So, isn’t imposing upon the world the ideas of “impermanent and changing” also projecting human concepts “out into the world” as if those all too human ideas have “real external existence.” Aren’t you merely and capriciously “reifying” the ideas of impermanence and change as an alternative to reifying the ideas of permanence and fixity, and thus being a Nagarjunan pot calling the Aristotelian kettle, “black?”
Then we are not talking about time, which is the fourth dimension of our material universe/plane. If God exists in some higher dimension then we need a new vocabulary. Say God exists in the ‘faarn’ dimension, then we should express His unalterability in terms of faarn, not in terms of time. God changes in terms of time, but is static in terms of faarn: ‘faarnstatic’ say.
God regrets His actions in creating man (Genesis 6:6). That is a change in God, not a change in the universe.
You are assuming that the simple always causes the complex. That is not the case. I am more complex than this post, yet I caused this post.
In the absence of time there is no “before” or “after”. That destroys causation, since no proposed cause can be ‘before’ the alleged effect. You are telling us here that God could not have caused/created the universe any more then he can make a square triangle.
Looked at from inside the one dimensional line, then you change. If your God is outside our four dimensions, then we need to rework our vocabulary to include the God-dimension beyond our current four. See the word “faarn” in my reply to jcrichton above. In those terms your actions have changed in our four dimensional STEM universe, but they have not ‘faarnchanged’ in the extended ‘faarnuniverse’.
Yes. There is a chain of cause and effect between that younger person and the older me.
Consider an arachnophobe. Their internal mental construct of a spider has all the usual: eight legs and the rest as well as an element of fear. The fear is purely internal, it is not part of the spider, but solely part of their internal mental construct ‘spider’.
Anything permanent cannot change. Can your soul change from unsaved to saved? Does Baptism have no effect? If your soul can change then it is not permanent. A permanent thing is the same at all times. If something is different at different times then it is not permanent.
I do not make absolute pronouncements. I make pronouncements. As you correctly point out, they are not absolute.
My brain is mistaken, things are not the same. The food in the fridge is that much closer to its “Use by” date. I won’t be able to put off mowing the grass for as long as I could before I left. At this time of year there are more leaves to sweep up…
Are rossum’s memories part of rossum or not? If they are, then rossum has indeed changed because a part of rossum – the memories – has changed.
It has. In the three phases the water molecules have different levels of freedom of movement. In ice they are very restricted in a crystal lattice. As a liquid they are constrained to remain within the liquid. As a gas they are free to move throughout the entire volume.
No, that’s not the logic here. Assuming there is nothing else but these two items you mentioned, then it must be stated the any level of complexity must require a cause. That which is absolutely metaphysically simple requires no causal explanation.Wesrock:
You are assuming that the simple always causes the complex. That is not the case. I am more complex than this post, yet I caused this post.
I already anticipated this misconception you have, so to repeat myself verbatim:
The western world does not propose that the world is unchanging. Why you cast it that way I’ve no idea. Is it proper to say that the younger person who is linked to you by this chain of “cause and effect” was you? Certainly in some ways he was a different person, but is he absolutely and entirely and in all ways a different person?Wesrock:
Yes. There is a chain of cause and effect between that younger person and the older me.
Buddhism sees the world as changing, with an illusory veneer of stasis in some places: things that appear to be unchanging are merely changing slowly. “Grass doesn’t grow. I watched a blade carefully for ten minutes and it didn’t grow at all.”
Much Western/Greek philosophy tends to see the world as static with a veneer of change in some places. I am more a follower of Hearclitus: You cannot step in the same river twice, because it is not the same river and you are not the same you.
rossum
So I cannot have caused this post, instead this post must have caused me, when we only consider the two entities me and this post? You will understand if I do not find this logic convincing.
God’s actions are “dimensional” in that the parting of the sea took place at a specific place and a specific time within the four dimensions of the material universe. By removing God outside those four dimensions you separate Him from His actions and you deny His omnipresence. If He is omnipresent, then He is present here and now within space-time as well as outside space-time.
Buddhism does not have a soul:
Given that, then “person” is treated differently. It is a convenient label for a bundle of parts, none of which is permanent.