Question on God's perception of time

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powerpsi

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I am extremely new to Open Theism but is the first bit of theology that has me excited and open to God in almost 15 years. Forgive me if this is something that is easily found from going through some recommended reading material but I really like to think through a lot of these things myself and reinvent the wheel almost :) Also I am open to any recommended reading if you have it!

From what I've read so far God is thought to exist outside of space and time, which is a bit confusing to me as when I think of existence outside of the dimension of time, I think of an observer that can see all points in time across the entire timescale of the universe. The confusion for me begins when also incorporating the idea of a non-deterministic, random probabilistic universe. As free will agents that exist in this particular point in spacetime we are making decisions - the choices + probabilities creating a branching probability distribution space of potential futures that God can see and make inferences about (e.g. the most likely outcome) but cannot know for certain which one will become reality.

So that's great but I'm thinking of God existing outside of time looking at the entire timescale of our universe. Existence outside of the dimension of time to me means that no moment of time is of particular importance - mapped out in front of God is the entirety of it. The free will agents exist and make decisions across all points in time. As God looks down at the universe outside of time, what does he see exactly? Given no point in time is considered the "official" point in time for a being that exists outside of time, there would be no time period t where from 0 to t the past/present data is known and based on the reality that formed from the choices made by free will agents, and time >t are almost infinite branching possibilites discernible only to God.

So basically can someone explain what it means for God to exist outside of time and how exactly does his nonlinear perspective coincide with the linear experience of time free will agents such as you and I are currently experiencing. Hope this makes sense but if I didn't explain myself properly I'll be sure to respond to questions. Thanks!
 
Yorzhik

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powerpsi said:
I am extremely new to Open Theism but is the first bit of theology that has me excited and open to God in almost 15 years. Forgive me if this is something that is easily found from going through some recommended reading material but I really like to think through a lot of these things myself and reinvent the wheel almost :) Also I am open to any recommended reading if you have it!

From what I've read so far God is thought to exist outside of space and time, which is a bit confusing to me as when I think of existence outside of the dimension of time, I think of an observer that can see all points in time across the entire timescale of the universe. The confusion for me begins when also incorporating the idea of a non-deterministic, random probabilistic universe. As free will agents that exist in this particular point in spacetime we are making decisions - the choices + probabilities creating a branching probability distribution space of potential futures that God can see and make inferences about (e.g. the most likely outcome) but cannot know for certain which one will become reality.

So that's great but I'm thinking of God existing outside of time looking at the entire timescale of our universe. Existence outside of the dimension of time to me means that no moment of time is of particular importance - mapped out in front of God is the entirety of it. The free will agents exist and make decisions across all points in time. As God looks down at the universe outside of time, what does he see exactly? Given no point in time is considered the "official" point in time for a being that exists outside of time, there would be no time period t where from 0 to t the past/present data is known and based on the reality that formed from the choices made by free will agents, and time >t are almost infinite branching possibilites discernible only to God.

So basically can someone explain what it means for God to exist outside of time and how exactly does his nonlinear perspective coincide with the linear experience of time free will agents such as you and I are currently experiencing. Hope this makes sense but if I didn't explain myself properly I'll be sure to respond to questions. Thanks!
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I can't explain what it means for God to be outside of time because God interacts with us inside of time. And if God is interacting with us inside of time then He cannot also be outside of time or God would simply be the puppet of something outside of time.
 
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powerpsi

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So God does not exist out of time, does not experience time in any sort of nonlinear fashion where he can exist in the past and the present at the same time - Open Theism makes no claims like this then. Sorry I must have been reading some bad stuff.

So by the simple fact that God depends on our current choices to create the future reality, God exists and experiences the same time we experience. The universe then necessarily has to have an "official" moment in time, which is right now. Because God or free will actors cannot exist in some "time" in the past making other decisions, there is only a single moment in time unique to right now and unique to in the past.

At least that's what would have to be true if God does not exist outside of time. That would mean nothing exists outside of time, this time and space is the official one.

Sorry if all this sounds obtuse - but in Physics the jury is still out on a lot of these things, looks like a bit of a harder stance is claimed here. And thanks for the responses.
 
Right Divider

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powerpsi said:
So God does not exist out of time, does not experience time in any sort of nonlinear fashion where he can exist in the past and the present at the same time - Open Theism makes no claims like this then. Sorry I must have been reading some bad stuff.
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You might try this: https://opentheism.org/is-god-outside-of-time
powerpsi said:
So by the simple fact that God depends on our current choices to create the future reality, God exists and experiences the same time we experience. The universe then necessarily has to have an "official" moment in time, which is right now. Because God or free will actors cannot exist in some "time" in the past making other decisions, there is only a single moment in time unique to right now and unique to in the past.
Click to expand...
The only existence is the one right now.
powerpsi said:
At least that's what would have to be true if God does not exist outside of time. That would mean nothing exists outside of time, this time and space is the official one.
Click to expand...
Time does not "exist" in the same way that matter exists. As I mentioned, time is an abstraction that allows us to talk about the sequence and relationship of events.
powerpsi said:
Sorry if all this sounds obtuse - but in Physics the jury is still out on a lot of these things, looks like a bit of a harder stance is claimed here.
Click to expand...
What you really mean is that our understanding of physics is incomplete, which makes sense since we are not the Creators of the universe.
powerpsi said:
And thanks for the responses.
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You're welcome.
 
Yorzhik

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powerpsi said:
So God does not exist out of time, does not experience time in any sort of nonlinear fashion where he can exist in the past and the present at the same time - Open Theism makes no claims like this then. Sorry I must have been reading some bad stuff.

So by the simple fact that God depends on our current choices to create the future reality, God exists and experiences the same time we experience. The universe then necessarily has to have an "official" moment in time, which is right now. Because God or free will actors cannot exist in some "time" in the past making other decisions, there is only a single moment in time unique to right now and unique to in the past.

At least that's what would have to be true if God does not exist outside of time. That would mean nothing exists outside of time, this time and space is the official one.

Sorry if all this sounds obtuse - but in Physics the jury is still out on a lot of these things, looks like a bit of a harder stance is claimed here. And thanks for the responses.
Click to expand...
Right. However, this space does not have to be the "official" one. And there might be a way for a thing to skip some of the movement of the past and appear to have traveled forward in time, which can possibly explain some of the effects physics theorizes about that might be considered "time travel".

But here is how I think about it. The past is all that exists unchanging. It travels back behind us never to be encountered again (and so doesn't exist in substance). We call where the past flows back from the "present", but it's only a designation and doesn't differ from the past in manifestation. The future exists only as an intelligent consideration, but likewise to the past not as substance.

And, yes, it has the problem of infinite time that the Open View cannot explain, but every view has the same problem whether it is admitted or not.
 
Right Divider

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Yorzhik said:
If God existed in the infinite past, we could not have arrived at now yet. That's about the simplest way to put it.
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In that case, nothing can happen... since there are an infinite number of moments between this one and the next.
It also means that you cannot go from one place to another... since there are an infinite number of locations (and movements) between the two.
 
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Yorzhik

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Right Divider said:
In that case, nothing can happen... since there are an infinite number of moments between this one and the next.
It also means that you cannot go from one place to another... since there an infinite number of locations (and movements) between the two.
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Those two situations are not quite the same. To move between a particular set of events, there may be infinite moments to move across, but those moments get infinitely close together the more of them there are. Same with space. So we can traverse both time and space because one infinite cancels the other out.

In the case of the infinite past, the "first event" keeps changing, not the distance between moments between two events. So one infinite grows while the other is not available to cancel it out.
 
Sherman

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In Open Theism, time is actually something that is abstract. It isn't something physical or even a dimension. You cannot move back and forth on it because time is merely a concept. It is just a progression of events.
 
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powerpsi

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Right Divider said:
Time does not "exist" in the same way that matter exists. As I mentioned, time is an abstraction that allows us to talk about the sequence and relationship of events.
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Yep - it's an emergent property of mass, just like space. Massless photons don't know what space or time even are as those cease to exist at the speed of light. Who knows what's going on over there in the massless realm of pure energy. We're over here fat and stuck in spacetime looking at these particles and how they behave in our little spacetime dungeon but the massless particles don't even know what space or time are or that we're looking at them. Who knows what properties these particles have in whatever realm they exist, their version of spacetime whatever that may be.
 
Yorzhik

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powerpsi said:
Yep - it's an emergent property of mass, just like space.
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Well, that's not a forgone conclusion yet. There are some competing ideas that might be less popular, but they are still just as internally consistent.
 
Yorzhik

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Right Divider said:
You are referring to time is if it was a created thing. There is no "first event".
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No, time is not a created thing and I'm not referring to it as such. There are only events, like when God has a thought, and some events take place before or after other events. Because there is a before and after for some things, we call the concept "time".
 
Sherman

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Time is just a sequence of events. It is not matter or energy. It is very much like a numbering system. It is something that is abstract.
 
JudgeRightly

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Moving this to the correct section.......

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Complete!
 
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