(July 17, 2019 at 12:55 am)mcc1789 Wrote: I think there's a logical argument to be made against God's existence here on the basis of incompatible properties. God is outside time, we're told. He's not only eternal (existing forever) but also unaffected by temporal changes. He is after all the creator too, and that includes time. Yet when something is created, it comes into being. That entails a previous instance where it didn't exist of course. Yet if time itself was created, that makes no sense. To speak of a time "before" time is meaningless. Moreover, how does a timeless being create while outside time (and space as well)? A creation involves a change in space and time. It's enough to see how this could be done by a lesser being. How though could it be with a timeless being? I suggest it's incoherent, and the very fact that things do exist shows that such a being (i.e. God) doesn't. What do you think?
I hadn't considered this one (you're correct, of course), but I've long felt that God is such a mess of incompatibilities that it's defined out of existence. God cannot be both omniscient and omnipotent, merciful and just, and now we can add 'temporal and creative' to the list.
Unfortunately, theologians are then constrained to go through the most torturous wordplay in order the reconcile what they say God is with what they want it to be. Smacks of desperation, that does.
Boru
‘But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’ - Thomas Jefferson