If you quote him, please don’t forget any subtle qualifications in his remarks (they make the difference between a logical incongruity, and a barely perceptible solution.)
Also, the wording of a question (as polsters know) can determine the answer (so please include the full text of your email.)
All I ask, Michael, is that you be a bit more merciful to Tom. I haven’t really seen him be anything other than honest and human. I’m fine with him disagreeing with me, as long as he’s not rabid, which he hasn’t been.
I was willing to take a week’s break from this topic, but Tom went on the offensive in a post that ridiculed “drug induced visions,” and failed to recognize the relevance of the psychologically percieved passage of time to the topic under discussion here.
As I pointed out, Zimmerman’s view (as he explained it in that interview) would make this the only time that existed prior to the laws of physics.
Our brother Tom seemed to recognize that in a subsequent post (on page four of this thread), that I recall thanking him for.
I don’t think I’ve been unfair, and I’ve tried to be respectful, but I find the claim that he was arguing for this more nuanced view all along (and that we should have somehow understood him as meaning some kind of “non-metric, amorphous” temporality) a little insulting.
We’re not mind readers, and when an alternative is logically unacceptable without significant qualification, offering that alternative without said qualification is offering an irrational option (and in effect suggestig that we turn our brains off, shelve them, and ignore intellectual questions–however much Tom might wish to deny ever doing that here.)
Mercy Stellar.
Are you calling me a mad dog here?
I can’t do this anymore.
Tom
I’m sorry Tom, but I do believe I’ve been fair here.
If you receive a reply from Prof. Zimmerman that you believe is relevant to this topic, please post it in full (with the text of your email, so we can place his comments in their proper context.)
Thank you.
Here’s what I’ve argued all along (in no particular order). It’s not a syllogism. Just my thoughts.
God as love is the fullness of triune personal being.
Loving relations involve mutual given-and –take which constitutes an experience of aesthetic satisfaction, the joy and ecstasy which is God’s being. God’s being just is this ecstatic exchange of personal being in the fullness of loving address and response.
I’m unable to conceive of the above in atemporal/timeless terms.
Temporal and atemporal are mutually exclusive states. Whatever the temporal status of God’s existence may be in the absence of a created order, in the end it doesn’t matter since God now exists WITH a creation and not without one. I agree with Craig that God now exists temporally, period.
I acknowledge the incongruence of holding to a view that entails the notion that God traversed an infinite past. I also acknowledge the incongruence of supposing a timeless God could be a personal and loving God. The latter incongruence is more egregious in my view—God MUST (in my view) be thought of as supremely personal and loving. And since I can’t conceive of personal existence in terms of timeless existence, I bite the bullet and suppose that we’ll find out in the bye and bye that there’s more to actual infinites than we understood.
I could be wrong about God and time. I’m open to new arguments and like to think about this issue.
Tom
I don’t know anything about the latter, but you’d have to stretch it to say that he was doing much in the vein of the former. I saw the post and you’d have to imply an insulting tone (although he did apologize to an extent, so to a small degree you could be right).
I just think you’re probably reading too much into things.
I wasn’t comparing the two of you. Like I said, I think you’re reading a bit too much into things, and you’ve been on the offensive. I’m not categorizing people or calling them names. I just see that there are healthy and unhealthy attitudes/actions. It’s just best to not assume or read attitudes into somebody’s post until you have proof, y’know?
Tom,
I apologize for neglecting to address one argument you’ve repeated a couple of times (even though it contradicts the position that you were saying the same thing as Padjet and Zimmerman all along, and just didn’t think you had to spell it out for us.)
It goes something like this:
1.) A personal God is inconceivable to me without an actual past eternity (with the transversal of an actual infinite, or at least with nothing to suggest that you had any other thought in mind.)
2.) The proposition of an actual past eternity (with the transversal of an actual infinite), is no more illogical than the proposition of time having a begining.
3.) I am therefore justified in suspending reason, and believing what I want.
In answer, I would submit the following:
1.) Even if this argument were valid, it would still be suggesting that we had to turn off our brains, shelve our intellects, and avoid the issue (whatever our view, and whether we believe in God or not.)
2.) Given the evidence for the theory of relativity’s space/time continnum (and the evidence that space and time began with the big bang), the proposition of an actually infinite past eternity of time IS more illogical than the proposition that time had a beginning (since it would involve rejecting said evidence.)
3.) A personal God is conceivable without this past eternity of hard time (via atemporality, Zimmerman’s non-metric, amorphous, psychologically perceived “quasi time,” or a hybred view.)
4.) There is a logical alternative to the incongruity of of an eternal past (that involves an actual infinite), so there’s no need to suspend our intellects and avoid the issue.
I’m not reading any melicious intent into anything Tom has written.
We’ve exchanged some pm’s, and I think he’s a very nice guy.
(A true brother in fact.)
I just think he entered this discussion giving little thought to what he said, didn’t fully understand his own stated position (or didn’t fully state his own position), and has been defending himself since.
It’s his arguments that I find insulting, not any personal intent I’ve read into them (and there’s nothing personal in any of my replies to Tom either.)
My problem with Tom’s posts is that I’m interested in answers to the questions raised on this thread, and I believe he did nothing but cloud the issues for the first three pages (and has done nothing but try to justify himself in the past two.)
Alright, fair enough. I don’t know enough about that to be able to give a response. Unfortunately, I haven’t really had time to keep track of this thread.
Michael,
I’ll try to clarify myself a bit more:
M: 1) A personal God is inconceivable to me without an actual past eternity (with the transversal of an actual infinite, or at least with nothing to suggest that you had any other thought in mind.)
T: To be more specific, what’s inconceivable to me is a ‘timeless experience’. Timeless to me conjures up images of a (to use Dallas Willard’s phrase) a “cosmic stuffed shirt” or an “unblinking cosmic stare.” As far as I can tell, to have an experience is to have it temporally. I’m not out LOOKING for this to entail an temporally eternal past. I’m looking just for it to be temporal. It so happens that this entails (or so the argument goes) the impossible notion of traversing an infinite past.
M: 2) The proposition of an actual past eternity (with the transversal of an actual infinite), is no more illogical than the proposition of time having a begining.
T: I recall having offered this. Yes. I didn’t originate it. I believe process theists offer this objection to thinking God can “move” from absolute timeless existence to temporal existence. The problem is that the temporal mode of existence that’s moved into, or embraced by God, is required to make the move.
3.) I am therefore justified in suspending reason, and believing what I want.
T: I’ve not argued this. This is you “interpreting” me, and it’s a bit unkind to say I’ve gone around arguing this. You can say, “Hey, it looks to me like you imply this or that.” That’s honest. But I’ve corrected you on this and explained myself several times time.
Yet again…
What I have said is that when confronted by two propositions which you believe can’t both be true but which each have independent evidence for being true, the thing to do is to assume that there’s some further truth that eludes us and that were we in possession of the fuller truth we would see which proposition was true and which was false. In the meantime, we have to do the best we can, i.e., adjudicate as honestly and tentatively as possible. That’s what I do, and this in no way amounts to suspending reason and believing what we want. What I’m doing is employing reason to make the best judgment I can given the light I’ve got. I’m not believing what “I want.” I’m choosing to settle for the moment on the position I think has the MOST going for it. This is anything BUT suggesting we turn our brains off and ignore the issue. On the contrary, I’m facing the issue: and the issue is I’m faced with two propositions each of which independently appears to be true but one of which is false. Just repeatedly saying, “But actual infinites are impossible! And affirming one is irrational!” doesn’t add anything NEW to the mix. In other words, YOU are the one (not me) insisting that YOUR view is the ONLY possible view—viz., you’re insisting that the ‘actual infinites are impossible’ proposition MUST decide other questions about this issue no matter howincongruous THEY may appear. It’s an absolute non-negotiable for you. I respect that. But in my view personal/relational realities are as or more weighty (like the inconceivability of atemporal personhood). And I don’t see why, given your methodology, I shouldn’t accuse YOU of suggesting we shelve our brains (or our hearts) for adopting a view that turns God into a stuff shirt, an unmoving, unblinking cosmic stare, a non-person.
Onto just the first of your suggestions:
M: 1.) Even if this argument were valid, it would still be suggesting that we had to turn off our brains, shelve our intellects, and avoid the issue (whatever our view, and whether we believe in God or not.)
T: This is where you fundamentally misinterpret me (specifically) and intellectual integrity (in general). It is simply not the case that if the available evidence is insufficient to resolve the question about which of two contrary props is true when both props have good independent evidence for being true, then it’s tantamout to commiting intellectual suicide to say to one’s self, “I can’t at present resolve this with any sort of finality but will hold prop B over prop A to be true because it has, in my view, slightly more weight to it at present.” This does not ‘avoid’ anything Michael, nor is it to suggest we shelve our intellect. On the contrary it is to display a healthy intellectual integrity. Do the best you can, and when you’re faced with contrary positions which you cannot resolve, then live in the tension while looking for more evidence and better arguments.
Tom
When you (or they) use the word “move,” you’re using a spacial analogy that falls apart if God can be in more than one place at a time.
Now let’s look at process theology for a moment.
You do know that Hartshorn was a unitarian, and denied interpersonal trinitarian relations, the incarnation, and any kind of personal existence after death?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hartshorne
Would you agree with this?
webcache.googleusercontent.com/s … clnk&gl=us
How about this?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_th … ite_note-5
I suppose all the beauty that was created in the life of Jesus “will exist forever in the reality of God,” but Jesus himself is dead (like every other human in whom God is incarnate?)
Process theology doesn’t lead to a personal Trinitarian God, but to an impersonal, pantheistic, evolutionary force.
If you’re not looking for this to entail a temporally eternal past (which is what you seem to have been suggesting, without any hint of any other thought, for much of this thread), then Zimmerman’s comments should help resolve your problem.
Time as we know it began with the laws of physics:.
Before that “long” and “short” had “no meaning,” and the only time there was consisted in whatever change in mental states (if any) God actually experienced and remembers (and there would be no actual infinite to transverse–but if you yourself ever had anything like this in mind you should have shared it with us on page one.)
I would also submit that if you can conceive of feeling, knowing, or willing without any awareness of the passage of time, a “timeless experience” is conceivable.
It was entailed in your simple, unqualified, unexplained insistence on a wholly temporal God (as you presented it, up to page four here.)
It’s not entailed in Zimmerman’s qualified temporality (or “quasi-time”), but instead of welcoming that solution to your problem, you’ve done nothing but re-state it (as though it’s still a problem) and try to justify your own clumsey handling of the issues.
1.) You insist that the props are contrary.
I deny this.
If I can consciously digest and answer your arguments here, and then stop typing and call a memory from my past to consciousness, that memory exists (even now, as I type) in my unconscious.
That means that consciousness and unconsciousness aren’t contrary and contradictory modes of existence, but contemporary and simultaneous modes of existence (however “contradictory” they might appear.)
I suspect the same is true of temporality, and atemporality.
2.) You didn’t appear to start out arguing that the evidence for temporality had “slghtly more weight” than the evidence for atemporality, you dismissed atemporality, argued for an unqualified temporality that invoved a logical incongruity, and offered no solution to that incongruity.
I still maintain that that approach to the topic under discussion is intellectually indefensible.
You seem to love this “tension,” and wilfully return to it whenever “more evidence and better arguments” are offered.
I’ll post this reply from Zimmerman before responding to your last post, Michael. I haven’t asked Dean if sharing it would be OK, but I don’t imagine he’d object. It’s stuff he’s talked about publicly and not personal. So enjoy.
Hi Tom. Good to hear from you.
I think God might have existed in an amorphous type of psychological time PRIOR TO (that is, temporally prior to) creation, and that would alleviate some of the pressure to ask “Why didn’t he create sooner/later?” But I don’t really think that pressure is so terribly great. I think we should deny the principle of sufficient reason, in any case, and allow that God could choose things when he could have chosen others for equally good reasons. So I don’t have any deep commitment to God’s time, pre-creation, being amorphous (extended but partless). It’s just a way that one might go; a coherent theological-cum-philosophical position.
Whether this is equivalent to Craig’s view depends a lot upon the nature of God’s timeless mode of existing. As I understand Craig, the way God is “timeless sans creation” is not the way he WAS, temporally prior to creation. Although sometimes Craig has talked as though God existed timelessly AND THEN stopped existing timelessly when He created other things, this can’t be the official version (and I don’t think it is Craig’s position when you look closely). After all, if his timelessly existing PRECEDED (temporally) his temporally existing it wouldn’t be a timeless mode of existence after all — except perhaps in being a spread that doesn’t involve change or is metrically amorphous or something like that.
I’m not sure how to understand “atemporal.” If anything is in time, everything seems to be required to be in time. Even numbers change, extrinsically, when 2 stops numbering the Dodos, and 1 numbers the Dodos, and then no number numbers them. So even if God were timeless in the way numbers are, God would still change extrinsically. One possible meaning for “atemporal” is “intrinsically unchanging.” But that doesn’t seem strong enough. Take a particle that doesn’t ever change; if it’s located in space-time it’s temporal even if unchanging.
I’m interested in exploring the idea that “timelessly” might be another way of having properties, like “In the future” or “in the past” (so, in tense logic, adding a tense operator for “timelessly”); but I’m not all that optimistic that the result will be worth the trouble. Still, I am working on the idea. If it works out, it would provide a nice framework within which to state a view like Craig’s.
Cheers,
Dean
T: I recall having offered this. Yes. I didn’t originate it. I believe process theists offer this objection to thinking God can “move” from absolute timeless existence to temporal existence. The problem is that the temporal mode of existence that’s moved into, or embraced by God, is required to make the move.
M: When you (or they) use the word “move,” you’re using a spacial analogy that falls apart if God can be in more than one place at a time.
T: All I mean by “move” here is the change from one particular state to another state, or in Craig’s terms, from existing timelessly to existing temporally. There’s no moving from this ‘spatial location’ to that ‘spatial location’.
M: Now let’s look at process theology for a moment. You do know that Hartshorn was a unitarian, and denied interpersonal trinitarian relations, the incarnation, and any kind of personal existence after death?
T: Yeah, that’s his view.
M: Hartshorne did not believe in the immortality of human souls as identities separate from God, but explained that all the beauty created in a person’s life will exist for ever in the reality of God.
T: His view, right.
M: This can be understood in a way reminiscent of Hinduism, or perhaps Buddhism’s Sunyata (emptiness) ontology: namely that a person’s identity is extinguished in one’s ultimate union with God, but that a person’s life within God is eternal. Hartshorne regularly attended services at several Unitarian Universalist churches, and joined the First Unitarian Universalist Church in Austin, Texas.
T: Correct. To what do these points about CH tend?
M: Would you agree with this?
T: I agree with you that it’s true that HE believed them. I don’t agree with him on this points, no; nor do many other theists who are (to use another popular process term) panENtheists and who embrace a LOT from process metaphysics.
M: How about this? The Christ of process theology does not represent a hypostasis of divine and human persona. Rather God is incarnate in the lives of all humans when they act according to a call from God. Jesus fully and in every way responded to the call of God and so the person of Jesus is theologically understood to be “the divine Word in human form.” Jesus was not God-man in essence, but fully identified with God at all moments of life.
T: That’s standard process Christology, yes.
M: Process theology doesn’t lead to a personal Trinitarian God, but to an impersonal, pantheistic, evolutionary force.
T: It doesn’t lead to a ‘trinitarian’ God. But process theists would argue God is ‘personal’ since God. He does all the things you say are essential to personal being—i.e., (correct me if I’m wrong), he thinks, knows and wills. Are those your three essentials to being a person? If so, then the process God is a personal being for he does all three. Being “in process” doesn’t mean you can’t think, know and will. WE are in process and we do those things as persons. So God needn’t be less than personal just because he’s in process.
I’m not a process theist, by the way.
M: If you’re not looking for this to entail a temporally eternal past (which is what you seem to have been suggesting, without any hint of any other thought, for much of this thread), then Zimmerman’s comments should help resolve your problem.
T: I just mean that believing in a temporally eternal past is a CONSEQUENCE of what the main proposition I want to affirm (a personal loving God). If someone tells me, “But if God has a necessarily ongoing experience then you’re affirming an eternal past,” then I’ll say, “I can’t help you with that part. I see the problem, but if I agree God is atemporal sans creation then I have a bigger problem.”
M: Time as we know it began with the laws of physics.
T: Define “time as we know it.” If you mean time experienced (as we experience it) by finite reference points who depend upon the speed of light for the transfer of information, then yes, THAT experience began with the existence of matter and light. But I don’t think it follows necessarily that apart from matter and light there can be no ‘sequence’ or flow to the experience of an immaterial conscious mind.
M: Before that “long” and “short” had “no meaning,” and the only time there was consisted in whatever change in mental states (if any) God actually experienced and remembers (and there would be no actual infinite to transverse–but if you yourself ever had anything like this in mind you should have shared it with us on page one.)
T: Why of course the only change there could be sans creation would be a change for whatever existed—and sans creation the only thing that exists is God, an immaterial mind. So IF there are any changes in/for God sans creation, they’re changes of/in some manner of his state of mind.
M: I would also submit that if you can conceive of feeling, knowing, or willing without any awareness of the passage of time, a “timeless experience” is conceivable.
T: I can conceive of such lack of awareness, yes. But (a) the problem is that this entails a certain ignorance (i.e., the failure to perceive what is actual). And I can’t suppose that God is less the fully knowledgeable/aware of all that is. So if there is some manner of flow to conscious experience per se but God is unaware of it, then God is less than omniscient (unaware of some matter of fact). I can conceive of a less than omniscient being (you and me for example) being ignorant of some matter of fact. I can’t conceive of God in those terms. Then (b) secondly, I don’t see how being unaware of the passage of time amounts to timelessness. Timelessness is “no passage of time” and not “ignorance of the passage of time.”
M: It so happens that this entails (or so the argument goes) the impossible notion of traversing an infinite past. It was entailed in your simple, unqualified, unexplained insistence on a wholly temporal God (as you presented it, up to page four here.) It’s not entailed in Zimmerman’s qualified temporality (or “quasi-time”), but instead of welcoming that solution to your problem, you’ve done nothing but re-state it (as though it’s still a problem) and try to justify your own clumsey handling of the issues.
T: I’m glad you call is qualified “temporality” and not qualified “atemporality.” For that’s what it is as far as I can tell. God for Dean, God is temporal sans creation, but (as I earlier said), the “content” of his knowledge (self-knowledge) would be constant. So you’d have (in Z’s words) “extension but no parts.”
I don’t dislike this view. It’s cool that “temporal” existence can be framed in a way that escapes the actual infinites. I’m not sure it really works, but if YOU think it works then that’s awesome. My problems with it are a) I don’t see how infinitely repeating THE SAME content really escapes the actual infinite, and b) if it’s extended temporally (with not parts), then it would seem that objectively speaking God’s experience WOULD have a past, present, and future (that’s just what ‘temporal extension’ is) to it but God wouldn’t perceive these distinctions because the content of his thoughts would not change. And with Craig, I wonder how absolutely unchanging experience would be really different from atemporal existence.
At this point the arguments get pretty complex and beyond me. If it’s really the case that fully personal and loving interpersonal relations can “extend temporally” without any “parts” (i.e., any changing states of mind), then we both have our solution and can go out for a beer and celebrate. I’m a “bit” suspicious of the whole amorphous/psych time. I’m suspicious because I still think the loving personal relations entails some—what’s the word—“flux” in the exchange of thoughts, feelings, and desires.
I’m not dogmatic.
T: This is where you fundamentally misinterpret me (specifically) and intellectual integrity (in general). It is simply not the case that if the available evidence is insufficient to resolve the question about which of two contrary props is true when both props have good independent evidence for being true, then it’s tantamout to commiting intellectual suicide to say to one’s self, “I can’t at present resolve this with any sort of finality but will hold prop B over prop A to be true because it has, in my view, slightly more weight to it at present.”
M: You insist that the props are contrary. I deny this.
T: I don’t “insist” they’re contrary. I “believe” they’re contradictories which, like contrary props, cannot both be true. I don’t think X can exist both atemporally and temporally. I don’t ‘insist’ upon this. I just think it’s true. I could be wrong.
M: If I can consciously digest and answer your arguments here, and then stop typing and call a memory from my past to consciousness, that memory exists (even now, as I type) in my unconscious. That means that consciousness and unconsciousness aren’t contrary and contradictory modes of existence, but contemporary and simultaneous modes of existence (however “contradictory” they might appear.)
T: OK, so let’s clarify. When I have spoken of “conscious” and “unconscious” I’ve used the terms (perhaps medically) as depicting a physical state. You’re either awake (or conscious) or asleep or knocked out (unconscious). Nobody is ever BOTH fully awake and in REM sleep simultaneously. THAT is what I’m talking about.
But you’re on a different page. Thanks for clarifying. In that case I believe (if we go with Freud’s model—I’m guessing!) you have ‘consciousness’, ‘subconsciousness’ and ‘unconsciousness’ (though psychiatrists might disagree on what these represent in us). The conscious mind is that collection of perceptions and data immediately present to the waking mind, right? OK. And my conscious mind can only handle so many bits of information before I short-circuit. (I don’t think God suffers from this weakness by the way.) The subconscious is that collection of data in store (burnt in our brain by chemical charges or what have you) and available to be retrieved by the conscious mind, generally at a moment’s notice. I’m not consciously entertaining every phone number I’ve memorized, but if you ask for X’s phone number—then boom, I pull it up into my conscious mind and spit it out. Then you have the ‘unconscious’ mind, which I believe is all those deeply buried memories and trauma that could only with great care be brought to the surface. We may NEVER be conscious of some of what’s there.
So for the record—I would never deny that a person has all three of THESE states of mind simultaneously. That would be ridiculous indeed.
M: I suspect the same is true of temporality, and atemporality.
T: Why suspect that? I mean, what is it about the subconscious or unconscious mind that resembles timelessness? Everything about these is subject to the vicissitudes and ravages of time. Time affects it all. Over time we lose our memories. The synapses don’t connect as they ‘used’ to. Everything about the physical constitution of our memories and subconscious mind, including how it works, and our experience of it, is constantly changing and irreducibly temporal. So I’m not seeing anything remotely ‘timeless’ about any of this.
Again, I could be wrong.
M: 2.) You didn’t appear to start out arguing that the evidence for temporality had “slghtly more weight” than the evidence for atemporality, you dismissed atemporality, argued for an unqualified temporality that invoved a logical incongruity, and offered no solution to that incongruity.
T: TWO incongruities, Michael. TWO. One is affirming that God is atemporal and having to live with an impersonal, unblinking cosmic stare. The other is to affirm that God is fully personal and lovingly related and having to affirm an actual infinite. Again—I don’t offer a solution to either incongruity because I don’t HAVE a solution. I’m sorry. I don’t have a FINAL, CONCLUSIVE solution. Neither do you. Neither does Zimmerman. Nobody does. What you have with Zimmeran’s view is a ‘possible’ solution. It’s philosophically respectable. So if it satisfies you, blessed by the Name! But some respectable folk won’t buy it. It remains controversial—as controversial as anything in this crazy debate about God and time.
M: You seem to love this “tension,” and wilfully return to it whenever “more evidence and better arguments” are offered.
T: I don’t ‘love’ the tension. I’d love to be rid of it. But I don’t ‘hate’ such tension as you seem to. I’ve learned to live with my humanity and accept the fact that I don’t know everything and won’t be able to resolve all the intellectual puzzles that having a finite mind entails.
Sorry for the long post.
Gotta run!
Tom
Some thoughts on Zimmerman’s comments.
It seems clear that whatever amorphous, psychological time is that some are attempting to use to describe God’s existence sans creation, it is a qualified “temporality.” That is, God’s life sans creation is “temporally extended” even if it has no discrete measurable “parts.” And whatever it is, Zimmerman claims it “temporally preceded creation.” Interesting. I’m a bit ambivelent about it, and a bit unsure as to whether it really accomplishes what it’s supposed to (escape from out underneath the ‘actual infinite’ argument AND still deliver a fully personal, lovingly related divine life). I’m not hating on it or anything, I’m just not sure.
Dean doesn’t have any deep commitment to amorphous time prior to creation. It’s “a” way one might go. It’s coherent as far as philosophical constraints are concerned, but he doesn’t seemed pressured to come up with an explanation as to why God might have taken so long to create (an argument unique to those who object to a temporally eternal past). Dean’s answer to this is to deny the principle of sufficient reason (a HUGE philosophical debate in and of itself). God doesn’t NEED a reason to create over and against not creating. Wolterstorff takes the same approach.
Dean seems a bit unsure as to what “atemporal” or absolute “timelessness” would even be. His comment, “If anything is in time, everything seems to be required to be in time,” expresses what many temporalist have long argued. If the world is temporal, and God is related to the world, then God is temporally related to the world, in which case God is temporal—period. The world’s temporal becoming constitutes a portion of God’s own “experience” and that experience is temporal if the world is temporal. Whatever the temporal status of God’s existence was sans creation, it’s academic in as much as it doesn’t endure beyond the point of creation. God is now temporal.
I’d like to try to express a bit more my thoughts on your analogy between atemporality and the unconscious mind, Michael, when I get time. Gotta jet right now though.
Tom
I’m talking about psychological perception, not “physical constitution” (and I assume you’d agree that God’s mind has no “physical constitution”?)
In a semi-conscious dream state, it’s possible to feel, know, and want (or will) without any experiential pasage of time, and that’s what there is about the semi-conscious dream state that I think might resemble timelessness.
BTW: The term “sub-conscious” isn’t really used anymore, and it could be argued that the “unconscious” is always without the experiential passage of time (especially when we’re awake.)
In that way we could resemble a God who is both temporal (experiencing the passage of time within creation), and atemporal (existing outside time.)
Let me make sure I understand you.
There weren’t any clocks, but you think there could have been?
Neither do I (“necessarily,” and Zimmerman certainly doesn’t), but that sequence (however long or short, and Zimmerman says those terms may be meningless here) would be all time there was.
To quote Zimmerman.
Without creation (and the laws of physics) that amorphous type of psychological time would be all the time there was, and God’s “physical constitution” would not be “ravaged” by some external time (and He wouldn’t be ignorant of the external passage of time either, because there wouldn’t be any objective time outside His own experience.)
You’re confussing Zimmerman’s view with a strictly atemporal view here.
Zimmerman’s view (if you understood it) actually gives you the “flux in the exchange of thoughts, feelings, and desires” that you say you want.
There could even be a sequence of changing mental states prior to creation (numbering two, a hundred billion, or more.)
Does that mean we go out for that beer now?
Yes, and I think he’d agree that Craig and Leftow are coherent as far as philosophical constraints are concerned (he even seems to think Craig’s view could be compatible with his own, depending on what Craig means by timeless.)
What exactly did you ask him Tom?
The principle of suffecient cause doesn’t interest me (because I agree with Zimmerman that “God could choose things when he could have chosen others for equally good reasons.”)
But (as I’m sure Zimmerman understands) if you have an infinite past eternity (of objective, metric, linear time–that God experiences moment by moment, in the same way we do) before creation–the question isn’t why God chose to create at the moment He did, it’s how He ever got there.
An infinite succession of one linear moment following another couldn’t terminate in creation, because it didn’t start anywhere, and couldn’t have any end.
Here’s what I found interesting about Zimmerman’s reply (and we still don’t know what you asked him.)
I think he probably understands Craig better than you do, and He seems to think Craig’s saying that God IS both temporal and TIMELESS (and even that this view might be compatible with his own, depending on what Craig means by timeless.)
Did you miss that Tom?
Basically I asked Dean if he’d slant his answer in a biased way to favor my view against this other guy (i.e., Michael) I’m talking to about time.
Mine it all for what it’s worth Michael. I’ll have beer with you with or without agreeing on anything.
I’m pretty tired.
Tom
I don’t think he really did.
If it’s geographically feasable, I’ll buy.
But I would be interested in what You asked Dr. Zimmerman.
For example, did you ask him about “the principle of suffecient reason” (or why God chose to create when He did)?
I don’t believe that’s an issue I ever raised here, and I would certainly agree that the incarnation could have happened a century before or after the birth of Christ.
The issues involved in a (wholly) temporal God creating the universe AFTER existing for an INFINITY of linear time are very different.
Michael,
I never brought up sufficient reason. That was just him (I guess 'cause it’s ONE of the reasons people use to object to God being temporal sans creation). I told him I was having trouble nailing down his view of God and time sans creation and would he clarify it or me. Then I asked him whether he thought ‘temporal’ and ‘atemporal’ were contrary states, i.e., does he think that since creation God remains both atemporal and temporal or is God just temporal. That was it.
Tom
Thank you Tom.