God knows what will happen in the future, correct?

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onenow1 said:
God could change things through intervention, that does not mean that there is any change within the nature of God, because he knew from all eternity that he would create the world and save it from its sins.
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onenow1, might I point out that in the underlined statement you have made the same error that others have accused Bahman of making, you have made God subject to time. It’s not that God knew that He would save the world, as if saving it was some future event. But rather it’s that all of the events, in all of history, are part of some eternal now for God. There’s no was, and there’s no will be, there’s only now. For God to create something however, He must change it from not being, to being, but for God, no such change is possible, because everything has always been. If God can’t change, then He can’t create. For God, everything has always been exactly the way it is.

I can understand how God could be the sustaining cause of the world. I can also understand how His foreknowledge doesn’t negate our free will. But to identify Him as the creator is to give Him a capacity that He simply can’t have. Because He can’t change. If He can’t change, then He can’t create.

I hope that this makes sense.
Aloysium said:
The Truth, comes from surrendering one’s mind to God.
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Aloysium, amazingly, mankind’s greatest lies come in exactly the same way. The world is full of men who have surrendered their minds to God. They even persecute and kill in His name. Their so-called wisdom isn’t so much a window into the mind of God, as it is a window into the hearts of men. If you truly want to know the heart of a man, then have him believe that he knows the mind of God. What is then revealed isn’t the mind of God, but the heart of the man.
 
Bahman said:
I would be happier that you would give me a definition of your God instead an example so we could have something to work around. Can we define a timeless God that sees everything in his eternal now?
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God cannot be satisfactorily defined any more than a person can be defined. Anything we say is going to be unsatisfactory. And maybe that’s part of the plan. If someone could be fully possessed, how can there be a desire to know them?

We can begin to know God because, through his own initiative, God approaches us and desires for us to know him. But, because God is the ultimate “other”, we cannot possess him in his essence.

God is his own outpouring, a community of love before creation itself. God loves so powerfully that even though he is uncreated…he pours himself out into creation through Christ. He breathes forth existence itself, and “con-descends” to know us in Christ.

We talk about God’s mystery, and his full essence is mysterious, but God speaks a “Logos”, a “reason”, to us, through Christ.

As has been talked about in the thread, God simply is. We, on the other hand, were not always. Right? There was a time when you “were not”, now “you are”. That is all a non-sequitur with God, who simply is “I Am”.
 
Bahman said:
No. I was referring to your God that he could not experience anything temporal hence he could not know the current time hence he could not sustain creation. The same apply to very act creation. You God cannot have both candies at the same time, meaning to be timeless and temporal the former is needed to know everything and the latter is needed to carry different actions.

The incarnation of Jesus,where humanity and divinity merged from all time in God’s plan.

Cool.
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Good !

Can you imagine a simple act in timeless state?

“No”! I am not God. However I have had dreams that were in the state of sleeping with no Idea of time.

God Bless:)
 
clem456 said:
God cannot be satisfactorily defined any more than a person can be defined. Anything we say is going to be unsatisfactory. And maybe that’s part of the plan. If someone could be fully possessed, how can there be a desire to know them?

We can begin to know God because, through his own initiative, God approaches us and desires for us to know him. But, because God is the ultimate “other”, we cannot possess him in his essence.

God is his own outpouring, a community of love before creation itself. God loves so powerfully that even though he is uncreated…he pours himself out into creation through Christ. He breathes forth existence itself, and “con-descends” to know us in Christ.

We talk about God’s mystery, and his full essence is mysterious, but God speaks a “Logos”, a “reason”, to us, through Christ.

As has been talked about in the thread, God simply is. We, on the other hand, were not always. Right? There was a time when you “were not”, now “you are”. That is all a non-sequitur with God, who simply is “I Am”.
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:thumbsup:Exactly Clem!
 
clem456 said:
God cannot be satisfactorily defined any more than a person can be defined. Anything we say is going to be unsatisfactory. And maybe that’s part of the plan. If someone could be fully possessed, how can there be a desire to know them?

We can begin to know God because, through his own initiative, God approaches us and desires for us to know him. But, because God is the ultimate “other”, we cannot possess him in his essence.

God is his own outpouring, a community of love before creation itself. God loves so powerfully that even though he is uncreated…he pours himself out into creation through Christ. He breathes forth existence itself, and “con-descends” to know us in Christ.

We talk about God’s mystery, and his full essence is mysterious, but God speaks a “Logos”, a “reason”, to us, through Christ.

As has been talked about in the thread, God simply is. We, on the other hand, were not always. Right? There was a time when you “were not”, now “you are”. That is all a non-sequitur with God, who simply is “I Am”.
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Mystery is a good way to cut the line of reasoning when you reach a dead end with contradiction waiting for you. How about facing the truth as it is and call a concept contradictory instead of mysterious? In fact, I argue that there is no mystery here but the concept of timeless God is contradictory. Theologians invented the concept of timeless God in order to formulate a theory which can accommodate a God who knows everything. But they were not aware of the fact that they have to give up something instead since such a God cannot act.
 
onenow1 said:
“No”! I am not God…
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That is not a good answer. Each act is dealing with a change. No change is possible in timeless state hence no act is possible. Do you still believe that God is timeless?
 
Bahman said:
Mystery is a good way to cut the line of reasoning when you reach a dead end with contradiction waiting for you. How about facing the truth as it is and call a concept contradictory instead of mysterious? In fact, I argue that there is no mystery here but the concept of timeless God is contradictory. Theologians invented the concept of timeless God in order to formulate a theory which can accommodate a God who knows everything. But they were not aware of the fact that they have to give up something instead since such a God cannot act.
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None of the above is true. The mysterious parts of God are statement of reality. The only contradiction exist in your own mind. The truth is that you have built a strawman god. God is a real being, not a concept. His timelessness can be logically deduced from valid premises (see St. Thomas Aquinas).
 
Bahman said:
That is not a good answer. Each act is dealing with a change. No change is possible in timeless state hence no act is possible. Do you still believe that God is timeless?
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It is not that it is a good answer, its just an answer you chose not to accept. God is eternal.

God Bless:)
 
Bahman said:
Mystery is a good way to cut the line of reasoning when you reach a dead end with contradiction waiting for you. How about facing the truth as it is and call a concept contradictory instead of mysterious? In fact, I argue that there is no mystery here but the concept of timeless God is contradictory. Theologians invented the concept of timeless God in order to formulate a theory which can accommodate a God who knows everything. But they were not aware of the fact that they have to give up something instead since such a God cannot act.
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If you cannot acknowledge the existence of mystery, then you fancy yourself omniscient.
This is not atheism at all, but an inverted and unreasonable faith in yourself and your own ability to know things for certain.

I would like to repeat again that mystery is not the same thing as unreasonable, not the same thing as completely incomprehensible, not the same thing as imaginary. Mystery respects that which we cannot know fully.
 
Bahman said:
Mystery is a good way to cut the line of reasoning when you reach a dead end with contradiction waiting for you. How about facing the truth as it is and call a concept contradictory instead of mysterious? In fact, I argue that there is no mystery here but the concept of timeless God is contradictory. Theologians invented the concept of timeless God in order to formulate a theory which can accommodate a God who knows everything. But they were not aware of the fact that they have to give up something instead since such a God cannot act.
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Nope.
 
If one approaches the knowledge of God as if it were the knowledge of a creature in time - one simply will not get anywhere in understanding the matter.

The knowledge of God is not like ours.

It is very important keep in mind in general that God is more unlike creation than like it.
 
clem456 said:
If you cannot acknowledge the existence of mystery, then you fancy yourself omniscient.
This is not atheism at all, but an inverted and unreasonable faith in yourself and your own ability to know things for certain.
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Mystery has no place in philosophy forum. You stop thinking and instead believing when you accept the very concept of mystery and this is very deadly. We however need to believe on something so called truth in order to keep thinking. This is something we experience it each day in our life and it improves as we keep thinking. We need a right judgment for making distinction between true and false, the duty of logic. The truth is what we experience it at the very end, if there is any end.
clem456 said:
I would like to repeat again that mystery is not the same thing as unreasonable, not the same thing as completely incomprehensible, not the same thing as imaginary. Mystery respects that which we cannot know fully.
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You cannot call something mystery when logic call it illogical.
 
onenow1 said:
Indeed !

God Bless:)
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But the God who sees everything cannot possibly do anything since the very definition of doing is dealing with producing some change! This is in fact sounds as illogical as it is if you think a little.
 
Bahman said:
A criticism. We of course free to decide. Our decisions are indeterminable hence future is indeterminable as well.
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Just because something can be determined does not eliminate the freedom involved. Let’s say I had a child who loved chocolate, and I knew without a doubt he would eat a piece of chocolate if I gave it to him, it doesn’t mean the child has no choice to take it. His free decision is independent of any degree of foresight I might have.
 
MarcoPolo said:
Just because something can be determined does not eliminate the freedom involved. Let’s say I had a child who loved chocolate, and I knew without a doubt he would eat a piece of chocolate if I gave it to him, it doesn’t mean the child has no choice to take it. His free decision is independent of any degree of foresight I might have.
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So you agree with me about the very fact that decision is indeterminable hence you are free.
 
Bahman said:
But the God who sees everything cannot possibly do anything since the very definition of doing is dealing with producing some change! This is in fact sounds as illogical as it is if you think a little.
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Again…trying to ask “how come the peddles do not go round and round in this car like they do in my bicycle?”
 
Bahman said:
Mystery has no place in philosophy forum. You stop thinking and instead believing when you accept the very concept of mystery and this is very deadly.
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Actually just the opposite. A closed mind believes it can apprehend everything. Mystery draws one to an ever deeper truth, appealing to reason, enlightened by faith.
 
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