Good example Octavious - "although God exists outside of time" is an assertion with out any conclusive evidence or basis in reality. :-)

Well the whole idea of transcendence (outside space & time) creates its own set of problems. If god is timeless, why is the effect of his supposed creation not timeless as well? But we go from an atemporal/timeless state of nothingness to a temporal state of somethingness.

Indeed if god is timeless he can't effect anything since in order to effect something you have to be within space and time. In order to engage in an action, there has to be some kind of change in the actor to enact change, and change requires time. Change requires something to be different from time point A and time point B. So for a god to create a universe or do anything, something about the actor must have changed between particular time points in order to implement that creation. Which means god is bounded within time. Either that or god is completely irrelevant.

God cannot simultaneously be beyond space and time and effecting events within space and time as a 'personal' being. It's yet another in a long list of logical contradictions.

There's not really a logical contradiction there, Putin (you haven't demonstrated one), just an understandable inability of finite people stuck in spacetime to understand. Who knows how it works? Maybe God exists in another timelike dimension, different from ours, and created ours within it (much like scientists occasionally talk of us creating other spacetimes one day). Or perhaps one can cause time without being in it. Just because we can't conceive of it doesn't mean it can't happen.

"since in order to effect something you have to be within space and time"

This seems like question begging to me. How would you support this very strong premise?

I just spent a paragraph providing support. You chose to ignore it. An atemporal being cannot simultaneously have a causal relationship with anything because causes and effects require change and time. They not only require change for the affected by also for the actor doing the action. Change requires some kind of difference in conditions occuring between two different time points. To cause change requires being able to exist in a time point prior to the change. To cause also requires some kind of internal change within the actor in order to effect it. Something happens within the actor implementing the change so that the change happens. In order for me to type on the computer, my hands move. Something within me changes which allows for me to change something externally. Something within god had to change so that something could be created, otherwise the creation would simply occur without god doing anything.

To repeat yet again, so I'm not ignored and accused of question begging. A timeless being cannot create a world bounded in time (or create anything for that matter). Creating is a time-bound action. It requires there being a point A where the thing didn't exist and a point B where the thing did exist. It requires interactions between the creator and the created that are timebound which changes occur to both the creator and the created.

In what sense are you guys talking about atemporal or how are you defining it? The force of gravity could be an interesting limit case for this. It's atemporal in the sense that the mathematical equations determining it's potency and direction are always constant. But it clearly effects temporal objects.

"I just spent a paragraph providing support. You chose to ignore it."

No, you spent a paragraph making unsupported assertions. All of them built on very strong metaphysical assumptions that were not justified.

"An atemporal being cannot simultaneously have a causal relationship with anything because causes and effects require change and time. "

Begs the question. If an atemporal being can have a causal relationship with something, then causes and effects DON'T require time. All we have to go on here is your arbitrary assertion of what you're trying to prove.

"They not only require change for the affected by also for the actor doing the action."

Ditto.

"To cause also requires some kind of internal change within the actor in order to effect it. "

Now you're just repeating your unfounded assertions.

"Something happens within the actor implementing the change so that the change happens. In order for me to type on the computer, my hands move. Something within me changes which allows for me to change something externally. Something within god had to change so that something could be created, otherwise the creation would simply occur without god doing anything."

OK, I'll grant that this is an actual argument. However, I already gave you two different ways in which this could be explained. First, it might simply be untrue that this is required for change. An eternally existing, timeless, all-knowing, free agent might just have ways to self-define/choose throughout eternity/timelessness that we cannot imagine.

Second, God could easily be in His own independent time-like space, analagous to but different from ours. This would solve both the paradoxes you're referring to, and the paradoxies that Octavious was referring to earlier.

"Creating is a time-bound action. It requires there being a point A where the thing didn't exist and a point B where the thing did exist. "

Eh, that's the usual definition, sure, but I think it would just be common sense that that doesn't apply when time itself is one of the things being created. Then "create" would more be "cause," and "cause" would be in a very metaphysical, non-timebound sense.

Take care.

@gramilaj, interesting analogy. I've never thought about it. I'll have to muse and get back to you.
Of course, some people probably don't believe in an actual force / equations of gravity, just a regularity in nature that we abstract.

Sure, in the same way I don't believe in the word gramilaj, I believe in the physical object gramilaj.

With those people, I would say the equation for gravitation could be considered similar to a name. The equation is a representation of something (unless you're a Solipsist, in which case your mind doesn't want to make the representation of me argue with you) in the same way my name is a representation of something.

If you think that the natural force named by a gravitational formula is regular I want to know what you mean by regular.

Though I just got myself in a weird spot. If I'm arguing the immediately above, and I'm arguing that God could be considered similar to gravity in the way that they both exist a-temporally, it's the name "God" that would be atemporal, which is (interestingly) mythically resonant, but unsatisfying to me.

@gramilaj, Interesting points once again.

OK, it's beyond frustrating that my arguments are dismissed while your only argument is "god can around these problems. we don't have to know how he does, he just does".

If only theists ever held themselves to their own standards.

For the record I wasn't justifying a God or any creature outside of time. It's perfectly reasonable to postulate a creature inside the space/time that has knowledge of what happens in the space/time that they occupy. I guess I'm looking at a Dr. Manhattan kind of character... the omniscient character is the agent in this model that wouldn't have free will, that doesn't mean that the non omniscient agents don't have freewill - they are the agent's making the decisions.

If you take that model and apply it to God then we have freewill and God doesn't...

@Putin,
"OK, it's beyond frustrating that my arguments are dismissed while your only argument is 'god can around these problems. we don't have to know how he does, he just does'"

Well, hang on here. You're the one who's arguing that somebody else's position is logically impossible. All I have to do to falsify that is to show that there is some possibility that God could work around it in unknown ways, and that that does not violate any logic. I don't have to actually prove a specific method -- just the absence of a proof against it (and hence, the existence of possibility in some manner or other).

Keep track of the ball, man.

And of COURSE a theist is going to say there are things God does that we can't understand. If your argument assumes the contrary, then you are indeed already assuming the negation of what you're arguing against, so you will have proved the logical impossibility of nothing.

Gravity requires mass, so how on earth is gravity atemporal? Gravity "began" just like everything else, right?

You're not showing anything. The idea that you're showing something by saying that god can work in unknown ways is not an argument. You're saying god can get around these problems of logic and then declaring victory based on that assumption.

"Second, God could easily be in His own independent time-like space, analagous to but different from ours. This would solve both the paradoxes you're referring to, and the paradoxies that Octavious was referring to earlier."

And then how on earth would these separate time-spaces interact? How would this god be able to be omniscient in a time-space he does not occupy? How would god be able to create and intervene in time-spaces he does occupy?

All of this convoluted nonsense in order to protect the doctrine of free will. How bizarre.

And can theists stop beginning their arguments with "it'd be perfectly reasonable to give this god all these characteristics which make it immune from any debate, discussion, or skepticism". You're just moving the goalposts every time a problem arises and giving god yet another magic power that gives you a escape route.

Putin, I think you should at least admit that the theistic arguments of Semck and Kal-El and others are internally self-consistent. Intellectually, that is. Because... if God is real as people are witnessing to you, all of your arguments against him evaporate.

@Putin, I'll make the easy argument and say that the force of gravity may not exist without mass, but the law of gravity certainly does. In my OP, I said, "force of gravity" when I should have said "law of gravity".

I think the law of gravity is an atemporal thing that has a temporal effect.

Laws are descriptive, they are not causal. The laws themselves aren't doing anything. The patterns exist and the laws explain them.

There have been some great points made in this thread on the "time vs. eternity" theme. Thanks guys for the comments. I've really enjoyed reading them.

@Putin those patterns existing is the laws existing, right? The patterns "exist" outside of the physica object. The way to argue this:

1)physical object exist, they have gravity
2) physical objects stop existing, htere is no gravity
3) physical objects come into existence again, and lo, there IS THE SAME GRAVITY

There must be some property of mass that exists through 1 and 3 even though there is no mass that exists between 1 and 3. A non-temporal property with a temporal effect.

God can be paradoxical from our perspective, and this is seen several times in Christian theology. Jesus is fully God, and fully man. How can that be? It just is. A paradox, and a necessary one. Paul describes the salvation of believers as being "already/not yet." That is believers are already saved from God's perspective, but not yet saved from our limited temporal view. The unsaved are "condemned already", yet clearly from the view at a gay pride parade, there doesn't seem to be much biblical condemnation atm. So paradoxes abound, but with someone like God, they are bound to.

What is happening is you are making logical judgements that are perfectly rational for temporal being, but then applying temporality to atemporality. You've no idea what atemporality is, what its like, how it functions, what is possible or impossible within it.

It is like saying because 1 + 1 = 2 that Infinity + Infinity = 2Infinity. That of course doesn't follow.

I think that's just excuse making for a nonsensical religion. What's bizarre is how the religious simply dismiss paradoxes as 'just the way things are' while they become uber-skeptics with the slightest uncertainty about scientific theories.

"The patterns "exist" outside of the physica object."

No, they do not. No mass, no gravity. The objects create the pattern, not the other way around.

@uberpenpal "Jesus is fully God, and fully man." and fully socialist.

Putin, we just point out the flaws in the old argument that science, the study of the observable by the five senses, can answer all questions, especially about origins. That said, I truly respect science. But there's no dichotomy between science and the knowledge of God because science is the study of creation, physical phenomena, while God is spirit and must be known through your spirit and a desire for truth, even when it conflicts with your own rational construct of what the universe is like.

Everywhere where science has struggled to reveal truth, religion has been there busily trying to obscure it because it was consistent with this or that religious dogma. This has been the case throughout history. That is what the religious are doing now with evolution, with their "creationism", etc. As the legendary Peter Atkins puts it: "Science's dispassionate stare examines issues publicly, exchanges information openly, discusses awkward points objectively, and builds up a network of interdependent ideas and theories that progressively expose the complex as an outcome of the simple. Religion's inwardly directed sentimental glow reflects on issues privately, exchanges information by assurance and assertion, discusses awkward points by warfare, terror, and coercion, and builds up a network of conflicting ideas that conceal ignorance under a cloak of high-flown yet empty prose."

One view is self-consistent, one view injects random acts of sorcery and godly intervention in between long periods of adherence to the laws of physics. Religion is continually forced to the margins of life, because there is less and less it can account for. Every single theory it has posited about the physical world has turned out to be false. It increasingly has to shield itself from any accountability whatsoever by cocooning itself in areas that cannot be readily observed, in areas where technology is not yet advanced enough to shine the light of science on it completely. The last cocoon is the realm of consciousness. And once there is a conclusive materialistic account of the origins of consciousness, religion will be a complete joke, as if it isn't already.