God's infinite Creation?

[Cheerful Charlie]

According to Augustine (Confessions - Book 11) and Boethius (Consolations of Philosophy - Book 5), God is outside and beyond time. To God, all is a Big Now. To us, we have the illusion of a limited local time, and place.

Thus If John is Born in Texas and dies at age 50, all stages of John's life are really existent to God.

The weird though struck me, since John as a person exists in many copies as it were, could it be there are also many Johns in many possible Universes that exist for God? A universe where John is evil and damned and a Universe where John is good and saved? An infinite Universe where there are infinite johns, all really John as much as the original John we considered spread through the Big Now?

Why did I think of this? Because it just popped into my mind, and the idea amuses me. Something else to ponder and for metaphysicians to argue about. One can dismiss it as uninteresting, unlikely, silly, or useless, but as a possibility, it is a possible as anything else with God. Perhaps there are infinite Universes in God's overarching Universe. If in one Universe John is evil and in another Universe John is good. Is John then good or evil?

In modal logic, one thinks about possible and impossible Universes. Enough metaphysical bullshit for today.

 

[Juma]

Why are you so obsessed with the concept of a god?

 

[DBT]

According to Augustine (Confessions - Book 11) and Boethius (Consolations of Philosophy - Book 5), God is outside and beyond time. To God, all is a Big Now.

That implies a static condition. No progression of events. No motion. No movement. No thought. No life.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

According to Augustine (Confessions - Book 11) and Boethius (Consolations of Philosophy - Book 5), God is outside and beyond time. To God, all is a Big Now.

That implies a static condition. No progression of events. No motion. No movement. No thought. No life.

Yes it does. And that has been noted by theologians. Many then think the idea of God outside of time is incoherent for that and other reasons.

But then you have another problem. If Time is so basic even God has to obey time, where does time come from? Since from physics we know time is connected to everything else depending on your speed, Einsteinian relativity, it implies mass, velocity, and dimension are outside and beyond God. How deep does that rabbit hole go? Why do we need God if there is a natural world outside and beyond this theoretic idea of God? Naturalism here raises its ugly little head, only to be ignored by the theologians.
And I am very interested to see how hard the theologians try to banish metaphysical naturalism, only to see it pop up and thumb its nose at the theologians.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Why are you so obsessed with the concept of a god?

Because I have always been an atheist. And the religious have all my life pestered me with claims about this God. And wanted to run everybody's life based on claims about this God critter. There was a time I was introduced with the concept of strong atheism. And ever since, I have had fun with taking the claims of theists and demonstrating how that theology does not work. The theists long ago challenged my opinion about God, and it's a standard bromide that one cannot disprove God.

So doing exactly that is what I try to do, mainly because it's possible. Poking holes in theological woo.

Of course the God concept is something that doesn't work, pushed to its limits, and I find it odd that the bigger and more expansive one's concept of God is, the easier it is to poke holes in. Then the goal post moving begins, the abandonment of all reason, and other games. I win. True believers have pestered me all my life with this God thing, so challenged, I have had a lot of fun, swatting back.

God of course is a concept. And not all believers hold the same concept. It is interesting to me that disproving the Flying Spaghetti Monster is harder to disprove than the standard Omni-everything Creator God. Everybody has something they do that they enjoy, and to me, this hobby beats stamp collecting or watching bad TV shows.

 

[DBT]

But then you have another problem. If Time is so basic even God has to obey time, where does time come from?

I'm not sure that 'obey time' is a reasonable objection. Not if time itself is thought and action and progression of events within a 'time' line, so called 'time' being inseparable from objects, their relationships and an overall web of events. 'Not being bound to time' could, maybe, mean the ability to be move freely within time/space. I don't know.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

But then you have another problem. If Time is so basic even God has to obey time, where does time come from?

I'm not sure that 'obey time' is a reasonable objection. Not if time itself is thought and action and progression of events within a 'time' line, so called 'time' being inseparable from objects, their relationships and an overall web of events. 'Not being bound to time' could, maybe, mean the ability to be move freely within time/space. I don't know.

The problem is that the theists tell us God created everything de novo. God is utterly transcedent. But if so, time is a problem.

Time is connected to everything else. Again, naturalism refuses to be banished by merely claiming God is transcendent and creator of all things.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I'm not sure that 'obey time' is a reasonable objection. Not if time itself is thought and action and progression of events within a 'time' line, so called 'time' being inseparable from objects, their relationships and an overall web of events. 'Not being bound to time' could, maybe, mean the ability to be move freely within time/space. I don't know.

The problem is that the theists tell us God created everything de novo. God is utterly transcedent. But if so, time is a problem.

Time is connected to everything else. Again, naturalism refuses to be banished by merely claiming God is transcendent and creator of all things.

You're forgetting the mystery defense, that a magic spaceman can be very mysterious, beyond understanding.

Then again, the spaceman did something if it created a universe. How come? Obviously these stories originated when humans didn't live long, didn't have as much knowledge, didn't have time to spend on luxuries, had less intellect.

 

[Atheos]

According to Augustine (Confessions - Book 11) and Boethius (Consolations of Philosophy - Book 5), God is outside and beyond time. To God, all is a Big Now.

Another problem with that concept is Draygomb's Paradox, something everyone who has responded (so far) to this thread will surely remember from the II days. "Without Time God Didn't Have Enough Time to Create Time."

If god exists in a "big now" it is logically impossible to construct a scenario whereby god could claim credit for creating the universe. In order for that relationship to exist the following three criteria are mandatory:

• God exists alone
• God does something creative (even if it's just "will something to happen")
• God and a universe exist

If there was never a "time" when god existed and a universe did not then it cannot be said that god created the universe.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Augustine stated that if God is indeed outside of time, the creation is eternal and is part of the Big Now.
This of course means that it's hard to say if we can credit God with creation at all in this situation. Creation seems more akin to the underlying cause of everything, which if you take the argument of God's aseity and simplicity seriously argues creation is part of God's nature. He cannot not create. But then creation, and God is static. God doesn't do anything, he just is as God is and all creation with him.

As all is frozen forever as it is, I call this the Fly in Amber scenario. We are all of us frozen in time unable to change and that includes God. Nobody has free will.

How all just happens the way it doe gets hard to explain, the Universe with all its evil and suffering. Once you suffer, you will suffer in a real sense forever.

 

[DBT]

The Big Now is for all practical purposes an Ever Changing Now...the rate of change within our Omnipresent Now being our perception/measurement of Time.

 

[Tigers!]

But then you have another problem. If Time is so basic even God has to obey time, where does time come from?

If God is bound by time then he is hardly a God worth worrying about or worthy of any form of worship

- - - Updated - - -

Enough metaphysical bullshit for today.

Very true.

 

[DBT]

What exactly is a 'God' supposed to be? Believers tend to talk like they know something about 'God' - whatever that is.

How would they know? Because it says something about 'God' - whatever that is - in the Gita? The Quran? The Torah?