Debate: Is it possible for God to be timeless?

I have heard people in the other debate topics assert that God is the only logically possible cause of the universe, but is it possible for God to be entirely seperate to, yet completely responsible for the universe?

To me, it seems not. I see time as a continuum and the medium through which causality can exist. If you take away time, you take away all means of causality and thus in this way you cannot have a God who lacks time and yet still causes physical events.

Yes

I used to think of time that way as well, but the theory of relativity (or some other related physics) appears to disagree: time is a dimension in which one can move, just like spatial ones. So if we believe that God can exist in all places, He could (must?) exist in all times as well.

I should point out that I have no evidence for this, but thinking of it that way helps me to organise my thoughts, such as they are.--CPalmer 08:15, 23 October 2008 (EDT)

I thought relativity stated that time is relative to the speed of movement in the spatial dimensions. In this way I dont think relativity addresses so much the existence of a continuum but how the rate of this continuum is relative to movement. -Barnes

I agree that time is a continuum, but the idea that one's position in time can be affected by movement in space suggests to me that it might be sensible to think of time in the same terms as the familiar spatial dimensions. If you follow my line of thought above, God can only be timeless if He is also omnipresent: do you believe it's possible for God to be omnipresent? If not, there's not much point pursuing this.--CPalmer 09:57, 24 October 2008 (EDT)

But mixing omnipresence with general relativity implies that God is a physical part of the universe. Anyway general relativity would require that something without movement cannot progress in time, which doesnt allow for timelessness so much as a lack of a continuum for God to cause within.

I can understand how omnipresence might work, but it makes God a part of nature rather than the separate creator of the universe. -Barnes

I disagree that omnipresence makes God a physical part of the universe. If He was both omnipresent and physically present, there wouldn't be any room for anything else, would there?.--CPalmer 12:56, 27 October 2008 (EDT)

It is quite possible for God to be timeless. To try and explain, humans always feel the need to quantify everything, even things which cannot be quantified. Thus you end up with thought experiments such as "If God is forever, where did He come from?" (How many people here have asked themselves that question? I bet all atheists have at some point and used their lack of an answer as a basis for their non-belief) and "If I fly forever, will I run out of universe?". The concept of eternity (running forwards and backwards) is simply a condition that we cannot (yet) wrap our minds around. Even if the Big Bang theory is true and one proton became "everything" and time started from that point, where did that one proton come from? It's when we try and picture and already infinitely old God standing in an infinite nothingness, holding a metaphorical match under this lonely proton that the thought experiment starts to become mind-bending. (Another t.e. we did a while ago was "if God is eternal and the Earth is 6,000 years old, what was He doing for eternity-6000?")

That could be why many people reject the notion of God, "I cannot conceive the concept of God being forever, because I do not understand 'forever', thus God cannot exist." God's existence cannot be quantified, which is where "belief" and "faith" come it, as unsatisfactory as some people find those answers. --KotomiT^Konnichiha! 15:04, 27 October 2008 (EDT)

I don't know, and nor do you

Perhaps God is just so far outside of human comprehension, trying to work this out is impossible. God is, and that's all that really matters. NewCrusader 08:50, 23 October 2008 (EDT)

Would you say that God is outside of logic too? The fact that you can assert that God exists means that you are conforming God to logic, since affirming his very existence means obeying the logical law of non-contradiction. -Barnes