Why God Is Not In Time

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@Dale

It has to do with trust…

For some, it is baby steps, at first. For others, it can happen all at once. Some resist but finally accept, and many reject and refuse out of hand. It is definitely personal and experiential (Spurgeon would say ‘experimental’, in 19th century English ) and there can be counterfeit experiences (as well as counterfeit witnesses), and it is not all just intellectual. I, for example, could not tell you date, hour and minute when I became a Christian. There are probably some Christians who would doubt that I even was a Christian and find my faith suspect, since there was no conscious ‘decision’ on my part that I can point to. There can be false ‘decisions’ [merely emotional ones which you are wise to be wary of, and also to be wary of are those made from peer or cultural pressure, perhaps unconsciously, because “it’s what you do”], as well.

When I was a child, I freely accepted the testimony that that Japan existed. I was given it from trusted sources – my parents, teachers, pictures, books, maps and globes. I was a ‘believer’ in the existence of Japan, or maybe more accurately a ‘believist’, a ‘Japanist’, making a somewhat esoteric and technical distinction. Now that I have been there and have seen it firsthand, I am not going to deny its existence, and I am a ‘believer’ – a ‘Japaner’.

A believer, then, is someone who has had something irrefutable happen in their life experience and which they will never deny as being legitimate evidence. That evidence can be as personal and intimate as a recognition of a change in heart – a change in their heart’s desires and a willingness to trust and to be obedient, but it can also include empirical events that can be documented. Either can certainly be denied as being evidence by others, as flat earthers deny any and all evidence that the earth is spherical, but denial does not constitute proof of the contrary fact. There are many who count themselves as believers, or say that they used to be believers and have ‘deconverted’, when in fact they are now or used to be merely ‘believists’.

ETA: A believist can acknowledge Christian doctrines as true or admirable and affirm them, but what matters is the heart and the heart’s desires, not the intellect alone.

[Kendel]

• Assume legitimate Christian faith on the part of other people, unless they identify otherwise. The purpose of discussions here is not to judge the legitimacy or efficacy of anyone’s faith or lack of faith.
  (See: FAQ - The BioLogos Forum)

[Terry_Sampson]

• Time in physics is operationally defined as “what a clock reads”.[6][13][14]
• The universe is filled with “clocks”, literally and metaphorically. In fact, the universe is a clock. Ergo, anyone who thinks “God is not in Time” appears to believe that God is not “in” the universe, or may be manifesting schizophasia, or both.
• The fact that there are so many clocks, literally and metaphorically, in the universe, and the fact that physics denies Absolute Time appears to be the reason that there is no “Absolute Now” in the universe, which may go a long way toward explaining why the universe is “Godless”.
• P.S.
  • Neo-Lorentzian Relativity and the Beginning of the Universe, Daniel Linford (September 20, 2021). Abstract:
    • Many physicists have thought that absolute time became otiose with the introduction of Special Relativity. William Lane Craig disagrees. Craig argues that although relativity is empirically adequate within a domain of application, relativity is literally false and should be supplanted by a Neo-Lorentzian alternative that allows for absolute time. Meanwhile, Craig and co-author James Sinclair have argued that physical cosmology supports the conclusion that physical reality began to exist at a finite time in the past. However, on their view, the beginning of physical reality requires the objective passage of absolute time, so that the beginning of physical reality stands or falls with Craig’s Neo-Lorentzian metaphysics. Here, I raise doubts about whether, given Craig’s NeoLorentzian metaphysics, physical cosmology could adequately support a beginning of physical reality within the finite past. Craig and Sinclair’s conception of the beginning of the universe requires a past boundary to the universe. A past boundary to the universe cannot be directly observed and so must be inferred from the
      observed matter-energy distribution in conjunction with auxilary hypotheses drawn from a substantive physical theory. Craig’s brand of Neo-lorentzianism has not been sufficiently well specified so as to infer either that there is a past boundary or that the boundary is located in the finite past. Consequently, Neo Lorentzianism implicitly introduces a form of skepticism that removes the ability that we might have otherwise had to infer a beginning of the universe. Furthermore, in analyzing traditional big bang models, I develop criteria that Neo-Lorentzians should deploy in thinking about the direction and duration of time in cosmological models generally. For my last task, I apply the same criteria to bounce cosmologies and show that Craig and Sinclair have been wrong to interpret bounce cosmologies as including a beginning of physical reality.
    • Forthcoming in the European Journal for Philosophy of Science.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

Edited. We need to examine ourselves and

@Kendel

judge the legitimacy or efficacy of [our own] faith or lack of faith.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

Regardless, God is still not constrained by time.

@Dale

A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.
Psalm 90:4

And

But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.
2 Peter 3:8

[Kendel]

Dale, these judgements are not for you to be handing down:

@Dale

Yes, pretty much. You did not get that idea from the Bible nor from the Holy Spirit, and it is not a faithful one. Your mere intuition is leading you astray again.

@Dale

Another reason to feel sorry for you – the Bible speaks about stubbornness often enough, and you apparently ignore that as well. Your life is poorer because of it.

@Dale

2

(It seems your eyes are fixed earthward and you are paying attention to the wrong things – what we pay attention to is a continuous moral choice that we make.)

@Dale

Sure, but I can suspect you grieve the Holy Spirit, maybe by not doing all you ought or could (not that I do)?

@Dale

Maybe by paying more attention to who he is and what he has done, and less to yourself?

@Dale

Paying attention to Magge’s factual account should be refreshing to a Christian.

@Dale

ETA: A believist can acknowledge Christian doctrines as true or admirable and affirm them, but what matters is the heart and the heart’s desires, not the intellect alone.

@Dale

Edited. We need to examine ourselves and

@Kendel

judge the legitimacy or efficacy of [our own] faith or lack of faith.

Go and do likewise, Dale.
The rest of us are doing our own work of self-examination in whatever way the Lord leads us. YMMV.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@Dale

A believist can acknowledge Christian doctrines as true or admirable and affirm them, but what matters is the heart and the heart’s desires, not the intellect alone.

You have an issue with that and don’t think it’s true?

[Benjamin87 (B)]

@Dale

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

Objection! Relevance.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@Benjamin87

What was God doing 400 Trillion years ago?

@Dale

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

They’re both nonsense questions that do not need to be answered.

[Benjamin87 (B)]

I guess, Dale, you could say I am “working out my own salvation with fear and trembling”. Is it supposed to be easy, come naturally, or is it hard and quite a long journey sometimes? What was simple for one to pass could be a stumbling block for another.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

I’ve been prostrate in prayer more than once.

[Benjamin87 (B)]

@Dale

I’ve been prostrate in prayer more than once.

I’m not doubting you or questioning your motivations. We’re just not on the same path right now. Maybe it links up down the road.

[Kendel]

In those old days it was different: then, faith was a task for one’s entire life because people assumed that the capacity to have faith was not acquired either in days or weeks. When the old man, tried and tested, approached his end, had fought the good fight and kept the faith, then his heart was youthful enough not to have forgotten that anxiety and trembling which had disciplined the youth, which the man certainly mastered, but which no person ever entirely outgrows—unless, that is, one were to succeed, the sooner the better, in going further. So, the point at which those venerable figures arrived— that is where everyone in our times begins, in order to go further.
“Preface,” Fear and Trembling, Søren Kierkegaard (Kirmmse Translation).

@Benjamin87, sorry about my bristly first encounter with you. I’ll try to keep my wits better.

I’ll probably be quoting F&T for a while. Just finished it this week, and it’ll be on my mind for a while. I’ll try not to continue to overdo it, but this piece seemed particularly relevant.

[Kendel]

That’s beside the point.

[Dale (evolutionary providentialist)]

@Dale

A believist can acknowledge Christian doctrines as true or admirable and affirm them, but what matters is the heart and the heart’s desires, not the intellect alone.

It pretty well stands up for itself.

[JerryN (Jerry Nolte)]

@Benjamin87

I’m not doubting you or questioning your motivations. We’re just not on the same path right now. Maybe it links up down the road.

Maybe there are many more than one path for people on this earth, which are different for different people. Isn’t there some passage about, “All things work together for good…”? And maybe, just maybe, Jesus still comes to each individual where he or she is, rather than demanding we all come to Him in the same place, in the same manner? And maybe, just maybe, God really meant it when He said, “God is not willing that any should perish…” And maybe, just maybe we don’t really know how Jesus will judge us (think about the story of the Last Judgement in Matthew, where Jesus doesn’t send people to Hell because they were homosexual, or invite people into Heaven because they believed in Him).

[heymike3]

Or what if God is about to turn the world upside down through a simple argument against atheism? It wouldn’t be impossible for him to do something like that, in a way that nobody saw coming.

[JerryN (Jerry Nolte)]

Heymike, I’d be willing to bet against this one…but I have some inside information. Back in the early 1980’s, an atheist taught me that God has a very good reason for not allowing an irrefutable proof of His existence. The atheist commented (in an ARPANET forum) that, if God would show Himself, he (the atheist) would grovel. If not, he would not grovel. It immediately struck me that “grovel” is not the relationship God wants with anyone! God wants us to love Him, not grovel in fear. And this atheist’s comments made it obvious to the most casual observer that, if God the Creator were irrefutably present, then some (if not many) humans would grovel in abject fear and dismay.
So maybe God is really permitting this world to run the way He really wants it to run, so that His real purposes (not what we think He might want) are actually being accomplished.
And to bring my apparently religious comments back to the basics of BioLogos: My understanding that God is “omnitemporal” (that is, God exists outside of the time and space of this universe, most definitely, because He created this universe) also means that God knows what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen (which is also claimed in the bible) because He is looking from outside the created space and time of this universe, all of this is based on modern physics, which clarifies and emphasizes some things written in the bible that could not be understood by humans this way when they were written. I do believe that God knows exactly what is going on in this world, and it is leading directly to the results He wants for each and every one of His children. The big problem I have with this, and I am sure most other humans also have, is that some of the things that go on are absolutely not for good to some people in this world - mass murders, abuse. And I can’t explain why that is the best that God can do. I just have to trust Jesus when He tells me He loves everyone, that He died for the whole world.

[heymike3]

@JerryN

an atheist taught me that God has a very good reason for not allowing an irrefutable proof of His existence

Disproving atheism doesn’t necessarily prove the existence of God.

@JerryN

mass murders, abuse

How I wonder about a world where philosophers finally get it’s factually wrong to treat other people like they don’t exist when you believe they do.