Dilemma of time and the act of creation

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God is transcendent; He is wholly independent of the material universe and beyond all physical laws.
 
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 1, 30: THE NAMES THAT CAN BE PREDICATED OF GOD
[4] Now, the mode of supereminence in which the abovementioned perfections are found in God can be signified by names used by us only through negation, as when we say that God is eternal or infinite, or also through a relation of God to other things, as when He is called the first cause or the highest good. For we cannot grasp what God is, but only what He is not and how other things are related to Him, as is clear from what we said above.
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dhspriory.org/thomas/ContraGentiles1.htm
 
AveOTheotokos said:
Cosmic Force is created, God is self-existing
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By Cosmic Force I meant an unconscious thing that is source of everything. God cannot decide which means that He is not a person. Is He even conscious? What is the use of consciousness if you cannot decide?
 
STT said:
By Cosmic Force I meant an unconscious thing that is source of everything. God cannot decide which means that He is not a person. Is He even conscious? What is the use of consciousness if you cannot decide?
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The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit are the three persons. Again, you are butting up against mystery here.
 
STT said:
He cannot do illogical thing.
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It is not illogical. Time is a part of creation, and is limited to creation. Pure Act (which God is) does not require time. Act requires time in a reality in which there is time, however, God is outside of time, and therefore does not require time.

You’re thinking only in temporal of temporal existence. God cannot be limited by these notions as He is outside of them, and they beyond them.
 
THAT GOD WILLS HIMSELF AND OTHER THINGS BY ONE ACT OF WILL

More Aquinas on God’s will and the existence of other things:
[5] Again, since God wills Himself always, if He wills Himself and other things by different acts it will follow that there are at once two acts of will in Him. This is impossible, since one simple power does not have at once two operations.
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[6] Furthermore, in every act of the will the object willed is to the one willing as a mover to the moved. If, then, there be some action of the divine will, by which God wills things other than Himself, which is diverse from the action by which He wills Himself, there will be in Him some other mover of the divine will. This is impossible.
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[7] Moreover, God’s willing is His being, as has been proved. But in God there is only one being. Therefore, there is in Him only one willing.
Item.
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[8] Again, willing belongs to God according as He is intelligent. Therefore, just as by one act He understands Himself and other things, in so far as His essence is the exemplar of all things, so by one act He wills Himself and other things, in so far as His goodness is the likeness of all goodness.
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THAT GOD IS ETERNAL

And Aquinas again, this time regarding God being eternal:
[3] Again. Those beings alone are measured by time that are moved. For time, as is made clear in Physics IV [11], is “the number of motion.” But God, as has been proved, is absolutely without motion, and is consequently not measured by time. There is, therefore, no before and after in Him; He does not have being after non-being, nor non-being after being,** nor can any succession be found in His being**. For none of these characteristics can be understood without time. God, therefore, is without beginning and end, having His whole being at once. In this consists the nature of eternity.
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ProdglArchitect said:
It is not illogical. Time is a part of creation, and is limited to creation. Pure Act (which God is) does not require time. Act requires time in a reality in which there is time, however, God is outside of time, and therefore does not require time.

You’re thinking only in temporal of temporal existence. God cannot be limited by these notions as He is outside of them, and they beyond them.
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What I am trying to say is that you need time for any act otherwise your are dealing with two states at the same point which makes the point ill-defined. Time is part of creation and it is needed for the act of creation which is problematic.
 
STT said:
What I am trying to say is that you need time for any act otherwise your are dealing with two states at the same point which makes the point ill-defined. Time is part of creation and it is needed for the act of creation which is problematic.
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WE need time to act. God doesn’t. God exists outside of time, so to claim that He needs time to act is irrational.

God is not just some bigger version of us, limited by the same constraints we suffer under. He is existence itself. He is pure act. He does not require time to act because then He would require time to exist, which we know He does not. (Refer to Aquinas’ proofs) Any act which God commits is born of Himself, and requires nothing outside of God to occur.

This has been repeated many times throughout this thread and you haven’t addressed it. Either acknowledge that you have no objection to it, and recognize that you might be misunderstanding something; or present an actual problem.

Seriously, you need to read through Aquinas’ proofs for God. They cover this in detail.
 
SST
Back in December on a thread called “God and Time” I posted the following:
  • According to modern science, time emerged from the singularity. This seems to imply that there was no time before the big bang, but that cannot be, something had to cause the big bang and the something in my view was God. What we experience as time is the manifestation of change, namely the change of matter and energy as measured by clocks.
If there was time, God’s time, before the big bang, what was changing? The only thing that it could possibly be changing is thought. Thought is a sequence of scenarios of the mind that is a form of change and therefore represent something that could be construed as time. What existed before the big bang was God and God’s mind full of thoughts that manifests as a form of time.

Thus, we can argue that two modalities of time exist: pre and post big bang. I refer to the time we experience after the big bang as cosmological time ; I refer to time before the big bang, God’s time, as ontological time. Ontological time is eternal—of infinite duration. Cosmological time is finite and thus is embedded in the flow of ontological time.

We, of course, cannot know the nature of ontological time other than our supposition that it consists of the thoughts in the Mind of God, and unlike cosmological time that advances incrementally, ontological time flows continuously.*

You contributed to that thread and ignored (at least didn’t respond to) my post which indicates that you missed a plausible answer to your assumption expressed on this thread that there can only be one kind of time.

I am intrigued by your failure to respond to my December post if believing there can be only a single modality of time creates a dilemma for you and you are using a pseudonym
SST=seeking the truth.
Yppop
 
ProdglArchitect said:
WE need time to act. God doesn’t. God exists outside of time, so to claim that He needs time to act is irrational.
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Quite oppositely, any sort of claim that an act does not require time is irrational. I have already argue against that but unfortunately nobody paid any attention to it. So I repeat the argument again: Two states cannot exist at one point. Any act constitutes of two states. Therefore time is needed for any act.

Now lets discuss each statement separately:

(1) “Two states cannot exist at one point”: This is true because otherwise the point is ill-defined. We cannot have two states X (God only) and Y (God and creation) at the same point.

(2) “Any act constitutes of two states”: One state (God only), no changes. Act is about changes therefore any act constitutes of two states.

(3) “Time is needed for any act”: This follows from (1) and (2).
ProdglArchitect said:
God is not just some bigger version of us, limited by the same constraints we suffer under. He is existence itself. He is pure act. He does not require time to act because then He would require time to exist, which we know He does not. (Refer to Aquinas’ proofs) Any act which God commits is born of Himself, and requires nothing outside of God to occur.

This has been repeated many times throughout this thread and you haven’t addressed it. Either acknowledge that you have no objection to it, and recognize that you might be misunderstanding something; or present an actual problem.

Seriously, you need to read through Aquinas’ proofs for God. They cover this in detail.
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I hope things are more clear now. Could we please focus on the argument to see where would we go?
 
yppop said:
SST
Back in December on a thread called “God and Time” I posted the following:
  • According to modern science, time emerged from the singularity. This seems to imply that there was no time before the big bang, but that cannot be, something had to cause the big bang and the something in my view was God. What we experience as time is the manifestation of change, namely the change of matter and energy as measured by clocks.
If there was time, God’s time, before the big bang, what was changing? The only thing that it could possibly be changing is thought. Thought is a sequence of scenarios of the mind that is a form of change and therefore represent something that could be construed as time. What existed before the big bang was God and God’s mind full of thoughts that manifests as a form of time.

Thus, we can argue that two modalities of time exist: pre and post big bang. I refer to the time we experience after the big bang as cosmological time ; I refer to time before the big bang, God’s time, as ontological time. Ontological time is eternal—of infinite duration. Cosmological time is finite and thus is embedded in the flow of ontological time.

We, of course, cannot know the nature of ontological time other than our supposition that it consists of the thoughts in the Mind of God, and unlike cosmological time that advances incrementally, ontological time flows continuously.*

You contributed to that thread and ignored (at least didn’t respond to) my post which indicates that you missed a plausible answer to your assumption expressed on this thread that there can only be one kind of time.

I am intrigued by your failure to respond to my December post if believing there can be only a single modality of time creates a dilemma for you and you are using a pseudonym
SST=seeking the truth.
Yppop
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Eternal time, infinite duration, before Big Bang is logically impossible. This is due the fact that it is practically impossible to reach from infinite past to now.
 
STT said:
I read both. Thanks. But they didn’t help.
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There are not two states, “God Alone” and “God and creation” God’s willing of Himself and the willing of creation are the part of one act of His one will. There are not two separate acts, and there are not two separate states.

Here is a link to the entire first book of Summa Contra Gentiles, which explains God extremely well:

BOOK ONE: GOD
 
STT,
Is there one person on this forum that you would believe what they tell you without understanding, confident that this person only would tell you what is really real?
And then tell other people this “truth” that you do not really understand, and tell them it is true because the person you trust told you it was true?
 
AveOTheotokos said:
There are not two states, “God Alone” and “God and creation” God’s willing of Himself and the willing of creation are the part of one act of His one will. There are not two separate acts, and there are not two separate states.

Here is a link to the entire first book of Summa Contra Gentiles, which explains God extremely well:

BOOK ONE: GOD
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Was God able to do not create?
 
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