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PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 6/25/2002 9:11 AM (GMT -6)

THALES ... XENOPHANES ... HERACLITUS ... PARMENIDES ... PLATO ... Origen ... AUGUSTINE ... JOHN CALVIN ... BEZA ... IMMANUEL KANT ... SOREN AABYE KIERKEGAARD ... KARL BARTH

NICE LIST, NEWCOMB!

I'm sure glad that you posted it.

My Summer reading has included The Sacred and the Profane. The various kinds of time in various kinds of cultures has been interesting reading. And reading how Persian concepts interacted in the Hellenistic world, and influenced the Qumeran writing and that of John in the NT is interesting too.

Starkman
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747

Posted 6/25/2002 10:47 AM (GMT -6)

Hey Neuk'em,

You said:
So we have a way to measure time even if we don't call them "seconds" or other conventions.

We have a way to measure OUR time. This does not prove there is time of this nature with God. Sequence, yes, but defined sequence? I don't see anything having to slave God to our seqence and time. If He's Spirit, and if there were no creation of any sort? Is God limited? If so, then creation (of some sort) is as old and eternal--time--as is God. However, only He is eternal, not what He creates. So, the POSSIBILITY of a reality of God's existance apart from any "time" sequencial concept as we know it must be considered. Again, I have to state that seqence may exist--something of time in concept, perhaps similar, maybe not, as we know it--but that does not have to be equated to sequence within the Deity's existance. It simply can't be as I see it.

You said:
So a sequence of events can be used as a measurement of change indicating time is passing."
I agree with this. Where I differ would be if we equate OUR sequence, and thus OUR concept of time, with how this transpires in the realm of God's existance.

With regard to John's reference to a half-hour while he was in heaven, imagine if you were he, and you felt a period of what you'd approximate as a half-hour go by...AS YOU WOULD SENSE IT. Would you not convey such to your readers as you felt in regard to time as you're used to it? That's not hard to conceive, and it's certainly not impossible. I do not claim that John was not saying a half-hour passed while he was in heaven; I claim that he naturally leaves us (in my opinion) with no reason to conclude otherwise that it is OUR time he's refering.

If this were a half-hour in heaven, then by what measurement? A clock? Because a clock is used to track sequence of time as WE keep it here on earth under a solar system. It's the most natural interpretation to John's statement: earth's concept of time. What in the world--or rather, what outside of this world and it's universe--could John possibly have been refering to as a measurement of a half-hour of heavenly time? What, does heaven exist in some sort of its own solar system? That would be an argument from silence. I go back again to "God is Spirit." That concept completely leaves (though it is couched in personality) the concept of slavery of any type to our system of time.

I do not believe that time is "created." I only believe it is relative within creation and outside of it. Atomic clocks placed at different altitudes reflect change. Minute, but change nevertheless. That's because sequence is what's at stake, not time in the strictly limited sense of solar system calculation. Thus, your parent/daughter logic stands, but not on all 4 legs if it is only confined to our existance.

With regard to my comments about time travel--and yeah, the Philedelphia Experiment, if I recall correctly, was a cool movie--I'm shaky here, because I struggle trying to grasp it enough to think about it! However, I believe that in the movie, Farentino as a young man was never on the ship and in the car at the same time. Ahhhh! I can't remember all the movie now, and I'm over my head here at this point! I don't want to be half way anywhere! I want to be all-the-way there or I'll be more like those guys in the movie!

Finally, the Scriptural concept of "forever" causes me to ask the question, "forever after the sun burns out and the universe explodes or disintegrates?" What "time" is there to measure? Perhaps something, but nothing we know of yet. Also, the words for time in the Greek--and I know you probably know this--are two prominent ones (no, I don't read Greek, so I'm pulling this out of my memory for ages ago): Chronos and Kurios. The former being measurable time in meaning; the latter being not of measurable time but of ages, eons and passing of such.

"Forever" theologically holds strong not just in measurment of time--though it surely means that and utilizes words for this--but there is sometimes more than that at heart. I don't know what the Hebrew word(s) are for "forever", and I'm on merely comenting on the concepts I believe God is sometimes after in using "forever." This isn't to say diminish your point in referencing the word; but it is to add thought to it, and sometimes that thought isn't OUR time/sequence that's the issue.

What I'm seeing so far, Neuk, is that there may be a splitting-of-hairs with regard to terminology. I think you, if I'm understainding you correctly, are defining time as sequence; perhaps one and the same. I follow this to the point where dimensions, for lack of a better word, change: God's and ours. The only difference then would be, as I see it, sequence may define or walk inside of a different . . . oh, say, speed--action/sequence at the speed of thought: no seration, but sequence inbetween said action/thoughts. Measurement in the interim is still of another nature than measurement of time passing on earth.

Am I making any sense here?

For the time being,

Starkman

Iconoclast
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1227

Posted 6/25/2002 3:42 PM (GMT -6)

Neuk'em:

This was a sardonic view of the quantum theory proposed by Eistein, Podolski and Rosen (proposers of the aptly named EPR paradox). His point was that the cat is either dead or alive, it cannot be both and the determination of which it is does not make it so.
This would be like saying a person killed by a machine out in the desert is only dead once someone views the dead body.
Schroedinger was saying, reductio ad absurdum.

Iconoclast:

And yet, Quantum Mechanics is the most spectacularly successful theory ever devised. It has predicted every measurement thrown against it to the accuracy that our instruments are capable of measuring. Even the EPR paradox has been proven. It has been conclusively shown that entangled particles 'correlate' with each other faster than the speed of light. It has also been shown that this does not allow us in any way to 'communicate' faster than the speed of light - which voila - means it doesn't violate Einstein's relativity theory. Paradox, no more...amazing feature of time and space - yes. Proven: two particles departing from each other at the speed of light can be 'entangled' in such a way that to change the spin of one particle instantaneously changes the spin of the other particle. Proven...and yet due to the nature of this phenomenon it has also been proven that one cannot use it to communicate. My take...they are indeed the same particle at a deeper level of reality. The world is not as it seems...

thanks,
Iconoclast

"The benefit overran the merit the first day, and has overrun the merit ever since. The merit itself, so-called, I reckon part of the receiving." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Newcomb
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 116

Posted 7/15/2002 9:43 AM (GMT -6)

Sorry I've been gone for a while. Let me try to catch up and respond to one post at a time.
PotOnWheels said:

quote:

But just because we have a word called "forever" does not force on reality or the future whatever concepts we like to assign to it.

Well, yes and no. Who assigned a meaning. I Don't mean to get into this but who assigns meaning to words initially? Was it God? Words shift meaning (in time!) but who did the original meaning? Adam has language and the assignment was definately from God. Hmmm.
Moving on. . . The words God uses to communicate, does he select words with meaning? Of course he does, so when he selected the words here, "evermore" in KJV Hebrews 7:28, the original word MEANS for ever, an unbroken age, perpetuity of time. Perpetuity MEANS it keeps going in the culture and language the text was selcted in. I am comfortable claiming the words God uses in his Word are accurate an have meanings correct for the usage he selected them. This isn't our concept, he could have selected another word if he meant something else. He didn't. He selected a word which means time in perpetuity.
This is an overall point of mine. The Greek concept etched its way into both western and Jewish thought A.D. Prior to this the Jews concept of time was that it was perpetual, not that it terminated nor was it created. The concept was that God was perpetual and again, perpetuity is a concept of time. No time= no perpetuity. You quote the problem well when you posted:

quote:

Pike and other tagmemic rhetoricians concluded, contra Noam Chomsky, that no theory of syntax and no rhetoric that ignored the situational context of utterances--and thereby programmatically dismissing inquiry into the cultural bases of thought and communication--could yield insights into the nature of language acquisition or use. More importantly, such theories could not produce ultimately useful tools or strategies with which to investigate and solve actual communication problems.

But then you state:

quote:
Words can't be treated the way Fundamentalist Christians often do the Bible. One use of "forever" does not forever set in stone how it must be used. Use does not prescribe reality. Certain realities do not proscribe use.

I agree that fundamentalists misuse words enormously. The word sovereignty is so misused it would be funny if it didn’t have so much poor acceptance. But what has that to do with me? In am not a fundamentalist (=Calvinist) nor am I using it out of cultural context.
Neuk’em

"Neuk'em"

Newcomb
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 116

Posted 7/15/2002 10:53 AM (GMT -6)

Starkman:
It is interesting how you use words to force your way as opposed to just reasoning. The use of the word “slave” below illustrates this, and it is erroneous to use words thusly. It can be turned in any direction and has nothing to do with the concepts being used. I can say, I don’t see God as a slave to timelessness, and have the same effect. Why is the word “slave” applicable? It isn’t, it is just used as leverage because we have an aversion to making God a slave to anything. Perhaps your making him a slave to your way of thinking.
We are trying to arrive at a truth about the entire universe (that is: ‘everything,’ not just the physical universe, which is its normal use). The question is, what is the character of everything, not what theology is disturbed by answering the question of time. Frankly, I don’t care if a theological idea is upset, I only care if it is true or false.
Starkman wrote:

quote:
We have a way to measure OUR time. This does not prove there is time of this nature with God. Sequence, yes, but defined sequence? I don't see anything having to slave God to our seqence and time. If He's Spirit, and if there were no creation of any sort? Is God limited? If so, then creation (of some sort) is as old and eternal--time--as is God. However, only He is eternal, not what He creates. So, the POSSIBILITY of a reality of God's existance apart from any "time" sequencial concept as we know it must be considered. Again, I have to state that seqence may exist--something of time in concept, perhaps similar, maybe not, as we know it--but that does not have to be equated to sequence within the Deity's existance. It simply can't be as I see it.

Another old trick is to separate the concept in a Kierkegaardian way. Here you decide that there is a different type of time in heaven than on earth. So be it. Exactly what is the difference? And why are there two types of time? Why is it needed? It is really not a cogent argument to try and define two types of time. This is like saying there are two types of the dimension of length. What’s the point?
But there is error here: You beg the question as to time being created when you say: “If He's Spirit, and if there were no creation of any sort? Is God limited? If so, then creation (of some sort) is as old and eternal--time--as is God. However, only He is eternal, not what He creates.” I presume you mean before creation? That is before God made anything? OK, Is God limited? Yes, 1) God cannot lie, 2) he cannot be what he is not, 3) he does not know facts about what does not exist (an idea may exist in his mind) 4) he cannot put a square peg in a round hole 5) he cannot both be there and not be there, 6) he cannot be both rational and irrational. You see any thing used to describe anything, including God creates limitations. It is not just time that does this. If you tell me anything at all about God, then you are, by definition, limiting him to that characteristic. So this is a Red Herring. But here you presume time is created when I specifically stated that it is not created, that is the premise (see first post) So you are wrong in your assumption quoted in this paragraph. Sanders does an excellent job of handling this in ‘The God Who Risks’ page 225-226.

quote:

With regard to John's reference to a half-hour while he was in heaven, imagine if you were he, and you felt a period of what you'd approximate as a half-hour go by...AS YOU WOULD SENSE IT. Would you not convey such to your readers as you felt in regard to time as you're used to it? That's not hard to conceive, and it's certainly not impossible. I do not claim that John was not saying a half-hour passed while he was in heaven; I claim that he naturally leaves us (in my opinion) with no reason to conclude otherwise that it is OUR time he's refering.

Without time passing, how would you “feel” time was passing???? You sense things that are happening, senses are there to tell you what reality is like, not to lie to you (though they can be deceiving at times). We are back to magic dust “feeling” and sense” this time are used to cover up ration holes. Let’s separate the ½ hour from the other events for a second. Are you claiming that John went to heaven, came back to earth a half hour later, but the half hour that passed, passed only on earth but in heaven a different type of half hour passed? This is non-sense.

quote:
If this were a half-hour in heaven, then by what measurement? A clock?

Ask God and John what they meant. I didn’t write it, I wasn’t there.

I do not believe that time is "created." I only believe it is relative within creation and outside of it. Atomic clocks placed at different altitudes reflect change. Minute, but change nevertheless. That's because sequence is what's at stake, not time in the strictly limited sense of solar system calculation.

It seems we are dancing around for no reason. I have never limited God to using out measurements of time, (i.e., seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, etc.) though he seems to communicate with us in those contexts (he created in 6 days, gave the King 15 more years, John experiences a half hour in heaven, etc.) Again, time is a dimension, Eistein was wrong when he quipped “time is what we see when we look at a clock.” He was seeing a machine measure time. It isn’t the same thing.

quote:
Finally, the Scriptural concept of "forever" causes me to ask the question, "forever after the sun burns out and the universe explodes or disintegrates?" What "time" is there to measure?
quote:

Same problem, mixing the measurement of something with the thing itself.
quote:
I think you, if I'm understainding you correctly, are defining time as sequence; perhaps one and the same. I follow this to the point where dimensions, for lack of a better word, change: God's and ours. The only difference then would be, as I see it, sequence may define or walk inside of a different . . . oh, say, speed--action/sequence at the speed of thought: no seration, but sequence inbetween said action/thoughts. Measurement in the interim is still of another nature than measurement of time passing on earth.

I’m not sure I understand what you are saying, however, no, I am not saying that time and sequencing are the same thing. I am saying that time is a dimension, a fundamental thing that is necessary for the existence of everything that exists, not just created things. Time is not created. Sequencing is the result of time; sequencing cannot exist if time does not exist because it is a daughter concept to time. God’s Word indicated he sequences. This indicates he also experiences time. If he did not, he could not sequence. The Greek concept of time and the gods being outside of time is an error that has crept into the church and science. I don’t know enough about Newton’s time (he said it was absolute) and Einstein’s (he said it is relative) but they were both speaking about how time influences things in the space-time domain we call the physical universe and which domain God created the physical universe in as stated in Genesis 1.
Neuk’em

"Neuk'em"

Newcomb
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 116

Posted 7/15/2002 10:58 AM (GMT -6)

quote:

[quote]Iconoclast:
Even the EPR paradox has been proven.

Isn't EPR interesting? While we cannot use that we may be able to use Gravity to break the light barrier for communications. Gravity travels faster than light. It is a force, not a particle, so this is OK with E and P and R and E=MC2. I work with a guy theorizing that one.
Newcomb

"Neuk'em"

Starkman
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Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747

Posted 7/23/2002 7:10 AM (GMT -6)

Hey Neuk'em,

You said this, and I think this sums it up:
"I am not saying that time and sequencing are the same thing. I am saying that time is a dimension, a fundamental thing that is necessary for the existence of everything that exists, not just created things. Time is not created. Sequencing is the result of time; sequencing cannot exist if time does not exist because it is a daughter concept to time. God’s Word indicated he sequences. This indicates he also experiences time. If he did not, he could not sequence. The Greek concept of time and the gods being outside of time is an error that has crept into the church and science. I don’t know enough about Newton’s time (he said it was absolute) and Einstein’s (he said it is relative) but they were both speaking about how time influences things in the space-time domain we call the physical universe and which domain God created the physical universe in as stated in Genesis 1."

This is all I've meant to say! Perhaps I've somehow muddied the water doing so, but I couldn't agree more with you. I do not hold that time is created as neither you do. I believe that time and sequence are relational but not the same, as seems you quite believe also. Further, I agree that within this discussion of the concept of time, God is not outside of it. (It would be interesting to discuss the following: if there is no time between God's thinking and acting, is there, however, time between His thoughts? If so, how is it measured?)

Where we do, perhaps, differ is whether God sequences the same as we do; I do not think He does because He's not limited to the physical dimmension where all kinds of screwy things are discovered with regard to time/sequence in view of the Newtonian and Einsteinian developments, as well as other's input.

Neuk, I'm tapped out here! Throw some more at me, if you've got more to contribute, because I like having to think.

For all the time in eternity!

Starkman

PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 7/23/2002 7:21 AM (GMT -6)

Where time is characterized as overwelmed by corruption (What we experience in our fallen lives and fallen world), it is different from what it was in Eden. (But how do we fathom past THAT flaming sword?)

Newcomb
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 116

Posted 8/14/2002 6:05 AM (GMT -6)

Hello 'Writer'
(This will be posted both in the AoG article section and in my subject of time.)
Oh, I love Geisler, but here he is wrong, you are right.
You quoted Geisler as saying:

quote:

What neotheists fail to see is that this is not really an argument against all talk about God but only why talking about him in temporal terms is not possible. Further, rather than eliminate all God-talk, it calls for analogious God-talk. It points out that temporal language does not fit a nontemporal Being. But it does not follow that no language is appropriately used of a nontemporal God.

OK, let's try to explain God with no "temporal terms"
For Geisler to be correct we would need to reconstruct the English language (I would prefer we revert to Gaelic anyway:-) to get rid of what is called the temporal index.
It is nearly impossible to create a sentence describing things with tense-less verbs. A temporal index is the tense of the verb indicating where in time we are talking about.
Remember again, time is the fourth demension. Just as you cannot completely describe a box without its three dimensions, length, height, and width, so it is hard to describe things without the temporal index that accompanies normal speech.
The words listed below are daughter concepts to the parent concept of time. They cannot exist and have meaning if time does not exist, so the exercise becomes one of describing God and what he is like without using any of these words, or any other temporal index.
If you posit that time is not applicable to God and, as Geisler said, we need to remove temporal talk about God, then the exercise becomes trying to describe him without any of these words:
Across, Affiliate, After, Afterward, Age, Agreeing, Ahead, Already, Amplitude, Antecedent, Area, Beat (Musical), Before, Beforehand, Behind, Breadth, Broadness, Cadence (rhythm or, beat), Centimeter, Circumstance, Coinciding, Collaborate, Concurrent, Concurrently, Confluent, Congruous, Contemporaneously, Continuance, Converging, Cooperate, Cooperative, Coterminous, Course , Crosswise, Cycle, Date, Development , Distance, Duration, During, Earlier, Episode, Epoch, Era, Event, Expanse, Feet, Following, Fore, Formerly, Future, Gauge, Height, Heretofore, Inches, Incident, Instant, Interval, Join, Kilometer, Large, Lasting, Later, Length, Light, Magnitude, Manometer, Meanwhile, Measure, Method, Miles, Millimeter, Moment, Move, Narrow, Nearness, Next, Occasion, Once, Opportunity, Originate, Over, Past, Period, Preceding, Present, Previously, Prior, Procedure , Process , Progress, Progression , Proximity, Range, Rate, Reach, Rhythm, Route , Season, Simultaneous, Small, Soon, Sooner, Space, Span, Stretch, Subsequently, Swing, Synchronal, Synchronous, Tempo, Term (period of time), Then, Thereupon, Therewith, Time, Together, Transverse, Uniting, Wavelength, When, While, Whilst, Wide, Wideness,
One way or another each of these, and others require time. This does not deal with tense at all, these words simply cannot be used by Geisler’s standard. Once these are eliminated from our language, then we can go about trying to eliminate the temporal index of the remaining words.
This is untenable.
“Neuk’em”

"Neuk'em"

Newcomb
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 116

Posted 8/14/2002 6:48 AM (GMT -6)

quote:

Where we do, perhaps, differ is whether God sequences the same as we do; I do not think He does because He's not limited to the physical dimmension where all kinds of screwy things are discovered with regard to time/sequence in view of the Newtonian and Einsteinian developments, as well as other's input.

AH! OK, this is where Einstein made an error stating "time is what we see on a clock." Talk about over simplifications! Oy!
I will assume you know the basics (that's all I know) about time speeding up or slowing down relating to gravity. Once you enter the event horizon of a black hole, clocks tick differently.
Here I am using "clock" to represent all atoms and their response to gravity. Einstein comes from a naturalistic philosophy, but even (or "especially") he should have understood that if you had a clock in a gravitational free-fall (i.e. falling to a gravitational center) then it becomes weightless and will tick differently than even on, say, half way to the moon because that clock is still in a gravitational field. When gravity is removed the clock still ticks, and this is the ticking that God experiences.
I think your verbiage is very slightly off: God experiences all the physical dimensions (how he interacts with them I don’t know) but he has different ones than we (i.e. the “spiritual domain”). God the Father and the H.S. are not in the “physical domain,” the second member, as of C 4BC, added that domain to his other domain so he is in both (all??? don’t know, don’t have a way to know).
The spiritual domain likely includes all the dimensions that exist. “Spiritual” beings interact with our 4D world periodically and sometimes we can see them.
However, you were intending that statement as it pertains to gravity. In this you were spot on. They don’t have physical mass. I am reasonable sure they have mass in the spiritual domain, not subject to gravity which is a strong force in the physical domain.
It is physically possible to build an anti-gravity unit (spin a light mass very fast around a central spot and that spot will produce anti-gravity, things will fall away from its center). If we built one and placed a clock in it and watched that clock we could see God’s time, or universal time. Now, our clocks would run differently and one in an event horizon would also run differently, one on a light planet would also run differently.
Three people sitting on each of the three clocks would all experience sequencing the same but events seen from one clock would take more/less time according to which clock you were viewing from and which clock the sequencing happened in, but all would experience the sequence of events.
This would be similar to the Star Trek where something caused some of them to speed up into hyper speed and when they slowed way down it was like a buzzing bee to the slow people. They accomplished huge amounts of things in seconds measured by the slow clocks.
Even this, though, is tenuous since Daniel prayed and the angel took 21 days to arrive because of the fight he went through to get to him. The time indicated tells us several things: 1) Angels know about earth time “But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days” Dan 10:13, and 2) Angels move from spot to spot “Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia” (ibid).
Did God create an Earth Time Clock and hang it on the wall? I don’t know, I just know the angel was aware of the number of earth days it took him to get from heaven, fight, and arrive on earth. I also know Daniel’s prayer was answered.
In short, Newton was right (time is absolute) and Einstein was right (time is relative) with limits, he was talking about the speed of clocks not time itself. I wish he had dealt with a clock in a gravitational free fall or zero gravity.
"Neuk'em"

"Neuk'em"

eaglecam
Registered Member

Date Joined Aug 2002
Total Posts : 12

Posted 8/15/2002 10:58 AM (GMT -6)

I just started following this discussion yesterday (a time word)so I hesitate to get in the fray and mix it up with battle-hardened debaters. I write mostly to recommend a book to Starkman which expanded my layperson understanding and served as an intro to the quantum physics/theology field.

Beyond the Cosmos, and Creation and Time, both by Dr. Hugh Ross were blessings to me. I moved from there to Beyond Einstein by Michio Kaku. Waiting in line (following Satan and the Problem of Evil) is Michio's book on Hyperspace. I think you should be able to grasp what they are covering without needing an encyclopedia nearby.

As for now, I shall continue lurking on these boards, enjoying th exchange. Thanks to all of you who contribute.

..."for him to see me mended, I must see him torn..." Luci Shaw

Starkman
Registered Member

Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747

Posted 8/15/2002 11:24 AM (GMT -6)

Hey thanks, eagelcam, I'll see what I can do.
Oh, if only money weren't an issue!!!

eaglecam
Registered Member

Date Joined Aug 2002
Total Posts : 12

Posted 8/15/2002 4:17 PM (GMT -6)

Ah yes, Starkman. Money is SUCH a problem. Since I'm new around here I don't know all topics dicussed in the past, but money and its implications for the believer would be a hot one.

At any rate, if funds are tight, choose Beyond the Cosmos by Hugh Ross. Runs about $14 at Amazon I think.

Blessings

..."for him to see me mended, I must see him torn..." Luci Shaw

Newcomb
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 116

Posted 9/17/2002 8:13 AM (GMT -6)

I stated above:

quote:

I think your verbiage is very slightly off: God experiences all the physical dimensions

I hate it when that happens. My own verbiage was off here since dimensions are not physical things. Physical things are things in the physical domain which is based on at least 4 dimensions.

"Neuk'em"

PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 9/17/2002 8:28 AM (GMT -6)

Hey, N. How's this:

quote:
He (The Son/Logos) is within creation, but only through his operation. He holds creation together, and stops it returning to non-being. But in his essence he is outside creation.

As uncreated and begotten of the Father, the Logos has all the properties of the Father, who is unoriginated, unchangeable, imperishable, immortal, and he is ïìïïýóéïò (I think that is homouosios.) with the Father.

Within this framework I would agree with your verbage of "God experiences all the physical dimensions." Certainly!!!

Newcomb
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 116

Posted 9/17/2002 8:52 AM (GMT -6)

Above I responded to Writerdad about Geisler and the Temporal Index words carry in what we call the tense of a word.
What Geisler and others ignore is that this temporal index can falsify a proposition if the index, or time stamp is not true.
For instance, if my proposition is: "Yesterday I went to Los Angeles," then my proposition is flase. Why? now because I haven't been to L.A., I have many times, however, it was not yesterday that this happened. The statement is false.
Of course the sense of the word also play into this. Perhaps the person making the proposition uses the word "yesterday" to mean "in the past." So the time value must be understood.
In scripture, the translation needs to be understood also, but that aside, the time stamp, or temporal index can be a point of falsification.
Back to Hezekiah (Isa 38:5-6) were we find time stamps all over the text: "Go, and say to Hezekiah, Thus saith the LORD, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will add unto thy days fifteen years. And I will deliver thee and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria: and I will defend this city."
"I have heard" = past tense.
"I have seen" = past tense.
"I will add unto thy days"= present or future tense.
"I will deliver"= future tense.
"I will defend"=future tense.
Here God's propositions have time stamps that are, in fact, false if everything is preset to happen. The primary one is the one on this board that we use to show God responding and changing his mind and that the future is open, but all these have time stamps. The Bible is full of God's time stamps.
Just a thought.
"Neuk'em"

"Neuk'em"

Newcomb
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 116

Posted 9/20/2002 4:44 AM (GMT -6)

quote:

Hey, N. How's this:

quote:
He (The Son/Logos) is within creation, but only through his operation. He holds creation together, and stops it returning to non-being. But in his essence he is outside creation.

As uncreated and begotten of the Father, the Logos has all the properties of the Father, who is unoriginated, unchangeable, imperishable, immortal, and he is ïìïïýóéïò (I think that is homouosios.) with the Father.

That states it well. I like that.
If I am right(that God shares all the dimensions including the 4 [at least] that the 'physical domain' exists within), and the second member of the trinity took on a physical body for eternity future, then, when the "the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also" (2Pet3:10b)something in the physical realm endures (that is, not everything in this domain is destroyed), therefore the domain is permanent, Jesus' body is permanent, and we too can remain in the physical domain after the resurrection (new body/new earth, etc).
Jesus added something to his nature and took on something from the 'physical domain,' and that which he took on he retains permanently. It is interesting that he holds creation together, and he took on part of what he holds together as part of himself.
Newcomb

"Neuk'em"

Newcomb
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 116

Posted 9/20/2002 5:14 AM (GMT -6)

Geisler on time . . . again.
Reading this morning in Geisler’s Christian Apologetics I came across an error again dealing with time.
Speaking to Kant’s errors he states in part:

quote:
we need not speak of the world beginning in time, as though time were already there and there was a time before time. We may speak of the beginning of the world as the beginning of time. That is, time is a concomitant of a created world in process-in which case there would be no time before time. All that is prior to time is eternity.

p26
He goes on to describe things that are not caused, but necessary, and therefore, uncaused. At the end of the next paragraph he states:

quote:
The finite must be caused, but the infinite being would be uncaused.

Do you see the time stamps he uses to say that time is temporary? He is correct that necessary things are uncaused. Dimensions are necessary things, and therefore, uncaused. Time is one of those things. He makes a parent/child-concept error when he states that “All that is prior to time is eternity.” Why? Because eternity is unending time, or infinite duration of time, or endless time. It is the child of time. Without time “eternity” has no parent and is, therefore, meaningless. Geisler made eternity (which is a subset of time, that is, all time past and all time future) the parent of time. I cannot be the parent of my mother, therefore becoming my own grandparent, and time cannot be the child of it's own child either.
Part of the problem here is acceptance by Geisler of current cosmologies that claim we have an unbounded universe, and that time and space expand as the universe expands, that is, the domain controls the dimensions is is built on. This is foolishness on the part of the desperate evolutionists to explain the universe without God. Geisler rejects the basics, but swallowed part of their paradigm.
It is hard to weed them out, they make up much of the language of the world in which we live, but Geisler also accepts the Neo-Platonist ideas of God which fit into this same picture, so the pill he swallowed didn't look too big.
Many of us do this without knowing it. Yesterday my Aunt and I were speaking and she was throwing the word “sovereign” onto anything she needed it to cover. The word means that God has the authority to do anything he can do, such as judge the people of the earth, etc. It does not mean he can do absurd things such as things that are impossible to do. The word has specific meaning and is usually (say, 99% of the time) misapplied by Christians who use it. This is partly because of the background of the classical theology we have in this culture.
Geisler, then, falls into two traps; 1) the theological trap of Neo-Platonic polytheistic thought passed through Augustine, Calvin, and Beza, and, 2) the cultural trap where atheistic science describes a universe tailored to exclude God and describes a boundless universe were time and the physical universe are directly related.

"Neuk'em"

"Neuk'em"

PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 9/20/2002 2:34 PM (GMT -6)

I understood you on "nature" this time, N-. (re Trinity and Christology.) Thanks for the post.

Starkman
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Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747

Posted 9/21/2002 2:54 AM (GMT -6)

Hey Newcomb,

Okay, so here's the $42.43 question (deflation, you know!), when we hit the wall of the universe, what's next?

For the SMACK! "Hey, where'd this wall come from?"

Starkman

PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 9/21/2002 5:19 AM (GMT -6)

Starkman
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Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747

Posted 9/21/2002 2:43 PM (GMT -6)

Good one, AL!
I read those books . . . laughed my head off!

Starkman

Newcomb
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 116

Posted 9/27/2002 10:34 AM (GMT -6)

quote:

Hey Newcomb,
Okay, so here's the $42.43 question (deflation, you know!), when we hit the wall of the universe, what's next?
For the SMACK! "Hey, where'd this wall come from?"
Starkman

:) Cute and funny, but actually this is the opposite. The unbounded universe has a wall of sorts. It states that there are no dimensions beyond the physical universe's last molecules, so, if you could get to the last matter out there, you couldn't go farther because there is nothing beyond it, nothing at all, no length, width, height, time, no empty space to move into. So once you were there, you would hit the "wall" because the universe hasn’t gotten there yet.
It is in the bounded universe that you can go past that point. The boundary is merely how far matter has made it through empty space right now. In this model (I would hold, the only rational one) there are dimensions that extend beyond the universe. Certainly there is time beyond the last physical matter, and there is empty space beyond it, otherwise, how could it expand? There would not be one foot left beyond it to expand into. The unbounded universe created the dimensions as it expands, so time exists only where there is matter.
Of course, this poses a problem: If time did not exist before the universe existed, then everything started with the universe. Everything will end when it dies. This is, of course, naturalism ala Carl Sagan et al.
OK, so what was there before the universe? Nothing at all. We have a philosophical and logical problems here; where did everything come from? Contingent things are all caused and, as Rogers & Hammerstein so eloquently pointed out in the "engagement" scene of Sound of Music “Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could.” It can’t create itself, this is absurd. There is a branch of “science” trying to explain how it could using quantum nil states I think. It goes something like, "since the sum of all charges in the universe is 0, then really, everything is really nothing at all, it is a nil sum." Sounds like Hinduism again (First was transcendentalism, then New Age, now this??)
It amazes me the extent man will go to to avoid responsibility to a living God.
"Neuk'em"

"Neuk'em"

GregBoyd
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818

Posted 10/1/2002 4:50 PM (GMT -6)

Did anyone in this discussion mention Willian Lane Craig's recent book Time and Eternity? It is the BEST defense of temporal theism I've ever read (despite his rejection of Open theism). The highlight of the book is his discussion of relativity theory and how it does NOT negate the idea of "absolute time." Newcomb, you'd love this book.

Just thought I'd through it out for your consideration.

Greg

"In Christ...the ONLY THING that matters is faith energized by love." Galatians 5:6

kerygma
Registered Member

Date Joined Aug 2002
Total Posts : 45

Posted 10/2/2002 5:57 PM (GMT -6)

Time....is very simply God's way of preventing everything from happening all at once. Just think how noisy that would be!

By the way, if you've not checked out this, you oughta:
www.apologetics.net/challenge/theChallenge.html

Scott

"Do you love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made out of." Ben Franklin

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