Does time have a beginning?

[Douglas_Kraeger]

Motion is merely change specifically referring to change in location.

Time is a measure of the motion of one thing in motion compared to another thing in motion and that is ALL it is. From any motion or change, there is a time to be measured, whether it actually has been measured or not.

When measuring time, we typically use the motion of a clock or the motion of the Sun or stars. We use something with which others can also relate so as to have a standard. But as relativity points out, if everyone’s standard for the measurement of motion, time, slowed down equally, there would be no means for anyone to realize it. Time is just a comparison so if the motion being measured as well as the motion that it is being compared to change together, there is no means to perceive that anything has occurred.

But a “beginning of time”, a beginning of any change to measure, implies that no change had occurred before that moment. That means that no changing could happen. If no changing could happen, how could anything start? Even God would have to decide, make a decision, change his mind, in order to cause the initial change that began time, yet God would have had to already been in a changing state in order to do that and thus not actually begin time.

How long did God wait before he decided to start time? He could not have waited. Thus if God is eternal, changing and thus time must also be eternal.

It actually violates no Scripture, only your misunderstanding of Scriptures. Wouldn’t you prefer to ensure that you understand them properly and not be accidentally worshiping the wrong idea?

---

And btw, the “entropy of the universe” concern is merely one of being on the down sides of a pendulum swing. After the entropy has consumed it thrust, the opposite begins to have the more fundamental influence as the universe no longer seemingly expands, but seemingly contracts toward a central point. The process is endless and must be so, else the entire universe could not exist.

I believe the it is philosophiscally provable that God must be an infinite spirit, He must be infinite in all His attributes, All-Knowing, All-Powerful, and All-Loving, with one, single, always in the present tense, outside of time and space, thought. He must be doing everything all at once because you can not have half a God, or separate thoughts or actions in a perfectly simple infinite Being. Therefore to say that God would have to change his mind, or be changing is wrong.
You say, “But a “beginning of time”, a beginning of any change to measure, implies that no change had occurred before that moment. That means that no changing could happen. If no changing could happen, how could anything start? Even God would have to decide, make a decision, change his mind, in order to cause the initial change that began time, yet God would have had to already been in a changing state in order to do that and thus not actually begin time.”

Why can not an infinite God create all space, and time, and all matter, and energy, and souls that men and angels posess all at once? You say “Even God would have to decide, make a decision, change his mind, in order to cause the initial change”, but just because you say it, the theory is not proven. Can you imagine a God so infinite as to be outside of space and time? Try it. If you say that is not possible, maybe your idea of God is too small?
The fact that time would begin by it’s creation with everything else, as a gift to men, can be seen as thelogical conclusion and therefore acceptable, with no contradictions to the truth, although our theories and understandings may need adjustment.

 

[querelous]

Since time is the measurement of change, it began when creation began. Did creation have a beginning.? It is POSSIBLE that creation (and therefore time) was from all eternity. However it seems that biblical revelation speaks about creation (and therefore time) as having a beginning. Gen 1,1.

 

[cassini]

Since time is the measurement of change, it began when creation began. Did creation have a beginning.? It is POSSIBLE that creation (and therefore time) was from all eternity. However it seems that biblical revelation speaks about creation (and therefore time) as having a beginning. Gen 1,1.

THE WORLD HAD A BEGINNING IN TIME (De fide)

The beginning of time definition was defined at 4th Lateran Council (1215) and endorsed at Vatican I querelous.

Biblical references
John 17, 5 Eph 1,4, Ps 101 ,26 Gn I.I Pro 8,22, Ps 89,2 John 17, 24.

 

[cassini]

Can you give us a specific reference to the infallible documents that you are quoting here?

Sid, ‘infallible documents’ is the wrong word to use. No pope has ever said this is infallible. Infallibility is explicit only when it is ex cathedra or defined in a Church council. There is however an infallibility of the Church in its ordinary magisterium when defining and declaring matters of faith and morals. Catholics are required to believe the Church’s teaching whether explicitly infallible or under the ordinary magisterium. As I have demonstrated if the Holy Ghost could only be guaranteed to be protecting the Church’s teaching when a pope or council with the pope defines it then all the teachings that bring the whole theology together would become redundant as a source of truth. One cannot willy nilly dismiss a papal decree as null and void and expect anyone to take the Catholic Church seriously. That said however, one must be able to distinguish between papal opinions and official papal definitions.

Here is something on references I have written up myself:
Anyone taking time to investigate the Galileo case will be amazed by the vast amount of documents detailing the man, his life, his work, his letters, his books, and trials that survived the vagaries of time. It is as though they were destined, for whatever reason, to be preserved reasonably intact throughout the centuries. Thus when the Freemason Napoleon of revolutionary France sacked Rome in 1810 and stole the documents of the Secret Archives for Paris, he personally ordered that the Galileo Galilei codex be isolated and protected by special courier lest anything happen to them during the long and dangerous journey. The preservation of the trial documents, those of the ‘Decreta’ containing trial records and judgements, and the ‘Processus’, the documents containing details and notes taken during interrogations, cross examinations of both the prosecution and defence, including the important sentence and abjuration, were thus secured for posterity. Since then the story revealed has fascinated the world in every generation, but always in a manner damaging to the credibility of Roman Catholicism.

The French returned the archives in 1846 on condition that Rome published full details of Galileo’s trial. Pope Pius IX placed the documents in the care of Monsignor Marino Marini, Prefect of the Vatican Archives, and it was he who published the first account of the case in his Galileo e L’Inquisizione of 1850. Then, in 1867, the French scholar Henri de L’Epinois gained access to some of the Galileo documents and published several of the most important ones in his Revue des Questions Historiques and later in his Les Piéces du Procés de Galilée. It was however, not until Pope Leo XIII finally opened the Vatican’s archives and the more secret Archives of the Holy Office that the most comprehensive transcriptions of the affair were made by Antonio Favaro in his Works of Galileo Galilei (national edition, 1890-1909 and 1929-1939). Further books edited by Berti (1878), the Protestant von Gebler (1879), and others, all amounted to a vast compilation of facts pertaining to Galileo’s clash with the Church.

For the most dishonourable piece of obscurantism in the history of the Galileo charade, it would be hard to beat that provided by Rome itself in 1992. Soon after his election in 1978, Pope John Paul II expressed a wish that the Pontifical Academy of Sciences would conduct an investigation into the Galileo case. Obviously he wanted to vindicate the sentiments that appeared in the Vatican II pastoral constitution Gaudium et spes – of which he was a major contributor - wherein they sided with Galileo and condemned the action of the Holy Office in 1616 and 1633. On that occasion, asking for an ‘objective’ review of the Copernican-Ptolemaic controversy of the seventeenth century, he said: ‘I give all my support to this task, which could do honour to the truth of faith and of science and open doors for future corroboration’. This commission was established in 1981 and eleven years later, on 31 Oct. 1992, Rome announced its findings and conclusions. So selected and obscured were its findings that even the Copernicans agreed it was virtually worthless.

.
Since then, perhaps the best documentary version was published by MAURICE A. FINOCCHIARO, Retrying Galileo and others.

 

[cassini]

I have the same question, I do not see that geocentrism was defined infallible by your references. Thank you.
Under the first proposition you cite, the apparent meaning is the sun is not the center of the universe. no problem.
under the second proposition: why could it not be understood to mean that this proposition can not be proven or disproven by scripture?
Again, a partial quote, out of context, can be honestly misunderstood.
another question might be the use of the word “world”.We may take that to mean all creation, or we might take it to mean the daily world we see and live in, the moral world. Ifthe meaning they intended for world was something other than the way you perceive it,how does that affect your understanding?

Interesting post Douglas, for you unknowingly (I presume) do what the 1741 churchmen did when trying to find a way out of the dilemma, start questioning the words and their meaning.
This however is TOTALLY DISHONEST and DISHONESTY should have no part in Catholicism. Given the heliocentric model was on view for nearly 80 years prior to 1616, we know exactly what was meant by the words of the decree. That to hold the sun is fixed is formal heresy because…

The second proposition, the movement of the earth that denies it is at the centre of the world was not found formally heretical because it is based on certain scriptural inferences but not according to the words themselves Moreover, and this is important, note what was condemned and what was not. At no time did the Church declare or confirm any geometric system of the cosmos, only that the sun moves and that the earth, at the centre of the universe, does not. These then are principles, not models. The Inquisition did not comment on the ‘scientific’ (so-called proofs) aspect of the proposals but stuck to its area of purview and comment. With regard its definition of formal heresy and ‘erroneous to the faith’; the Church remained within the parameters of its divine protection and guidance.

As regards the WORLD, interesting that the very same question came up on another related thread. My answer to that comes under the principle for Catholicism: EVERYTHING PRESUPPOSES CREATION. So we cannot say science defines what the world is, but THEOLOGY. The WORLD then is the universe according to CREATION. It is the physical and spiritual cosmos created for man and his survival as well as an instrument to GIVE GLORY TO GOD. So how best could such a world give glory to God if not a GEOCENTRIC one. Who could even DOUBT the existence of God in a geocentric world?
But Catholicism also has to deal with a guy called the DEVIL, out to banish GOD from the minds and souls of man. No doubt he didn’t like this doctrine of geocentrism created by God, so he put up a plan that operated throughout history and came to fruition in 1741 when popes joined up to dismiss the Church’s own endorsement of the reality of the WORLD. At first, after Noah heliocentrism manifested itself as a GOD. Then it became a theory, then it became a truth for nearly every man, woman and child on earth. Today if anyone DARES try to re-establish that CREATION there will be many ready to vilify him or her, especially those within the Catholic Church. Intellectual credibility has become a greater faith among Catholics now than complying with a papal decree of a medieval pope.

 

[Douglas_Kraeger]

Interesting post Douglas, for you unknowingly (I presume) do what the 1741 churchmen did when trying to find a way out of the dilemma, start questioning the words and their meaning.
This however is TOTALLY DISHONEST and DISHONESTY should have no part in Catholicism. Given the heliocentric model was on view for nearly 80 years prior to 1616, we know exactly what was meant by the words of the decree. That to hold the sun is fixed is formal heresy because…

The second proposition, the movement of the earth that denies it is at the centre of the world was not found formally heretical because it is based on certain scriptural inferences but not according to the words themselves Moreover, and this is important, note what was condemned and what was not. At no time did the Church declare or confirm any geometric system of the cosmos, only that the sun moves and that the earth, at the centre of the universe, does not. These then are principles, not models. The Inquisition did not comment on the ‘scientific’ (so-called proofs) aspect of the proposals but stuck to its area of purview and comment. With regard its definition of formal heresy and ‘erroneous to the faith’; the Church remained within the parameters of its divine protection and guidance.

As regards the WORLD, interesting that the very same question came up on another related thread. My answer to that comes under the principle for Catholicism: EVERYTHING PRESUPPOSES CREATION. So we cannot say science defines what the world is, but THEOLOGY. The WORLD then is the universe according to CREATION. It is the physical and spiritual cosmos created for man and his survival as well as an instrument to GIVE GLORY TO GOD. So how best could such a world give glory to God if not a GEOCENTRIC one. Who could even DOUBT the existence of God in a geocentric world?
But Catholicism also has to deal with a guy called the DEVIL, out to banish GOD from the minds and souls of man. No doubt he didn’t like this doctrine of geocentrism created by God, so he put up a plan that operated throughout history and came to fruition in 1741 when popes joined up to dismiss the Church’s own endorsement of the reality of the WORLD. At first, after Noah heliocentrism manifested itself as a GOD. Then it became a theory, then it became a truth for nearly every man, woman and child on earth. Today if anyone DARES try to re-establish that CREATION there will be many ready to vilify him or her, especially those within the Catholic Church. Intellectual credibility has become a greater faith among Catholics now than complying with a papal decree of a medieval pope.

Thank you for responding, but I am asking for the original source of your summations. Statements like, “The second proposition, the movement of the earth that denies it is at the centre of the world was not found formally heretical because it is based on certain scriptural inferences but not according to the words themselves Moreover, and this is important, note what was condemned and what was not. At no time did the Church declare or confirm any geometric system of the cosmos, only that the sun moves and that the earth, at the centre of the universe, does not. These then are principles,” are your cnclusions. I am not saying you are wrong. I am only asking for the specific place I can read the whole paragraph.
I think it has great meaning where you say " was not found formally heretical because it is based on certain **scriptural inferences **but not according to the words themselves". scriptural inferences? does that mean it is open to slightly different interpretaions and is not something we can be absolutely certain of? If not, why not?
Thank you

 

[Douglas_Kraeger]

also I could argue that there might be a better reason for a different, nongeocentric creation. You say “So how best could such a world give glory to God if not a GEOCENTRIC one. Who could even DOUBT the existence of God in a geocentric world?”, I do not believe your opinion proves you are correct.

 

[JDaniel]

This has been stuck in my head for the past week, and I want some (name removed by moderator)ut on it. It’s mainly 6-8 that I’m not so sure about.

1. Assume time has no beginning.
2. Therefore, an infinite amount of time has passed before the present day.
3. However, it is impossible for an infinite amount of time to be completed. An infinite amount of time would literally take forever to finish.
4. Therefore, it would take forever for the events of the present day to occur.
5. Therefore, the present will never occur.
6. Since this is not the case, time must have a beginning.

The logic up to this point is very good.

---

1. Since time must have a beginning, it must have a cause.

Here is where the problem begins: some want to treat time as though it had ontological being. Time is not an ontological being nor does it possess ontological beingness. It has a sort of “ontological” ground, but only by clinging to ontological motion. It has imperfect existence in the real world. Causality does not apply to the beginnings of "time,’ except in an accidental way.

If time is directly caused, what kind of cause caused it? What kind of cause sustains it? Is it a material cause? Or, an efficient cause? These are the only external causes. The formal and final causes are intrinsic causes, so they can be excluded, as we have already been told - here in this forum - that time cannot self-cause. All that we have left are the extrinsic causes, material and efficient. We can rule out material cause as it would only potentially exist; without its formal cause it could never actualize. One could say that the cause of time is an efficient cause and that efficient cause is motion or God. The problem now is, which motion? Was it a particular motion? Did the causal action occur at some particular “time?” In a sequence? Perhaps the collection of all motions? To date? At some beginning point, such as the Big Bang? What about complete absence of motions? What about the immobile? Can time be caused to stop? When the final throws of entropy occur, will there be a cause for the permanent stopping of time? Or, will time just continue on? If it just continues on, why?

“Time” leaves many questions to be answered. It is important that they be answered correctly or else we will have no cogent conception of time. Time is known to the Church as a correlate of motion (including the motion we call change). It simultaneously enters our awareness the moment we notice motion. The knowledge of time can linger in our minds even after a motion stops. Science seems to have a continuity of good evidence for a big bang cosmology. Now, if there was no motion “prior” to the aft innermost surface of the place occupied by and surrounding the stuff of the Big Bang, there was no time, pre- Big Bang.

If, on the other hand, just our Universe began with the BB, and there were no other universes that pre-dated ours, then there was motion correlative with our BB. So, if this is the one and only universe, then motion began with the BB and simultaneously so did time. Or, if motion began inside of the “singularity,” before its initial explosion, then time began within the singularity. Or, if God created the stuff of the singularity, then compressed it all, then let it explode.

1. Since time cannot exist before it begins, whatever caused time must exist outside of time - in other words, is eternal.

Since motion (and existing mobile beings) can be started and stopped, and since time only exists if there is motion, then time may well be able to appear, stop, then re-appear. Consider that a period of time was begun, existed, then all motion was stopped. God could do that. Thus, a time could have pre-existed our time.

Once again, the question is not “What(ever) caused time . . .” Rather, it is, "What caused motion. . . " Motion is, for sensing beings, an ontological reality. Material, mobile being is part of the real, physical universe.

 

[Douglas_Kraeger]

It seems possible from your arguement, that God created all things (including time) set them in motion, stopped them, (no ‘time’ now) started motion and time again, perhaps many times. I do not see where this contradicts the church’s teaching that God is outside of time, creator of all things, and in complete control, bringing about His everlasting Kingdom where He is everything to everybody, God is all to all.
All that would mean is that there are details that we are incapable of knowing about other than by divine revelation. Would this change anything concerning whether or notGod wants us all to believe that Jesus Chrst is True God and True man and that He established one church, with one Faith?

 

[avflf]

I believe the it is philosophiscally provable that God must be an infinite spirit, .

A philosopher has been described as a blind man wearing dark glasses, in a dark room, looking for a black cat that is not there … but keeps on trying to find it. On the other hand a theologian is described as a blind man wearing dark glasses, in a dark room, looking for a black cat that is not there … but is convinced he found it.

 

[cassini]

Thank you for responding, but I am asking for the original source of your summations. Statements like, "The second proposition, the movement of the earth that denies it is at the centre of the world was not found formally heretical because it is based on certain scriptural inferences but not according to the words themselves

< separated by Cassini)>

Moreover, and this is important, note what was condemned and what was not. At no time did the Church declare or confirm any geometric system of the cosmos, only that the sun moves and that the earth, at the centre of the universe, does not. These then are principles," are your cnclusions. I am not saying you are wrong. I am only asking for the specific place I can read the whole paragraph.
I think it has great meaning where you say " was not found formally heretical because it is based on certain **scriptural inferences **but not according to the words themselves". scriptural inferences? does that mean it is open to slightly different interpretaions and is not something we can be absolutely certain of? If not, why not?
Thank you

Douglas, the above was put together by me. The first part - I have separated the two - has various references from many sources. The actual words of the decree was first recorded publicly by Giorgius Polaccus, Venice, 1644 according Fr W. W. Roberts in his book The Pontifical Decrees against the Doctrine of the Earth’s Movement and the Ultramontane Defence of Them, Parker & Co., London, 1870 and second edition, 1885. It can of course be found in many places elsewhere.

The second part was put together by me to clarify the decrees because most books say INCORRECTLY the Church was defending the PTOLEMAIC SYSTEM. As it says the Church did not defend any SYSTEM.

As I understand it the Scriptures clearly state the sun moves. It does not clearly state the earth does not move and is fixed at the centre of the world. That is only inferred in various statements. Here are a few examples:

“Behold I will bring again the shadow of the lines, by which it is now gone down in the sun dial of Achaz with the sun, ten lines backwards. And the sun returned ten lines by the degrees by which it was gone down”. — (Isaias 38:8)

“*Then Josue spoke to the Lord, in the day that he delivered the Amorrhite in the sight of the children of Israel, and he said before them: Move not, O sun, toward Gabaon, nor thou, O moon, toward the valley of Ajalon. And the sun and the moon stood still… Is it not written in the book of the just [now lost]? So the sun stood still in the midst of the heaven, and hasted not to go down the space of one day. There was not before nor after so long a day, the Lord obeying the voice of a man, and fighting for Israel.” *— (Josue 10:12-13).

“*The heavens show forth the glory of God, and the firmament declareth the work of his hands….He hath set his tabernacle in the sun: and he, as a bridegroom coming out of his bride chamber, Hath rejoiced as a giant to run the way. His going out is from the end of heaven, and his circuit even to the end thereof: and there is no one that can hide himself from his heat.” *—(Ps. 18:1, 6-7).

We see in these passages that the sun is said to move so cannot be fixed at the centre of the world. . Now a few about the earth:

“*Thou who didst found the earth on its stable support (super stabilitatem suam); it shall not be moved for ever.” *—Ps. 103:5

“He hath fixed the earth, which shall not be moved.” —Ps. 92:1

“He has made the world firm, not to be moved.” —Ps. 95:10

It can only be inferred from these sentences that the earth is fixed at the centre of the world.

 

[JDaniel]

It seems possible from your arguement, that God created all things (including time) set them in motion, stopped them, (no ‘time’ now) started motion and time again, perhaps many times. I do not see where this contradicts the church’s teaching that God is outside of time, creator of all things, and in complete control, bringing about His everlasting Kingdom where He is everything to everybody, God is all to all.
All that would mean is that there are details that we are incapable of knowing about other than by divine revelation. Would this change anything concerning whether or notGod wants us all to believe that Jesus Chrst is True God and True man and that He established one church, with one Faith?

Douglas,

Remember, No Motion, No Time. If time is, as the Church seems to indicate, correlative with Motion, then Motion would have to have begun a Now-length before Time began.

God bless,
jd

 

[yppop]

The Op asks: Does time have a beginning? Let me rephrase an answer I gave in post #158 on page 11 of this thread: “On the question of time, there seems to be two points of view: (1) that time began with the big bang; hence is finite, and (2) time had no beginning; hence is infinite (eternal)”.

In my post I propose that time is both finite and infinite because there are two modalities of time. I then go on to say in #158, “I suggest we recognize two forms of time: cosmological time and “pre-big bang time or God’s time”, which is concomitant with God for all eternity. So, if time is the manifestation of change, the question then is: what was changing during God’s time?

Now skip to Post #237, now on page 16 of this thread. This lone post from fcs25, a questioning protestant, who writes, “All mental events require time else you cannot progress from one thought to another. This also applies to the concept of God”.

And this was immediately validated in post #248, when JD answers fcs and presents a wonderful example of time being a manifestation of thought: “Your first sentence is quite correct. Lie in bed in total darkness, so that your senses perceive no motion. Yet, our ideas pass through our minds in succession, taking time as they do. This is one of the ways in which sensing beings are able to know that time is flowing.”

Later in post #244, page17, Cassini adds his validation when he comments on fcs’ gem, “Welcome aboard fcs, so far you are 100% correct. Keep up the good work.

So the answer to the question that ends the first paragraph, is the answer I alluded to in #158 when I wrote, “Perhaps it was nothing more than God’s thoughts and it was the Mind of God that caused the big bang and the beginning of cosmological time”

To summarize:
God always existed;
God always thought;
God’s thought is a form of change
Change is manifested as time
Therefore God’s thought is manifested as time.

One of God’s thoughts was to create the cosmos.
The cosmos consists of constantly changing matter and space.
The changes in matter and space that form the cosmos are manifested as cosmological time.

Cosmological time is different than time associated with God’s thoughts.
God’s time is infinite; Cosmological time is finite.

Yppop

 

[James_S_Saint]

Now Yppop add to that very well poised post the thought that the cosmos IS God’s thoughts.

 

[sidbrown]

Sid, ‘infallible documents’ is the wrong word to use. No pope has ever said this is infallible. Infallibility is explicit only when it is ex cathedra or defined in a Church council. There is however an infallibility of the Church in its ordinary magisterium when defining and declaring matters of faith and morals. Catholics are required to believe the Church’s teaching whether explicitly infallible or under the ordinary magisterium. As I have demonstrated if the Holy Ghost could only be guaranteed to be protecting the Church’s teaching when a pope or council with the pope defines it then all the teachings that bring the whole theology together would become redundant as a source of truth. One cannot willy nilly dismiss a papal decree as null and void and expect anyone to take the Catholic Church seriously. That said however, one must be able to distinguish between papal opinions and official papal definitions.

Here is something on references I have written up myself:
Anyone taking time to investigate the Galileo case will be amazed by the vast amount of documents detailing the man, his life, his work, his letters, his books, and trials that survived the vagaries of time. It is as though they were destined, for whatever reason, to be preserved reasonably intact throughout the centuries. Thus when the Freemason Napoleon of revolutionary France sacked Rome in 1810 and stole the documents of the Secret Archives for Paris, he personally ordered that the Galileo Galilei codex be isolated and protected by special courier lest anything happen to them during the long and dangerous journey. The preservation of the trial documents, those of the ‘Decreta’ containing trial records and judgements, and the ‘Processus’, the documents containing details and notes taken during interrogations, cross examinations of both the prosecution and defence, including the important sentence and abjuration, were thus secured for posterity. Since then the story revealed has fascinated the world in every generation, but always in a manner damaging to the credibility of Roman Catholicism.

The French returned the archives in 1846 on condition that Rome published full details of Galileo’s trial. Pope Pius IX placed the documents in the care of Monsignor Marino Marini, Prefect of the Vatican Archives, and it was he who published the first account of the case in his Galileo e L’Inquisizione of 1850. Then, in 1867, the French scholar Henri de L’Epinois gained access to some of the Galileo documents and published several of the most important ones in his Revue des Questions Historiques and later in his Les Piéces du Procés de Galilée. It was however, not until Pope Leo XIII finally opened the Vatican’s archives and the more secret Archives of the Holy Office that the most comprehensive transcriptions of the affair were made by Antonio Favaro in his Works of Galileo Galilei (national edition, 1890-1909 and 1929-1939). Further books edited by Berti (1878), the Protestant von Gebler (1879), and others, all amounted to a vast compilation of facts pertaining to Galileo’s clash with the Church.

For the most dishonourable piece of obscurantism in the history of the Galileo charade, it would be hard to beat that provided by Rome itself in 1992. Soon after his election in 1978, Pope John Paul II expressed a wish that the Pontifical Academy of Sciences would conduct an investigation into the Galileo case. Obviously he wanted to vindicate the sentiments that appeared in the Vatican II pastoral constitution Gaudium et spes – of which he was a major contributor - wherein they sided with Galileo and condemned the action of the Holy Office in 1616 and 1633. On that occasion, asking for an ‘objective’ review of the Copernican-Ptolemaic controversy of the seventeenth century, he said: ‘I give all my support to this task, which could do honour to the truth of faith and of science and open doors for future corroboration’. This commission was established in 1981 and eleven years later, on 31 Oct. 1992, Rome announced its findings and conclusions. So selected and obscured were its findings that even the Copernicans agreed it was virtually worthless.

.
Since then, perhaps the best documentary version was published by MAURICE A. FINOCCHIARO, Retrying Galileo and others.

I don;t think that the Catholic Church teaches geocentrism now.

 

[yppop]

Now Yppop add to that very well poised post the thought that the cosmos IS God’s thoughts.

Yes, the cosmos is God’s thoughts! The idea of the eternal synchronicity of God and time, I believe, is what you propose in threads such as “Before God” and “Time -for an IQ Test”. Since my thesis presented in the thread “*God Exists, But How?”, *now on page 9, begins with the big bang, it ignores this very fruitful idea of the duality of time—cosmological time and God’s time—but I will now incorporate it into my own thesis.

I know we take different paths to the creation of the cosmos, mine a straight forward existence of God’s time, yours a more complex history of inertia creation, I thank you for inducing the idea of the duality of time in my mind. Perhaps we can reach a consensus in this thread based on duality that would satisfy the question asked in the OP. Isn’t this what a philosophical discussion should be about: the free exchange of ideas?
Yppop

 

[James_S_Saint]

Perhaps we can reach a consensus in this thread based on duality that would satisfy the question asked in the OP. Isn’t this what a philosophical discussion should be about: the free exchange of ideas?
Yppop

“should be” - YES!

You and I think from very different perspectives, but we each seek out upon which of our differing views we can agree and then seek to settle what is left.

It is interesting that you should post such at this time. I have just been filling out my chapter on the Constitution of Harmony wherein a quintessential element is “Resolution Debating”. In Resolution Debating, the proponents seek how much they can agree upon rather than the attempt to gain popularity vote for defeating the other proponent. In effect the “opponent” is disagreement and obfuscation.

In effect, God IS the fundamental agreement within all things. The process of achieving agreement, rather than winning competitions, is the path to God. This was Jesus’ fundamental teaching and premise to all He taught - “seek agreement, not controversy” or “agree to agree, if you possibly can”. It is fundamentally why he can be rightfully called “Son of God” for He seeks with devotion the agreement within all things, lion and lame. Love IS devoted support. “Follow me and you will find God”. In that chapter, I am detailing exactly how any group can do just that regardless of their current beliefs concerning any religion, anti-religion, or governing process. If the name had not already been chosen, I would have named it “Catholicism”.

Oh but before you publish, we might need to have a discussion concerning the thought that whatever changes ALWAYS leaves physical evidence. The universe is the set of ALL that changes, but none of that which never changes. This in effect, merges those separate concerns of time back into one again. Proving that assertion will take considerable discussion, but don’t go to press before we have a talk, k.

 

[Douglas_Kraeger]

A philosopher has been described as a blind man wearing dark glasses, in a dark room, looking for a black cat that is not there … but keeps on trying to find it. On the other hand a theologian is described as a blind man wearing dark glasses, in a dark room, looking for a black cat that is not there … but is convinced he found it.

I am curious; Do you believe there are any possible actions that are absolutely, objectively, morrally, wrong and evil? Such as deliberately killing your neighbor’s son as he walked across your lawn, rather than the small deer, because you wanted supper and the boy had more meat on his bones? Do you disagree with the premiss that: If there is one action that is absolutely, objectively, morrally wrong and evil, then there must be an All-powerful, All-knowing, All-loving, infinite Creator to create and revealsuch an objective moral Law? What else couldcreatean absolute Law?

 

[peary1]

This has been stuck in my head for the past week, and I want some (name removed by moderator)ut on it. It’s mainly 6-8 that I’m not so sure about.

1. Assume time has no beginning.
2. Therefore, an infinite amount of time has passed before the present day.
3. However, it is impossible for an infinite amount of time to be completed. An infinite amount of time would literally take forever to finish.
4. Therefore, it would take forever for the events of the present day to occur.
5. Therefore, the present will never occur.
6. Since this is not the case, time must have a beginning.
7. Since time must have a beginning, it must have a cause.
8. Since time cannot exist before it begins, whatever caused time must exist outside of time - in other words, is eternal.

Time is a product of 3-dimensional reality. It has its beginning through the physical universe.

 

[cassini]

I don;t think that the Catholic Church teaches geocentrism now.

Yes it does, by virtue of a papal decree of 1616, never ABROGATED. That is the LAW of the Church. That churchmen do not TEACH its own papal decrees does not mean that THE CHURCH does not hold to a fixed earth, moving sun interpretation of Scripture and a revelation.