clearly a "personal" God who gets pissed off and then in response to the negative stimuli, does something nasty - which usually involves killing or torturing.