God and time and space

[fromderinside]

Oh come on. A one off or a math limitation is God?

 

[Kharakov]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the singularity central to his "There is no god" argument?

Not sure about that, but from what I ken from his "Top Down Approach" paper (link here arxiv.org), it looks like he proposes that our view of the singularity depends on precisely what questions we ask.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

I've heard it argued by apologists on youtube, ect that God exists outside of time and space. How can that be? If he has substance then he has space and is inside a space and if he thinks or does anything he is acting within time.

Plato speculated that God created time. Later on, Augustine in book XI of his "Confessions". God is sovereign of all things, nothing can thus be greater than God. Including time. So God created time. To God there is no time, time is one big now for God. Otherwise, time would be more powerful than God, which to Augustine in inconcievable.The problem is that then is that there is no temporal cause and effect. No A causes B which causes C The only connection between A, B and C is God's will. They are all God's knowing and personal creation.So all to the smallest part of creation is God's doing. So it follows there is no free will, and thus all moral evil is God's personal and knowing creation. But God is defined as being totally and perfectly good.I call this situation omnigenesis, God creates everything to the smallest contingent part. But if God creates all moral evil, God is not as defined, good.And since without time, there is no before and after or start and finish, creation is eternal and timeless, which Augustine notes. Thus God is eternally creating moral evil. These youtube experts simply don't know what they ate babbling about. Neither do theologians that take God's being outside of time.See also Boethius, "Consolations of Philosophy" where God is stated to be outside of Time and Molonism, which tries to save free will.

 

[Clivedurdle]

Outside time and space means supernatural!

How did people of the medieval period explain physical phenomena, such as eclipses or the distribution of land and water on the globe? What creatures did they think they might encounter: angels, devils, witches, dogheaded people?

This fascinating book explores the ways in which medieval people categorized the world, concentrating on the division between the natural and the supernatural and showing how the idea of the supernatural came to be invented in the Middle Ages.

Robert Bartlett examines how theologians and others sought to draw lines between the natural, the miraculous, the marvelous and the monstrous, and the many conceptual problems they encountered as they did so.

The final chapter explores the extraordinary thought-world of Roger Bacon as a case study exemplifying these issues. By recovering the mentalities of medieval writers and thinkers the book raises the critical question of how we deal with beliefs we no longer share.

http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academi...ral-and-supernatural-in-middle-ages?format=PB

 

[Horatio Parker]

Outside time and space means supernatural!

Or eternal.

 

[Draconis]

If God is outside spacetime, then his act of creation of spacetime itself is also outside spacetime - it cannot be within something that doesn't exist until he's done creating it, in whatever sense one wishes to take that. If he is eternal simply because he is outside spacetime, then this act of God is eternal too: therefore the finite universe as we know it is actually eternal because God never stops creating it.

In fact whatever God does outside spacetime is eternal too: notably bringing the whole show down at the end. So that suggests that he is eternally and simultanously creating and un-creating (destroying) a universe at the same time. Forgive me, but if you simultanously build and knock down a house, when do you ever get a finished house?

Either everything is eternal, or nothing is. Or else God has to exist within a time continuum. And pretend evil has nothing to do with him.

 

[Underseer]

Outside time and space means supernatural!

Or eternal.

Outside of space and time?

Don't you love how things change? A couple thousand years ago, Jesus and Yaweh were in an unreachable place: they lived on the firmament, the dome onto which the sky is painted. It seemed like such an obvious and inaccessible place to hide your gods in. All the religions of that region did it.

Unfortunately, we've been to the sky and there is no firmament at all.

Rather than admit that the Bible was wrong, theists simply moved their invisible magical friends to outer space. When that didn't work any more, they moved him to "outside space and time."

I wonder where they will hide their gods next? Another dimension?

It seems they're running out of places.

 

[Horatio Parker]

Or eternal.

Outside of space and time?

Don't you love how things change? A couple thousand years ago, Jesus and Yaweh were in an unreachable place: they lived on the firmament, the dome onto which the sky is painted. It seemed like such an obvious and inaccessible place to hide your gods in. All the religions of that region did it.

Unfortunately, we've been to the sky and there is no firmament at all.

Rather than admit that the Bible was wrong, theists simply moved their invisible magical friends to outer space. When that didn't work any more, they moved him to "outside space and time."

I wonder where they will hide their gods next? Another dimension?

It seems they're running out of places.

Unfortunately for your thesis, this idea of a class of things existing outside time and space is an ancient idea, predating Jesus by centuries.

Where in time and space is a geometrical point?

 

[George S]

"Where in time and space is a geometrical point?"

In spacetime. If it is real 4D space, that is. Otherwise it is an imagined entity in an imagined spacetime that may have different dimensions from reality. As in: A point on a line, plane or sphere.

 

[Horatio Parker]

"Where in time and space is a geometrical point?"

In spacetime. If it is real 4D space, that is. Otherwise it is an imagined entity in an imagined spacetime that may have different dimensions from reality. As in: A point on a line, plane or sphere.

The argument is that imagined entities exist. For my part, I'm satisfied with that explanation as a construction instead of empirical. Any outlook or system that includes values must be subjective.

 

[Underseer]

Outside of space and time?

Don't you love how things change? A couple thousand years ago, Jesus and Yaweh were in an unreachable place: they lived on the firmament, the dome onto which the sky is painted. It seemed like such an obvious and inaccessible place to hide your gods in. All the religions of that region did it.

Unfortunately, we've been to the sky and there is no firmament at all.

Rather than admit that the Bible was wrong, theists simply moved their invisible magical friends to outer space. When that didn't work any more, they moved him to "outside space and time."

I wonder where they will hide their gods next? Another dimension?

It seems they're running out of places.

Unfortunately for your thesis, this idea of a class of things existing outside time and space is an ancient idea, predating Jesus by centuries.

Where in time and space is a geometrical point?

Even if you find one person who believed that (and I bet even that involves creative interpretation of someone's words), the majority of people in that part of the world even in Jesus' time believed in celestial gods, which is to say gods that lived on the dome of the sky (firmament). I don't see how your observation invalidates mine.

 

[Horatio Parker]

Unfortunately for your thesis, this idea of a class of things existing outside time and space is an ancient idea, predating Jesus by centuries.

Where in time and space is a geometrical point?

Even if you find one person who believed that (and I bet even that involves creative interpretation of someone's words), the majority of people in that part of the world even in Jesus' time believed in celestial gods, which is to say gods that lived on the dome of the sky (firmament). I don't see how your observation invalidates mine.

No, none of this invalidates your claim that material gods don't live anywhere. But that's a limited answer in view of the OP which doesn't limit God to the material. If God exists as an idea, and if ideas are the foundation of our reality, or our perception of reality, then the question has some validity.

 

[Kharakov]

Even if you find one person who believed that (and I bet even that involves creative interpretation of someone's words), the majority of people in that part of the world even in Jesus' time believed in celestial gods, which is to say gods that lived on the dome of the sky (firmament). I don't see how your observation invalidates mine.

You still have the possibility that in those days, when the universe wasn't fully formed (this was prior to the beta release, which was the 60s!), the physics engine actually didn't have the solar system, stars, and the like.

So quite literally, all activity was clipped on the "firmament", unless you turn off clipping, but this would just make you walk into void realm (unless you could walk out far enough past the "firmament" to reach the other side of the world, don't know what the early engine was). Gods could be displayed on the "firmament", but it was only an image, just like the stars and the planets (although the planets do follow specific rules of movement, rules that have been edited over time to introduce new exciting ideas like "black holes" and the BB).

 

[Underseer]

Even if you find one person who believed that (and I bet even that involves creative interpretation of someone's words), the majority of people in that part of the world even in Jesus' time believed in celestial gods, which is to say gods that lived on the dome of the sky (firmament). I don't see how your observation invalidates mine.

No, none of this invalidates your claim that material gods don't live anywhere. But that's a limited answer in view of the OP which doesn't limit God to the material. If God exists as an idea, and if ideas are the foundation of our reality, or our perception of reality, then the question has some validity.

My point was not that material gods don't live anywhere, but that theology has to periodically move gods around as our understanding of the universe improves, thus showing that the claims about gods are just ad hoc fallacies (just-so stories).

 

[Horatio Parker]

No, none of this invalidates your claim that material gods don't live anywhere. But that's a limited answer in view of the OP which doesn't limit God to the material. If God exists as an idea, and if ideas are the foundation of our reality, or our perception of reality, then the question has some validity.

My point was not that material gods don't live anywhere, but that theology has to periodically move gods around as our understanding of the universe improves, thus showing that the claims about gods are just ad hoc fallacies (just-so stories).

Which is a limited point. Remember, the OP was about God in time and space. There are ancient traditions that placed ultimate reality in the intelligibilty which can only be seen with the mind. The Pythagoreans said all is number, Parmenides said the universe is mind. The laws of the physical universe to which we devote ourselves to understanding are seen as emanations from a single unifying principle or thing which can felt or intuited but can't be articulated. Thats using the language of philosophy(ancient philosophy at that); in theological terms this unification idea could be called god. Myself I prefer the philosophic language because god is such a loaded word. I don't want to conflate what I'm talking about with bible fables.

The argument is this thing exists, but qualified as a working hypothesis. It was conceded by Plato that we really don't know anything for certain. But we need a way to structure our reality.

 

[Underseer]

Even if you find one person who believed that (and I bet even that involves creative interpretation of someone's words), the majority of people in that part of the world even in Jesus' time believed in celestial gods, which is to say gods that lived on the dome of the sky (firmament). I don't see how your observation invalidates mine.

No, none of this invalidates your claim that material gods don't live anywhere. But that's a limited answer in view of the OP which doesn't limit God to the material. If God exists as an idea, and if ideas are the foundation of our reality, or our perception of reality, then the question has some validity.

God exists outside time and space because we've actually been to his previous hiding place.

Whether this imaginary being is material or not is irrelevant. His constantly shifting place of residence is evidence that the whole thing is a  just-so story (ad hoc fallacy). He "exists" outside of time and space to keep him out of reach of evidential verification.

 

[Kharakov]

No, none of this invalidates your claim that material gods don't live anywhere. But that's a limited answer in view of the OP which doesn't limit God to the material. If God exists as an idea, and if ideas are the foundation of our reality, or our perception of reality, then the question has some validity.

God exists outside time and space because we've actually been to his previous hiding place.

Where?

 

[Horatio Parker]

No, none of this invalidates your claim that material gods don't live anywhere. But that's a limited answer in view of the OP which doesn't limit God to the material. If God exists as an idea, and if ideas are the foundation of our reality, or our perception of reality, then the question has some validity.

God exists outside time and space because we've actually been to his previous hiding place.

Whether this imaginary being is material or not is irrelevant. His constantly shifting place of residence is evidence that the whole thing is a  just-so story (ad hoc fallacy). He "exists" outside of time and space to keep him out of reach of evidential verification.

I wonder if deja vu exists...

 

[Underseer]

My point was not that material gods don't live anywhere, but that theology has to periodically move gods around as our understanding of the universe improves, thus showing that the claims about gods are just ad hoc fallacies (just-so stories).

Which is a limited point. Remember, the OP was about God in time and space. There are ancient traditions that placed ultimate reality in the intelligibilty which can only be seen with the mind. The Pythagoreans said all is number, Parmenides said the universe is mind. The laws of the physical universe to which we devote ourselves to understanding are seen as emanations from a single unifying principle or thing which can felt or intuited but can't be articulated. Thats using the language of philosophy(ancient philosophy at that); in theological terms this unification idea could be called god. Myself I prefer the philosophic language because god is such a loaded word. I don't want to conflate what I'm talking about with bible fables.

The argument is this thing exists, but qualified as a working hypothesis. It was conceded by Plato that we really don't know anything for certain. But we need a way to structure our reality.

It's hardly a limited point. It's the reason theists believe their imaginary friend lives "outside time and space."

If it were a limited point, then many theists would still believe their gods live on the physical barrier above the sky.

 

[Horatio Parker]

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVDaSgyi3xE[/YOUTUBE]