My philosophical arguement against an "eternal-temporal" version of Heaven

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MindOverMatter2

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I have made many arguments in Gods favor. But as an honest philosopher i have also developed an argument that attacks a popular conception of God which i feel to be incorrect. I feel its an issue that we must tackle as Catholics in-order to grow in our understanding. This is not an argument against Gods existence (there are none that succeed), but rather it is an argument against a popular conception of what is meant by an eternal heaven.

It is popular to think of heaven as a never ending chain of temporal events.
  1. God has eternal (timeless) knowledge of all temporal events.
  2. God cannot have timeless knowledge of an actual infinity of temporal events, because an actual infinity cannot exist.
  3. God cannot have timeless knowledge of a potential-infinite since that would suggest change or progression in Gods timeless knowledge.
Conclusion: Therefore God does not have knowledge of a never ending chain of temporal events.

Which means that either…
  1. There is no eternal heaven
Or
  1. There is an eternal heaven, but it is not a never ending chain of temporal events.
What say ye?
 
MindOverMatter2 said:
I have made many arguments in Gods favor. But as an honest philosopher i have also developed an argument that attacks a popular conception of God which i feel to be incorrect. I feel its an issue that we must tackle as Catholics in-order to grow in our understanding. This is not an argument against Gods existence (there are none that succeed), but rather it is an argument against a popular conception of what is meant by an eternal heaven.

It is popular to think of heaven as a never ending chain of temporal events.
  1. God has eternal (timeless) knowledge of all temporal events.
  2. God cannot have timeless knowledge of an actual infinity of temporal events, because an actual infinity cannot exist.
  3. God cannot have timeless knowledge of a potential-infinite since that would suggest change or progression in Gods timeless knowledge.
Conclusion: Therefore God does not have knowledge of a never ending chain of temporal events.

Which means that either…
  1. There is no eternal heaven
Or
  1. There is an eternal heaven, but it is not a never ending chain of temporal events.
What say ye?
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That sounds about right.

Eternity has long been understood as not being nonending time, but as outside of time. Time, after all, is an artifact of an entropic physical universe, including our entropic human bodies.

ICXC NIKA
 
If Eternity is understood as lying in successive time, then it is infinite time, and so Eternity is a kind of infinity.

I for one am not certain why the mind of God could not contain infinity. But that one’s foe the OP.

ICXC NIKA
 
GEddie said:
If Eternity is understood as lying in successive time, then it is infinite time, and so Eternity is a kind of infinity.

I for one am not certain why the mind of God could not contain infinity. But that one’s foe the OP.

ICXC NIKA
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I may be thinking incorrectly, but have always interpreted eternal as having a beginning without an end, and infinite as having neither beginning nor end. Only God is Infinite. Nevertheless an interesting topic.

Kind regards.
 
MindOverMatter2 said:
I have made many arguments in Gods favor. But as an honest philosopher i have also developed an argument that attacks a popular conception of God which i feel to be incorrect. I feel its an issue that we must tackle as Catholics in-order to grow in our understanding. This is not an argument against Gods existence (there are none that succeed), but rather it is an argument against a popular conception of what is meant by an eternal heaven.

It is popular to think of heaven as a never ending chain of temporal events.
  1. God has eternal (timeless) knowledge of all temporal events.
  2. God cannot have timeless knowledge of an actual infinity of temporal events, because an actual infinity cannot exist.
  3. God cannot have timeless knowledge of a potential-infinite since that would suggest change or progression in Gods timeless knowledge.
Conclusion: Therefore God does not have knowledge of a never ending chain of temporal events.

Which means that either…
  1. There is no eternal heaven
Or
  1. There is an eternal heaven, but it is not a never ending chain of temporal events.
What say ye?
Click to expand...
I think you’ve made some assumptions that might not be warranted. I don’t see why “God cannot have timeless knowledge of an actual infinity of temporal events” – after all, He Himself is infinite and eternal. The reason you give for this inability – “because an actual infinity cannot exist” – merely begs the question raised in your post. I don’t think God having knowledge of a potential-infinite (however you define that) suggests a change in God’s knowledge; I assume from the start that God knows not only all that has happened, all that is happening, and all that will happen; but also all that could have happened, could be happening, and might happen. That’s part of my understanding of God as both eternal and infinite.

That being said, I also don’t think Heaven is a series of temporal events. Granted, it could be if God so willed it; but time as we understand it is a function of the space-time continuum, meaning that Heaven is both outside time and space. God Himself has told us that “one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8), which plainly tells us that time is different for God. Anyone with Him in Heaven is likely to find it a whole lot different than we like to think it will be.
 
paduard said:
I may be thinking incorrectly, but have always interpreted eternal as having a beginning without an end, and infinite as having neither beginning nor end. Only God is Infinite. Nevertheless an interesting topic.

Kind regards.
Click to expand...
That’s how I understand it as well. If eternity and infinite mean the same, that would mean that souls in heaven will exist infinitely and be outside of time, so they would have always been there. That doesn’t make sense.

In Christ,
OMGJ
 
MindOverMatter2 said:
I have made many arguments in Gods favor. But as an honest philosopher i have also developed an argument that attacks a popular conception of God which i feel to be incorrect. I feel its an issue that we must tackle as Catholics in-order to grow in our understanding. This is not an argument against Gods existence (there are none that succeed), but rather it is an argument against a popular conception of what is meant by an eternal heaven.

It is popular to think of heaven as a never ending chain of temporal events.
  1. God has eternal (timeless) knowledge of all temporal events.
  2. God cannot have timeless knowledge of an actual infinity of temporal events, because an actual infinity cannot exist.
  3. God cannot have timeless knowledge of a potential-infinite since that would suggest change or progression in Gods timeless knowledge.
Conclusion: Therefore God does not have knowledge of a never ending chain of temporal events.

Which means that either…
  1. There is no eternal heaven
Or
  1. There is an eternal heaven, but it is not a never ending chain of temporal events.
What say ye?
Click to expand...
That is well said and goes in the right direction, as far as I can tell.

Eternality has no component of duration. The term "knowledge’ as applied here to God is not knowledge as we apprehend information. It is knowledge in Principle, as BEing, not as series of events. Even physics refutes our perception of time as illusory. I’d like to here more from you on this.
 
Whadyamean said:
That is well said and goes in the right direction, as far as I can tell.

Eternality has no component of duration. The term "knowledge’ as applied here to God is not knowledge as we apprehend information. It is knowledge in Principle, as BEing, not as series of events. Even physics refutes our perception of time as illusory. I’d like to here more from you on this.
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In your penultimate sentence, do you mean that we perceive time as illusory and this is refuted by physics; or that our time perception is illusory?
 
GEddie said:
In your penultimate sentence, do you mean that we perceive time as illusory and this is refuted by physics; or that our time perception is illusory?
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Time as we perceive it is illusory. We usually experience “psychological time” as distinct from clock time which is relative,anyway, as you know. In the overall picture, time as such is a perceptual phenomenon having no actual reality as all that is is NOW.
 
Whadyamean said:
Time as we perceive it is illusory. We usually experience “psychological time” as distinct from clock time which is relative,anyway, as you know. In the overall picture, time as such is a perceptual phenomenon having no actual reality as all that is is NOW.
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To say that time is illusory is a contradiction, since inorder to experience the illusion in the first place you would have to experience a progression of events, and thus experience change. If there was nothing changing, then you would not experience it. IIlusions can only work within the greater context of dynamic events and our experiences of those events. For example, motion pictures (a collection of still frames appearing to be in motion) is a true illusion; but the motion itself is not an illusion, since the motion itself is required inorder to make the illusion of a motion picture using still frames. Otherwise it would be impossible to create the illusion. Relativity only works if there is truly change, otherwise relativity is meaningless.

The kind of illusion you appear to believe in is like saying existence is illusion.
 
There is a fascinating account of the interpretations of eternity online:

plato.stanford.edu/entries/eternity/

I agree with the conclusion:

“Augustine hints that it is not a reasonable requirement for a satisfactory articulation of a doctrine such as timeless eternality that one must be able accurately to describe what it is like to be timeless. Part of what it means to say that God is incomprehensible, ‘mysterious’, is to recognize that even if we say that God is timeless we do not and cannot have a straightforward understanding of what his timeless life is, or of what it is like to be timeless.”

What we do know is that facts are timeless. So God must be the Supreme Fact but of course He is far more than that! He causes change to occur and must be “the dynamic Fact”… 🙂
 
A never ending succession of never reaches infinity, there in no infinite number of events or of anything else that can be counted, divided or measured,
therefore,
it is wrong to say God can’t known an infinite number of events, there is no such number and God can only know the knowable, the real.

The phrase “potential-infinite” is unreal and meaningless, like “giant midget”.

The argument in post #1 is false.

Side issue:
God is eternal. He is “timeless”, if that’s what is meant by the term used on this thread.
He is outside of time. He is not burdened by time. ( There are probably other ways to express the idea, but this list should be sufficient. 🙂 )
Nevertheless, by his omniscience he knows about our experience of time.

In Heaven, we will experience time but it will not be a burden because we will already have all that it is reasonable for us to have and will not be waiting for goodness.
Even so, we will be learning and changing, or perhaps better to say growing, and so there will be time for us.

To participate in God’s divine nature does not mean that we will be outside time like he is. It means that like God, we will be able to think of and entertain all thoughts and knowledge we have simultaneously, an experience we cannot even describe now. The angels already had this ability. It will be given to us in the Beatific vision.
 
MindOverMatter2 said:
To say that time is illusory is a contradiction, since inorder to experience the illusion in the first place you would have to experience a progression of events, and thus experience change. If there was nothing changing, then you would not experience it. IIlusions can only work within the greater context of dynamic events and our experiences of those events. For example, motion pictures (a collection of still frames appearing to be in motion) is a true illusion; but the motion itself is not an illusion, since the motion itself is required inorder to make the illusion of a motion picture using still frames. Otherwise it would be impossible to create the illusion. Relativity only works if there is truly change, otherwise relativity is meaningless.

The kind of illusion you appear to believe in is like saying existence is illusion.
Click to expand...
Perhaps you have never seen Penn & Teller? Or one of their ilk? Isn’t any perception illusory on no other count than that it is incomplete and you only see what you are capable of putting on it? Ultimate;y yes, existence is illusory, as you might be led to understand if you ever had an experience, such as many do, that took you our of your discursive mind. Then you might discover that it is mind instead of matter, not mind over matter 🙂
 
Whadyamean said:
Perhaps you have never seen Penn & Teller? Or one of their ilk? Isn’t any perception illusory on no other count than that it is incomplete and you only see what you are capable of putting on it? Ultimate;y yes, existence is illusory, as you might be led to understand if you ever had an experience, such as many do, that took you our of your discursive mind. Then you might discover that it is mind instead of matter, not mind over matter 🙂
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I wouldn’t go THAT far; clearly we need matter to hold our minds together and keep them alive. You won’t be doing much thinking OR experiencing if someone puts a chokehold on your neck, or a clout on the side of your head.

Even in Scripture, eternal life is linked to matter, via the risen human body, pneumatikon soma.

God Bless and ICXC NIKA!
 
GEddie said:
I wouldn’t go THAT far; clearly we need matter to hold our minds together and keep them alive. You won’t be doing much thinking OR experiencing if someone puts a chokehold on your neck, or a clout on the side of your head.

Even in Scripture, eternal life is linked to matter, via the risen human body, pneumatikon soma.

God Bless and ICXC NIKA!
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Yes, if you have a very primitive interpretation of p.s., right? And choke holds etc are in the realm of the physical, which is only a veil over Reality yet one with it. If you have experienced beyond the mind then this is abundantly clear and is why we engage in spiritual practice, eh?
 
Whadyamean said:
Yes, if you have a very primitive interpretation of p.s., right? And choke holds etc are in the realm of the physical, which is only a veil over Reality yet one with it. If you have experienced beyond the mind then this is abundantly clear and is why we engage in spiritual practice, eh?
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If you care to engage with me (and the other 99% of readers on the forum who are nonphilosophers), please lose the jargon.

What precisely do you mean by experience beyond the mind? Your mind is what has experiences; in fact, the mind is “you”. You experience nothing while unconscious; and unconsciousness is physical.

If by EBTM you mean something related to drug trips or even meditation, I’d say those are just another dimension of cerebral mind-states. Even the vaunted “out of body” or near-death experience cannot be proven to not originate in the malfunctioning or dying head.

FWIW, in Scripture, the “PS” is, like our LORD post- resurrection, a genuine solid body.

God Bless, Happy Holidays and ICXC NIKA!
 
GEddie said:
What precisely do you mean by experience beyond the mind? Your mind is what has experiences; in fact, the mind is “you”. You experience nothing while unconscious; and unconsciousness is physical.!
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By “beyond the mind” I refer to unmodified Conscious awareness, which, you are right, is not technically an “experience” but a discovery.
If by EBTM you mean something related to drug trips or even meditation, I’d say those are just another dimension of cerebral mind-states. Even the vaunted “out of body” or near-death experience cannot be proven to not originate in the malfunctioning or dying head.
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Right, not any of those, and God cannot be proven, or not. Not part of the discussion.
FWIW, in Scripture, the “PS” is, like our LORD post- resurrection, a genuine solid body.
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Really? Line and verse if available?

Thanks
 
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