If God is outside of time...

[shunyadragon]

There is reasonable evidence that the greater cosmos beyond our universe is outside the time/space continuum of our universe. Based on this it is not unreasonable that if God exists, God is also outside the paradigm of our time/space relationships.

 

[Windwalker]

While scripture tells me that God exists in his original reality, what you said here is true, that is, if I can wrap my head around it.

That's the thing I love about it. You can't wrap your head around it. That's the point. There is more to Reality, than just what we can conceive with our minds using dialectical thought. I can explain why in more detail if you're interested.

 

[Grandliseur]

That's the thing I love about it. You can't wrap your head around it. That's the point. There is more to Reality, than just what we can conceive with our minds using dialectical thought. I can explain why in more detail if you're interested.

I think I am good. No need to blow my mind tonight.

 

[Jainarayan]

• If God changes something today then tomorrow that change will have been made in the past. Either way, I probably won't know.
• If we're talking about reversal of time and something that's already happened, while I believe God is totally capable of that, I don't believe he does. From a Hindu (or even Buddhist) perspective of involving karma, with karma being the governor of outcomes, it doesn't make sense to me.

 

[djhwoodwerks]

In some not so distant future now,

I love it when someone tries to sound as tho they are spiritual and full of wisdom, but end up sounding silly!

 

[Grandliseur]

I love it when someone tries to sound as tho they are spiritual and full of wisdom, but end up sounding silly!

I love it when those with their noses in the sky have to stomp on others to elevate themselves when speaking about difficult subjects.
Why don't you put forth your own opinion of what was asked instead of putting down unnecessarily others who may lack your ability in putting words together with panache to your taste.

Did you just turn into the green monster of jealousy here! It sure sounds as if you got a case of indigestion caused by a serious mental inability to stomach others writing what is beyond your ability to comprehend. Aren't we being friendly here! Too bad we cannot start using stronger vocabulary. You could of course just stay away from anything I have to say or comment on, but I am sure that I shall hear from you again. It's a matter of maturity, I am sure.

 

[Muffled]

Those of you who claim when it's convenient (e.g. when discussing the First Cause argument) that God is outside of time: do you ever pray for God to change the past?

This question was raised on the most recent Non Prophets podcast. They went a step further and claimed that theists who believe this generally don't pray for God to change the past the way they pray for God to change the future and pointed out that this doesn't seem to make sense.

If God is outside of time, seeing all moments in time together, then there would be no significant distinction between "past" and "future" to God; both would be equally fixed or equally changeable.

So do you believe that God is outside of time? If so, do you ever pray for God to change the past? If not, why not?

I believe I have prayed for an operation to go well after the operation was performed.

I believe the saying that Jesus made that we have enough trouble today without borrowing from the past or future.

I believe there is a timeline and that changes made in the distant past while changing that timeline would not affect my timeline. So say the assassination of Hitler was changed to successful in the year 2000 then that would be true for a new timeline in the 1940s but not true for the 2000 timeline.

 

[Muffled]

If the past was changed, would we as temporal beings be aware of it? What effects would this have on a universe which functions based on causality?

I have sometimes heard it said that, when we pray to God for the deceased, that prayer sort of goes back in time and blesses them before their death.

I believe that seems counter intuitive unless the prayer was for the persons life and not his departed soul.

 

[Muffled]

Good question. I don't think it would do much good personally unless you could also go back in time and relive life under the new circumstances.

I believe in time travel. God has told me that time is circular and I have since learned there are other religion that have that concept. It is only slightly implied by the statement of Jesus that He is the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end.

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

While I believe that God exists outside our reality since he created our reality, I view time as only being real in the now, there is no past or future, there is only the now which keeps being transformed by the inertia of the past now having become the future now. Thus our memories are true, but the things remembered, dead friends and family, are only memories and naturally exist no longer. While I remember my supper, it keeps being modified in my stomach in the inertia of chemical biological conditions and does no longer exist in its original state.

While we can in many cases calculate where some things were in the past, heavenly bodies, the earth, a car that had an accident, these are simulations of now things that no longer exist but did exist for a moment, that now which is no longer.

So, I live in an eternal now that keeps transforming and at the moment remembers me. In some not so distant future now, it will no longer remember me for I shall be dead due to the inertia of the conditions that make me age and are killing me slowly.

If God wanted to, he could recreate a past now though it might take a lot to do, but it would not be the past now, it would be a new now. The past does not exist any longer and neither does the future exist, at least not now. And, still, every now is a new now.

However, you do have memories. We all do. And so, our consciousness facilitates the keeping of a version of the past. This "hold-out" of times long gone is only moderately affected by time unless a person experiences quite a bit of brain-related malady.

My point being... if all other things remain equal, if God were to "re-create" a past, or alter things in some manner to create a "new now", He would have to physically alter our brains to erase the original memory of the span of time being changed. That would be ALL of our brains... every single human being. Perhaps this is no big deal to God... but I don't think I could ever be too keen on the idea myself. Not that I would be aware... but let's say I (somehow - hahahaha) made it into heaven and God was recounting all of His godly exploits from His fun times steering the course of the Earth, and He ended up letting us all in on His little mind-screwing techniques as we were all listening intently while lying prostrate at His feet worshiping Him for all of eternity as is His apparent desire - my ears would likely perk up at this admission, and I doubt I'd be able to restrain myself from asking Him a question or two.

 

[Sanzbir]

Those of you who claim when it's convenient

Nah, I believe it in all times, its a basic part of Baha'i metaphysics.

that God is outside of time: do you ever pray for God to change the past?

This question was raised on the most recent Non Prophets podcast. They went a step further and claimed that theists who believe this generally don't pray for God to change the past the way they pray for God to change the future and pointed out that this doesn't seem to make sense.

Well that podcast is wrong. There's an awesome comedy science fiction book, This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It, by David Wong that made the point to me once that people pray for God to change the past all the time, most of the time without even realizing that they are doing that.

In the example This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It gives, say you've got a guy waiting on the results of the medical tests praying that the results are going to report he does not have cancer. That guy is essentially praying to God asking, if he does cancer, that God reach back in time to remove the cancer and induce the symptoms that sent him to the doctor's office in the first place, so that in the end the doctor walks into the room and says with full honesty that the man is cancer-free.

Now, granted, the patient might not be cognizant of the fact he is asking God to alter events in the past, but he is indeed doing that.

So yes, as This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It shows, people pray for the alteration of the past all the time, even if they usually don't realize that is what they are asking for!!

If God is outside of time, seeing all moments in time together, then there would be no significant distinction between "past" and "future" to God; both would be equally fixed or equally changeable.

Yep.

So do you believe that God is outside of time?

Yep.

If so, do you ever pray for God to change the past?

Not really.

If not, why not?

'Cause I don't often pray to be given things in general. I didn't sign up for this to be given free stuff, and I'm generally fine with the past or future being whatever they are. It's fine as is, and I don't care to change it. The past is fine, the present is fine, the future is fine. I'm not an "inauspicious person", as Chuang Tzu would put it, that demands they be this-or-that or be immune from the cycle of change.

 

[syo]

So do you believe that God is outside of time? If so, do you ever pray for God to change the past? If not, why not?

if the past changes, there would be havoc. god is wise for not altering the past.

 

[Sanzbir]

if the past changes, there would be havoc. god is wise for not altering the past.

Why would there be "havoc"??

Like, me typing this comment right now is changing your future self's past, is that wreaking havoc on you??

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

I rather doubt God changes anything because we ask him to. Past, present or future. and we certainly can't take a vote on it.
This is not to say he never changes anything that is not going the way he intends it to.
I do not believe for an instant that he micro manages the universe.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Wouldn't this be kinda up to you?

So you only pray for things when you would be able to measure your prayer's success?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

if the past changes, there would be havoc. god is wise for not altering the past.

If, from God's perspective, what we see as past and future is just part of one continuous timeline, why would changing the past create any more havoc than changing the future.

 

[Laughing Coyote]

It is an opinion among some Catholic theologians i.e.

“ Catholic Q & A” by Fr. John Dietzen,

“God is not bound by the limits of time, past or future. The prayers we offer… can be ‘answered’ by God long before they are actually said…The official prayers of the Church at Masses for the dead for example, repeatedly imply (by praying for ‘forgiveness’ and so on) an extension of that prayer back to that person’s time on earth and his or her preparations for death.”​

But god's "creation," that is the universe, is time bound, in the form of continual expansion or movement towards greater entropy. It seems thus that although the prayers may be heard by a God that is not time bound, they nevertheless can only be acted upon in a time-bound manner. How the relativity of time and space influence this from our standpoint is another thing.

 

[syo]

If, from God's perspective, what we see as past and future is just part of one continuous timeline, why would changing the past create any more havoc than changing the future.

because past is a concrete reality, whereas future is highly flexible.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Nah, I believe it in all times, its a basic part of Baha'i metaphysics.



Well that podcast is wrong. There's an awesome comedy science fiction book, This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It, by David Wong that made the point to me once that people pray for God to change the past all the time, most of the time without even realizing that they are doing that.

In the example This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It gives, say you've got a guy waiting on the results of the medical tests praying that the results are going to report he does not have cancer. That guy is essentially praying to God asking, if he does cancer, that God reach back in time to remove the cancer and induce the symptoms that sent him to the doctor's office in the first place, so that in the end the doctor walks into the room and says with full honesty that the man is cancer-free.

Now, granted, the patient might not be cognizant of the fact he is asking God to alter events in the past, but he is indeed doing that.

So yes, as This Book Is Full of Spiders: Seriously, Dude, Don't Touch It shows, people pray for the alteration of the past all the time, even if they usually don't realize that is what they are asking for!!

I see those sorts of prayers as more about being solipsistic than being about changing the past. I think that the person looking at the test result envelope is just thinking about what it says inside and hasn't given a thought to the fact that the envelope's contents were already determined by the technicians in the lab that analyzed the biopsy or whatnot.

'Cause I don't often pray to be given things in general.

So you don't pray for the past to be changed because you don't pray for change at all?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

because past is a concrete reality, whereas future is highly flexible.

... seemingly, to us inside time. Why would this be the case for a being outside of time?