A good reason not to believe in God

[reverendjeremiah]

Given this definition of omniscience, your argument ignores at least one omniscient deity—the God of Christianity, for whom the concept of "will happen" is inapplicable because that involves being temporally bounded. It is not as though God knows in sum "the position and momentum of every particle in the universe at every moment of time throughout existence" at the initial t0. God has no temporal locality, he is not temporally bounded. "In God there is no was or will be, but a continuous and unbroken is. In him, history and prophecy are one and the same" (Aiden Tozer). "With God there is no past, and can be no future ... What we call past, present, and future, he wraps up in one eternal now" (Charles Spurgeon).

To just simply say "the god of christianity" is deceptive in and of itself, as there are many gods in the modern Christian theology (Trinity - god, son, holy spirits and their help meet of angels and principalities) and the birth philosophy of Christianity being the gnostics, who believed in many gods and TWO (yes two) unmoved movers, uncreated creators. One being the spirit, who was unknowable, and the other being the demiurge known as "Yaldabaoth" who fashioned physical matter and thought. The demiurge being a supposed solution to the problem of evil by claiming all physical mater and thoughts are impure and not of the spirit, but "of this world", and since the demiurge created itself (or as they put it "The uncreated creator of matter") therefore all things that malevolently happen in this world is a resilt of Yaldabaoth.

In the The Nag Hammadi Library text "On the Origin of the World" goes into great detail of the first 3 verse of the book of Genesis just skimmed over. It explains what the "face of the deep" was, and the reflection that was seen was Pistis Sophia (Faithful Wisdom). Altough it depends on which gnostic faction you read from, some had the Demiurge being the offspring of Sophia, whom she incased on a throne covered in clouds on the seventh heaven.

Psalms 82:1 describes a plurality of gods (ʼelōhim), which an older version in the Septuagint calls the “assembly of the gods,” although it does not indicate that these gods were co-actors in creation. Philo had inferred from the expression, "Let us make man," of Genesis that God had used other beings as assistants in the creation of man, and he explains in this way why man is capable of vice as well as virtue, ascribing the origin of the latter to God, of the former to His helpers in the work of creation. The other gods sometimes being called "principalities" which in turn could easily be said that Venus (love)was a principality of Jupiter and Juno, and therefore all being principalities of the supreme creator the same as the differing Hebrew tribal gods Yahweh, Jehovah, etc could be said to have principalities of "god is love".

(a quote from "on the origin of the world")
Seven appeared in chaos, androgynous. They have their masculine names and their feminine names. The feminine name is Pronoia (Forethought) Sambathas, which is 'week'.
And his son is called Yao: his feminine name is Lordship.
Sabaoth: his feminine name is Deity.
Adonaios: his feminine name is Kingship.
Elaios: his feminine name is Jealousy.
Oraios: his feminine name is Wealth.
And Astaphaios: his feminine name is Sophia (Wisdom).
These are the seven forces of the seven heavens of chaos. And they were born androgynous, consistent with the immortal pattern that existed before them, according to the wish of Pistis: so that the likeness of what had existed since the beginning might reign to the end. You will find the effect of these names and the force of the male entities in the Archangelic (Book) of the Prophet Moses, and the names of the female entities in the first Book of Noraia.

[Edwardo Piet]

What kind of existence does an atemporal God have considering that he can never exist? (there is not a time that he can ever exist because he is atemporal) Something either existed, exists or will exist (or a combination of the three), and since something atemporal can't do that, how can something atemporal be said to exist?

---

[...] such that God is before everything else and he is after everything else [...]

This contradicts God's atemporality. For him to be "before" or "after" anything he would have to be temporal, since "before" and "after" imply time and temporality.

[Ryft]

Divine simplicity boils down to God not being a thing but a collection of 'properties' ...

Err, no. A collection (complex, composite) of properties is precisely the opposite of divine simplicity.

---

---

To just simply say "the God of Christianity" is deceptive in and of itself ...

Only if you are new here. (And I think you are. Greetings, and welcome to the forums.) Thanks for catching my sloppy language. I will do better at maintaining precision in the future, so other newcomers won't mistake my meaning as I allowed you to here. I am well known here for arguing only the God of biblical Christianity; I never waste my time arguing beliefs I don't hold. So to be precise what I should have said was that his "argument ignores at least one omniscient deity—the God of biblical Christianity." That would have obviated your response, as Gnostic Christianity is not biblical (an exegetical point between myself and them).

---

---

There is not a time that God can ever exist, because he is atemporal.

There is a time that God exists—namely, at every single moment of time (omnipresent).

For God to be "before" or "after" anything he would have to be temporal, since "before" and "after" imply time and temporality.

If what you mean is temporal succession, then no they don't imply that. Saying that God is before and after does not imply temporality in that sense (whereas saying that God is before then after would). What those terms do imply is temporal locality—but that is what one should expect from omnipresence; i.e., existing at every temporal locality.

[everythingafter]

Here's Almond's treasure trove of essays on AI, Information Theory, Game Theory, Religion, Rationality etc.

http://www.paul-almond.com/

Fascinating topics. I will have to dig into some of these.

[reverendjeremiah]

What kind of existence does an atemporal God have considering that he can never exist? (there is not a time that he can ever exist because he is atemporal) Something either existed, exists or will exist (or a combination of the three), and since something atemporal can't do that, how can something atemporal be said to exist?

It has NO existence other than in fiction and the imagination of those who imagine it. You have to be within the folds of time to exist. In order to be inside of time you must have at least ONE of the 3 other dimensions (height, width, length - time being the fourth dimension). What many theists consider to be PROFOUND is merely a description of nothingness. for example: "God has infinite power." Well, I am well versed in power as a profession, and to say "infinite power" is the EXACT same thing as saying "no power". Infinity = 0 Zero.

---

Only if you are new here. (And I think you are. Greetings, and welcome to the forums.) Thanks for catching my sloppy language. I will do better at maintaining precision in the future, so other newcomers won't mistake my meaning as I allowed you to here. I am well known here for arguing only the God of biblical Christianity; I never waste my time arguing beliefs I don't hold. So to be precise what I should have said was that his "argument ignores at least one omniscient deity—the God of biblical Christianity." That would have obviated your response, as Gnostic Christianity is not biblical (an exegetical point between myself and them).

That is EXACTLY what I meant. Not any other religion, but saying "The Christian god" alone is not good enough. How about the Gnostic Christians? they thought the old testament god was a malevolent, imperfect being. Is that the Christian god you were speaking of? Not all Christians believe in the trinity, or that Jesus is god or even a divine being, and they are still Christian. Me personally, I do not consider Elohim to be the same as Yahweh or Jehovah. I also consider Yahweh and Jehovah to also be seperate. Elohim is plural, which means those three names right there alone constitutes 3 or more deities that the Hebrews worshipped. The New testament is NOT clear on which specific Hebrew Tribal god they were refering to as "God". Even when I was a believing Christian I noticed different names for Gods in the old testament, varying from book to book. I do not, now, buy into the idea that "they are all different names for the same god" and then claim monotheism. If that is true, then the Greeks and Roman Pagans were not polytheistic at all. They were merely worshipping different names for the same god. I dont expect you to admit this. So you have several different named deities in the old testament , and occasional references to god speaking of himself as "us", and "we" pointing to good proof that some of the Hebrews were polytheistic, or at least in the sense that they believed in more than one god and considered all of them as "god". Example:

Then God (singular) said, ‘Let us (plural) make people who are images of us. Let them be similar to us. Let them rule over the fish of the sea. Let them rule over the birds of the air. Let them rule over the animals. Let them rule over the whole earth. Let them rule over every crawling animal that crawls on the earth.’

Then you have the trinity..honestly..if this is what monotheism is supposed to be, then what is polytheism?

[Edwardo Piet]

There is a time that God exists—namely, at every single moment of time (omnipresent).

How is God atemporal if there is a "time" that he exists? Wouldn't that make him temporal?

Unless you are saying he is both temporal and atemporal?

If what you mean is temporal succession, then no they don't imply that. Saying that God is before and after does not imply temporality in that sense (whereas saying that God is before then after would).

The terms "before" and "after" make no sense without temporality. How can you say something exists in atemporal form "before" or "after" anything? If it exists before or after anything then that implies a temporal existence.

Nothing can exist atemporally in fact, since that would mean that something can exist without ever existing, which is a contradiction. Something either existed, exists or will exist or a combination of the three. To say something exists without ever having existed before, existing now or going to exist makes no sense. Nothing can exist before or after time because the terms "before" and "after" imply time. Existence requires time because existence equates to existing which is a temporal process.

[Captain Scarlet]

There is a time that God exists—namely, at every single moment of time (omnipresent).

How is God atemporal if there is a "time" that he exists? Wouldn't that make him temporal?

Unless you are saying he is both temporal and atemporal?

If what you mean is temporal succession, then no they don't imply that. Saying that God is before and after does not imply temporality in that sense (whereas saying that God is before then after would).

The terms "before" and "after" make no sense without temporality. How can you say something exists in atemporal form "before" or "after" anything? If it exists before or after anything then that implies a temporal existence.

Nothing can exist atemporally in fact, since that would mean that something can exist without ever existing, which is a contradiction. Something either existed, exists or will exist or a combination of the three. To say something exists without ever having existed before, existing now or going to exist makes no sense. Nothing can exist before or after time because the terms "before" and "after" imply time. Existence requires time because existence equates to existing which is a temporal process.

Absolutely. If this god exists outside of time as its creator then it is a frozen immutable god, incapable of dynamic processes and therefore not a creator at all (nor as you say a being). If it is caught up inside time, then it cannot be the creator of time, the universe etc . If omnipresence explains this gods timelessness, then it would imply that it is everywhere at once and thus also caught up in the material world, and not immaterial as claimed. The truth is there are no anologies for any such being and it is boot-strapped into existence by the imagination of those who for some reason want to believe. Just one reason why there probably is no god.

[Edwardo Piet]

Nothing exists "before" or "after" time because if we're talking "before" or "after" we're still talking time. That's like saying "The time before time" or "The time after time", it makes no sense whatsoever.

[fr0d0]

We use the terms 'before', 'after', 'at a certain time' because we are referencing the atemporal from a temporal perspective.

[Edwardo Piet]

Well you can say something exists before or after time however many times you want but it's still nonsense.