Is it coherent to say that God exists outside of time/space?
This is a common characteristic attributed to god in theism - that god exists outside of space/time. This allows for wording the cosmological argument in such a way that, while the universe requires a cause, because it begins to exist (according to the big bang theory), god does not require a cause, because god does not 'begin' to exist. He exists outside of space/time, so he is not subjected to the same constraints that objects that begin to exist have, such as requiring a cause.
I’d highly recommend either Saint Augustine’s Confessions, Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy or the opening arguments of Saint Aquinas’s Summa Theologica for this question but there are various views on this question between Christian philosophers such as between Anselm and Aquinas so I’ll try my best to take a Thomistic view since this is the one I know best.
God is immutable, the source of all existence, necessary, uncaused, and essential being itself. God therefore brings things that possess potential being into actual being since no thing can bring its own potentiality into actuality. This all demonstrates that God holds a unique position in eternity. Further we understand time and its passage within space as that of motion and mutability and change which are things that cannot be attributed to the uncaused cause which is God. He is wholly immutable and therefore interminable, having no beginnings and end, once again demonstrating His eternity and being outside of time.
It's another meaningless metaphysical statement. Language can't even evaluate it in any way that makes sense.
I think Plato is almost close, but a bit too tangential. With your description, we can say that a creator exists outside spacetime in the same way you exist outside a painting.
Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five does a decent job of helping to conceptualize the idea of stepping outside of time.
There are theories in quantum gravity according to which spacetime is not fundamental but depends upon some more fundamental, non-spatiotemporal structure. It would seem rash to try to a priori rule out such a scenario. So, it just seems like an open question whether there could be something existing beyond space and time. I don't see any reason to think that such a thing is impossible.
>while the universe requires a cause,
>because it begins to exist
Statement B not enough to conclude statement A
Meds
What
>Is it coherent to say that God exists outside of time/space?
Does God lie outside of space and time?
Outside of space and time, yes, and therefore, as an observer and judge of humans, and also as an agent effective in their world, outside the realm of sense as opposed to nonsense, hence outside the realm of possibility, and therefore outside the realm of existence. You cannot explain how an entity can be (1) outside of space and time and (2) an observer and judge of humans or (3) an agent effective in their world, because it simply does not make sense.
Try it!
“God lies outside of space and time.”
It is easy to play with words to fabricate a pleasing little story, and incomparably more difficult to determine whether those words mean anything. Hence the popularity of the former activity and the unpopularity of the latter.
It is difficult even to perceive the necessity of determining whether words mean anything in a case like this, and hence few do.
I'm more likely to object by saying this is special pleading. Given the existence of A, there is B that explains the existence of A. I don't see why we wouldn't extrapolate this to be true of an entity that exists outside of time and space.
Further there's a question of why we would identify something beyond space and time with God. Why does the cause need to be an agent?
Again, there is no way to coherently talk about 'outside space and time' without self contradiction.
That gives me pause for this kind of objection. It's difficult for us to conceive but that doesn't make it impossible.
You really have no understanding of logic do you? Even outside imagination, the statement is meaningless. You cannot convey such an idea with language, merely stating it is a contradiction. It's like saying that all bachelors are married.
I do have an understanding of logic. Want to create a valid argument where you conclude P and not P? So far it just sounds like people are saying that they can't comprehend what it would mean for something to exist outside time and space. Obviously. Everything you ever experienced exists within time and space. My guess is that your conception of "exist" needs time for some reason. I don't see why it would be needed.
Actually, I'll give a plausible example of something existing outside space and time that we could wrap our heads around.
2+2=4 is commonly thought to be a true statement. If so, what makes it true? Generally, for a proposition P, there is something that exists that makes that statement true. In this case we might say there is an abstract existence, "2", that goes beyond its mere instantiation as being "2 birds", "2 dogs", "2 cats," etc. "2" exists in the abstract, and one thing that's true of 2 is that 2 + 2 = 4. What kind of existence does the number 2 have? It doesn't exist in space. It isn't anywhere. Does 2 exist within time? Presumably if the universe came to an end and time itself did as well, it would still be true that 2+ 2 = 4, and so 2 exists independent of time.
Whether you buy the argument I just made, the concept of 2 existing in a sense that is independent of time and space is sensible. Meaning the concept of existence is not necessarily married to time and/or space.
all this for a sourcefriend?
It's easier to come up with some reason why the definition of existence has to include time and space when you don't have to account for possible counter examples.
Except it doesn't. Metaphysical concepts such as these exist because we can materialize them in time and space.
Your claim is basically saying that if time and space were to disappear, it would no longer be the case that 2+2=4. Even if you don't believe 2+2=4 would remain a true statement in that situation, the idea is comprehensible, and that's enough to suggest that existence as an idea does not require time and space.
Also, you never did the work of actually pointing out a contradiction in saying something exists outside of time and space other than declaring there's one.
Yes it wouldn't. Existing outside time and space is a contradiction. The definition of exist requires a cause, but let's assume things exist ontologically, these entities need to evolve or move in order that we may discern their existence. There is no way to know whether something exists without that thing evolving through space and time. It would just be another metaphysical category that only exists as a thought relating one experience to the material world, not as something in a separate reality that we can never hope to discern. Just like the lion man cro-magnon people believed in, it no longer exists since there is no one who believes it does, it has evolved through time and space into a blond eyed european man who lives in the sky and is supposed to be our father. It exists in the thoughts of fallible and scared people in a brief moment of human history and as an old man who represents paternity. If such a concept existed, don't you think it would appear as something more alien, something we all could agree was not familiar to us, we have to familiarize it with our culture because there's no way of describing it in an unfamiliar manner, we can only relate to it via familiar concepts of family.
>The definition of exist requires a cause
That sounds obviously false.
Tell me the contradiction in the following situation:
Uncaused, a universe pops into existence with a single atom inside it. The universe then ceases to exist after a second.
For the brief instant, the atom existed. We're just used to things that exist having causes, but that doesn't mean the definition of existence itself has causation within it.
>these entities need to evolve or move in order that we may discern their existence. There is no way to know whether something exists without that thing evolving through space and time.
Whether something exists and whether we can know something exists are two separate questions. What you're saying allows for the epistemic possibility that something exists that is beyond space and time. We just wouldn't know about it. The idea remains nonetheless comprehensible, just like the idea 2+2=4 being true regardless of time and space is an understandable statement even if you disagree with it or say we can't know whether it's true.
So it sounds like both of your objections fall flat. One is to say existence as a concept requires causation. This is not the case. Second was to indicate that a purported epistemic inability to determine the existence of entities beyond time and space proves they can't exist. This is not the case.
Your next points are just stating your conclusion.
I deny the existence in of itself. I don't deny it can exists as a metaphysical concept that relates material and thought. The idea that something can exist in a separate plane of reality is ludicrous. We can never hope to discern it. 2+2=4 exists in the sense that we can relate material objects to quantity, it doesn't exist in a platonic form. Just like a talking ant doesn't exist anywhere but in the mind that took the premise of an ant in physical form and a talking man and thought connecting those two is somehow meaningful or believed that a talking ant exists in a platonic ant universe that is outside space and time.
>I deny the existence in of itself. I don't deny it can exists as a metaphysical concept that relates material and thought. The idea that something can exist in a separate plane of reality is ludicrous.
Okay, but here you're basically just saying you can't comprehend what it would mean for something to exist without having time or space. I can. And I just gave an example in which a good deal of people can comprehend it. Clearly our understanding of existence doesn't require time or space.
>2+2=4 exists in the sense that we can relate material objects to quantity, it doesn't exist in a platonic form.
Bringing up your position of what makes 2+2=4 does not tell us whether it's a comprehensible statement. "A rabbit has been to the moon" is a comprehensible statement even if it's a false statement. "2+2=4 would be true even if there were no time and space" is a comprehensible statement even if it is not a true statement, and you don't have to be a Platonist to recognize that.
It wouldn't because children learn math by counting objects. There is no way to teach a child math without first starting with objects. The reason you understand 2+2=4 is because of space and time, just because you can make a statement about its supposed independence doesn't mean anything. A rabbit has been to the moon is comprehensible because rabbits and moons are understood as being in space and changing in time. If you want to talk about outside space and time then you have to come up with a concept that no human is privy to or can discern which is a contradiction in itself.
Just because I learned something under certain conditions doesn't mean those conditions are required for the concepts to have meaning. It's no more sense to say "you learned what 2+2=4 means under conditions of there being space and time, so the concept has no meaning when there is no space and time" than to say "you learned what the word 'rabbit' in sub 100 degree Fahrenheit conditions, so the concept has no meaning above that temperature."
>just because you can make a statement about its supposed independence doesn't mean anything.
In general, if a statement has meaning, we can make sense of giving it a truth value. If I said "a rabbit gorsnorged the moon," we couldn't comprehend giving it a truth value. So a good test for whether a statement has meaning is to determine whether we can comprehend it having a truth value. We can comprehend "2+2=4" being true in a universe without space or time, so the statement still has meaning. Do you have an objection to this test for a statement having meaning?
>If you want to talk about outside space and time then you have to come up with a concept that no human is privy to or can discern
Plenty of people understand what it means for something to exist outside of space and time in particular instances. If you mean people can't determine whether statements have truth value, we're back to the point that a lack of epistemic access doesn't imply something is incompressible.
Again, you never really demonstrate that there's any contradictions here. You happen to have a concept of existence that requires space and time, and you assume everyone else must be similar. But for the rest of us who don't just assume these ideas are bundled, you have extra work to do.
It makes no more sense to say*
The temperature analogy is moronic since you don't require temperature to learn anything. Space is a fundamental part of reality, more fundamental than even temperature, there is no way to talk about temperature without talking about space and time, just like there is no way of talking about math without space and time. Also a universe without space and time is meaningless since any universe we have knowledge of has space and time, you remove those requirements and it stops being a universe. You make so many definition and analogy mistakes its difficult to even understand what you mean.
>The temperature analogy is moronic since you don't require temperature to learn anything.
I don't know about you, but past the temperature where I'm burning to death, I have difficulty learning anything.
>Space is a fundamental part of reality
As we know it
>just like there is no way of talking about math without space and time.
If I described arithmetic bottom up from the Peano axioms, I'm never bringing up time or space in the description. Unless you mean to explain it I need to be within space and time. Then we're back to I need to be at a certain temperature to be able to explain these concepts.
>Also a universe without space and time is meaningless since any universe we have knowledge of has space and time
Just because every example you have of something involved A does not mean A is intrinsic to our understanding of that thing. Before we ever saw a black swan, the concept of a black swan had meaning. You can't use this same exact reasoning which we would recognize is a non-sequitur in any other context to say a universe without time or space is meaningless.
>You make so many definition and analogy mistakes its difficult to even understand what you mean.
I'm just taking your reasoning and applying it to other things. First you imply that learning something under certain conditions means the statement only has meaning under those conditions. I give a counter example. Then you clarify you mean it has to be a necessary condition for learning it. My counterexample is maintained by pointing out some temperature range is required for us to learn anything.
By the way, you never addressed what I said earlier. Is a good test whether a statement has meaning whether it having a truth value is comprehensible?
You don't need to talk about temperature like you need to talk about materials existing in space and time to learn math or counting. The reason why your analogy is moronic is because you introduce temperature as something humans feel as opposed to what i did with materials existing in space and time. We take things that exist in space and time and count them, that's how math developed even during pre-history. You take my statement then do a moronic analogy about us needing to feel how hot it is to do math, something completely different from what i meant. You don't get peano axioms before euclid's element of geometry, or before primitive man counting stones, you cannot break that cycle of knowledge or even teach math without it.
The concept had meaning because the first people who saw a black swan named it for posterity, otherwise it doesn't mean anything to anyone who never saw it.
How do you determine a truth value without comprehending it? How do you comprehend it without directly relating it to space and time?
>You don't get peano axioms before euclid's element of geometry, or before primitive man counting stones, you cannot break that cycle of knowledge or even teach math without it.
You're slipping back into the idea that the process how you learned an idea is somehow embedded into the idea itself. Fact is you can talk about arithmetic without referencing space or time, even if that's not how children about it.
>The concept had meaning because the first people who saw a black swan named it for posterity, otherwise it doesn't mean anything to anyone who never saw it.
The idea that "black swan" would have no meaning as an idea prior to someone seeing one is pretty silly. Don't know what to tell you. If someone wrote a story with a black swan in it before there was one, everyone would have a good idea of what's being talked about.
>How do you determine a truth value without comprehending it?
You don't, because a good test for whether a statement has meaning is whether it being true could make sense. And it does make sense for 2+2=4 to be true even if the universe, and time and space with it, end.
>How do you comprehend it without directly relating it to space and time?
See the Peano formulation of arithmetic for an example.
It is intimately related to how you learn it. I don't know how you can deny this with a straight face. As if everything your learnt was by osmosis. You learn things by association, there is simply no other way of teaching that. If you somehow removed space and time, all knowledge would simply cease. There would be no memory and no object to relate to. Knowledge would be impossible. The reason why you know things is because you make associations in time and to space.
Generally speaking, it is not the case that the way I learned something means every concept involved in learning it is needed within the concept.
>And the reason why we can even argue is because you remember something i said 5 minutes ago in time, and can point to the letters as referencing me an object in space among other things that language references. This is something that is undeniable unless you don't understand the definitions of space and time, this argumentation is meaningless
And the reason we can even argue is that we are both not drowning to death, being burned alive, not being electrocuted. Yes, I couldn't comprehend anything if there was no time and space. And? None of these mean the concept in itself includes the conditions required for me to comprehend the idea.
>This is something that is undeniable unless you don't understand the definitions of space and time, this argumentation is meaningless.
Sure, most concepts have time and space embedded somewhere in there. I gave a counterexample and an understanding of time and space are needed to practically function. I gave a specific counterexample within math. I can both hold that I need to comprehend time and space to live out my daily life and comprehend the idea that 2+2=4 would be true even if the universe ended.
You gave no such counterexample. Again, drowning and being electrocuted are not irreducible fundamental concepts such as space and time. Those are moronic contrived examples that have nothing to do with anything. I could as well counter that and say i could comprehend something while being massaged or having sex or any other thing that is opposite your contrived examples of discomfort. They don't mean anything. You can negotiate with discomfort you can not negotiate your way out of talking about space and time however. Your last statement doesn't even make sense. The reason why you can even talk about 2+2=4 is because you remember it in space and time, and you will remember that whether you are falling from an airplane or getting electrocuted. If you remove space and time, you can not remember anything or talk about anything. Your memories would not even be accessible since time simply doesn't exist.
>Again, drowning and being electrocuted are not irreducible fundamental concepts such as space and time. Those are moronic contrived examples that have nothing to do with anything.
Here you pretend that you aren't talking about physical conditions that are needed for you to understand a concept being needed within your concept.
>The reason why you can even talk about 2+2=4 is because you remember it in space and time
Here you're talking about physical conditions that are needed for you to understand a concept being needed in your concept.
Clarify your position, or I won't bother.
I have clarified time and again that some physical conditions- time and space are more fundamental than others and every time it goes over your head because you have no understanding of physics. First you started talking about temperature and now that i debunked that moronic example you have come up with electrocution and drowinng, what is next, meeting god or the devil? You clarify or i won't bother.
So your full conditional is the following.
If A is fundamental to the physical world, and it is physically needed to comprehend an idea, then the idea itself contains A. In this instance, you're saying time is fundamental to the physical world, and time is needed to comprehend any concept, so all concepts include time. Is that accurate?
I would not put it as containing, rather that knowledge itself is meaningless without any associations you make evolving time and being referred to in space.
Don't really know to handle your correction. One interpretation is just a simple statement that I need to be within space and time to understand an idea. Agreed, but I don't see the relevance. Another interpretation is that time and space are somehow always fundamentally conceptually enmeshed in any ideas I have. Don't know what else to say to that other than I disagree. That's precisely the disagreement so it doesn't advance anything to just say your side of the disagreement is true without further support.
How about this. You can't use language to talk about anything without referencing space and time including the concept of 'outside space and time'. 'Outside' is a reference to space, 'and' is a concept that talks about both precedence and spatial order and is also a reference to both space and time. You don't need it to be anywhere, your needs are not important, space and time precedes all that reptilian hubris of things needing to align with human preferences.
This is a more persuasive point. It's not surprising to me that our language would have things like temporality built deeply into it given that even I'm saying most things have time and space embedded in them as concepts but there are just exceptions where this is not the case. That's what you would expect our language to be like as well if I'm correct, because such a language is very functional. That would bring me back to the idea that with math specifically, we have very abstract formulations. You can formulate arithmetic using formal logic.
Yes you can formulate it but that depends on past knowledge. You are not formulating math in isolation. The fact that peano axioms exists is because euclid already made geometric axioms. The concept of peano axioms is directly associated with euclid's elements. You can't understand them without understanding where they come from, if that were possible then we would be teaching this to kids first and discard all the other fundamentals of math. You need to understand how knowledge is captured by humans, it can't exist in isolation, knowledge is like a ladder, you need to climb it, you can't find yourself at the top without having already passed though something else. Yes you can formulate arithmetic, but again you can only do that in reference to space and time. Frege was responding to aristotle and plato when he invented predicate logic, peano and zfc exist because of Cantor who was responding to someone earlier than them. These are math concepts evolving in time and associating past to present. You can't invent in isolation, you have to rely on past theorems, axioms, corollaries, lemmas etc. You don't get more abstract than that, even logic itself is subject to time and space. Kant's transcendental logic includes space and time as the forms of pure intuition, the very realm in which axioms are supposed to exist. So space and time as abstract concepts are even more fundamental than math since they are ontologically necessary for any other abstract concept to make sense.
I'm not seeing how the history of the development of math tells us what ideas are present in the current iteration of math. If I'm correct, we would still expect us to formulate almost anything in terms of space and time in order to understand it. The concepts you needed to understand an idea are all not necessarily intrinsic to the idea. The Peano axioms don't need to be construed as making any references to space and time even if the way you first understand the concept "2" involved time.
Geometry is fundamentally about spaces. We're talking about arithmetic.
I never said you were making the claim that it was false. I said there are people who believe it is a true statement, which implies that for them it is a comprehensible statement. The objection to make here would not be "you're wrong. You're lying. You can't comprehend it, so we can't even assign a truth value." They have a very clear idea of what the claim their making is. Some people just strongly disagree.
>You can't comprehend it, so we can't even assign a truth value
But that's literally the case here. Just because people pretend that math (or God) is comprehensible outside space-time doesn't make it so.
I'm not pretending. It makes total sense to say that 2+2=4 is true even if the universe ends. I actually think a reverse could be happening in that people in this thread engaging in motivated reasoning are pretending they don't get it. Which you know, there are other arguments against the existence of God than this one. No need to hang your hat on it.
>I'm not pretending. It makes total sense to say that 2+2=4 is true
This is the second time I am repeating that this is not about whether 2+2=4 is true or not. This is about the statement itself being rendered meaningless outside of space time.
>Which you know, there are other arguments against the existence of God than this one.
None of them are good but I'll wait for your attempts to repeat what you've already said without understanding anything.
>This is the second time I am repeating that this is not about whether 2+2=4 is true or not. This is about the statement itself being rendered meaningless outside of space time.
If the statement is meaningless outside of space and time, then it is not true that 2+2=4 is true outside of space and time.
>None of them are good but I'll wait for your attempts to repeat what you've already said without understanding anything.
How did God create the time and space while existing within time and space?
>If the statement is meaningless outside of space and time, then it is not true that 2+2=4 is true outside of space and time.
No. There's a distinction here. Incomprehensibility and falsity are different concepts
>How did God create the time and space while existing within time and space?
Good question. Since creation itself is an act which requires space time and causality to even make sense. And this act cannot make sense outside space time. Therefore the universe is not created by something outside it. And since it clearly can't be created something inside it hence it is not created at all.
>No. There's a distinction here. Incomprehensibility and falsity are different concepts
There's some distinction to be made here so we don't get jumbled up.
Sometimes people have a difficult time comprehending something and it's nonetheless true. E.g. the idea that spacetime can bend. Nonetheless we would say that spacetime being bent has meaning and that this can be verified for example by checking the interior angles of a triangle for whether the sum is or is not 180 degrees.
But I'm talking about are situations where it's incompressible because the idea is actually just meaningless. If I say "a rabbit gorsnorged the moon," we wouldn't give the statement any truth value because it has no meaning. For the statement to possibly have truth value, it needs to have an understood meaning.
>Good question. Since creation itself is an act which requires space time and causality to even make sense. And this act cannot make sense outside space time. Therefore the universe is not created by something outside it. And since it clearly can't be created something inside it hence it is not created at all.
Generally people would argue that God created the universe and time and space along with it. It's a pretty important element to many God beliefs at the present moment.
>spacetime can bend
what do you really mean?
A space in which the parallel postulate fails to hold. You'd find in such a space that the interior angles of a triangle fails to be 180 degrees. We are in a relatively flat space (hence Euclidean geometry is very intuitive to us) but distortions can occur when there's a massive object like a black hole.
If you want to be able to picture what this means, you can't. The best you can do is understand the mathematics, look at the yielded predictions, and verify that they in accordance with what you'd expect in bent space.
That they are in*
>But I'm talking about are situations where it's incompressible because the idea is actually just meaningless. If I say "a rabbit gorsnorged the moon," we wouldn't give the statement any truth value because it has no meaning. For the statement to possibly have truth value, it needs to have an understood meaning.
This is what I'm trying to convey here. Mathematical statements without space time are incomprehensible precisely because they don't have an understood meaning outside space time. Understanding itself presumes a thinking mind and hence temporality. I'm not completely rejecting the idea either. Maybe 2+2=4 is indeed a thing outside space time and its logic is carried out by something else, not spacial or temporal but which performs a similar function and outside human comprehension. Though any contemplation on this would be falling for transcendental illusion
>Generally people would argue that God created the universe and time and space along with it. It's a pretty important element to many God beliefs at the present moment.
A good analogy to this would be the big bang. We know that the laws of physics work only upto the point of emergence but break down right at the beginning. Similarly I think the concept of "creation" itself only works within the confines of the universe and not outside it.
It doesn't matter whether its arithmetic or category, logic itself can't be done without appealing to temporal precedence and it doesn't matter whether you need to understand that precedence, its inbuilt by human language to depend on time. Its like arguing about how human beings walk without thinking about gravity, its there, whether you think of it or don't.
>Its like arguing about how human beings walk without thinking about gravity, its there, whether you think of it or don't.
You don't know for a 100% fact that gravity exists anywhere as a force. Gravity is a theory.
I don't need to know whether its a theory, its effects are there. The name is not important, the observable effects are, if you jump off a building you will fall whether you know the name of the effect or don't think about it all, its there and it affects us all.
The effects you are observing could be those of density and downward acceleration. Gravity is one theory. If you jump off a building you will fall, but not if you can cancel out the density of atmosphere you will pass by tying enough balloons to yourself you make you not fall downward.
Gravity is one theory for the effects you are experiencing at all times. To this day, scientists still do not understand how bees can fly when taking into consideration the principles of gravity. There are a lot of things we take for fact that not necessarily are so. I'm not arguing that God doesn't exist if we are not around to comprehend him, by the way. I'm just saying that there are a few false assumptions being made ITT.
Explain where I used temporarily in the following.
[1] P ---> Q
[2] P
∴ Q
Explain how you are using gravity right now lmao
I'm always experiencing gravity at all times. That doesn't mean all words have gravity embedded in the meaning. Are you okay?
You can't even draw geometric spaces without a notion of distance? You can't talk about proving theorems without a notion of temporal precedence, premises precede conclusions and hypotheses, etc.
And the reason why we can even argue is because you remember something i said 5 minutes ago in time, and can point to the letters as referencing me an object in space among other things that language references. This is something that is undeniable unless you don't understand the definitions of space and time, this argumentation is meaningless.
>the definition of exist requires a cause
Proofs? You’re entire argument against the notion of god existing outside spacetime seems to be entirely based around the fact it doesn’t align with your definitions and assumptions, rather than it actually being something which is in fact either entirely nonsensical in any possible system of metaphysics
>Even if you don't believe 2+2=4 would remain a true statement in that situation, the idea is comprehensible, and that's enough to suggest that existence as an idea does not require time and space
Nta but that is some insane mental gymnastics right here.
>Nta but that is some insane mental gymnastics right here
Feel free to explain. Some people believe that it is true that 2+2=4 would be true even if the universe and time and space with it ended. My objection to this wouldn't be that I don't understand what they mean by that. It would be that they have an incorrect metaphysics.
You are putting the cart before the horse here. I'm not saying that 2+2=4 is "false" in the absence of spacetime. Whether 2+2=4 or not is a meaningless question in the absence of time and space if these concepts require the presence of time and space to even be concieved. Very easy observation that the other anon is pointing out.
if an idea is comprehensible
but there is no one around to comprehend it
does it really exist?
>does it really exist?
i think so, why won't it exist?
because to exist without time or space, the idea has to be comprehensible
how can it be comprehensible if there is no one to comprehend it?
It would still be true that the Earth orbits the Sun even if all conscious life in the universe were eradicated tomorrow. Similarly the thought goes it would still be true that 2+2=4 even if the universe ended.
>It would still be true that the Earth orbits the Sun
You don't know this to be a fact. You have good reason to believe it is true, but you haven't verified this and no one, outside of some baby boomer freemasons have been far enough away from the Earth to even see it in its entirety with their own eyes. Also, if the universe were to end, 2+2=4 would likely not be true, but it wouldn't be false either. It would just be a nonsense expression because mathematics is merely the language with which the structures of the universe are conveyed. If there are no structures, there ceases to be substance behind the language (mathematics), rendering the numbers 2 and 4 to not mean really anything at all. At least that's what I think.
> Again, there is no way to coherently talk about 'outside space and time' without self contradiction
That’s not true at all, as long as you don’t relate God or the Absolute to space in spatial terms there is no contradiction. For example, if you say that God is ontologically above space-term such that spacetime a ‘virtual’ creation being sustained by what is ontologically beyond it then there is no inherent contradiction in saying that the Reality that is the basis of spacetime is not itself an object subject to spacetime.
>That’s not true at all, as long as you don’t relate God or the Absolute to space in spatial terms there is no contradiction
>For example, if you say that God is ontologically ABOVE(spatial metaphor) space-term such that spacetime a ‘virtual’ creation being SUSTAINED(temporal metaphor) by what is ontologically BEYOND(again spatial metaphor) it then there is no inherent contradiction in saying that the Reality that is the basis of spacetime is not itself an object subject to spacetime.
Where is this reality? Like Kant you'll end up in a tailspin when talking about unobservables. Language can't describe it. It doesn't matter how many branches of philosophy you invent. Kant had to invent transcendental logic in order to explain his noumena and even he came to the conclusion that we can't know anything beyond the properties of space and time.
Shut the frick up
ask him. if he doesn't answer , he's not there
he is there, what shall i do
>I ask
>He gives me
>I inquire
>People respont unprompted
Yeah He is there
At the point where you're asserting an invisible, intangible entity that both created the whole universe and who cares about you personally coherence has already gone out thr window. You can add on whatever details you want without making it stupider because it's already at peak stupid.
what do you mean
If you take a Trinitarian view of God then He is both fully beyond time and fully inside of it as a person who existed in the world-historical. The implications of this have yet to be fully determined, imo.
yes
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God created the space and time. So, if God is something that exists before space and time, God must be outside of space and time.
>time: measure
>space: shadow of mass
Certainly not beholden to either of those reifications.
Sure, mathematical objects (e.g. numbers) exist outside of time/space and most philosophers don't have a problem with the coherency of that statement.
Nominalism is very much a thing in philosophy. Plenty of people think numbers only exist in your mind.
>Is it coherent to say that God exists outside of time/space?
God is immutable, the source of all existence, necessary, uncaused, and essential being itself. God therefore brings things that possess potential being into actual being since no thing can bring its own potentiality into actuality. This all demonstrates that God holds a unique position in eternity. Further we understand time and its passage within space as that of motion and mutability and change which are things that cannot be attributed to the uncaused cause which is God. He is wholly immutable and therefore interminable, having no beginnings and end, once again demonstrating His eternity and being outside of time.
If God is immutable then how could he have created the universe? The act of creation itself changes the creator e.g.
Intention: "I want to create the universe"
Action: Creates the universe
Reaction: Observes how the universe's potential is actualized, possibly interacts with it somehow
>Is it coherent to say that God exists outside of time/space?
Not really.
If A. he exists outside of the universe and does not interfere with it past the creation, then he is just a stand-in for an unknown and you cannot make any assumptions about "him". There is no reason to assume it is a sentient God or something similar. The rules of the universe do not apply because they are a feature of the universe itself. Causality might not apply, but neither does any other rule that you could base your assumptions on.
If B. he exists outside of the universe, but interferes with it past the creation, then he must manifest inside of the universe in some form and therefore he is not outside of it. At least not at all times and everywhere. That would mean he becomes a detectable phenomenon and subject to the laws of the universe, at least in that limited capacity.
That's a very true assessment. But I think defining God as being "outside the universe" is applying too much particularity to something that is infinite. After all, the question is not if he exists outside of the universe (which is all that exists), but outside of space/time.
There's a common saying "you can't find Shakespeare if you look for him in his plays." If you look for God in the material universe, you won't find him because everything that exists is in a sense a part of God. Everything that exists is reasoned into existence and can theoretically be articulated with language; everything conforms to Logos. The Logos is reason, language, and logic. You can't begin to articulate anything that exists outside of the logos, because to in order to "articulate" it you would be working within the precepts of Logos. Nothing can exist that can be outside of reason, hence Logos is that which nothing greater can be thought, and that is what we call God in the Greek tradition.
I think you make a good point that God is either infinite and therefore impersonal and abstract, or he is personal and describable and therefore no longer infinite. I guess my best attempt at squaring the circle there is that if we define God as "that which nothing greater can be thought," then you can see how he is both infinite and describable. The universe exists inside of "All Possible Existence." In that sense, it's reductive to say whether he is inside or outside the universe, as well as to question whether he acts or doesn't act upon the workings of the universe.
>he is both infinite and describable
i agree with you, God bless
Good post. God is not an entity; He is more of a force, in my opinion. He's that which governs all things while being governed by nothing else above it. Atheists don't really have a disbelief in God, they just call it Nature. They'll always say that Nature doesn't care about this or that, but do not realize (or consciously reject the fact) that they are accountable to Nature by virtue of being inseparably a part of it themselves. Mind you, this is just another way we are inseparable from God or Logos. When we actively reject Logos, which the religious would call sin and atheists may describe it (if they were being honest with themselves, which they have a hard time doing since their bread is usually buttered by those who control the perceived prevailing zeitgeist) as "going against Nature." This is the reason why morality is likely objective. If you live in accordance with Logos, with God, and therefore with Nature and the Universe, the more you realize that you are actually one with these things. This is why all of the religions preach "know thyself." It's not talking about some material identity that you can wave a flag to signify; it's about knowing who you are as a soul that is only inseparable from God if you reject Logos and genesis. Most people think degenerate means "icky" when it literally just means the opposite of generative or genesis. Things deemed degenerate are not immoral because they are icky and God punishes them, they are punished by becoming more separated from God because they are rejecting that which is conducive of genesis and which brings you closer to Logos. It's a very childish view to reject the notion of God as being a "sky daddy who will spank you when he thinks you're being bad," but it's a very common view indeed.
Yes, great post. Atheists take so much for granted, it's such an ignorant "belief." I agree with all of that.
God is incoherent if you only stick to physicalism.
If you realize that reality itself is mental then God is the most coherent conclusion. Granted that doesn't mean any particular religion is always terribly coherent.
I like the idea of God existing outside of time because I interpret the story of mankind eating the Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil as humanity developing a sense of time. Everything we experience in the world is seen through the lens of finitude, as things existing separately from each other in time. This applies to our dualistic understanding of reality, in terms of Good and Evil, Beautiful and Ugly, Right and Wrong, etc. We only perceive these things in this way because we think temporally, instead of eternally.
What is Good? Well, it's the opposite of Evil. We can only know Evil because we know Good, and we can only know Good because we know Evil. When you deconstruct things, the line between the two becomes blurred as well. The same can be said for all the dichotomies listed above. We only see things this way because we perceive things finitely, sequentially, as separate things relating to each other, existing in space and time. In bringing your mind to God, the Good and the Evil collapse into each other in a Daoist sense. Good and Evil need each other in order to exist, and God is that which nothing greater can be thought. If God is all that is, he is greater than Good and Evil; God is being, life, reason, and meaning itself. We can only call this "Good." "I do not know her name; I entitle her the Way. I force myself to name her Great." - The Daodejing
This is how God can be "all good" even though he "allows evil to exist." God is not the opposite of Evil, he is simply greater. If we, using faith, believe that being is greater than non-being, and that life is greater than non-life, than we must accept that God, as the necessity of Being and Life, is "good." Good has already triumphed over evil; it always has and it always will. Even if we believe this using faith, we can only see the fight between Good and Evil as a cyclical one because that's how we are. This is how dualism and monism can coexist; in the absense of space and time, the distinctions disappear and they collapse into each other.
Books for this feel?
>inb4 Jung
God is Time and God is Space. God is also beyond those, since the Lord is Limitless. How would you be able to reason something Limitless?
>How would you be able to reason something Limitless?
You don't. And hence you dispense with the idea
God must be spatio-temporal. If God exists outside of space and time, then that would allow him to be the creator of everything but also invite questions of his provenance. Sure, someone could believe that he exist outside of space and time but it makes more sense if he doesn't and he evolved as a sort of ghost in the machine of the universe before coming into his own and becoming something more akin to modern day God
Nothing can be said about God except analogously, or negatively. And even then you are coming up very hard against the limits of language.
If he knows everything along all of time, including what exactly you will do and where you will be on January 27th, 2056, how can we possibly have free will?
>The mercedes-benz lives inside an anger.
>I can make this statement therefore I can "comprehend" mercedes-benz living inside an anger. Therefore it is true and completely coherent
See where play-pretend games get you
>it begins to exist (according to the big bang theory
This is a common misconception. Basically the big bang theory tells us what the universe was like up to 13.7 billion years ago, it doesn't prove there was nothing before that.
True. There are also cyclical models consjste with what we know. All we can determine is that the universe was in a very condensed state a long time ago and then the math breaks down past that point.
Consistent*
>trying to apply logic to God
You can't. You just have to have faith. That's it. It's as simple as that. There is no coherent, logical argument for the Christian God and there doesn't need to be. He simply is the fact of the universe.
Funny watching a moron be smug in thinking others are the moron. The formal argument
[1] P
[2] P ---> Q
∴ Q
is still a logically valid argument, lol. Pretty sure you're baiting though. Have a good day.
It doesn't matter what the truth value is homosexual, or what kind of logic you are using, modal, transcendental, paraconsistent. The conclusion could be 'homosexual' for all i care. The argument depends on temporal precedence.
You sure do know the terminology for a fair number of logics while not knowing something basic like the argument I made being valid in predicate logic regardless of how I ordered the statements.
>Gravity is one theory for the effects you are experiencing at all times. To this day, scientists still do not understand how bees can fly when taking into consideration the principles of gravity. There are a lot of things we take for fact that not necessarily are so. I'm not arguing that God doesn't exist if we are not around to comprehend him, by the way. I'm just saying that there are a few false assumptions being made ITT.
You guys are good trolls, I'll give you that.
I don't care about your elementary predicate logic. I could come up with my own system of logic and the same temporal rule would still apply. You asked me to show you how you use temporal precedence and I did.
Lol okay moron
The argument depends on P coming first, that is what i said. P precedes Q in all of the arguments you presented, not sure how you can't see this. Flip the argument into Q->P and see if the conclusion is the same.
I can't tell if you're trolling or not but
P -> Q = (not Q) -> (not P)
This is called the contrapositive and is one of the first few things covered in any formal logic course
I am talking about the premise you ignorant homosexual. P comes first then the fricking -> then Q. You have to assume P first for that argument to have any meaning. I could say the same about not Q coming first and there would be no contradiction about precedence and like i keep repeating the logic doesn't matter here, all of it requires assumption of precedence.
Just to be clear, your deleted comment said that the argument ceased to be valid when you swap premises 1 and 2. Now you're changing it up.
Anyway, describe how there's temporarily in P ---> Q. Did I write P first then Q? Perhaps I wrote Q first then P by going from right to left. Or do you not mean temporal ordering but spatial ordering, failing to meet my request to show how temporality is there? But let's say you mean spatial ordering. Who cares what the spatial ordering of the words are? We're talking about meaning. It makes no more sense to say that the meaning of "P ---> Q" includes spatiality any more than it makes sense to say the meaning of these words includes the idea of black because the letters are black. I expect this point to be lost on you. good luck coming up with something a quarter coherent.
Is the name temporal preference lost on you homosexual? Do you need to look it up? You could start wrting -> first for all i care. The argument could only be interpreted if it is read from left to write, first with p as an assumption then -> then Q, the very fact than it's read as P implies Q, or If P THEN Q should start your two braincells jogging as to the meaning of my argument.
*temporal precedence
You can interpret "P ---> Q" as If P, then Q, or you can interpret it as Q only if P. Point? I also hope you don't think "if, then" assumes some temporal relationship. P could be an event after Q, because again the "--->" relation has nothing to do with time.
It doesn't matter if it happened after Q, the assumption still holds. The premise has to come before the conclusion. This is a language feature not a logic one, something that you can't quite wrap your head around, its not about physics or math or logic, its about how humans understand causality. Q only if P, still assumes P as a premise first, its not the same, If you remove the conclusion Q in P->Q you are left with P, if you try to do that with Q only, the statement ceases to make sense.
>its not about physics or math or logic, its about how humans understand causality.
"P ---> Q" also has nothing to do with causality. P and Q could be casually independent and it still be true that "P ---> Q."
Causally independent*
I did not say it would not be true moron. I said it would cease to make sense without assuming some temporal precedence. If it ceases to make sense grammatically the truth value is indeterminate.
Cool. Why did you talk about causality when the "--->" relation has nothing to do with causality?
I talked about time, causality in the sense that past things cause future things, not necessarily that P causes Q, But that P has to be assumed first in order that Q can be concluded, you can talk about how that statement has equivalents and it would still not contradict my argument, P and Q are arbitrary here.
>not necessarily that P causes Q,
For any P to cause any Q the P must exist temporally prior to Q
The argument was about how P implies Q not necessarily that it has to cause Q. P->Q doesn't say anything about causation.
Oh. My bad then. I though causality was being discussed
>doesn't say anything about causation
it does
I'm not trolling you. I believe in God. I'm just saying that we do not have all the answers when it comes to scientific theories. Newton likely wasn't even a real person as our entire chronology is a recent concoction of the Jesuits to shape the reality of the masses. I'm not kidding. Almost all of our knowledge of ancient events comes from The Histories, which wasn't even discovered until the late 1400s. If I came to you and told you I found a two-thousand year old book that no one else had noticed before me, you'd have questions no doubt. But for the modern person, we question nothing. We think, well, if the academics generally accept it to be true, then it probably is. But in most cases, it's not! Academics have families to feed and no one wants to be the one to speak up and question things that absolutely everyone around them question to an extent of zero. Anyways, it's been fun but I need to work.
seconding Confessions in which Augustine talks about this at length. i am a simpleton and cannot explain what he said in my own words, but he makes it quite clear
Here is my take - if god exists outside of space/time how did he create the universe over a specified timeframe? If god exists outside of time/space the universe would've come into existence fully realized instantaneously. A timeframe of the creation wouldn't be observable even if there was one and everything that is created would be as if it was always there to the observer.
God created planet earth in 6 days in Quran and bible
The theological mode operates independently of time and space. It can talk about days of creation without needing to be measured. The scientific mode is the one that demands such measures.
Bible thread?
Anyway I have a quick question; are you allowed to commit sin in heaven?
no, there is no sin in heaven
So no murder, no lying, no stealing etc etc?
yes
So then what's the point? Why would you abstain from doing bad things just so you can live in eternity doing very much the same stuff as you are now? Why would you want to not drink alcohol or fornicate with women just to live eternally NOT doing that stuff? Doesn't seem like there's a lot of incentive to being in Heaven.
Yeh its a nice gigacope
ITT: Two israelites pretending to argue with each other