Originally posted by Hilston
Do you believe reality is infinite?
Yes.
God is real.
God is infinite.
Therefore, reality is infinite.
How does God transcend creation?
He created it! He cannot be fundamentally a part of His own creation, He must therefore transcend it. The created cannot be greater or even equal to the Creator.
Yes, I got that, the connection was obvious, and I saw it coming like a circus elephant down the sidewalk. You missed my point. Real is really part of reality, just as truth is truly part of what is true. This is equivocation. It doesn't say anything. Get it?
It says a lot if someone is attempting to say that something really can exist outside of reality. The point was to show the self contradictory nature of such a position. If you are saying that anything (including God) can exist for real outside of reailty then you are contradicting yourself because what is real is reality.
OK, fine. Are you making an argument for infinitude that transcends God?
NO! Don't you get it? If God really did transcend reality then if that transcendence is real, then it too is part of reality. It is totally a logical absurdity to suggest that one can realy exist outside of reality. It would be basically saying that it is possible to be more than infinite which might be a fun and pious thing to say, but it ignores the meaning of the word infinite just as saying that God transcends reality ignores the meaning of the word reality.
Who said anything about size? Nothing exists apart from God, independent of God, at any distance from God. He is separate from His creation (i.e., holy), but creation cannot exist separated from Him. All, even hell and the Lake of Fire, are contained within Him.
Size was only an example Jim. Put anything in there you want. Time, Size, power, patience, joy whatever. If you have an infinite amount of it and you remove anything less than all of it, then you are left with a infinite amount remaining. That is the nature of infinity.
It does no harm to God's infinite nature to suggest that there is some location within His creation where He is not present, especially if that location was created just for that very purpose by God Himself.
It's not a matter of size. It's a matter of existence. Anything that exists is contained within God. There is nothing that transcends Him or that is outside of Him.
Certainly nothing transcends him but being outside of Him does not imply transcendence especially if it was He who put you outside of Himself and if you have no means of getting back in on your own.
Prove the past and future do not exist.
Prove that they do!
What exists, exists now. The past is gone, done, finished, forever "in the past", unalterable and forever inaccessible except by our memories and those memories that have been recorded (accurately or otherwise) in history books.
The future is always future, thus the sign "Free beer, tomorrow!". What has been predicted might come to exist and it might not. What God has determined in advance to bring to pass will come to exist but does not exist YET.
There is precisely zero evidence that either the past or the future exist with their own independent existence as though they were some destination which could be traveled to (the adventures of Capt. Kirk not withstanding).
We have no record in the Scripture of anyone ever praying and asking God to go back into the past in order to fix some terrible wrong, or to insure some good result. Why? If the past exists why couldn't God go to the past and change things?
You will undoubtedly point out that this last point is an argument from silence, and I would agree, but it's a awfully powerful one. Even you wouldn't recommend that someone ever pray such a prayer. It would go against everything you and I believe concerning the finality of death and the inevitability of our facing God to give an account for the actions we performed during this life. The Bible does not teach that we will give an account of every idle word, unless God goes back in time and changes things so that you were never born in the first place. Any such belief would throw everything we know to be certain into doubt and confusion.
And so I say it again. The past does not exist and neither does the future. All of existence is NOW. If you believe otherwise in the absence of any evidence then the burden of proof is on you.
Are there true and false memories? How do we ascertain which are which?
By an examination of the currently existing evidence. If no such evidence exists and some memory is in question then the information cannot be known. God's memory is perfect of course, and all our actions are recorded in some fashion or another (perhaps in our own minds). So God will not have any such difficulty. But the point is that without corroborating evidence of one sort or another the truth of memories that are in dispute cannot be determined.
There is more than one sense of the word but for the purposes of this discussion I would say that history is the retelling of events that occurred prior to now.
The events that define history exist in the past, Clete.
Only in a manner of speaking Jim. Those events do not have their own independent existence out there is some other dimension or something. Jesus is not on the cross suffering and dying somewhere in some past existence. That event happened, then it was over, and that's it. The event continues to exist in our minds and in history books but the event itself does not exist any longer.
Your view is utterly unbiblical, Clete. Scriptures instruct us to count on the future, with full assurance of faith, firm and unwavering certitude regarding a future which you say does not exist. The Word of God gives us explicit prescriptions to long for a future we do not see, but nonetheless exists.
Ro 8:23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. 24 For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? 25 But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.
Eph 1:18 The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, ...
Col 1:5 For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel;
Tit 2:13 Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;
Tit 3:7 That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
Heb 3:6 But Christ as a son over his own house; whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.
I think perhaps you are thinking I'm saying more than I am. I'm not saying that what God has planned for the future won't ever happen, I'm only saying that those events do not exist YET. Saying that they are "in the future" is a useful convention of language but it is not intended to mean that those events are actually existing in the future just waiting in line to become the present. There is simply no evidence that that is the case nor is there any reason to suppose that it should or needs to be the case.
Hilston wrote:
So if God created a world of humans whose only emotion was jealousy, in which all their actions were locked in place and the future was "closed", God would still be righteous as long as He didn't punish any of them for any of their actions? Is that your view?
I responded…
If you take out the word 'evil', I think you'd be getting somewhere. God could have made people whose action where locked in place, yes. But had He done so, morality, good, evil, love, hate, etc would all be meaningless to those people.
Jim asked in response:
So what. Could God do that?
I said yes. I highlighted it for you; maybe you missed it the first time around.
So you're basically saying that there is only one kind of world God could have created and still be righteous and loving, right?
No I just said that God could have created any sort of world He wanted to as long as that world didn't violate His righteous character.
He could easily have made a whole universe of metallic, robots with eighty two legs each which manufactured vast quantities of break fluid just in case God's Lamborghini needed a break job. Had He done so, it would not have had any impact upon God's character. It's not wrong to make robots, or break fluid or to do a brake job on a Diablo. But if one day God got tired of brake fluid and He got angry at the robots for having made it, gave them emotions and senses with which to feel pain and then punished them for having made one too many gallons of brake fluid, God would be unjust! He. Would. Be. Unjust.
If you believe that our actions were predetermined by God and that He has sent people to Hell for having committed those very actions then you believe God to be unjust or your belief is self contradictory, take your pick.
So what part of the syllogism do you disagree with?
God is infinite, completely free of limits and finite boundaries.
All of creation, without exception, is finite.
Therefore, God's knowledge of His finite creation is exhaustive.
- I do agree that God is infinite.
- I do not agree that He is "completely free of limits and finite boundaries". God cannot lie, steal, cheat, murder, or rape. He cannot go somewhere that does not exist (like the future or the past for example), God cannot know the unknowable, He cannot make someone love Him, etc. I would say that these limitations are real and significant, wouldn't you?
- I do agree that all of creation is finite in at least some respect. We will live forever, whether in the presence of God or in Hell, so our life spans are infinite but we, as created beings, had a beginning and so are not eternal. God is eternal; He both will always exist and has always existed; this is not true of any created thing.
- I agree that God knows everything that is knowable that He wants to know, nothing more, nothing less.
Resting in Him,
Clete
