Richard Swinburne - What is God's Eternity?

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Could God be eternal? For God to be eternal, God would exist outside of time, would not experience time's flow. God would have no past, present or future. As Boethius said in the 6th Century, "Eternity, then, is the whole, simultaneous and perfect possession of boundless life". God's relationship to time helps assess God's existence and discern God's essence.
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[@mikeclancy741]

Thank you Robert for all your work in uploading these clips and with such an interesting range of scientists, philosophers and theologians.

[@darkknightsds]

This guy is really smart

[@dom-dominiquecaldwell8382]

What if God dose not experience time as we experience time?, God is out of our understanding on how time is experienced by God? So we can try to put time to God but we will not know unless God tells us. Best way to understand God “in my opinion” God is omnipresent. Time for us mortals existence and experience is fixed in time do to our material being. God is eternal thus time is eternal as for us time mortal as we will experience time only for how long one lives? Love to learn other opinions about this. I love learning to understand God as we try to know God.

[@broself2878]

If God were to be eternal, he would be apart from our 'time'. How would he be able to interact within time as he does now? If he were out of time, then he is beyond time. Because of this, his omnipotence gives him the power to create time. Furthermore, if he can create time, then he is wrong to do so for his omniscience would show that he is the creation of problems within evil. Just a little rabbit hole haha... enjoy

[@uremove]

Hmmm... I think the problem is we think of God as ‘a being’ like Zeus, or Odin, rather than the transcendental Source of all being, yet if God is omnipresent, He/She/It cannot be ‘a being’, but must be ALL being, at every level of existence. So, if God is omnipresent He is both ‘outside’ time, ie. in a higher dimension of time, eg. with a 4D block universe before Him, yet also present at every point within that block in our 1D linear time. In the same way, we in 3D space are outside of, yet could intervene at any point in 2D Flatland, because our 3D space includes Flatlands 2D world within it. To say that 3 different times in our linear time must be 3 different times in God’s experience is to restrict God to our 1D linear time.

[@mcgch46e80]

God is at whatever He wants to be whenever He wants to be.

[@LorenzoDeprado]

well that is certainly not helpful in having a discussion

[@adamrspears1981]

(1): Something can have a beginning & an end. Its said to be finite. (2): Something can have no beginning, & no end. Its said to be non-existant. (3): Can something have no beginning, & yet an end?....No. (4): CAN something have a beginning, but no end?....if so, is it eternal? (5): CAN something exist, but have no beginning & no end?.....is this eternal, infinite, both, or neither?

[@User-jr7vf]

You answers your question (5) in your question (2) Lol

[@rossheaton5173]

If God is Omniscient, why would he need to interact with his creation in any point in time. He already knew before the creation, what his creation was going to do. He created humans knowing they were going to commit all these sins. He created millions if not billions of humans, knowing he would torture them in Hell-Fire for eternity. Why would a lovely God with Omniscience do that? I would call this a contradiction, or a paradox at best.

[@melgross]

Well, this is the most common question. If a being is omniscient, then the can’t be anger at actions taken by humans that do what he saw before he created them. But this is a paradox, so to attempt to work around that, concepts are proposed that allow for those actions without god knowing of them in advance, which concept, is in opposition of god’s omniscience. The entire thing is therefor jumbled together. It’s much easier, and sensible, to just ignore the concept of god altogether.

[@brentonbrenton9964]

So I'm confused as to why people struggle with the concept of God being 'outside time' when we can experience exactly that state of consciousness under the influence of psychedelics. Just use the tool, then you understand what it means. That revelation usually comes at very low doses. If you want to understand Gods omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence... well then you have to go for a full Ego death dose - but those answers are down there too.

[@myles5158]

You are never outside of time on psychedelics. It just feels that way. What is perceived and what is real are two different things.

[@vecumex9466]

@@myles5158 Avoiding to get caught up in unverifiable facts to conclude whether the candidate is outside time or not which is really irrelevant and scientifically almost impossible to prove however almost all psychedelics research have shown a decrease in brain activity causing metabolism to slow down during the time of the experience unlike previously thought that our brains lit up during consumption. This is the most important data gathered from psychedelics studies.

[@kriskelvin64]

Why can t we just accept that we connot know anything about "God"

[@onestepaway3232]

kriskelvin64 because that is not what Jesus and scriptures reveal and demonstrate. Why do you think you cannot know God.

[@cube2fox]

@@onestepaway3232 They do not reveal and demonstrate, they claim and assert.

[@cube2fox]

Kris Kelvin said (in the book) he could believe a imperfect, crippled god.

[@onestepaway3232]

Trurl oh Jesus demonstrated. Death where is your sting????

[@misterbean5010]

@@cube2fox Granted I haven’t read the book, but the Christian response seems to be that Christ Jesus, the manifestation of the Second Person of The Trinity, embodies those two distinct yet interdependent properties of The Trinity; that is, embodying the personhood of God and its concomitant standards and embodying the form of a human being with its concomitant standards. Among the greatest and unique gifts to us is Christ Himself: the bearing of pain and suffering on earth to endure that which human endures. There is hardship in every corner of earth and Christ’s life attests to sharing in that same hardship so that we may come to have life :)

[@jesipatrocinio358]

God himself already explained the real nature of time to Neal Donald Walsch in Conversations 2..."There is no time but this time..Now is all there is..Everything that ever happened, is happening, and ever will happen, is happening right now...Time is not a continuum. It is an element of relativity that exists vertically, not horizontally... There is only One Moment--this moment--the Eternal Moment of Now." This is exactly how the Enlightened mystics and the Near-death experiencers describe their experience of time.

[@jesipatrocinio358]

"Time is not a contiuum. It is an aspect of Relativity that exists in an "up" and "down" paradigm, with "moments" or "events" stacked on top of each other, happening or occurring at the same time."

[@enzonazzaro2156]

if god exist outside of time then free will is dead. As the idea of omnipotence, especially in terms of causality and time, means the events have been set in motion you were always going to do everything you have and will do. you could argue that from my perspective that I feel I have free will but I can't actually make a decision in which god has not seen so its more of and illusion if anything.

[@anaccount8474]

It's amazing how much theologians can talk without saying anything, yet still manage to sound convincing to those who are desperate to be convinced.

[@cube2fox]

Theologians are like people who create fan theories for the lore of their favorite video games or anime series. The theories can become very intricate, but their subject matter is fictitious. The difference between fans and theologians is only that the former are not confused about the ontological status of their objects of interest.

[@blessedamerican3541]

If you were educated in theology you would realize he is saying many intricate things which you are not understanding.

[@anaccount8474]

@@blessedamerican3541 It’s hilarious when theists imply I can’t have a meaningful opinion about this if I haven’t studied theology. The average Christian knows nothing about theology, does make their faith null and void.

[@Epiousios18]

It's amazing how you can't realize that many "popular scientists" essentially do the exact same thing, and people desperate to believe a materialistic worldview find it convincing. Also, just because you can't follow what he is saying, doesn't mean he isn't making real claims. Maybe you just aren't able to comprehend his arguments?

[@anaccount8474]

@@Epiousios18 Who mentioned scientists and materialism?

[@ETHANFOXEDM]

Very interesting

[@lyletulk3213]

To me, these conversations are kind of like two avatars in a video game trying to define the nature of the programmer...🙄

[@reenatai75]

👍🏻😂

[@chrisc1257]

... while sipping fine wine, enjoying fine dining and programming the obtuse viewer for after hour eternal entertainment.

[@Hjgfrfjufdetivjiu]

This makes me almost have a panic attack thinking about this

[@armchairrockstar186]

What if time was god?

[@pauljohnson6019]

Yes, God is Brahman, in Hinduism, which means eternity, the other Gods, are bound in time, so they can know certain things, but not things outside their space-time dimension! So this is why, knowing everything is an illusion, you can only know everything, if you are eternity yourself!

[@cajones9330]

i wonder how/if entanglement can relate to this topic

[@kanemurphy6848]

Isnt every moment in infinity.. Infinity.. I. E. A tenth of infinity would be infact infinite.. You can't have a period of infinity that builds up to anything.. God would have to been created with the universe.. Or hes finite... I also find it astonishing academics profess to know anything about god.. Whats written down is written by other men.. Not just any old men.. Men born of a time when the thought the earth was flat.. Pretty much in the dark about nearly everything we take for granted.. If theres a force that created the universe. Id dont think theres a man or women on earth that has any details on its nature or whether its got good bad or no intentions towards mankind... We can't even trust revelation.. As we dont understand consciousness as yet...

[@allgodsmyth7318]

Swinburne's topological time (one unmeasured thought event for God after another, prior to the creation of the universe) fails if you believe there cannot be an infinite past regress. God could not have a "first thought (T1)" if there was no beginning for God and his thoughts. Even "topological time" requires there be an ordered sequence (T1 precedes T2 precedes T3), and so on. He goes on to argue we could not measure the duration of any given thought (T2, for example). Yet, we can. There would be a _relative_ difference between T1, T2, T3, etc., which could be measured. (God's thought T1 was twice as long as T2, but half as long as T3, etc.) Thus, the change and duration of God's own thoughts would be the scale by which time could be measured prior to the universe. Post creation, God could measure the time from when he created the universe to our present time relative to the duration of his other thoughts (e.g., from the big bang to our "now" was, for God, 1/100000th the duration of his thought T2). Thus, Swinburne does not get away with having God's time and in-universe time being substantially different when we use the relative duration of God's sequential thoughts as the clock by which all time could be measured.

[@ronjohnson4566]

the more you try to explain god, the sillier the explanations get.

[@suatustel746]

What do you expect? If you invent a strawman then you tolerate baggeges within...

[@gtrmain]

His answer is his god is in time, out of time and controls it all. That is a most unscientific and unsatisfying answer.

[@blessedamerican3541]

There is no such thing as time. You are either GOD’s good dreams or HIS nightmares.

[@chrisc1257]

What rubbish. God is a being outside of time yet he is there at the time of events?

[@reenatai75]

My head span 😅😅😅 I listened to him a second time ,he was rather convincing

[@samuelmiller371]

Don’t worry, on the third listen it goes back to being ridiculous.

[@Hjgfrfjufdetivjiu]

mmmmmyes ofcoooourse mmmmmmmmm

[@merrybolton2135]

If you can be outside time, then time is meaningless To go to heaven and live for ever is also meaningless. Just shows god is man make from a fellow ape

[@TheGianluman]

Biblic Elohim were not eternal. Ancient authors also depicted them as earthly and capable to die like every man. Only after the siege of Jerusalem, when the trace of Yahweh has been lost, his kohen started to elaborate the transcendental figure by blending their culture with the neoplatonic point of view. Moreover, ancient hebrew language never had a word meaning eternal, because the concept of eternity wasn't even elaborated back then. The word mistranslated into eternity, OLAM, means a "unknown period of time" that can be "longlasting". But not eternal. The fact is that every individual known in modern days as "deities" used to live thousands of years, therefore a human being can't even imagine anything different than the "eternal life" of that deity, simply because that one was there at the time of his ancestors and presumibly will last after the death of that man. Moreover, extrabiblic scriptures used olam as notion of space instead of time, meaning a "unknown" place. Or maybe we should mistranslate as "eternal place"? It would make no sense. Elohim were not eternal. Even a psalm confirm it. Nothing different than other culture featuring long lasting deities.

[@fjg2896]

Too much religious nonsense, not enough good science.

[@mikeclancy741]

Philosophy, metaphysics and comparative theology are always useful "thinking tools", as our physical measurement tools are always constrained by technology. Open your mind and read widely. Do not become a philistine merely because you have a smattering of undergraduate physics and think you "know it all" ;)

[@fjg2896]

@@mikeclancy741 And philosophy, metaphysics, and comparative theology are frequently constrained by delusional fantasy.

[@johnbrowne8744]

Blah, blah, blah.😴