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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: How do you see time?
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
OK, this seems like an esoteric sort of question, but as I watch a lot of SF, and there are a few series that deal with time travel, but often approach it in different ways.
Both 12 Monkeys and Continuum follow a belief that travelling into the past can change the future, and destroy futures that are undesirable. The process is not clear, but you can have impacts. while a) you can build a better future by changing the past, b) that future might not include you, and the future might not be the positive thing you expect.
Now turning this around, can our actions today change the future, or is the timeline fixed (i.e. does God have a Big Picture plan that we cannot change)?
More SF-related, irrepective of the practicalities, do you believe that the past and/or the future already exist? Could you (in theory, not practice) travel to the past or the future? Or are they actually just a figment of our understanding of reality? Is it actually true that the present is all there is?
Or is there another understanding of time that makes sense?
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Blog
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Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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Garasu
Shipmate
# 17152
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Posted
Thinking about speciation, I'm inclined to think that we might be able to change the future but that it's liable, to gravitate towards certain attractor...
And I hate sodding tablets...
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"Could I believe in the doctrine without believing in the deity?". - Modesitt, L. E., Jr., 1943- Imager.
Posts: 889 | From: Surrey Heath (England) | Registered: Jun 2012
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
There are many different ways to organize time travel in fiction (I assume you are not wrestling with real life here). In some venues there are many different ways within the same imaginary universe, even -- Dr. Who and Star Trek are offenders in this way.
Some years ago I tried to organize the various types -- A Taxonomy of Time Travel
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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shadeson
Shipmate
# 17132
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Posted
I believe (for no scientific reason) that time is another dimension through which everything is travelling at the same rate (apart from relativistic effects, which can only take things into the future anyway)
It is only a 'mind' which can be conscious of it, by remembering situations in the past and anticipating the future. Without a conscious mind, time has no meaning. Consider the experience of deep anaesthesia - effectively for the person under it, time ceases to exist.
I think that this is the best philosophical reason for belief in God. There are huge periods of time in which no material mind could exist because there was only a chaotic plasma of particles. We can only view a snapshot now and interpret it as time past - no material mind could actually have any experience of it.
If God wanted to see the future as a pre-existing continuum, evolution would not be much fun!
Posts: 136 | From: uk | Registered: May 2012
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
I have been dabbling in advanced quantum physics theory (purely for my own nefarious purposes) and there are some fascinating theories of the universe out there. The idea of an infinity of realities is irresistible (for fictional purposes) and some fine novels revolve around this concept.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
Many shippies already know I'm partial to open theism, which hinges particularly on the view that God is in time as we are in time. Which means the past is unalterable and the future is truly "open"/ undetermined.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
I find that difficult to like, because it seems so limiting. God cannot do with his creation, what I can do with mine? That God seems pathetically small.
Authors spend lots of tie hopping backwards and forwards in the timeline of their creations, fixing things. Today I went through a dozen years of fiction and changed a character's name, from beginning to end, from Florinda to Charlotte. If you happened to be in this story, you would never have known a Florinda. She has been Charlotte now from the very beginning, because I am outside of the timeline of that fiction, and can dip into it at any point. It is easy for me, because I have Global Search and Replace in my Word software. I find it difficult to believe that God can't do this.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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Gramps49
Shipmate
# 16378
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Posted
There are two forms of time: Chronos, which is the steady progression through the ages we measure with a clock.
But there is also Kairos, which means a propitious moment for a decision or action. The Bible would say: "In the fullness of time" (KJV), newer versions will say:"the time is right."
Chronos time, for me, will never come back once the moment is gone; however, kairos time savors the moment making it last for a long period. I would say our minds are in generally kairos mode. We remember past events as if they are actually happening now because they inform our present person.
Posts: 2193 | From: Pullman WA | Registered: Apr 2011
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Alyosha
Shipmate
# 18395
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Posted
I think there is an illusion of choice in the present a lot of the time.
As far as God's plan goes I really don't know because I don't know any more about that plan than anyone else.
I would divide the future up into accident, destiny and fate - accident being the things without rhyme or reason which are allowed by God, destiny being the best potential of things which could happen and fate being the things which can't be changed in any circumstances. But I do incline towards the idea that a lot of things are predestined even though it is a minority view.
I also believe that life is negatively ironic towards individuals in quite a pernicious way (to the extent that saying such things can bring negative consequences from life).
[ 10. May 2015, 07:16: Message edited by: Alyosha ]
Posts: 162 | From: UK | Registered: Apr 2015
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
Time is a measure of change or difference. I worked this out by asking what would happen if nothing changed, and I mean nothing. In such circumstances any "time" that occurs is not only unnoticeable, it is also unmeasurable. There is no way of knowing it happened however "long" it is.
Why we can travel in only one direction (or is that an illusion of the human condition and if so is time uni-dimesional) I do not know.
Jengie
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
Posts: 20894 | From: city of steel, butterflies and rainbows | Registered: May 2001
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Galloping Granny
Shipmate
# 13814
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Posted
The time problem that I have with the idea of an afterlife is the thought of existing in eternity – for ever – the idea os terrifying.
However, if 'God' and God's kingdom exists outside of time, there might be no problem. "A thousand ages in Thy sight/Are but an evening gone..."
All the same, I don't want a bar of it.
GG
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The Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it. Gospel of Thomas, 113
Posts: 2629 | From: Matarangi | Registered: Jun 2008
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
cliffdweller + Gramps49 = Martin60
Mainly.
I see it as problematic ONLY if there is, which there is, God. Because of Jengie jon. Who therefore should be in my equation too.
Martin60 = cliffdweller + Gramps49 + d(Jengie jon)/dt
Before God created, after eternity, what did He do? How did He be? For eternity?
Because eternity is THE fact. Denied by the gargantubrains here of course.
Without God there's no problem. Stuff meaninglessly happens. Which is why atheism pre-empts metaphysics.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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rolyn
Shipmate
# 16840
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Schroedinger's cat:
Is it actually true that the present is all there is?
Or is there another understanding of time that makes sense?
Dwelling deeply in the present moment, in a spiritual way, makes the present the only actual truth in a most astounding way.
If we start thinking about time past, or time yet to come it seems virtually impossible to do it without the ego coming in to play on one level or another.
Unless we are able to let God completely take ego out of the equation,(something also near impossible), ISTM useless even to try and contemplate eternity. For once we start thinking in terms of a boring Sunday afternoon or waiting for the clock to hit 5.00pm at work we are always going to conclude -- Eternal Life ? Blimey, no thanks !
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Change is the only certainty of existence
Posts: 3206 | From: U.K. | Registered: Dec 2011
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
Without God there's no problem. Stuff meaninglessly happens.
Not true. The question I am asking is, partly, does the future already exist? If so, what we do now cannot actually change things. Or maybe the future sort-of exists, and we can make decisions to fix parts of it.
The reality of God doesn't impact this.
Brenda - I am talking about reality, but using SF as a way of considering the possibilities and implications of different views. In Dr Who, for example, there are "fixed points" that cannot be changed, whereas the rest is flexible. I find this an interesting fiction, but not practical, because everything is too interconnected.
quote:
Originally posted by shadeson:
It is only a 'mind' which can be conscious of it, by remembering situations in the past and anticipating the future.
I do find this related to where I think I believe. The concept of the passing of time is the product of a conscious mind. For me, this means it is not real - it is only the way that we interpret the stimuli we receive.
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Blog
Music for your enjoyment
Lord may all my hard times be healing times
take out this broken heart and renew my mind.
Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Galloping Granny:
The time problem that I have with the idea of an afterlife is the thought of existing in eternity – for ever – the idea os terrifying.
GG
I have heard a saying to the effect that eternity is not time forever, but all time at once.
Another saying is that eternity is a circle, time is a tangent to that circle, and the present is the point where time touches eternity.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
Posts: 20365 | From: Alleghany Mountains of Virginia | Registered: May 2001
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Ad Orientem
Shipmate
# 17574
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Moo:
quote:
Originally posted by Galloping Granny:
The time problem that I have with the idea of an afterlife is the thought of existing in eternity – for ever – the idea os terrifying.
GG
I have heard a saying to the effect that eternity is not time forever, but all time at once.
Another saying is that eternity is a circle, time is a tangent to that circle, and the present is the point where time touches eternity.
Moo
It's purely speculation, of course, but I'm not sure that we can ever truly experience eternity. As created beings I think we have to experience the next life in some sort of a linear fashion.
Posts: 2606 | From: Finland | Registered: Feb 2013
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
Logic ("understanding") is greater than time ("understanding of sequential change"). Consequently, we can rule out most kinds of "time travel" as leading to illogical scenarios. It cannot for example be that I travel back in time and kill myself before I travel back in time. Any sort of time travel that would allow such things to happen is hence ruled out a priori, if one believes in a fundamentally logical universe. And I do, this is a universe created by the Logos.
The distinction between time and eternity is that between change and no change, and hence in a sense is trivial. What we actually struggle with conceptually is not eternity, but rather how something that is eternal can be alive, sapient, and (inter)active. The problem is that we are imagining the wrong sort of limit. Let's say I'm first cooking a meal and then I'm dancing. To make me "change less", we would usually imagine that I'm not dancing any longer. This removes a change. Obviously at the end of that sort of process of elimination we can find only a perfectly inactive entity. But there's another way of making me "change less". I can also imagine that I'm both cooking and dancing at the same time. Then I don't have to change from one to the other, this also removes a change. The limit of this sort process of simultaneity is an entity that does everything it does all at once, a purely active entity. Not that we can really grasp what that would "experientially feel like", but it does offer some kind of opening to "sapient (inter)active life", unlike the perfectly inactive entity. This is where the traditional God of Christianity is to be found... a single blast of activity, unchanging not because there is no action, but because all action occurs at once. Part of that single blast of activity is the creation, as a whole, of the finite spacetime of the universe including all interactions of God with that finite entity.
This of course leads to another famous set of difficulties, namely how creation and free will of creatures fit together. But there I would say a big part of the problem is that we don't really know wherein precisely this freedom consists...
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
I find that difficult to like, because it seems so limiting. God cannot do with his creation, what I can do with mine? That God seems pathetically small.
Authors spend lots of tie hopping backwards and forwards in the timeline of their creations, fixing things. Today I went through a dozen years of fiction and changed a character's name, from beginning to end, from Florinda to Charlotte. If you happened to be in this story, you would never have known a Florinda. She has been Charlotte now from the very beginning, because I am outside of the timeline of that fiction, and can dip into it at any point. It is easy for me, because I have Global Search and Replace in my Word software. I find it difficult to believe that God can't do this.
God could of course. Just as an author can create a world where s/he can hop from one time to another, God could similarly create a world where he could do the same. But that would mean that the future was fixed and any truly free choice impossible. God freely chose to create a world with an open future in order to allow for human freedom, because without freedom there cannot be love.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Gramps49
Shipmate
# 16378
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Posted
What did God do before creation?
Martin Luther had an answer for that: God made willows to switch anyone that would ask that question.
Posts: 2193 | From: Pullman WA | Registered: Apr 2011
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
How is God not existing a problem for stuff just happening?
And the future is null, not just indeterminate like your status Schroedinger's cat. It's not even determinate in the present: even God cannot know if it's going to rain tomorrow.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
What?
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Love wins
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itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gramps49:
There are two forms of time: Chronos, which is the steady progression through the ages we measure with a clock.
But there is also Kairos, which means a propitious moment for a decision or action. The Bible would say: "In the fullness of time" (KJV), newer versions will say:"the time is right."
Chronos time, for me, will never come back once the moment is gone; however, kairos time savors the moment making it last for a long period. I would say our minds are in generally kairos mode. We remember past events as if they are actually happening now because they inform our present person.
Yes - this. And I've also experienced some things that make me think prayer can be retroactive by several years. We experience time as an arrow, coming and going - in the spirit world out may not be so unforgiving, and a moment may be smeared out over maybe decades or more of our time.
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
Posts: 994 | From: Planet Zog | Registered: Jul 2014
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itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
How is God not existing a problem for stuff just happening?
And the future is null, not just indeterminate like your status Schroedinger's cat. It's not even determinate in the present: even God cannot know if it's going to rain tomorrow.
Did He tell you?
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
Posts: 994 | From: Planet Zog | Registered: Jul 2014
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
I wouldn't ask.
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
What did God do before Creation? Well, He was very probably thinking about it. You don't, mostly, just make stuff. There is a preparatory stage: considering, selecting yarns or paints or actors or whatever, feeling the way into what the work is going to be. It is at least as important as the actual forging of the work.
That is if God experiences His creation as a process. But time is certainly an element of creation as we know it, and so He must be manipulating it in some way.
The other important thing to consider is that God Himself made a point of putting Himself into time and space. That's the whole point of the incarnation.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Just as an author can create a world where s/he can hop from one time to another, God could similarly create a world where he could do the same. But that would mean that the future was fixed and any truly free choice impossible.
That doesn't follow. One reason authors have to revise their plots is that they realise that they've made their characters do things that those characters just wouldn't do. And then the author has to go back and alter the plot, either to change the circumstances leading up to the decision so that the character does what the author wants, or else to have the character do what they would do, and then change the way the plot evolves from that.
The better the author the less they just push their characters around and the more free their characters are. That no author has ever truly free characters is more a limit on human ability, rather than because the author's role outside the story is incompatible with freedom.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
I can only testify that both things are absolutely true. As the creator of a work, I have total control over it. In me that novel lives and moves and has its being, and without me not one word of it shall be written; every character is my perfect slave.
But the characters do have free will, and this is complete and total and quite true as well. I can compel them to do things in a crude way (explosions, consumption, the dropping of pianos from on high), but this is not well. It does not make for a good book. The work tends to die right on the page, and lie there limp. For the book to come to life I have to let the characters do and be what they want.
The crucial difference (and there must be a theological term for this) is in the motivation. The characters have the motives I endow them with (marriage, the defeat of the Rebel Alliance, whatever). but my motive is simpler. It must, it shall be a good book, if we all die for it. To this end pianos shall fall and Death Stars explode.
Suppose God's motives are similar? He may not be interested, in our having an affordable mortgage or the latest Apple device. He may demand a really good book. And then what?
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Just as an author can create a world where s/he can hop from one time to another, God could similarly create a world where he could do the same. But that would mean that the future was fixed and any truly free choice impossible.
That doesn't follow. One reason authors have to revise their plots is that they realise that they've made their characters do things that those characters just wouldn't do. And then the author has to go back and alter the plot, either to change the circumstances leading up to the decision so that the character does what the author wants, or else to have the character do what they would do, and then change the way the plot evolves from that.
The better the author the less they just push their characters around and the more free their characters are. That no author has ever truly free characters is more a limit on human ability, rather than because the author's role outside the story is incompatible with freedom.
This is a tangent, but... if God definitively knows the future, then our choices cannot be free, since there is no possibility, never was any possibility, of us choosing anything other than what God definitively knew the future to be. This is true even if you try like many to mince around with words like "foreknowledge" rather than "predestined." The fact is, if God knows definitively what you will do in the future, then you are not free to choose something different. And to be sure, there are many that find that a satisfactory explanation of the world.
The Open view is that the future is still open and therefore are choices are exactly what we intuitively experience them to be: free, within some constraints. Since God knows all the potential variables, God is able to anticipate all the potential possibilities and even which is the most likely choice you will make in any given scenario. But God knows them as "contingent futures" not as "definitive futures".
Again, God did not have to create a universe with an "open" future, but (IMHO) chose to do so because that is the only way in which our choices would be in any meaningful way free.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
What did He do before He started thinking about it? How long did His thinking about it last? All computable aspects are instantaneous in Him. Surely? I fancifully suspect ALL in one instant. From eternity. So what's left to 'think' about? The ... humanities? Can God ever have had an unasked question?
Do the laws which apply to THEORETICAL physics, which stand EVERY test, EVERY observation, apply to God? His processing, of data, information, is quantized? He ticks? Or is delocalization of quantum entangled pairs and their instantaneity of determinization, regardless of spatial separation, which seems to be pure 4+ dimensional playfulness (tell me that it IS theoretically necessary, purely logical, first, please!), a metaphor for that instantaneity of all calculation I posit above?
As there is no entropy in God, do perfume bottles refill from the air in heaven? At the same time as they empty in to it? ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
Usually I see time by looking at a clock or watch.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
# 8700
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
This is a tangent, but... if God definitively knows the future, then our choices cannot be free, since there is no possibility, never was any possibility, of us choosing anything other than what God definitively knew the future to be. This is true even if you try like many to mince around with words like "foreknowledge" rather than "predestined." The fact is, if God knows definitively what you will do in the future, then you are not free to choose something different. And to be sure, there are many that find that a satisfactory explanation of the world.
This is incorrect. The measure of your freedom - whatever it may be - is conditioned in time. In some way, you consider yourself to be "free" because you are making choices as you progress through time. And for an observer that lives alongside of you in time, this indeed means that your actions are not entirely predictable. Your internal freedom to a temporal observer expresses itself as you not being entirely determined by the observable state of the world and what we can learn about your prior history.
However, God does not live alongside of you in time. He is eternal. All of time, from its beginning (likely in a "Big Bang") to its end (whether heat death of the universe or Second Coming of Christ) is present to Him all at once. Thus the free choices that you make which render you unpredictable to other time-bound creatures are known to God. Simply because He sees all of time. This is "foreknowledge" only from your time-bound perspective. To God there is no difference between past, present and future. It is all equally present.
This however does not impede your freedom. Just like me watching a movie of you taking a decision does not change that the decision you made was free. Your freedom was conditioned on the time you were living through then, it is not eliminated by me looking back on it (now on a recording) and knowing exactly what you did. Likewise, God seeing all of time all at once, and hence knowing what you will have done simply from seeing it, does not change that you in progressing through time are free to make your choices. Your freedom is measured against the temporal world, not against the eternal God. It is the world state and your own internal history that does not fully determine you, hence allowing you genuine choice. But these are entities flowing with you through time, they are not God.
The mistake here is quite simply that you think of God as you think of me, just in a "super version". And obviously, if I am able to predict your every move, then you cannot be truly free. But that's because I cannot see the future, and hence can only predict if what I make predictions about is strictly determined in its actions by what I have observed and am observing now. Yet a Being who can actually observe the future imposes no such determinism, it doesn't predict (speaks before things happen), it postdicts (speaks of what will have happened).
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
Posts: 12010 | From: Gone fishing | Registered: Oct 2004
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Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
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Posted
IngoB says it so much better than I did. Quite right. Both things are true, at once. I have no idea how it works, but that's certainly the way it is.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
This is a tangent, but... if God definitively knows the future, then our choices cannot be free, since there is no possibility, never was any possibility, of us choosing anything other than what God definitively knew the future to be. This is true even if you try like many to mince around with words like "foreknowledge" rather than "predestined." The fact is, if God knows definitively what you will do in the future, then you are not free to choose something different. And to be sure, there are many that find that a satisfactory explanation of the world.
This is incorrect. The measure of your freedom - whatever it may be - is conditioned in time. In some way, you consider yourself to be "free" because you are making choices as you progress through time. And for an observer that lives alongside of you in time, this indeed means that your actions are not entirely predictable. Your internal freedom to a temporal observer expresses itself as you not being entirely determined by the observable state of the world and what we can learn about your prior history.
However, God does not live alongside of you in time. He is eternal. All of time, from its beginning (likely in a "Big Bang") to its end (whether heat death of the universe or Second Coming of Christ) is present to Him all at once. Thus the free choices that you make which render you unpredictable to other time-bound creatures are known to God. Simply because He sees all of time. This is "foreknowledge" only from your time-bound perspective. To God there is no difference between past, present and future. It is all equally present.
Obviously this is not a new perspective to me. It's the one we all grew up on-- the "God is outside of time" one, where "foreknowledge" sounds like a clever way to get around the predestination/ free will debate.
The thing is, there's nothing in biblical revelation to suggest this is the case. And in fact, there's much in the Bible to suggest otherwise. Passages where God makes conditional prophesies-- where he genuinely does not seem to know which choice will be made. Passages where God even changes his mind ("repents" in fact is the word often used) of a decision because of the way things turned out. Of course, many will say those are anthropomorphisms. But since pretty much the entire old and new testaments speak of God as if he were in time as we are in time and the Bible is supposed to give us a picture, however inadequate, of who God is-- what's left?
Seeing God as choosing to create and then operate within a cosmos that exists in time has changed the entire way I read the Bible-- makes the whole thing make sense-- as well as fit together with my experience of the world and the intuitive way we operate in it.
To your specific and very familiar "foreknowledge" explanation: if God is in fact outside of time and has exhaustive and definitive "foreknowledge" of our future choices, then all those conditional prophesies in Scripture are meaningless. He already foreknows what we will choose, even before we have chosen it. And while God may "foreknow" it in the future, in some other dimension, there still is absolutely no way that we can choose otherwise. You can say it is only "foreknown" and not "predestined", but the end result is the same. A divinely "foreknown" future cannot be undone.
A truly open future can be known. It is also a future that can be open to the intervention of a sovereign God, who can break into even an open history to insure his promises hold true-- just as a much more finite parent can still make promises to their children and intervene in history to be sure the promised treat/ holiday/ whatever happens.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Ad Orientem
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# 17574
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Obviously this is not a new perspective to me. It's the one we all grew up on-- the "God is outside of time" one, where "foreknowledge" sounds like a clever way to get around the predestination/ free will debate.
The thing is, there's nothing in biblical revelation to suggest this is the case. And in fact, there's much in the Bible to suggest otherwise. Passages where God makes conditional prophesies-- where he genuinely does not seem to know which choice will be made. Passages where God even changes his mind ("repents" in fact is the word often used) of a decision because of the way things turned out. Of course, many will say those are anthropomorphisms. But since pretty much the entire old and new testaments speak of God as if he were in time as we are in time and the Bible is supposed to give us a picture, however inadequate, of who God is-- what's left?
God's interaction with his creation only appear to us in such a way. How could it be any other way? That doesn't necessarily mean he is subject to time though.
quote:
Seeing God as choosing to create and then operate within a cosmos that exists in time has changed the entire way I read the Bible-- makes the whole thing make sense-- as well as fit together with my experience of the world and the intuitive way we operate in it.
To your specific and very familiar "foreknowledge" explanation: if God is in fact outside of time and has exhaustive and definitive "foreknowledge" of our future choices, then all those conditional prophesies in Scripture are meaningless. He already foreknows what we will choose, even before we have chosen it. And while God may "foreknow" it in the future, in some other dimension, there still is absolutely no way that we can choose otherwise. You can say it is only "foreknown" and not "predestined", but the end result is the same. A divinely "foreknown" future cannot be undone.
I'm not quite sure that follows. That God sees time in its completeness, including his own interactions within it, doesn't necessarily negate freewill within time itself.
Posts: 2606 | From: Finland | Registered: Feb 2013
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Macrina
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# 8807
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Posted
Well, as time is a property of space and matter then I don't actually think we can travel ourselves back or forward in time without doing nasty things to the material balance of the universe. Unless when we travel we dump a load of matter and space equivalent to ourselves forward or backwards as needed. Mind you, what happens to the material in black holes? If that disappears then maybe I am wrong.
Because time is a property of space and matter which only exist within time I'm not sure if the past exists now and the future exists now in the same way that London exists even though I am not there and I could travel to London if I wanted to.
I'm also not sure that logical is a good word to describe the universe. It has laws yes but they are laws that we have worked out based on observation, not ones that it only obeys because it's afraid of a judge. Logic implies reasoned order and there are things about the universe which are not very reasonable or ordered.
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Again, God did not have to create a universe with an "open" future, but (IMHO) chose to do so because that is the only way in which our choices would be in any meaningful way free.
Why are they not free in a meaningful way in the other case?
Let us distinguish between two meanings of free:
'Metaphysical freedom': there are other possible future chains of events, in the sense that there is only one past.
'Agent freedom': what I do depends upon my choices, within relevant constraints.
Now a classical theist position affirms agent freedom but not metaphysical freedom. Now it appears to me that the claim that without freedom we could not love depends upon agent freedom. Metaphysical freedom is irrelevant to the claim.
For example, it makes sense to say you acted out of love in the past. But the past is fixed. There is no longer any metaphyiscal freedom in the past; yet you have still acted out of love. The past has agent freedom but not metaphysical freedom.
Incidentally, we don't interpret the Bible to mean that the moon actually gives forth light or that the earth is flat and surrounded by sea. The sensible ones among us don't interpret it to mean the world was actually created in six days.
[ 11. May 2015, 07:58: Message edited by: Dafyd ]
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Dafyd
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# 5549
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Posted
Sorry - meant to say that the Bible needs to be read in the light of modern science, and to a lesser extent, philosophy. And at the moment modern science favours an actually existing future.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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IngoB
Sentire cum Ecclesia
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
The thing is, there's nothing in biblical revelation to suggest this is the case. And in fact, there's much in the Bible to suggest otherwise. Passages where God makes conditional prophesies-- where he genuinely does not seem to know which choice will be made. Passages where God even changes his mind ("repents" in fact is the word often used) of a decision because of the way things turned out. Of course, many will say those are anthropomorphisms. But since pretty much the entire old and new testaments speak of God as if he were in time as we are in time and the Bible is supposed to give us a picture, however inadequate, of who God is-- what's left?
The eternal Being interacts with beings in time, interactions which happen in time at their endpoint. It is inevitable that the time-based beings - us - will interpret all this as temporal events. This is not anthropomorphism, this is temporalism. Whether we we see God "human-like" or not, we cannot but perceive him "time-like". We cannot think eternity but as an abstract concept, we cannot sort our experiences into anything but a temporal mould. Reports about what God did are hence necessarily temporal.
The descriptions of the bible are hence perfectly consistent with the temporal categorisation of temporal actions of an eternal Being. (They are temporal actions in the sense of manipulating spacetime, not in the sense of originating sequentially in God.) To say that God is repenting of something is then on top of that an obvious anthropomorphism, just like saying that God is angry. Furthermore, one shouldn't discount the possibility of God using change at the spatiotemporal end point in order to achieve His ends. For example, Abraham "bargaining down" God over the number of righteous needed to save Sodom and Gomorrah: this does not necessarily indicate that God is changing His mind due to Abraham's bargaining. This can just as well be God allowing Abraham to change his own mind by working this out against God's response, i.e., just how few righteous will Abraham think are enough, at what point will he lose his nerve and become embarrassed about pleading for even greater mercy?
Also, it is philosophically easy to show that only an eternal, unchanging God can be the Creator. The bible does show God as the Creator. So I can turn this around and ask what is left if one adopts a "temporal god"? And what is left then is a demiurge, a god like any of the pagan gods, a Jupiter perhaps - but not more. Certainly that god is not the Creator in the fundamental "creation from nothing" sense that Christians have attributed to their God.
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Seeing God as choosing to create and then operate within a cosmos that exists in time has changed the entire way I read the Bible-- makes the whole thing make sense-- as well as fit together with my experience of the world and the intuitive way we operate in it.
God does not require an "abstract eternalising" perspective of us in interacting with Him. He is ever accommodating, and just as the bible shows, will interact with us on our temporal terms. Problems arise though when you get "too smart" about this and start mistaking the accommodation as fundamental truth. A simple temporal interaction with God is fine, a philosophical categorisation of God as temporal is false, and like all untruths will eventually damage our relation with God.
Let's look at concrete examples. Here is god, according to you, making false promises:
""Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come forth from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you. And I will give to you, and to your descendants after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God." (Gen 17:4-8)
Of course, your god cannot possibly promise anything of that sort. How would your temporally limited god know that Abraham will be fruitful and have both literally and metaphorically many descendants? How would this god know that kings will be among the descendants of Abraham? How will God guarantee their ownership over any lands? Rather obviously, over the centuries and millennia countless free human decisions, as well as general "shit happening", could disrupt these Divine plans.
But it gets worse. Let's say your temporal god feels bound to this promise, and hence will try his utmost to make it come true. Now, unfortunately for your god, Sarah has just decided that at her age she has had quite enough of sex, and that she certainly does not want to be a mother any longer. A wonderfully free human decision right there. Now, what is your temporal god going to do? Pressure Sarah into changing her mind? Induce Abraham to rape Sarah? Create a baby in Sarah's womb against her will? Faced with an indeterminate universe full of human choice and random events, your temporal god if he wishes to guarantee a specific outcome has not choice but to throw his almighty weight around. Your temporal god will be an all-powerful bully, manipulating the world constantly to bend it to his designs, and frequently stepping on the toes of humans in the process. There is no other way for god to guarantee an outcome across millennia.
So your God makes false promises, and then in running after them becomes inevitably a bully.
Another example, let's hear God speak again:
"Peter declared to him, 'Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away.' Jesus said to him, 'Truly, I say to you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.'" (Mt 26:33-34)
Ahh, Jesus, the liar - according to you. For of course Jesus cannot possibly know this. Note that not only is Jesus saying what Peter will do, which one could consider as a shrewd guess. No, he puts a timing to this, he declares when all this will happen. Clearly, Jesus according to you must be bullshitting, and that what He said actually came true is - according to you - just a lucky guess. Nice touch to start these lies with "Truly..." then.
Now, once more, what would your temporal god have to do in order to make sure that this guess, this lie (for predicting definitely what you cannot know is a kind of lie), will end up coming true? Well, either he has to manipulate Peter's mind so that he denies the Lord against his stated intentions. Or he has to manipulate the world to put Peter under enough pressure to make him break, and then as soon as that happens he has to make some cock crow. It would be bloody inconvenient for this temporal god of yours, of course, if Peter had already the mindset of a martyr. Because then he couldn't be manipulated into failure. So your temporal god also has to carefully manage Peter prior to this event, so that Peter does not become too saintly to be manipulated at this point in time.
So your Jesus is a liar, and in order to maintain an appearance of truth he has to either brainwash Peter or manipulate both Peter and the world into a state where Peter is certain to fail in his commitment to Jesus (and then he has to add a dramatic gimmick, by making a cock crow, just to make it all come together in the minds of the manipulated observers).
A temporal god acting as the bible describes is a liar, a cheat, a bully, an almighty tyrant who micromanages the unpredictable world and manipulates the free humans within it to achieve his own ends and to maintain the illusion of his power among them. Such a temporal god is a prince of the world, indeed, but it is not God.
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
To your specific and very familiar "foreknowledge" explanation: if God is in fact outside of time and has exhaustive and definitive "foreknowledge" of our future choices, then all those conditional prophesies in Scripture are meaningless. He already foreknows what we will choose, even before we have chosen it. And while God may "foreknow" it in the future, in some other dimension, there still is absolutely no way that we can choose otherwise. You can say it is only "foreknown" and not "predestined", but the end result is the same. A divinely "foreknown" future cannot be undone.
You completely failed to engage with my explanation! Once more, do I restrict your freedom if I watch a video of what you did? Are you any less free just because I can see with certainty what action you took, and if I wish can see it a hundred times in a row? No, of course not. Difficulties arise only when I, living alongside you and speaking in the same present as you, can predict your future actions perfectly. But my eternal God is not like that, and He knows your future actions simply because they are not future to Him. His knowledge restricts your freedom no more than me watching a video of you does.
Anyway, I'm making this too easy for you by explaining to much. To make your claims, you have to first state wherein your freedom consists, precisely. Because otherwise your statement that God would take this freedom away is ill-defined. So state exactly how you are free, and then I will argue why eternal knowledge will not take away this freedom.
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
A truly open future can be known. It is also a future that can be open to the intervention of a sovereign God, who can break into even an open history to insure his promises hold true-- just as a much more finite parent can still make promises to their children and intervene in history to be sure the promised treat/ holiday/ whatever happens.
Your future remains as open to you as it ever was, and an eternal God can "break into" it all the same.
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They’ll have me whipp’d for speaking true; thou’lt have me whipp’d for lying; and sometimes I am whipp’d for holding my peace. - The Fool in King Lear
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
IngoB proliferates entities just a tad and hasn't moved on since Ptolemy. Despite my pondering if God ticks, eternity isn't a film.
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Love wins
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
Again, God did not have to create a universe with an "open" future, but (IMHO) chose to do so because that is the only way in which our choices would be in any meaningful way free.
Why are they not free in a meaningful way in the other case?
Let us distinguish between two meanings of free:
'Metaphysical freedom': there are other possible future chains of events, in the sense that there is only one past.
'Agent freedom': what I do depends upon my choices, within relevant constraints.
Now a classical theist position affirms agent freedom but not metaphysical freedom. Now it appears to me that the claim that without freedom we could not love depends upon agent freedom. Metaphysical freedom is irrelevant to the claim.
For example, it makes sense to say you acted out of love in the past. But the past is fixed. There is no longer any metaphyiscal freedom in the past; yet you have still acted out of love. The past has agent freedom but not metaphysical freedom..
Your choices made in the past are unchangeable-- they are fixed, you do not have free will to change them. At the moment you made them when they were present, you had free will to choose otherwise-- they were changeable-- because the present is not fixed.
But if God has definitive knowledge of the future, that means the present and the future are also fixed. Since it is impossible for you to choose anything other than what God exhaustively knows as a definitive future, that means that what might feel like a free choice in the present is not at all-- since it would be impossible for you to choose anything different. Our future choices would be as determined as our past ones.
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Incidentally, we don't interpret the Bible to mean that the moon actually gives forth light or that the earth is flat and surrounded by sea. The sensible ones among us don't interpret it to mean the world was actually created in six days.
Apparently, you are under the illusion that my understanding of time is based on a literalistic reading of Scripture. It's not. Like most Open Theists, I am a theistic evolutionist.
But whether we read Scripture figuratively or literally, we still think it means something. In fact, Christians generally believe that Scripture more than anything else is about revealing God to us. So when Scripture records God making a conditional prophesy or changing his mind about something/one, that means something. We can interpret it figuratively, but we still need to figure out what it means, why it's there, and most importantly, what it tells us about God. I'm very much not a "plain meaning of the text" sort of girl, but I would say, of all the range of figurative or other meanings a text can have, the least likely is usually the one that's completely opposite of what it appears to say.
So much of Scripture hinges on conditional prophesy, God changing his mind, inducements to encourage humans to choose rightly, that it all becomes pretty meaningless if we posit a God with definitive knowledge of the future. The picture of a sovereign God we find in Scripture, otoh, is consistent with the open understanding of a infinite God with exhaustive knowledge of the entire past and present, and of all the possible futures.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Sorry - meant to say that the Bible needs to be read in the light of modern science, and to a lesser extent, philosophy. And at the moment modern science favours an actually existing future.
This is beyond my wheelhouse, but I will say there are a number of very well-regarded physicists who are part of the Open Theist academic group (part of AAR) to which I belong and participate. They assure me that your statement "modern science favours an actually existing future" is not an accurate reflection of where the field is at this moment. Again, beyond my wheelhouse so all I can do is report what I'm hearing from others.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Also, it is philosophically easy to show that only an eternal, unchanging God can be the Creator. The bible does show God as the Creator. So I can turn this around and ask what is left if one adopts a "temporal god"? And what is left then is a demiurge, a god like any of the pagan gods, a Jupiter perhaps - but not more. Certainly that god is not the Creator in the fundamental "creation from nothing" sense that Christians have attributed to their God.
I don't find anything in the Open view of God that is inconsistent with God as Creator, and, despite your claim that it would be "philosophically easy" to do so, I don't see any argument otherwise here.
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Let's look at concrete examples. Here is god, according to you, making false promises:
""Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come forth from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you. And I will give to you, and to your descendants after you, the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God." (Gen 17:4-8)
Of course, your god cannot possibly promise anything of that sort. How would your temporally limited god know that Abraham will be fruitful and have both literally and metaphorically many descendants? How would this god know that kings will be among the descendants of Abraham? How will God guarantee their ownership over any lands? Rather obviously, over the centuries and millennia countless free human decisions, as well as general "shit happening", could disrupt these Divine plans.
But it gets worse. Let's say your temporal god feels bound to this promise, and hence will try his utmost to make it come true. Now, unfortunately for your god, Sarah has just decided that at her age she has had quite enough of sex, and that she certainly does not want to be a mother any longer. A wonderfully free human decision right there. Now, what is your temporal god going to do? Pressure Sarah into changing her mind? Induce Abraham to rape Sarah? Create a baby in Sarah's womb against her will? Faced with an indeterminate universe full of human choice and random events, your temporal god if he wishes to guarantee a specific outcome has not choice but to throw his almighty weight around. Your temporal god will be an all-powerful bully, manipulating the world constantly to bend it to his designs, and frequently stepping on the toes of humans in the process. There is no other way for god to guarantee an outcome across millennia.
So your God makes false promises, and then in running after them becomes inevitably a bully.
Well, that's pretty much what we see in the Genesis text, though, whether you read it from an "open" perspective or a classical theist one. In either paradigm you have God intervening in history to make the impossible happen, and even to work within and thru human errors (which abound in this text).
I believe God does intervene in history to achieve his promised future, but never in a way that is contrary to human choice. (This was actually a major discussion at the last Open/Relational subgroup meeting of AAR-- most would agree that God does not override human freedom). This is why we have so many things happen that are clearly contrary to God's will. Yet Christians believe in a promised future when all is set right. Those things are most consistent with the Open view of history.
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Another example, let's hear God speak again:
"Peter declared to him, 'Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away.' Jesus said to him, 'Truly, I say to you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.'" (Mt 26:33-34)
Ahh, Jesus, the liar - according to you. For of course Jesus cannot possibly know this. Note that not only is Jesus saying what Peter will do, which one could consider as a shrewd guess. No, he puts a timing to this, he declares when all this will happen. Clearly, Jesus according to you must be bullshitting, and that what He said actually came true is - according to you - just a lucky guess. Nice touch to start these lies with "Truly..." then.
Now, once more, what would your temporal god have to do in order to make sure that this guess, this lie (for predicting definitely what you cannot know is a kind of lie), will end up coming true? Well, either he has to manipulate Peter's mind so that he denies the Lord against his stated intentions. Or he has to manipulate the world to put Peter under enough pressure to make him break, and then as soon as that happens he has to make some cock crow. It would be bloody inconvenient for this temporal god of yours, of course, if Peter had already the mindset of a martyr. Because then he couldn't be manipulated into failure. So your temporal god also has to carefully manage Peter prior to this event, so that Peter does not become too saintly to be manipulated at this point in time.
God has definitive knowledge of the past and present, and definitive knowledge of all the future possibilities, which makes his aware intimately of what anyone is likely to do in any given scenario and how that will interact with other people's actions. I suspect this is particularly true when you are close to the one event that is most significant to the cosmos.
Were the choice to go otherwise though, Scripture doesn't seem to be too troubled to say so. As I said, we have lots of examples where God makes a prophesy (e.g. "I will destroy Nineveh"-- note no conditional language in text) and then has no problem changing things in response to human choices ("should I not care"?). I don't have any reason to believe this story could have turned out differently and God would have been fine with that, and indeed had another way of accomplishing his purposes in mind having anticipated every possible future. However, it makes sense for Jesus in the moment to speak of the most likely future.
So, again, most open theists do not believe God ever intervenes in a way that overrides human freedom.
[ 11. May 2015, 14:40: Message edited by: cliffdweller ]
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Ad Orientem
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# 17574
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Posted
Cliffdweller wrote:
"But if God has definitive knowledge of the future, that means the present and the future are also fixed. Since it is impossible for you to choose anything other than what God exhaustively knows as a definitive future"
Again, I'm not sure that follows, well, not if God exists in eternity. If God sees time in it's fulness, that is, if every event that ever was, is or ever will be (that is from our linear perspective) are present to God all at once, it doesn't mean that those who exist do not have freewill. The problem only occurs when you try to apply linear terminology to God such as "foreknowledge", which strictly speaking doesn't apply to God, it only seems like that to us because God sees time and interacts with it from eternity.
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cliffdweller
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# 13338
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Cliffdweller wrote:
"But if God has definitive knowledge of the future, that means the present and the future are also fixed. Since it is impossible for you to choose anything other than what God exhaustively knows as a definitive future"
Again, I'm not sure that follows, well, not if God exists in eternity. If God sees time in it's fulness, that is, if every event that ever was, is or ever will be (that is from our linear perspective) are present to God all at once, it doesn't mean that those who exist do not have freewill. The problem only occurs when you try to apply linear terminology to God such as "foreknowledge", which strictly speaking doesn't apply to God, it only seems like that to us because God sees time and interacts with it from eternity.
Again, just look at what it means for us, leaving God's nature out of it. If God "foreknows" that we will choose A rather than B, do we in this moment have any possibility of choosing B? If not, then our choice cannot in any way be deemed free.
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Ad Orientem
Shipmate
# 17574
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Cliffdweller wrote:
"But if God has definitive knowledge of the future, that means the present and the future are also fixed. Since it is impossible for you to choose anything other than what God exhaustively knows as a definitive future"
Again, I'm not sure that follows, well, not if God exists in eternity. If God sees time in it's fulness, that is, if every event that ever was, is or ever will be (that is from our linear perspective) are present to God all at once, it doesn't mean that those who exist do not have freewill. The problem only occurs when you try to apply linear terminology to God such as "foreknowledge", which strictly speaking doesn't apply to God, it only seems like that to us because God sees time and interacts with it from eternity.
Again, just look at what it means for us, leaving God's nature out of it. If God "foreknows" that we will choose A rather than B, do we in this moment have any possibility of choosing B? If not, then our choice cannot in any way be deemed free.
I don't see that as the logical conclusion. There is no other way time can be seen from eternity except in its completeness. That does not logically follow that those within time do not have freewill.
Posts: 2606 | From: Finland | Registered: Feb 2013
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cliffdweller
Shipmate
# 13338
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Posted
If you have no other possibility of choosing anything other than the choice that is known, then it's not a real choice.
As others have pointed out, "eternal" does not necessarily mean "outside of time."
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"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." -Frederick Buechner
Posts: 11242 | From: a small canyon overlooking the city | Registered: Jan 2008
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Ad Orientem
Shipmate
# 17574
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
If you have no other possibility of choosing anything other than the choice that is known, then it's not a real choice.
You have to think outside the box. It's a paradox but not necessarily one that is illogical.
quote:
As others have pointed out, "eternal" does not necessarily mean "outside of time."
Then it is not strictly speaking eternal.
[ 11. May 2015, 16:04: Message edited by: Ad Orientem ]
Posts: 2606 | From: Finland | Registered: Feb 2013
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Schroedinger's cat
Ship's cool cat
# 64
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Usually I see time by looking at a clock or watch.
But what you see there, as you well know, is a human means of defining and describing the passing of time. It is not time itself.
I suppose I resolve some of the complexities by accepting that God is "outside of time", and so can see all events at once, across all parallel universes. In some of the more recent insights from Quantum Physics, the actual parallel universe we experience may differ from occasion to occasion.
The problem is that I think we also exist outside of time, but in a different way. We are bounded by the flow of time, but the only reality is now. The past - and the future - are not real, but are only our mental constructions from the stimuli we have. To construct a reality, we define a past and a future (much in the same way that we interpret the optic nerve impulses as the world around us). That does not mean that they have any actual objective reality (or that the phrase means anything).
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Posts: 18859 | From: At the bottom of a deep dark well. | Registered: May 2001
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