God outside of time and space?

[Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz]

I don't know how new this idea is, I hadn't really heard about it until the last couple of years, but an argument I'm hearing more and more is a "god outside of time and space."  The link I've got at the bottom is as good as any at describing this, unfortunately comments are disabled.  I've had a couple discussions on another blog about what the implications are of a god that does not exist in time are.  My first thought is that a being that "sees all of history simultaneously" not only does not have free will itself, but is incapable of taking any action.  If every event that occurs exists at the same time (point?) an event like creation is impossible because there is no "before" or after" for creation, which means it cannot be an action.

Anyway, I'm thinking about trying to do a guest post about this on the blog where I can post.  I've got a fairly simple analogy that I'm trying to expand on (very simple role playing game), but I'm looking for thoughts and possibly other aspects I may have not considered. I've mentioned the above, I really hadn't thought about how the devil comes into play, and all I see from the other side is assertions on how it would work even if such a thing were possible.

Thanks for any input.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/summacatho...free-will/

[Aliza]

A G-d outside of time and space is the Jewish approach that I was taught.

I don't think there's any interpretation in Judaism that says otherwise.

[Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz]

Except that there were a couple of prophets that were physically taken up into heaven (Jesus and Mary as well, but I don't know how they fit into Judaism.) I don't know how that works if a physical bode suddenly goes to a place where spatial dimensions don't exist.

Also, time seems to be a really big deal to god, there's many references to generations, seasons, years, etc. which mean nothing to a being that does not experience time.

[no one]

Interpretation is in the eye of the beholder.

[airportkid]

Imagining a sentient being outside space and time able to adjust the molecules within space and time is just one more means of removing any possible limits on what this being is capable of.  It isn't so much the milieu as the infinite capacity.  And why must a god be unlimited?  So that it can be invoked as answer to any situation.  Put any sort of limit on the being that can solve any problem puts some problems out of the being's reach, and there's no more useless god than a god unable to solve your problem.

That infinite capacity vis a vis knowledge or capability is necessarily logically contradictory only forces the believer to give the god the additional capacity to be unhindered by intrinsic paradox, again so as to be able to solve any problem the believer finds personally insurmountable.  The whole construct is sheer childishness.

Meanwhile throughout the entire recorded history of credible, competent science seeking the mechanisms of action to how the universe functions never has any path of investigation found itself invoking any sort of god as answer, not even in sub-atomics, a field so bizarre that if a god could be inferred it would be there.  And that, despite a whole human history dedicated to finding a god.

[Aliza]

Except that there were a couple of prophets that were physically taken up into heaven (Jesus and Mary as well, but I don't know how they fit into Judaism.)  I don't know how that works if a physical bode suddenly goes to a place where spatial dimensions don't exist.

Also, time seems to be a really big deal to god, there's many references to generations, seasons, years, etc. which mean nothing to a being that does not experience time.

The way it was taught to me is that G-d is outside our time and space. G-d is external to our universe. I don't think it's necessarily that G-d exists without any definition of time at all. 

Imagine that you are a game designer and you've created a game world with quests and challenges and an ultimate goal for your players to work through and solve to win. You have created a universe that does not share your own time and space. You are outside of that universe, looking in. 


Now suppose you have some people play the game from beginning to end. You know what they'll encounter before they know it, and you might even drop some tools or write in an earthquake that conveniently causes a tree to fall, creating for your players a bridge to get to the other side of a river so they can access the next part of the game. Whatever it is. You preprogrammed things to meet their needs along the way. 

Maybe you record the game, and you get a list of all of the actions deployed by the players. Along with the code of the game, you have a clear story about what took place. This is kind of where the analogy starts to fall apart, but let's pretend you have a time machine, and you go back in time to when the game was being recorded. You watch the game live, but you have the transcript of the original actions that these players took (are taking right at that moment). You know what they choose, but they still have the free will to choose. 

Does that make sense?

I mean, does it make sense in the sense that you're an atheist listening to a theist talk, not "do you agree?"

[Minimalist]

God outside of time and space?

Mere apologetical straw-grasping from people who can't handle questions from the real world.  The great thing about imaginary friends is that you can make them into whatever you want them to be.

[mordant]

My take has always been that a god outside time and space stops being outside as soon as it intervenes in any way, IN time and space.

Also, a god truly outside time and space is completely non-examinable and therefore not just unsubstaniatED, but unsubstantiatABLE.

So if you have an interventionist god, it, or at least its effects, ought to be examinable, since it is NOT outside time and space if it's intervening. They also ought to have explanatory or predictive power to help us make sense of our lived experience. Neither is true.

If you have a non-interventionist god, you'd have to tell me how you would distinguish that from a non-existent god.

Aliza's game-designer analogy is not a bad one but I would say that the fact you design and build a software artifact such as a game means that you are in the same universe as the game and the gamers. If the analogy was meant to be more of a matrix-like world in which the game characters themselves are your creations, and see you as outside of the game ... I suppose the characters could infer your existence from the design itself, but most theists want to have it both ways -- they want you to transcend existence and yet also control it or provide guardrails of some kind.

[Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz]

I mean, does it make sense in the sense that you're an atheist listening to a theist talk, not "do you agree?"

I understand that thought, but in reality it doesn't work.  If you are considering our universe a program, then either everything we do is programmed to behave exactly as intended (no free will), or the programmer doesn't specifically know the outcome (no omniscience).  If we consider it as a recording that has already happened, then the events had to have had an initial occurrence at some point.  God, being out of time, could still go back before that point and not only see what we had done, but what he had done as well.  Very first time through, we get into a situation, pray to god, he helps us out, or not.  From god's perspective, if he already knows how he is going to respond to our prayer, not only does he have no choice, fully and perfectly knowing what he will do, we have no choice because in doing something different, god wouldn't even have had to answer our prayer.  Essentially, you are claiming our (and god's) entire timeline is a static recording that can never change.

[Aliza]

I mean, does it make sense in the sense that you're an atheist listening to a theist talk, not "do you agree?"

I understand that thought, but in reality it doesn't work.  If you are considering our universe a program, then either everything we do is programmed to behave exactly as intended (no free will), or the programmer doesn't specifically know the outcome (no omniscience).  If we consider it as a recording that has already happened, then the events had to have had an initial occurrence at some point.  God, being out of time, could still go back before that point and not only see what we had done, but what he had done as well.  Very first time through, we get into a situation, pray to god, he helps us out, or not.  From god's perspective, if he already knows how he is going to respond to our prayer, not only does he have no choice, fully and perfectly knowing what he will do, we have no choice because in doing something different, god wouldn't even have had to answer our prayer.  Essentially, you are claiming our (and god's) entire timeline is a static recording that can never change.

Yeah, my analogy wasn't perfect. The time traveler isn't watching a recording, though. He or she is observing the events while also knowing everything that will happen. 

Could there be multiple times that the game is run and we're moving through the game for the 71,293,291,018,102nd time? I don't see why not. Maybe each time G-d tweaks something?

The only things that have free will are the living beings. The laws of gravity, energy, and motion (for example) are consistent. They don't ever change. They have no free will, and that's okay. They're part of the program. 

If G-d knows what you're going to do, but *you* don't know what you're going to do until you choose to do it, I think that's free will. G-d knowing it doesn't change that you chose to do it.

[Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz]

Yeah, my analogy wasn't perfect. The time traveler isn't watching a recording, though. He or she is observing the events while also knowing everything that will happen. 

Could there be multiple times that the game is run and we're moving through the game for the 71,293,291,018,102nd time? I don't see why not. Maybe each time G-d tweaks something?

The only things that have free will are the living beings. The laws of gravity, energy, and motion (for example) are consistent. They don't ever change. They have no free will, and that's okay. They're part of the program. 

If G-d knows what you're going to do, but *you* don't know what you're going to do until you choose to do it, I think that's free will. G-d knowing it doesn't change that you chose to do it.

What is the substantial difference between seeming to make a choice because it is known that is the choice you are going to make and are powerless to do otherwise, and being forced to choose something against your will?  Could god be manipulating us into thinking we are making the choices we want and we just don't know it?

[airportkid]

The free will chimera has been explored in these threads already, and somewhere there's a You Tube of Sam Harris eviscerating the concept that free will exists.  The root of the nub is this:  part of our mind processes are subconscious, out of reach of the conscious, but are nonetheless a factor in our decisions.  So long as an aspect of our decision process involves something beyond our conscious reach, free will cannot exist, if by free will we mean trying to achieve outcomes consciously directed.

How many times have we done something (or not done something) or "free will" would have done differently?  Dozens of times daily?

[Dānu]

Making God outside space and time, all space and time, is necessary to avoid certain paradoxes. If an infinite past cannot exist for things in time, then God cannot have an infinite past. The difficulty is, how does a God that has never played the game, how does that being empathize with those who have played the game? And it brings up another problem. The past cannot be changed. It doesn't matter who the past is past relative to, once it is past, then it cannot be changed. So even before the future is past to us, it's past to God, and cannot be changed, removing the possibility of free will.

[Aliza]

Yeah, my analogy wasn't perfect. The time traveler isn't watching a recording, though. He or she is observing the events while also knowing everything that will happen. 

Could there be multiple times that the game is run and we're moving through the game for the 71,293,291,018,102nd time? I don't see why not. Maybe each time G-d tweaks something?

The only things that have free will are the living beings. The laws of gravity, energy, and motion (for example) are consistent. They don't ever change. They have no free will, and that's okay. They're part of the program. 

If G-d knows what you're going to do, but *you* don't know what you're going to do until you choose to do it, I think that's free will. G-d knowing it doesn't change that you chose to do it.

What is the substantial difference between seeming to make a choice because it is known that is the choice you are going to make and are powerless to do otherwise, and being forced to choose something against your will?  Could god be manipulating us into thinking we are making the choices we want and we just don't know it?

Manipulation is not a part of the Jewish belief of what G-d is and does. I'm telling you what Jews believe, I'm not trying to convince you. The best I can do is explain why Jews do not object to this teaching.

If you knew me to be a straight shooter... someone who doesn't play games or tricks, and I told you that I'm going let you pick a snack of either a banana or a jalapeno, and I know you hate spicy food, I can pretty much know that you're going to pick the banana. You have the free will to choose the jalapeno, but I already know you hate them. You're still choosing, though. You could still choose that pepper... you'd have a much more interesting day if you do. 

The world does not exist for G-d's amusement. G-d is not watching us on his G-d TV, marveling at what choices we make as he flips through channels and gets the latest dirt on who dumped who. It exists for us to experience things. We make choices and we have free will, but we have that free will in a closed system. 

If G-d was watching me from above, and he knew that I wasn't going to be the one to cure cancer, he still gives me the free will to try. I chose not to go into medicine, but it was always and option. I could have. In Jewish thinking, G-d would be liable for not allowing us to choose for ourselves.


Free will is the name of the game.

[1Sam15]

What came first?

Yahweh or this place outside time and space?

[epronovost]

The free will chimera has been explored in these threads already, and somewhere there's a You Tube of Sam Harris eviscerating the concept that free will exists.  The root of the nub is this:  part of our mind processes are subconscious, out of reach of the conscious, but are nonetheless a factor in our decisions.  So long as an aspect of our decision process involves something beyond our conscious reach, free will cannot exist, if by free will we mean trying to achieve outcomes consciously directed.

How many times have we done something (or not done something) or "free will" would have done differently?  Dozens of times daily?

Most conversation about free will end up in debates over semantics and definition. If free will means trying to achieve outcomes consciously directed, the existence of subconscious processes has no impact at all on the existence of free will. The term "trying" doesn't entail succeeding, thus even without actually succeeding in achieving outcomes consciously directed, you can have free will. You just need to want to be able to achieve consciously directed outcomes to have free will and I think you can easily demonstrate that humans have a desire for conscious and personal control over their thoughts and decision making. I hope you are slightly misquoting Sam Harris there else, I'll have to admit that his reputation of being an abysmal philosopher is well deserved.

[rocinantexyz]

...an argument I'm hearing more and more is a "god outside of time and space."...

sounds like magic

[Minimalist]

The past cannot be changed.

No....but it can be re-written.

[Aliza]

The past cannot be changed.

No....but it can be re-written.

Didn't anyone see Back to the Future? The past CAN be rewritten!

[Rhythmcs]

Outside of space and time, eh? Did it fuck off before or after it stopped talking to people?

[brewerb]

If god is outside of space and time how can he move/walk thru a camp site?

In 3..2..1, and the winner is allegory.

[pocaracas]

a "god outside of time and space." 

The word "outside" implies space, so "outside space" makes no sense.

In spite of that, I like Aliza's analogy of the programmer creating a "virtual" universe and making it run, with access to any in-game point of space-time.
That then requires considering the possibility of a whole civilization of gods where a few have this job/task of creating games... and that means that there might be many such game worlds running in paralel. And of course, none of those game worlds can be made aware of the existence of any other without one of those god programmers creating an interface.

As for free will... as always, it depends on how both those words are defined.
The will would be free within the rules of the game, but ultimately bound to the rules and not really free at all. (replace "rules of the game" by "laws of physics" at will).
At a counsciousness level, the individual in the game will certainly be free to consider any and all possibilities that crop to mind.

As for the possibility that our Universe is one such game world, I mean, the whole quantum world is where the RNG seems to be, but in such a way that all the more macro things display virtually no RNG and does look a lot like the world is on rails.

[OakTree500]

I dont think its a new idea, however it would be impossible to prove [at least by todays standards].

But then from there, if you allow the thing that religious people use as "evidence" all the time, their holy book, which has numerous interactions with this outside of space/time god speaking and interacting with people in real time in actual reality. So even IF we personally could never prove it - said god could hypothetically just pop into our reality and say something/prove otherwise.

[Aliza]

I dont think its a new idea, however it would be impossible to prove [at least by todays standards].

But then from there, if you allow the thing that religious people use as "evidence" all the time, their holy book, which has numerous interactions with this outside of space/time god speaking and interacting with people in real time in actual reality. So even IF we personally could never prove it - said god could hypothetically just pop into our reality and say something/prove otherwise.

Religion is not evidence based. It either works for you (makes you feel good, helps you stay sober, or has some other value in your life), or it does not. 

Explaining it is one thing, but proving it shouldn't be necessary.

[pocaracas]

I dont think its a new idea, however it would be impossible to prove [at least by todays standards].

But then from there, if you allow the thing that religious people use as "evidence" all the time, their holy book, which has numerous interactions with this outside of space/time god speaking and interacting with people in real time in actual reality. So even IF we personally could never prove it - said god could hypothetically just pop into our reality and say something/prove otherwise.

Religion is not evidence based. It either works for you (makes you feel good, helps you stay sober, or has some other value in your life), or it does not. 

Explaining it is one thing, but proving it shouldn't be necessary.

Proving it should be necessary when you're trying to get others to believe as you do.
The alternative is... well.... what historically was done: the ruling class either forcing people to believe what they "believe" and then, because that only works superficially for the first generation, wait a few generations and voila; or being the example that people want to emulate. I find this second option a bit more difficult to accomplish, so it's no wonder that the first one would have been the prefered one.

Nowadays, I think none of these options would work. Given how human and fallible any religious hierarchy is, I'd expect them to be unable to be the example, also provided the ubiquitous media coverage we have.
Imposing a belief would be work, if access to the broader society was blocked, I suppose.... but would the Western societies peacefully accept having the internet clamped down like they do in Iran and North Korea and a few other places I could name?