In the beginning... God and time

Faith & Science Conversation
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I do not think that you understand what the Philosophers’ God is. The P G is omniscient , which means He knows everything including the future, right.

People know that learning requires changes in the Mind, but the P G does not change. So this learning or knowledge must not current or new, but old going back to the Beginning.

Thus the P G knows everything that would happen from the Beginning and so the Philosophers’ God does not change nor change anything, because everything is preordained and arranged. This means that evolution as a scientific process is an illusion.

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Dear Roger,
Which philosopher has a god that is puppet master? Certainly not Socrates or Plato.
Best Wishes, Shawn

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How can the word, “divine”, be applied to a being that promptly falls from God’s favor? The orthodox Christian dogma I was exposed to relies on the hypothesis that Pride can be part of this sort of divinity and that both the angels and Adam & Eve became jealous of God’s power and thus Fell. As hard as I have tried, I just can’t get my head around this conundrum: Pride and Jealousy are compatible with potential divinity, but NOT with the real thing.

Shawn, evidently you and most of the responders to this forum do not share my difficulty with this distinction. In all probability it’s because we do not always make it clear which nature we are referring to: worldly or spiritual; biological or noospherical. We do have ‘a foot’ in each.
Al Leo

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Dear Albert,
Let me give you timeline that goes along with my comments, and this is from the theory of Apocatastasis. 1) God created the hosts of Heaven and they lived in divine bliss for an eternity. 2) Lucifer becomes jealous of the King and campaigns to become the second king. 3) Once all have chosen sides, God instructs Michael to purge Heaven of the 1/3 who followed Lucifer. 4) After an eternity in Hell, Adam and Eve (2 of the 24 Elders) are chosen as a proxy for the fallen to be tested in the highest reaches of Hell (Paradise). 5) After the fall of Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:24), God creates the material universe to restore all of the fallen.

Every soul that is born was created divine, and then spent an eternity in Hell. Created in God’s image and then corrupted. And now we are in the middle of our restoration. It took me a long time to stretch my imagining to encompass these multiple eternities. Needless to say, 13.7 billion years is a small fraction of the timeline since God and His Son lived alone in Heaven (John 1:1).

Does that help you to understand why I see no conflict with divine and corrupt? That envy and pride sprouted from Free Will and only through Free Will can restoration be complete.
Best Wishes, Shawn

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Probably because most of us ‘run-of-the-mill’ believers in this forum don’t buy into such extra-biblical fantasies as what Shawn is pushing on you here. We are not gods - never were, and never will be. To think we have been or have the potential to be is to create these confusions where none existed before. God is not part of some council of equals or even near-equals (despite some O.T. language that occasionally uses such imagery to anthropomorphize how God might deliberate to reach decisions). But the classical Christian conception of God would be much more along the lines of … “My ways are not your ways … my thoughts are higher than your thoughts.” And even that is an anthropomorphic accommodation since it is a category mistake for us to think of God as some ‘bigger, better, more genius’ version of ourselves. Any view that has God as just another being in the universe (even if the most superior ‘super-being’) is a view that invites in all this unnecessary confusion.

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I agree that the concept of Sin can arise only when there is Free Will. However, IMHO, your worldview has God acting the way we see humans act; i.e., you are making God in our image, rather than the other way around. If it maximizes the potential to make your life worthwhile, go for it!
Al Leo

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I agree with you statement above, but I find it unfortunate that finding the right words to express this to others (especially to one’s kids, grandkids, etc.) without confusion, is so difficult. It’s almost as if Christ waits for the right time to make himself really present to you; Bible study can often help, but unless thoughtfully done, can actually add to the confusion. I am especially fond of Sallman’s painting of Christ knocking on one’s door that has no outside latch. He is ready to enter whenever you are.
Al Leo

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Not only does this remind me of the serpent’s temptation in the Garden of Eden, but it is hard for me to even see the attraction in this. The vision I have is so much more appealing to me – an eternal relationship with God where there is no end to what He has to give us, no end to growth, to learning, or to becoming more with new horizons always waiting for us. There is where it seems to me the meat of life is to be found, not in the being but in the becoming. It seems that many people stumble over this desire for the accolades of success without any desire for the process of success itself. Isn’t this in fact the lie in the serpent’s temptation of Eve, suggesting that they skip over the becoming process to take on the appearance without the substance, “when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil.” Of course, as His children we have desire to be like God, but this so we open ourselves to receive what He has to give and to learn good from evil as He teaches it. Too much harm and horror has been the result of people taking it upon themselves to dictate good and evil, right and wrong, without any real wisdom and substance behind such exercises of empty authority.

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Evolution is not a scientific process but a process. It is - as the word says - the slow unfolding of a plan.
It was Einsteins big mistake to think “Gott wuerfelt nicht” as he did not contemplate that for an omniscient being throwing the dice does not make a change to the outcome as the outcome is already known, no matter how often you would roll the dice.
Why would you make the ability to learn a prerequisite for being alive - or do you believe God has to “evolve” to be worthy of being worshipped? Sure some people do and think he evolves by granting them their wishes, but that is a very dangerous territory

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When I was a child I prayed indeed that God would spare the life of my hamster - and it did not happen. Later I prayed he would not let my Grandma die - and it did not happen - and then I grew up and learned how to pray how to make a change to my reality in his name instead. Instead of asking God to heal someone who is in hospital or ill I ask him to help me in contributing to their healing - to drive their loved ones to see them - to cook a meal for them - cut their lawn… How many of us pray to God to help those in a disaster without reaching out to them ourselves?

you are clearly free of sin so you never did do that :slight_smile:

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???

I have plenty of my own sins. Why in the world would you suggest that my lack of your particular sins mean that I am without? I wasn’t even raised to believe in God. It was a long time before the word “God” had much meaning for me at all. So, no, I did no such thing as you have done.

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Why are you looking at God from a very human centered perspective?

The Fathers of philosophy thought that change was bad and Being was good, so Being did not change. Thus their “God” of Being does not change. The problem with that is beings that are alive change. Those beings, who think and learn, grow and change the most.

Generally humans think that change in the form of growth is good. It says that Jesus grew in wisdom and height, and in favor with God and humans. The issue is that philosophy says categorically that change is bad and no change is good, while theology says that good change is good, and bad change is bad, or no positive change in a evil situation is bad.

I prefer to think that evolution, which is change, is normal and thus is basically good, but we need to guide it in a positive good direction as much as possible. God is in the best position to direct these good changes because God created the universe and knows best how it should work. We are participants, like it or not, because we are part of the universe, so we need to make the best of our lives, which is what God wants for us and everyone else

I really do not know why you seem to be fixated on immature faith. Of course some “Christians” are immature, and they need to pray for maturity. The biggest problem is selfish faith, which is a contradiction in terms. What we need is Christian education, not the condemnation of God as a Person who is able to help people with their most serious problems.

Does God care about the problems of people? YHWH revealed God’s Personal Holy Name, I AM WHO I AM, on the Mountain when YHWH asked Moses to lead God’s people out of slavery in Egypt because YHWH heard their cries for help.

You could also ask God to give the sick comfort in the midst of pain, hope in the midst of darkness. and the faith in the midst of sorrow.

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Do you think he needs me reminding him?

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how can we be made in the image of God and immediately fall from God’s favour?

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good for you that you never asked God to change reality in your favour and and that you were given a sheltered life not having been exposed to prayers to Santa but credit me solely with this experience.

might be a place to start.

Sure we all have plenty of other sins to ponder about too but asking God to fulfill our wishes and then claiming to do so in the name of Jesus is one we can overcome.

robots can self maintain, have awareness, can grow and learn. Does that make them alive?
When the bible says that on the day adam and eve eat from the tree of realisation of good and evil, did they physically die on that day or did the manage to have children…
or were they declared dead because they realized their will in their physical body

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I said these are more important, I did not define life in this way.

I already defined life previously as a self-organizing system which maintains a structure apart from the environment and makes changes in its structures by bifurcation (choices). Self maintenance, awareness,growth, and learning all come from this as life multiplies because another important thing to recognize is that life is highly quantitative and enhanced by a number of things like hierarchical organization. Life weaves its way between the twin deaths of immunity to the environment and domination by the environment, to enhance both sensitivity and independence at the same time. The result is that living things maintain themselves not by invulnerability but by adaptation and are sensitive to the environment not by direct domination but by acquiring information about the environment. But the most important thing to understand is that life is a particular kind of process and NOT a kind of stuff or thing added to matter.

Robots are not self-organizing systems, they are designed - by definition. The medium is irrelevant. When we design things like viruses (with the same biochemistry as ourselves) to do tasks in medicine and engineering then the result is simply another kind of robot, not something which is alive because they are a product of design. And if an electronic or software system manages to come about by self-organization rather than design and maintains that organization making choices not because of programming but because of a bifurcation in their self-organization then they would also be alive (to the degree they self-organize) rather than just being a machine or robot. So while the machines, computers, and robots we have now do not fit my definition of life, I do not rule out the possibility that they may do so in the future.

GOD said that on the day they eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil they would surely die. But they did not physically die and this just points the fact that there are MANY places in the Bible where it speaks of two kinds of life (Luke 9:60 was another of them): physical life and spiritual life. Physical life is a process as I described above. Spiritual life is a connection with God, which I have also explained numerous time before. God created us for an eternal parent-child relationship with Him where there is no end to what God can give and no end to what we can receive. This is the essence of eternal life because only God has what is required to make an eternal existence worthwhile.

On the day Adam and Eve ate of the fruit, their relationship with God was broken by the only thing that can ever break a parent-child relationship, which is when the presence of the parent in the child’s life does more harm than good. To say the relationship was broken by disobedience is nothing but absurd for disobedience and making mistakes is the nature of children and part of the process by which they learn. Putting it down to disobedience is simply convenient for changing religion into a tool of power and manipulation. No what broke the relationship with God was the first self-destructive habit (and that is what sin is) of blaming everyone but themselves for their own mistakes, for this changed God from the perfect teacher into the perfect scapegoat. God had no choice but to cast them out in order to learn that there was no way of escaping the consequences of their own choices and mistakes.

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Communication is good. God enjoys people talking to God.

Prayer is not for the benefit of God. Prayer is for the benefit of humans.

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The difference between our two viewpoints seems quite simple: You believe God created humankind in a perfect state--already in His Image–from which they Fell. I believe He used evolution to create animals of gradually increasing complexity until, in the case of Homo sapiens, their brains were capable of abstract thought (i.e.Mind) and thus could choose to behave in ways that better reflected the nature of their Creator. Their failure to do so (i.e. their refusal of this Gift) could be called Sin, BUT it was NOT so much a Fall as it was a failure to Rise.

To hold this view and to maintain my Christian Faith, I have had to modify to some extent the orthodox belief in which I was brought up–chiefly in what it means that Jesus Christ is the Savior of mankind.

I believe that Jesus of Nazareth is an evolved human just the way the rest of us are (i.e. really 100% human) BUT, by the time he reached maturity, he had achieved a level of Spirituality that uniquely set him aside as the Christ, the perfect Image of the Creator that had existed even before the Big Bang [John, 8:48-59; “before Abraham was born, I AM”] Jesus is our savior as he leads us to overcome the inherent selfishness of evolution and embrace a life of love and caring for our neighbors on this planet.
Al Leo

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Mine is a different view from either. God created life itself in His image “good”, for in the ability of life to become more is the potential infinity to reflect God’s actual infinity. It is the nature and essence of life that it is the product of growth, evolution and learning rather than design. Only in that way could we be said to be more than simply what God made us to be, for we are the product of all the choices of our ancestors. But anyway, the purpose for this was a relationship and relationships depend on the ability to respond which simple life does not have a great deal of. So the image of God is perfected “very good” in man by His ability to communicate with God.

So God adopted Adam and Eve to give them a memetic inheritance by which they would be His children. But they were only perfect in the sense that they could have a parent child relationship with God, which means that their growth and learning were just beginning. In any case, the story in Genesis 2-3 tells how this parent-child relationship was broken, which initiated a long history of restoration culminating in Christ through which that parent-child relationship can be regained.

That sounds like an adoptionist Christology of man become God rather than God become man. A religion which shares this same Christology is the moonies. It is a convenient Christology when you want to declare your leader to be the second coming of Christ.

The orthodox view is that God became a helpless human infant and thus incarnated in the 100% human Jesus of Nazareth, while still being 100% the God who created the universe. I agree with Albert to degree that I think Jesus’ DNA was from union of a human mother and a human father and thus in that sense alone the product of evolution same as the rest of us.

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