(April 23, 2018 at 2:17 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: MK: Again, what I'm suggesting is not pre destiny. I believe we make all our choices and we have control over our actions, and there is no "fate" or anything like that. Just wanted to make that clear.

The thing is though... if God knows exactly what you will do then that is your fate.

(April 23, 2018 at 2:18 pm)Hammy Wrote:

(April 23, 2018 at 2:17 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: MK: Again, what I'm suggesting is not pre destiny. I believe we make all our choices and we have control over our actions, and there is no "fate" or anything like that. Just wanted to make that clear.

The thing is though... if God knows exactly what you will do then that is your fate.

Lol, yeah nvm. This isnt going anywhere.

(April 23, 2018 at 2:17 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: MK: Again, what I'm suggesting is not pre destiny. I believe we make all our choices and we have control over our actions, and there is no "fate" or anything like that. Just wanted to make that clear.

Give it some time. I heard this argument, and it took me about 6 years to realize that it was correct.

Just leave it for a while. Don't grapple with it. And see what you decide later in life about it!

Humans don't like changing their minds.

(April 23, 2018 at 2:18 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: Hammy, looks like you doing the same thing, having your cake and eating it to.

No. We agree that there was a first moment.

The way I understand the notion of something being temporally eternal is not that things stretch forward and backwards infinitely... temporally eternal just means things have always existed. There was no time before time. There will be no time after time. Those are tautologically true. Temporally eternal just means that reality has always existed in some way because there can't have been a time before it existed. Existence as we understand it and can actually make sense of it is temporal.

But what I'm saying is... if there's any kind of existence beyond time, we can't possibly describe it temporally. Our whole language is temporal, so anything outside of time, can't possibly be described.

And to be honest, I don't see any reason to believe there is such a thing as something outside of time. What would that even mean? Something that existed never? Existed at no times? What we call existence doesn't work that way. Whatever is outside of time... does it even make sense to say that it is? That implies presence and the present. If there 'is' something 'outside of time' we're talking about something so mysterious we literally will never possibly be able to describe it.

Noumenal reality may be atemporal... but noumenal reality means precisely those things which we cannot experience or know. So trying to describe it seems kind of silly.

Another time later!

A time that doesn't yet exist but will when it comes

(April 23, 2018 at 2:27 pm)Hammy Wrote: A time that doesn't yet exist but will when it comes

Why present-ism rather than the Block universe?  

It seems odd that all space exists at each time.  But not all time exists at each space.  

That said, I don't know how picking one over the other could be anything more than a wild guess for me.

I will leave this here though, as one last ditch effort to convey my position, in case anyone is interested:

Quote:We live in a physical world with its four known space-time dimensions of length, width, height (or depth) and time. However, God dwells in a different dimension—the spirit realm—beyond the perception of our physical senses. It’s not that God isn’t real; it’s a matter of His not being limited by the physical laws and dimensions that govern our world (Isaiah 57:15). Knowing that “God is spirit” (John 4:24), what is His relationship to time?

In Psalm 90:4, Moses used a simple yet profound analogy in describing the timelessness of God: “For a thousand years in Your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.” The eternity of God is contrasted with the temporality of man. Our lives are but short and frail, but God does not weaken or fail with the passage of time.

In a sense, the marking of time is irrelevant to God because He transcends it. Peter, in 2 Peter 3:8, cautioned his readers not to let this one critical fact escape their notice—that God’s perspective on time is far different from mankind’s (Psalm 102:12, 24-27). The Lord does not count time as we do. He is above and outside of the sphere of time. God sees all of eternity’s past and eternity’s future. The time that passes on earth is of no consequence from God’s timeless perspective. A second is no different from an eon; a billion years pass like seconds to the eternal God.

Though we cannot possibly comprehend this idea of eternity or the timelessness of God, we in our finite minds try to confine an infinite God to our time schedule. Those who foolishly demand that God operate according to their time frame ignore the fact that He is the “High and Lofty One . . . who lives forever” (Isaiah 57:15). This description of God is far removed from man’s condition: “The length of our days is seventy years—or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away” (Psalm 90:10).

Again, because of our finite minds, we can only grasp the concept of God’s timeless existence in part. And in so doing, we describe Him as a God without a beginning or end, eternal, infinite, everlasting, etc. Psalm 90:2 declares, “From everlasting to everlasting You are God” (see also Psalm 93:2). He always was and always will be.

So, what is time? To put it simply, time is duration. Our clocks mark change or, more precisely, our timepieces are benchmarks of change that indicate the passage of time. We could say, then, that time is a necessary precondition for change and change is a sufficient condition to establish the passage of time. In other words, whenever there’s change of any kind we know that time has passed. We see this as we go through life, as we age. And we cannot recover the minutes that have passed by.

Additionally, the science of physics tells us that time is a property resulting from the existence of matter. As such, time exists when matter exists. But God is not matter; God, in fact, created matter. The bottom line is this: time began when God created the universe. Before that, God was simply existing. Since there was no matter, and because God does not change, time had no existence and therefore no meaning, no relation to Him.

And this brings us to the meaning of the word eternity. Eternity is a term used to express the concept of something that has no end and/or no beginning. God has no beginning or end. He is outside the realm of time. Eternity is not something that can be absolutely related to God. God is even beyond eternity.

Scripture reveals that God lives outside the bounds of time as we know it. Our destiny was planned “before the beginning of time” (2 Timothy 1:9; Titus 1:2) and “before the creation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4; 1 Peter 1:20). “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible” (Hebrews 11:3). In other words, the physical universe we see, hear, feel and experience was created not from existing matter, but from a source independent of the physical dimensions we can perceive.

“God is spirit” (John 4:24), and, correspondingly, God is timeless rather than being eternally in time or being beyond time. Time was simply created by God as a limited part of His creation for accommodating the workings of His purpose in His disposable universe (see 2 Peter 3:10-12).

https://www.gotquestions.org/God-time.html

(April 23, 2018 at 2:42 pm)henryp Wrote: Why present-ism rather than the Block universe?  

It seems odd that all space exists at each time.  But not all time exists at each space.  

By a block universe do you mean like what Parmenides described?

Quote:That said, I don't know how picking one over the other could be anything more than a wild guess for me.

Well for me it's simply that anything but presentism seems to lead to logical contradictions. To say that all times exist now is to say that the past and the future are happening now which makes no sense because the future is by definition what isn't happening yet and the past is by definition what isn't happening anymore.

EDIT:

Wikipedia Wrote:According to the growing block universe theory of time (or the growing block view), the past and present exist and the future does not exist.

Oh I don't agree with this at all. The past doesn't exist any more than the future does.

One last word, time is not with God (God is beyond it), but God is with time (time exists through it).

This perspective will perhaps help you as well Catholic_Lady.