Dr. Craig is a liar.

[SteveII]

Why do you think God needs to "think" about anything prior to creation? 

Steve, this is idiotic. It is YOU that brought up the notion of God thinking prior to creation, not me! Let's review your words (p. 29)

If timelessness is not an essential, but rather a contingent characteristic of God, God could have decided to exist timelessly in the past and then decide to create the universe and in doing so became temporal.

and here... (p.38)

Even a series of mental events is enough to form a before and after (therefore some measure of "time").

So the question is, why do YOU think God needs to think/decide/have a series of mental events prior to creation? Why do YOU think there was some "before and after (therefore some measure of "time")" contrary to Craig's assertions?

Why can't causation be simultaneous with its effect?

1) Define cause and effect.
2) Demonstrate simultaneous cause and effect is plausible under your definition.
3) Even if we grant whatever you mean by simultaneous cause and effect, you still can't get around the fact that, God could not exist timelessly and changelessly without the universe prior to causing time to exist within the universe. This is a non sequitur.

Why does causation presuppose the existence of time? 

Review the first video in my "Timelessness" thread here: http://atheistforums.org/thread-42797.html
Time becomes an emergent property of causality. Or, put in terms of the video, "Causality is responsible for Time."

Why can't God become temporal the moment there was something to have a temporal relationship with?

That's not the question. It has never been the question, as I've stated emphatically before. It's the question you want to answer, but it's not the question being asked. The real question, which I'll try to state again in another way borrowing some of your words is, How could God ever exist atemporally prior to the moment there was something to have a temporal relationship with? If he did not ever exist atemporally, if God's first moment was simultaneous with the beginning of time within the universe, then God has never been anything other than temporal.

You misunderstood the sentence: "The image of God existing idly before creation is just that: a figment of the imagination." The point was NOT to imagine God sitting idly.

No, you misunderstand the mixed message Craig is stating. When Craig expresses that God was ever extant "timeless without creation," in a "changeless, undifferentiated state," one MUST picture "God existing idly before creation." Because if God did not exist in a timeless, changeless state sitting idly before creation, then God either 1) was NOT timeless or changeless before creation, or 2) Had a beginning simultaneously with the universe.

I'll try to make this clear to you once again: If God ever existed in a changeless, undifferentiated, timeless state without creation, then this necessarily happened prior to/before creation; anything that happens prior to/before something else defines two different states; a causal relationship between two different states is a measure of time and therefore cannot be timeless.

Let's try two simple Yes/No questions based on our discussion, addressing the implications of each answer:

1) Did God exist timelessly and changelessly by himself, prior to the creation of the universe?
1a) If Yes, then by definition, something that is changeless cannot change, something that is timeless will never transition from one state to another; therefore, God could not have logically been the agent of change, and could not have transitioned from a (timeless + no universe) state to a (temporal + universe) state.
1b) If No, see question 2.

2) Was God's existence simultaneous with his creation of the universe?
2a) If Yes, and if the universe had a beginning as theists' assert, then God had a beginning at the exact same moment as the universe. If two things can begin to exist at the exact same moment, and we have empirical evidence for one (the universe) and absolutely no evidence for the other (God), then we can safely excise the latter as wholly superfluous.
2b) If No, then God must have preceded the universe, see question 1.

Steve, I can't tell if you really don't understand the blatant contradictions within Craig's arguments, or you are just being disagreeable and purposefully deceptive at this point, like William Lane Craig often is. Any way you look at this, a timeless/changeless being can't implement change, and therefore this imagined deity can't be the explanation for anything.

[wiploc]

Your god is finite, then.

That does not follow. How is God an actual infinite of something?

I said "finite," not "infinite."

[wiploc]

"God can do anything"

No, God can only do things that are logically possible. He can only know things that are logically possible.

According to Plantinga, god knows everything that will ever happen in every possible world ... and in every impossible world.

[SteveII]

Numbers and relationships don't exist in the natural world.  They are functions of the concept of quantity which itself is a function of the idea of an object.  In the universe at large there is only undifferentiated being.  The desk is a part of the room which also contains the chair.  None of these are distinct objects except in the conception of the mind.  There is nothing special about the substance of the desk which separates it from the air surrounding it.  We impute a distinction by virtue of the way our senses break things down into separate parts.  The parts don't really exist as parts, it's just a function of the way our senses perceive the whole.  We 'break it down' into parts because that is the way our senses work.  If we didn't have this breaking down into distinct objects, we wouldn't have the concept of quantity.  Quantity, numbers, and relationships are artifacts of the granularity of our senses.  As artifact, they don't exist as natural kinds in the universe.  That we break things down into objects and parts when we perceive them isn't grounded in God.  So quantity and number aren't grounded in God.

Would you consider yourself an anti-realist?

[LadyForCamus]

Aaaand...god-magic.   [emoji53].   Steve:  TT is not required to think any of these things about God.  He can simply follow logic and reason where they lead.  You're the one making the assertions (e.g. God has some other magical way of coming up with the idea of creation without using "thoughts" or "a mind," which frankly, is idiotic and desperate when you consider it from an unbiased POV), so if you expect anyone to take them seriously you must support them with evidence.

Wait a minute. Aren't you the one that just claimed that logic and reason are constructs of humans and limited to our universe? How do these then apply to discussing God prior to the universe? 

I am not making assertions. I am defending the inferences made by the KCA.

First, a correction: I said numbers and logic are models constructed by humans to describe the abstract laws of our universe.

Second, you did it again: "prior to the universe." You are assigning a timeline to what you assert is a timeless state. Can you address this contradiction?

Third, you're right: logic and reason have NOTHING to do with the ideas you are putting forth...

[Time Traveler]

---

Your problem, Steve, is in imagining an "identical universe." Instead, imagine an Alice in Wonderland universe on LSD cranked up to 11. In that universe, the concept of 8 objects would have no meaning, because every grouping would be an ever-changing collection of random objects. Energy=Mass*Speed of Light^2 would be replaced by Penguins=Purple*Toothpicks, changing instantly to Vodka=Cellphones/Ant Farts, and so on. The concept of P then Q; P therefore Q wouldn't hold in such a crazy universe consisting only of nonsensical random fluctuations.

Therefore, it is only because of the natural observational consistencies within a universe like ours that logic and math hold any meaning and can describe and model these concepts inside our human brains. These concepts are not at all "transcendent" as some theists would have it, but very much dependent upon the empirical properties of the type of universe we find ourselves in. However, even within our universe, we have spacetime distortions, quantum uncertainties, superpositions and entanglements, dark matter, dark energy, etc., which we cannot fully explain given our current logical or mathematical tools - actual attributes of this universe which seem almost as bizarre as the one we might imagine on the other side of the looking glass.

---

I wasn't going to get so formal on a small point like this but...it seems that's what you want so...the term is "possible worlds" and the idea is used to express modal claims. To put it formally, in all possible worlds, I believe the concept of 8 objects and the idea of P then Q; P therefore Q are necessarily true propositions. 

Wikipedia has a short article in which they define the types of modal claims you can make when discussing possible worlds. For example from the article: 

"Necessarily true propositions (often simply called necessary propositions) are those that are true in all possible worlds (for example: "2 + 2 = 4"; "all bachelors are unmarried").[1] "

So, why do you think these concepts are only true in some possible worlds?

First, I don't necessarily buy into the "possible worlds" hypothesis of philosophy, which your article itself explicitly states "has been disputed." But as for your "Necessarily true propositions," these are purely definitions created by human minds. It's easy to imagine cultures which didn't have the concept of addition (certainly animals don't, and you'd be hard pressed to identify where exactly in our evolution the concept, however first expressed, that 2 + 2 = 4 originated).

But let's imagine I'm from another culture in another world. In my culture, we work solely with binary digits. Your 2 + 2 = 4 makes no sense to us. I insist that 10 + 10 = 100! This is a necessarily true proposition, despite your insistence that 10 + 10 = 20. And what do you mean by marriage, or bachelor? In my world, the males and females mate at will, without monogamous commitment. This is a necessarily true proposition, and all others are false!

To borrow from a quote I agree with...

Numbers and relationships don't exist in the natural world.  They are functions of the concept of quantity which itself is a function of the idea of an object.

So, these concepts are only true definitionally, and thus, only true in the models we build inside our own heads.

Now it's your turn... Prove that the concept of "unmarried" or "bachelor" or "plus" exists outside of human minds.

[SteveII]

Related to the question why God cannot do logically impossible things, God would not be able to do things contrary to his nature.

What is "God's" nature? How do you know?

We systematically develop a list of characteristics and qualities from a combination of general revelation and special revelation. Natural theology (what we are discussing in this thread) is investigating without the help of scripture or traditions. In the quote you have from me, we were discussing logic and why I infer that logic was part of God's nature.

[Time Traveler]

---

Steve, this is idiotic. It is YOU that brought up the notion of God thinking prior to creation, not me! Let's review your words (p. 29)

and here... (p.38)
So the question is, why do YOU think God needs to think/decide/have a series of mental events prior to creation? Why do YOU think there was some "before and after (therefore some measure of "time")" contrary to Craig's assertions?

1) Define cause and effect.
2) Demonstrate simultaneous cause and effect is plausible under your definition.
3) Even if we grant whatever you mean by simultaneous cause and effect, you still can't get around the fact that, God could not exist timelessly and changelessly without the universe prior to causing time to exist within the universe. This is a non sequitur.

Review the first video in my "Timelessness" thread here: http://atheistforums.org/thread-42797.html
Time becomes an emergent property of causality. Or, put in terms of the video, "Causality is responsible for Time."

That's not the question. It has never been the question, as I've stated emphatically before. It's the question you want to answer, but it's not the question being asked. The real question, which I'll try to state again in another way borrowing some of your words is, How could God ever exist atemporally prior to the moment there was something to have a temporal relationship with? If he did not ever exist atemporally, if God's first moment was simultaneous with the beginning of time within the universe, then God has never been anything other than temporal.


No, you misunderstand the mixed message Craig is stating. When Craig expresses that God was ever extant "timeless without creation," in a "changeless, undifferentiated state," one MUST picture "God existing idly before creation." Because if God did not exist in a timeless, changeless state sitting idly before creation, then God either 1) was NOT timeless or changeless before creation, or 2) Had a beginning simultaneously with the universe.

I'll try to make this clear to you once again: If God ever existed in a changeless, undifferentiated, timeless state without creation, then this necessarily happened prior to/before creation; anything that happens prior to/before something else defines two different states; a causal relationship between two different states is a measure of time and therefore cannot be timeless.

Let's try two simple Yes/No questions based on our discussion, addressing the implications of each answer:

1) Did God exist timelessly and changelessly by himself, prior to the creation of the universe?
1a) If Yes, then by definition, something that is changeless cannot change, something that is timeless will never transition from one state to another; therefore, God could not have logically been the agent of change, and could not have transitioned from a (timeless + no universe) state to a (temporal + universe) state.
1b) If No, see question 2.

2) Was God's existence simultaneous with his creation of the universe?
2a) If Yes, and if the universe had a beginning as theists' assert, then God had a beginning at the exact same moment as the universe. If two things can begin to exist at the exact same moment, and we have empirical evidence for one (the universe) and absolutely no evidence for the other (God), then we can safely excise the latter as wholly superfluous.
2b) If No, then God must have preceded the universe, see question 1.

Steve, I can't tell if you really don't understand the blatant contradictions within Craig's arguments, or you are just being disagreeable and purposefully deceptive at this point, like William Lane Craig often is. Any way you look at this, a timeless/changeless being can't implement change, and therefore this imagined deity can't be the explanation for anything.

---

Steve, you just copied and pasted my entire rebuttal without adding anything yourself. Was my response really so good, you just wanted to post it twice?

[Cyberman]

So what actually is "God's" nature, and what is the distinction between what you just described and making things up to fit presuppositions?

[SteveII]

No, you're not defending any inference made by the KCA..because you're talking about a god, and the KCA doesn't make god inferences, remember?  That's for "other arguments".  

As to the question above...it;s just another 180.  -We- don't know that logical limits (or any limits) apply to god, -you- asserted that they did.

I see your point, but do you have another name for the characteristics inferred from the KCA? Would you prefer I called it the Uncaused Cause of the KCA? (UCKCA for short) 

I tried to give reasons why I think logic is grounded in the mind of...the UCKCA.