(July 18, 2019 at 2:46 pm)tackattack Wrote:(July 17, 2019 at 8:49 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote:You are always yourself, but that self is never in a constant state as we consistently interact with time. I see myself as the same self who was me when I was 6, as I see the self that I want to be when I'm 60, which is the same self as I am now. Characteristics, experiences and beliefs of that self may change over points in time, but the self is still uniquely me.
As for God, If you existed in all places at once, existence wasn't dependent on time, and know everything about everything from all of those times, you would have no need to evolve. You would also have no survival concerns to apply selective pressure. You would only have any pressure to change based on your interactions within time (or people subject to time) or by your will alone.
God might see himself as 3 Gods, 20 Gods, the foundation of everything in existence or a globular mass of sheer will. IDK. The Bible seems to represent my known experience with God and I use it to help define what I consider God and in it He states that whatever else there is there is none like Him, and he alone is the Alpha and Omega.
(July 17, 2019 at 9:05 pm)mcc1789 Wrote:I find it unlikely that you had a face to face interaction with a Christian that used those words, but sure let's call it standard. A being who is eternal can be eternally changing or eternally stationary, or eternally grumpy and be eternal. The characteristic of eternal, simply means existing before and after time. Therefore, you WHEN you are does not necessitate WHAT you are. I could be an eternal asshole if I was able to
I haven't had many in person interactions with Christians on theology, so no probably not. So what? I haven't claimed to, and I'm unsure why that's relevant. However, it has been advocated by Christians from Boethius to C. S. Lewis, among others. In fact it's been a major pillar of how they strive to reconcile free will with God's foreknowledge (I don't think it works, but no matter). This seems like a slightly unusual definition of eternal (I'd call it "existing forever") but fine. I don't really want to get into another issue though (i.e. personal and eternal).