Oh no not another free will thread.

[Edwardo Piet]

Unless I'm missing something here, I dont see how it makes much sense to say the past and present dont exist?

To me it's all that makes sense. The past existed, the future will exist... the present exists.

To exist is to be present, as opposed to absent. The past is absent because it used to exist but no longer does, the future will exist but by definition doesn't exist yet. The future will become the present, and the past was present. Only the present is present.

We imagine what we think the future will be, and we remember what used to exist, but all our throughts about the past and the future are happening in the present. It's the only theory of time that makes any sense to me. The idea of the past or future existing now just sounds completely contradictory to me.

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The restriction is there for us, but not for God. That's what I meant.

Then we are under illusion only. The past exists as much as today and the future exists just as much. All time moments as if always there and forever will be.

God is eternal, he doesn't begin doesn't end. But time begins, it didn't always do so. And today ceases in every moment. God is constantly creating, the new creation is constantly being created, and he is not creating the past and the future at the same time.

If it did, it doesn't even make sense to say we only experience time today, because our past self is alive per this, and so is the future...so where we at? It's paradoxical even on that level.

Replace "God" with "the totality of all existence" and I'm with you.

I don't believe in a supreme mind. I believe in an eternal unbeginning and unending reality. Where forms change, but nothing ultimately is absolutely created or destroyed.

The creation you speak of, I think of as using the stuff that was already there and making it into something else.

Can't make something from nothing.

The bolded part I disagree with because to me it only makes sense to say that we experience time now. Not even today, today happens over time. We experience time now. We experienced time before, and we will experience time later.

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It's impossible to create past, present, and future at the same time, if it was possible, then all he would create was eternal existence without a start, and we would all be his equals, because he doesn't have equals not because he would not want to if he could, but because it's impossible and his greatness encompasses all life to the extent that nothing could have been with him and nothing can be with him, he is beyond all places, time is destroyed before reaching him, and attributes go astray regarding him.

I don't like the God part. But I like your line of thinking about time.

The idea of all times existing equally at the same time, is just nonsense to me.

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If the future has not already been created, in what sense does it exist?

No sense of course There's only a sense in which it will