by Delta20 234 Replies latest watchtower bible
Hi D Dog,
Saying that God exists outside the time and space of his creation does not free him from the logical requirment of the premise that complex things require a creator. Unless you qualify that as, "Complex things that exist within our universe require a creator." But that sounds less like a solid logical premise and more like a statement intentionally crafted to support belief in a creator, so I don't think it is as compelling.
SNG
My point is that you seem to want to put words in the mouths of creationists
Saying that God exists outside the time and space of his creation does not free him from the logical requirment of the premise that complex things require a creator.
It would have to, if he created time.
D DOG
DDog,
Did it occur to you that "outside" is a spatial concept / metaphor, just as "before" is a temporal one?
"outside space" is an oxymoron just like "before time".
Nark, you know better than that mate...
Space and time are invisible elephants ;)
FMZ
Nark
Are we talking about the relational theory or the absolute theory?
"outside space" is an oxymoron just like "before time".
Can we say "before space" or "outside of time"?
D Dog
Can we say "before space" or "outside of time"?
Yeah, I think we can conceive of that. It would mean that time didn't have meaning for you. You are a being that exists in all points of space-time, so any one point is not different than another point. The past, the present, the future, would all be terms that apply to someone else. You can conceive of a god wholly alone, creating "time" and then painting a universe in it. Those in the universe would see time as this all-encompassing thing, whereas you would see it as just another component of that universe you built. The god that did that may well not be limited by time. He could, for instance, halt time in that universe (to the extent that nothing in that universe would be allowed to change) and then restart it and nothing inside the universe would know anything happened. (How would such a pause be measured, since time exists only inside the universe? I don't know, I'm making this up as I go along!)
But SNG's point is that despite any detachment from the universe, the god being would still be subject to whatever logic we apply to anything else. (Logic is not always correct, but it still applies) I hold a hammer. You look away. You hear a thud that sounds precisely like the sound of a hammer hitting the floor. You logically deduce that I dropped the hammer. It doesn't matter if I really did or not, the logical conclusion is that I dropped the hammer. If I didn't, then the logical conclusion is wrong. But that doesn't shield the situation from having logic applied to it.
The difference is that you can look at me and my hammer and determine if logic was right or not.
With god and intelligent design, logic may suggest that a seemingly well-designed system must have been designed. The logic that says a man built a watch, also suggests that someone built the man. But the logic can't stop there. It must carry forward to suggest that the one who built the man must also have been built by someone. It doesn't mean that the logic is right, it just means that if you use logic to arrive at the first conclusion, you must also use it to reach the next and the next.
Perhaps god created the universe, and perhaps he has always existed. But perhaps not. Unlike my hammer, we can't look to verify. Perhaps someone that has always existed created god, and he created the universe. Or perhaps the stuff of the universe has always existed. No arguments about physical laws and entropy and all that can preclude it, because the universe is the universe. Energy can be transferred around, but it isn't destroyed. If it all collapsed back on itself, it would have the same energy it started with, and it could just blow up again and make a whole new expanding universe. Then do it again.
Perhaps.
Dave
AlmostAtheist:
But SNG's point is that despite any detachment from the universe, the god being would still be subject to whatever logic we apply to anything else. (Logic is not always correct, but it still applies) I hold a hammer. You look away. You hear a thud that sounds precisely like the sound of a hammer hitting the floor. You logically deduce that I dropped the hammer. It doesn't matter if I really did or not, the logical conclusion is that I dropped the hammer. If I didn't, then the logical conclusion is wrong. But that doesn't shield the situation from having logic applied to it.
That's not a logical conclusion. It's the most reasonable interpretation of the available evidence. Logically, it's not airtight unless you can logically eliminate all other possibilities.
With god and intelligent design, logic may suggest that a seemingly well-designed system must have been designed. The logic that says a man built a watch, also suggests that someone built the man. But the logic can't stop there. It must carry forward to suggest that the one who built the man must also have been built by someone. It doesn't mean that the logic is right, it just means that if you use logic to arrive at the first conclusion, you must also use it to reach the next and the next.
That's correct, but the first conclusion is faulty. A man is not like a watch. A watch is clearly a piece of precision engineering. It consists of solid parts, which do not change significantly over time. It can be taken apart and put back together. Remove one piece and it will not work. A man is not like this at all. In fact, a man is so unlike a watch that no conclusions can be drawn about men based on what we know about watches.
Dave
Sorry, but, if the universe and time are finite (as Einstein suggests) and God is infinite, It can be logical to assume that the infinite created the finite, however any logical conclusion requires some degree of faith.
D Dog
Did it occur to you that "outside" is a spatial concept / metaphor, just as "before" is a temporal one?
Good points Narkissos. Funny how talking and conceiving of the absence of space requires spacial metaphors.
A word of warning folks! Before you start discussing the origins of time and space, or the possibility of existing without them, make sure you have an objective way of discussing time. There are fairly genuine language constructs to describe space, but there aren't any to discuss time.
Taking the point Narkissos brings up, if we want to be more precise we have to admit that even the preposition "before" contains a spacial metaphor (and not an entirely dead one at that!). If wew can hardly discuss time without resorting to spacial metaphors, then where does this discussion about "God" being independent of time and space lead us to? Well, here we go: we're going to need even more spacial metaphors. Once we are using a few dozen of them to eplain our theory of the origins of the Universe, we realize we have constructed another metaphysics. And anything is possible to "verify" in the world of metaphysics. You can come up with new metaphors and "bend them" (another metaphor) to your liking. That's ok as long as you don't call your metaphysics a scientific theory.
This the problem with the Intelligent Design Theory: most of its premises were best refuted as early as 200+ years ago by Hume.
To a superficial observer, so wonderful a regularity may be admired as the effect of either chance or design; but a skillful algebraist immediately concludes it to be the work of necessity. David Hume.
Pole
