Oh, I’m not saying I didn’t see it; I just don’t think it’s a proper analogy in the case of a God who exists outside of the space-time (which, by the way,
He created 
).
Well, it was you who presented the movie analogy (which I embraced, since I find it most appropriate). The only problem with it was that the actors in the movie are “frozen”, they lack our (assumed) free will. The theater-play analogy fixes that problem. It is true that you could cut the movie into individual frames, put those frames onto a stack, and illuminate all of them with a strong enough light and “see” all of them “simultaneously”. Of course you would lose all the information which would come from the temporal sequence of the frames - in other words it would become a horrible, meaningless totally black frame without any information at all. You cannot do that with a theater play. It is being “played” one scene at a time as it happens in reality, and it preserves the “uncertainty” coming from the free will of the actors.
So now, since the movie/play analogy argues against your interpretation, you wish to discard it? :tsktsk:
Yes, you have. However, although change exists within the context of the temporal frame of reference of space-time, you haven’t explained why it has to exist outside that frame of reference. It’s true that you’ve asserted this point many times… but given no reasoning for it. Why is it that our temporal context must impose itself on God?
I did not say that it is “our” temporal context. It is “some” temporal context. Let me make a short summary:
- theists assert that God “acts”, or makes “changes”.
- the metaphysical concept of action - which is independent of a temporal framework - involves a “change”. (Otherwise there would be no difference between action and inaction).
- Any kind of change means a temporal “before” and “after”. (Without a before and an after there cannot be a change.) So it is action and change which will necessitate the introduction of some kind of “time”. Without this time the whole idea of “change” and “action” would collapse, and this would contradict assumption #1 (God acts).
It is this contradiction which makes the assumption of some temporal framework logically necessary for God.
Now you might try to say that in the proposition: “God acts” the word “acts” cannot be taken to mean the same thing as in the proposition: “John acts”, but that line of “defense” is even worse, because it would render the word “action” meaningless.
Unfortunately, many apologists take that “track”, whenever their argument collapses. Whatever the scenario, they start with an assertion about God, which takes the form of “God is/does
something”. When their assertion is refuted, they try to salvage their position by a cop-out: “when it comes to God that
something is fundamentally different from a human framework”. And when someone points out that this cop-out makes their original assertion meaningless, then they deny that, too. To see this level of intellectual dishonesty is extremely frustrating, and it is usually followed by my last line of “defense”, putting the person on “ignore”. Which makes them frustrated, but that is ok…
What you’ve provided is explanations that describe time
from our perspective, within this universe’s space-time. You haven’t attempted to explain why this must be so from the outside. When you get a minute (and yes, I understand that, if you’re on vacation, replying to threads here isn’t your first priority
), could you attempt that explanation? The notion that you’ve suggested so far only appeals to our internal time-frame…
I did it in the paragraph above.
The whole problem revolves around “what can be known”, or what does “omniscience” mean? Obviously everything that “exists” can be known. Also obviously everything that “existed” can be known to someone who existed “back then”, when it happened. The problem is the
future in particular, or the “
nonexistence” in general. Is it meaningful that something can be known that does not exist and did not exist?
Since knowledge is information (which concept was not available to people in the past) it is blindingly obvious that one cannot gather information about something that does not exist. One can surmise, imagine, etc… but one cannot
know. This is the reason that I presented all those scenarios about the “book, which does not reside on my desk”. Since there is no book there, it has no title, and therefore it cannot be known. Sure, there could be a book there, or more precisely, there could be a plethora of books there… but that is irrelevant: “there IS no book”, so there is no title, so there is no “knowledge”.
Now, let’s look at two problems.
- Is traveling into the past possible?
- Is knowledge of the future possible?
The answer is “NO”, to both of them, and a simple thought experiment can prove it.
- If traveling into the past would be possible, then the past COULD be changed, and this change could include the destruction of the present, which made time travel possible. The good-old grandfather paradox.
- If knowledge of the future would be possible, then this knowledge could allow to take a different course of action, which would invalidate the “current” knowledge about the “future”. If I could know that taking route “X” to work would place me into a pile-up, and thus causing my death, I would not take route “X”, and therefore the predicted future would NOT come to pass.
Both changing the past and knowing the future lead to a logical contradiction, so neither of them is possible.
God is “active” from time to time, and it is very much asserted by the apologists, who - thus - assert a logical contradiction.
