Does God have a stream of thought?

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Sunfire315

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  1. If God is timeless, then He does not have a stream of thought
  2. If God does not have a stream of thought, he is not personal.
  3. God is Timeless.
  4. Therefore, God is not personal.
How would you object to this argument?
 
I feel like point #2 needs a syllogism just for itself. I don’t see how it follows.

Edit: A definition of personal would be useful, too.
 
Wesrock said:
I feel like point #2 needs a syllogism just for itself. I don’t see how it follows.
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If God lacks a stream of consciousness, then how can he really be called “personal”? He would sort of lack consciousness as he couldn’t be “thinking” about anything.
 
Maybe you could salvage some aspect of personhood apart from a stream of thought; But how could you be personal timelessluy? because without a stream of consciousness how can you really think?

I’m incredibly confused about this matter as well.
 
God knows though. He knows you as you are at each and every moment of your life. He is disposed in love towards the goodness in you, which is a participation in Himself, and it is His constant will that you should draw closer to Him through the exercise of your own will. He doesn’t need to think from one thought to the next in order to consider or process information or figure out where you stand in relation to Him.
 
Sunfire315 said:
  1. If God is timeless, then He does not have a stream of thought
  2. If God does not have a stream of thought, he is not personal.
  3. God is Timeless.
  4. Therefore, God is not personal.
How would you object to this argument?
Click to expand...
Point #2 is an unproven premise.

This is a form of the “begging the question” fallacy.
 
Isaiah 55:8
My ways are not your ways, my thoughts are not your thoughts,

If that’s not the Correct reading,then it’s very Close to that,

Isaiah has many great readings , answers a lot of Questions
 
“Thinking” is necessary for timebound, headed beings to get knowledge into the head.

This is not needed in a timeless life.

ICXC NIKA
 
Perhaps “stream of conscious” is just one form of consciousness and a very primitive one at that. Perhaps God is capable of a consciousness that does not require a stream nor time but is more a stable all embracing consciousness…
 
Sunfire315 said:
  1. If God is timeless, then He does not have a stream of thought
  2. If God does not have a stream of thought, he is not personal.
  3. God is Timeless.
  4. Therefore, God is not personal.
How would you object to this argument?
Click to expand...
Hi Sun,
I suspect you are playing with the definition of ‘timeless’. In my dictionary it means ‘eternal’. I believe you are taking it to mean ‘without time’. Hence, by definition God is timeless, therefore is eternal.

Here is something else to chew on:
  • 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 before the big bang, God’s time, what was changing? The only thing that it could possibly be changing is God’s 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 manifest 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 **timeless **,i.e., eternal and 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, but unlike cosmological time that advances incrementally, ontological time flows continuously.
  • Yppop
 
If God had no stream of consciousness, how would we perceive him?

Perhaps this eternal being puts on a stream of consciousness for our benefit.
 
This is pure human level thinking - and that of persons who cannot imagine something greater than the self. Those who disregard Something (Some One) transcendent and outside of time, existing in the eternal now. Such thinking is a form of self-justification.
 
Sunfire315 said:
  1. If God is timeless, then He does not have a stream of thought
  2. If God does not have a stream of thought, he is not personal.
  3. God is Timeless.
  4. Therefore, God is not personal.
How would you object to this argument?
Click to expand...
We believe in one God in three persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, this is the Trinity. If God is not personal, how is it that there are three persons in one God? Such a statement is a contradiction in terms.

Does God have a stream of thought? Yes and no depending on how one interprets ‘stream’. If by ‘stream’ one means successive acts of God’s intellect and understanding, than such a stream of thought is not applicable to God. This would involve potentiality in God but God is pure act. If by ‘stream’ one means one eternal and continual act of God’s intellect and understanding, than maybe in a loose sense one can say God has a stream of thought. To avoid confusion, it is better to simply say that God’s thought and understanding which proceeds from his intellect is one eternal act. By one eternal act of his intellect, God knows all things that can possibly be known and by which also the Word proceeds from the Father’s intellect. God’s thought and understanding does not involve time or successive acts of his intellect. It is simply one eternal act of his intellect which never ceases or it wouldn’t be eternal. This is God’s life which also involves one eternal act of his will from which proceeds the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son and by which God wills all things. This is the infinite perfection of God. A being who may know many things by one act of their intellect is more perfect than a being who may know many things by many successive acts of their intellect such as is the case with human beings. And what is more and most perfect must be applied to God who possesses infinite perfection. God’s knowledge and understanding is infinite.
 
Sunfire315 said:
If God lacks a stream of consciousness, then how can he really be called “personal”? He would sort of lack consciousness as he couldn’t be “thinking” about anything.
Click to expand...
Neither do we have a “stream of thought” in our intellect. It is simply the place of understanding or knowing, something similar to the material event of just staring at the one you love, knowing that person and being known, but not processing any thoughts.

Our intellect is like that, simply delighting in the understood thing, knowing also that we understand, so delighting in ourselves.

So, how can a husband and wife be “personal” when they just enjoy staring at each other without a stream of thought processing? It is very easy, and the object of the staring is a person as is the one seeing…

A stream of thought is the human way of consciously constructing (over time) a full image in the imagination of what the intellect knows in a single unmoving knowing as a whole object known.
 
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