Definition from theism: God is an incorporeal mind that's not spatiotemporal.
_{Please note, this is just one definition that theists sometimes put forth, and the following applies just to that.}

• Suppose x is defined as not spatial, "outside of space". Well, then obviously x is nowhere to be found. And x cannot have any extent, volume, area, length, or the likes, not even zero-dimensional (like a mathematical singularity).
• Suppose x is defined as atemporal, "outside of time". Well, then there can be no time at which x exists. And there can be no duration involved, x cannot change, or be subject to causation, cannot interact, and would be inert (perhaps Platonic).

God is then one such x. How strange that someone would worship and pray to such a God. No one's listening.

Moreover, from evidence we already know that mind is strongly temporal (process-like) and body is strongly spatial (object-like):

• body: left to right, top to bottom, front to back, has inertia and mass — spatial, object-like
• mind: comes and goes, starts and ends, un/consciousness (anaesthetic, coma, dementia) — temporal, process-like
• body without mind: examples abundant — the deceased, rocks, body persists (structurally) throughout mind, …
• mind without body: no credible examples — "mind moving among bodies", "free floating minds", "possessions", …

All examples of minds are uniquely associated with, and localized to, bodies. By abduction, mind is something body can do and body is moved by mind, alike, apparently so that mind is contingent on body. Mind (as the experiencing self) and body (of which brain is a part) are merely two different aspects of the same (ontological) entity, synthesized into you, I, others. Whatever exactly we/it all may be.

For that matter, the likes of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, schizophrenia, various cases of brain damage, Libet's experiments, fMRI, introspection illusion, confabulation, etc, clearly point in one direction. (And why aren't non-theists possessed, to be subject to exorcisms, anyway?)

The interaction problem pushes the definition towards idealism.


Augustine grappled a bit with this, though not really satisfactory as such, albeit a great analysis for this time; he shuffles God into the usual fluffy spiritual realms, which is easier than giving an actual explanation.

How, then, shall I respond to him who asks, "What was God doing before he made heaven and earth?" I do not answer, as a certain one is reported to have done facetiously (shrugging off the force of the question). "He was preparing hell," he said, "for those who pry too deep." — Augustine, Confessions, Book XI, Chapter XII

If there was a definite earliest time, then anything that existed at that time, began to exist at that time. Phrases like "before time" are incoherent. Whatever is meant by "eternal" in this context can neither be atemporal, nor omnitemporal, but seems to suggest a sort of orthogonal temporality, perhaps like another temporal dimension, which is rather unparsimonious, and runs contrary to time having been created by a will'ed act.