I believe William Lane Craig discusses your problem and offers a solution:

Should be in this essay:

https://ojs.uclouvain.be/index.php/theologica/article/download/58143/56353/

It is undoubtedly absurd to talk about 'before," or to use any temporal language to describe the period (another temporal term) before God created time and space. After all, there is no time, so how can we talk about a time before time existed? — Raymond Rider

This is sound reasoning through the lens of three-dimensional set theory.

I agree that the two problems you articulate need to be addressed for the sake of the legitimacy of theism.

If I'm not mistaken, I see an additional problem for theism in your solution to the first time problem. Traditional theism, I think, asserts that God is prior to everything else.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Given the above quote, I'm skeptical about traditional theism accepting that time is co-eternal with God (even if God says so!).

As to the second time problem, as you say, there's no apparent rational start time for populating an empty existential set.

As to the second issue of the second time problem, the infinite causal regress, things perhaps start to get a little bit interesting. If you look at the problem of infinite-regress-in-general through the lens of set-theory, you can give yourself some maneuvering space by looking at the comprehension restrictions that limit the scope of inclusion of sets.

As you might know, around 1900 A.D., logicians saw that unlimited scope of inclusion of sets leads to a paradox that simultaneously places the ultimate set in two contradictory positions.

If I'm not mistaken, this very same problem of paradox-of-unlimited-inclusion applies to popular notions of God as all-encompassing and beyond. Following this line of reasoning, God is comparable to a set without comprehension restrictions. In short, God, so posited, is paradoxical.

Now, of course, Christian theology does address paradoxicality in the form of The Trinity (which is not mentioned in the bible).

Curiously, The Trinity is an assertion of paradoxicality within the material world of empirical reality.

Also curious, in the science world of realism, is the assertion that our universe has no center, nor any boundaries.

These two examples of complexities pertaining to the boundary ontology of sets alerts us to an important question - What about the complexities pertaining to the boundary ontology of sets?

In the literature I've read thus far pertaining to the comprehension restrictions, no issue is made about boundary ontology. I think it's up to the philosopher to address this question.

I find that QM is strongly impelling me towards a notion of upward-dimensionality as a lens through which to examine a concept of God as a phenomenon of four-dimensional set theory.

First, notice what I said in the first sentence: "before God created time and space." It is undoubtedly absurd to talk about 'before," or to use any temporal language to describe the period (another temporal term) before God created time and space. After all, there is no time, so how can we talk about a time before time existed? — Raymond Rider

This is a human language problem, not a theological one. Language paradoxes don't limit God's abilities.

This brings about the "second time problem." If time has always existed, then why did God create everything else when He did? Why did He choose that specific point in time to create the universe? — Raymond Rider

Again, God is not limited by your limited understanding. This is a human contradiction, not a theological one.

You can't play gotcha with God. There are plenty of good reasons why he might not exist, the two you have provided are not them. They.

I do not see the problem that you want addressed.

I believe in God (by which I mean an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent person). And I believe God created time.

But I don't see what problem there is with this. There was no time before God created time. Someone who asks what was happening before time came into being is confused, for nothing was happening as time is the medium in which things occur.

I think time is made of God's attitudes. There is, for us, something it feels like to remember something (or to seem to remember it) and something it is like to anticipate something. And then there's when we are doing neither. The visual sensation of the cup I am currently getting does not seem to me to be being remembered by me, or anticipated by me. And so it appears to have presentness. That is, for an experience to appear to be present is just for it to appear neither being remembered or anticipated by me. And that is also why the present is an all or nothing affair and does not come in degrees.

Our attitudes of remembering and anticipating do not, of course, constitute the pastness and futurity of anything. Rather, they are the means by which we are aware of the pastness or futurity of something. But in order to provide us with that awareness, they must themselves resemble the real qualities of pastness and futurity. And as an attitude can only resemble another attitude, we can conclude that pastness and futurity are attitudes and presentness is their absence. And as attitudes always have a mind that bears them, and as time is unified, we can conclude that time is made of the attitudes of a single mind - God. I say God, for God is omnipotent and if God was not the source of time then he would not be omnipotent.

Time, then, is made of God's attitudes. When God remembers something, it is past; and when God anticipates something, it is future, and when God does neither in respect of something, it is present.

First, notice what I said in the first sentence: "before God created time and space." It is undoubtedly absurd to talk about 'before," or to use any temporal language to describe the period (another temporal term) before God created time and space. — Raymond Rider

The word "before" in this phrase is probably a metaphor drawn from our experience with space-time, and our lack of experience with infinity & eternity. Some scientists also use the same analogy of "before" the Big Bang in their speculations on Multiverses, Many Worlds, and Instant Inflation. We also have no experience with Zero, but we find the notion of nothingness (null) to be useful in Logic and Mathematics.

If time has always existed, then why did God create everything else when He did? Why did He choose that specific point in time to create the universe? — Raymond Rider

The "time before time" problem is also caused by taking metaphors literally. The God of the Torah was sometimes portrayed as a humanoid deity in a parallel universe above the clouds. But other models insist that God is omnipresent & eternal, hence outside the limits of space & time.

So, in order to resolve your language problem, you'll just need to adjust your framing of the issue. But that still doesn't have anything to do with the "existence" problem. Obviously, the Ideal idea of God exists in the minds of most human on Earth. But there the only space-time evidence of God is the creation itself. The logically necessary existence of a Creator is the philosophical argument for a First Cause. And that reasoning remains moot after 2500 years of ideological debate.

Therefore, these paradoxes simply mean that the god of philosophers is a matter of personal opinion, and can't be proven in any objective manner. So, there's no sense in getting riled-up about it one way or the other. Just accept that it's a question for faith, either in scriptures or in your own reasoning. :smile:

This is a human language problem, not a theological one. Language paradoxes don't limit God's abilities. — T Clark

I was going to make precisely the same point.

I cannot think of a way for the theist to solve this problem. — Raymond Rider

The bigger problem for the theist is that they have no way of explaining how or why a god created anything or what a god even is. So in essence, before we get bogged down into meta-questions, it's worth recognizing that theism generally employs a mystery to explain a mystery. Gods have no explanatory power.

Gods have no explanatory power. — Tom Storm

I think that's not true. People experience God. You may claim that they are experiencing something else, something more mundane. Or you may claim they are deluded. I don't think they are, but it doesn't matter. God does have explanatory power. Not to you, clearly. But that doesn't disqualify the experience other people have or God's value to them.

You are one of the most moderate atheists here on the forum. You don't share the rabid obsession of some. But your lack of imagination limits your understanding.

You are one of the most moderate atheists here on the forum. You don't share the rabid obsession of some. But your lack of imagination limits your understanding. — T Clark

Thanks TC. But I meant what I said and I think the point is a moderate one. :smile: My imagination is working fine. Maybe I put it badly. Let me try again. If God is an explanation for creation/reality then this explanation is just another mystery. Even those who experience God (through, say, the Apophatic tradition) would agree that God is beyond ordinary perception and human experience.

I don't think an experience of a god - even if I grant that the experience is genuine - counts as an explanation of anything God is said to have done or wants from humans. The experience explains the experience and may well count as proof of God by the believer, but it does not provide an elucidation of anything further.

, if ineffable, then what's up with all the preaching anyway...? Weird.

There was a time when there was no time! God hadn't created time then.

Then God created time!

The problem, the way I see it, is that we've been habituated to using a spatio-temporal frame of reference. We immediately, reflexively as it were, latch on to, like an infant to its mother's nipple, time (and space). We have to, naturally, break the habit of looking at our watches or the wall clock in our study.

The puzzle may be "solved" so to speak if we reorient ourselves in a Minkowskian-Einsteinian sense (time as the 4^th dimension). We can imagine 2D space without a 3^rd dimension, no (a flat sheet of paper?)?. Now simply extend that to 3D space missing the time (the 4^th) dimension. The universe could attain a timeless state, God may have simply added the 4^th dimension to a 3D world.

I think there are a lot of fake atheists on this forum. I have come across this often. The theistic arguments are so vacuous because they ultimately rely on the acceptance of the supernatural.
There is no evidence at all for anything beyond naturalism.
Many who use the label atheist, have theistic manuscripts firmly inserted in orifices, making it harder to see them. They use the label atheist to appear to others as logical thinkers but then they use stealth to introduce the same old vacuous arguments that those such as William Lane Craig and his debunked Kalam cosmological argument BS have been doing since religious fables started.
Some 'chancers' even have the cheek to complain that some atheists are being 'too nasty' towards theism. Theism has threatened all non-believers with hell and damnation for eternity.
They have murdered, non-believers in every vile way their 'god-fearin' mind could come up with.

Many who use atheism for their own purposes are as bad as the fake 'evanhellicals!'
They should have the courage of their true convictions and show their true theistic heart.
Every time I watch online debates between theists and atheists, I see the theists defeated badly.
I think there is only one future for gods in the mind of humans, as humans gain more knowledge,
diminution.

I spend more of my time on discussion forums such as Quora, where there seems to be a much more enlightened membership. This is my last post on this website. Many good thinkers on this forum but many chiseled, ossified people as well.
There are enough able people on this site to counter the fake atheists and the true theists/antinatalists/political extremists etc.
I will read any responses to this comment but will not respond to them.
Enjoy your future exchanges with each other!

if ineffable, then what's up with all the preaching anyway...? Weird. — jorndoe

People gotta talk. Not God's fault.

I don't think an experience of a god - even if I grant that the experience is genuine - counts as an explanation of anything God is said to have done or wants from humans. The experience explains the experience and may well count as proof of God by the believer, but it does not provide an elucidation of anything further. — Tom Storm

First off, as I've made clear in the past, I am not a theist and don't have any particular religious beliefs. Still, if someone has experienced God directly within a religious tradition, it seems to me it would make faith in the tenets of that tradition a reasonable response. People say there is no evidence for God, but there is.

If you don't mind archaic translations, esoterica, references to symbolic systems like Alchemy or Hermeticism, and mystic allegory, you might appreciate this:



It deals with a similar topic. Boehme was quite influential, in Christian theosophy and in philosophy, particularly through Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. Whitehead has some Behemist influence too.

I will caution though that it's fairly arcane. In some ways, it's a lot more intuitive than Hegel, but in others it requires more flexibility.

The basic takeaway is that we know there is being (becoming) because we're here. So how did God have being before creation, before time?

Behemism says God couldn't have being in that period. Genesis starts with "In the beginning," a begining that coincided with creation for a reason. Because if there is only one thing, God, how can God have any meaning. An infinite string of ones carries no information in the same way an infinite string of zeros lacks information. As Sausser says, "a one word language is impossible," because if one word carries equal reference to all things, it denotes nothing.

In Boehme, this means God's knowledge of God is frustrated. God cannot define God. God must posit another, must create, in order to be defined, hence creation and time.

Hegel builds up a similar story, starting with a thought experiment on human experience. Pure sense certainty has no definiteness. You don't see dogs or sheep or trees. There is only a now, devoid of interpretation. But this pure, undefined sensory stream lacks all meaning, and so is itself pure abstraction. This pure being is contradicted by the pure nothing of its content. The contradiction results in being sublating nothing and incorporating it into itself. The result is becoming. We experience a now of being that falls away continually into nothing. The new concept entails both, the beingness of being in "now" and the nothing of nothing in the falling away of "now," which is then replaced by another "now" of being.

Our Newtonian heritage has us think of space and time as a receptacle or container for things. However, the time and space we find in relativity is dynamic, and time and space are relative. Whitehead envisioned spacetime as a relationship between processes, point events, rather than a container.

Talking about time before creation, when all being was God, is then misunderstanding the term. It's akin to Zeno's paradox. If space and time are infinitely divisible, how can Achilles ever pass a tortoise? Every time he closes the distance by half, there is always another half to go.

Mathematical solutions to this were always lacking. Physics eventually solved the problem though. Velocity is a relationship between entities. It is itself a measure of distance / time, but one that is necissarily relative between points of observation. A coffee mug "at rest" on my table is actually rotating on the Earth's axis at a tremendous speed. It is also moving relative to the sun through space, and the sun is moving relative to the center of the Milky Way. Speaking of absolute time, relative to nothing is a Newtonian holdover. You'd as well ask "where was space before creation."

The problem here is one of applying an abstraction that is necissarily relational to a non-relationship.

To go back to the communications example, God then is not like an infinite stream of ones. God is like a waveform of infinite amplitude and frequency. As frequency approached the infinite, the peaks and troughs become infinitely close together, canceling each other. The result would be silence, but not an empty silence. The wave would contain a pleroma of information, the entirety of all possible functions. It can, however, only be heard through a reduction of its amplitude and frequency. Negativity, reduction, differentness, become requirements of being.

I think there are a lot of fake atheists on this forum. I have come across this often. The theistic arguments are so vacuous because they ultimately rely on the acceptance of the supernatural.
There is no evidence at all for anything beyond naturalism. — universeness

Theistic arguments don’tt have to rely on the supernatural, and by the same token, atheistic arguments don’t have to embrace naturalism. Maybe it’s those atheists you’re referring to as ‘fake’.

Evan Thompson(2001) writes:

“Another way to make this point, one which is phenomenological, but also resonates with William James' thought (see Taylor, 1996), is to assert the primacy of the personalistic perspective over the naturalistic perspective. By this I mean that our relating to the world, including when we do science, always takes place within a matrix whose fundamental structure is I-You-It (this is reflected in linguistic communication: I am speaking to You about It) (Patocka, 1998, pp. 9–10).”

Ratcliffe(2002) says:

“The unquestioned givenness of the objective world that is constitutive of scientific descriptions cannot capture the way in which the given is disclosed by a meaning-giving background. Thus, if anything, it is the transcendental, meaning-giving account that has ontological priority over an objective/causal description.”

Zahavi(2008) concurs with Thompson, Varela and Ratcliffe:

“Ultimately, what we call “reality” is so deeply suffused with mind- and language-dependent structures that it is altogether impossible to make a neat distinction between those parts of our beliefs that reflect the world “in itself” and those parts of our beliefs that simply express “our conceptual contribution.” The very idea that our cognition should be nothing but a re-presentation of something mind-independent consequently has to be abandoned.”

Atheists like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett treat science ‘scientistically’, that is , as a kind of faith. They operate from an implicit metaphysics of naturalistic rationalism that they don’t recognize as a presupposition, and that leads to the notion that one can defeat theistic arguments by ‘rational’ or ‘empirical’ refutation ( “defeat them badly”).

Every time I watch online debates between theists and atheists, I see the theists defeated badly. — universeness

I spend more of my time on discussion forums such as Quora, where there seems to be a much more enlightened membership — universeness

You think Quora is a better site for philosophical discussion that the philosophy forum? Haven’t heard that one before.

I don't mean to insult anyone's intelligence but why are people discussing Wellsian temporal mechanics in 2022? You guys do know that this is a completely naive and scientifically silly notion of what time is right?

Time has been conclusively proven to have absolutely no concrete existence outside of a MCMC variable in causal calculations.

Of course you can't prove a negative like "time doesn't exist" but you can prove that what we observe and think of as time is just an illusion created by our perceptual limitations and so any discussion has about as much axiomatic foundation as cultural mythology.

If I'm not mistaken, I see an additional problem for theism in your solution to the first time problem. Traditional theism, I think, asserts that God is prior to everything else.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Given the above quote, I'm skeptical about traditional theism accepting that time is co-eternal with God (even if God says so!) — ucarr

Forgive my ignorance, but I cannot reply to your comments about set theory, as I do not have any meaningful understanding of set theory. However, I did follow this above quote and I believe you are providing me with two arguments. The first one looks like this:

1. On traditional theism, God is prior to everything, including time.
2. If God has willed that time always exists, then God is not prior to everything, namely time.
3. Therefore, traditional theists cannot coherently say that God has willed that time always exists (1, 2).

I think this argument commits the fallacy of equivocation. In premise 1, traditional theists are committed to say that God is ontologically prior to everything. In premise 2, God is not temporally prior to everything. Thus, you seem to be equivocating two uses of the word "prior." To help illustrate this distinction, consider the example of the relationship between fire and smoke. Fire is ontologically prior to smoke. In other words, smoke is ontologically dependent on fire. If there is not a fire, then there is no smoke. However, fire is not temporally prior to smoke. Once there is fire, then there is instantly smoke. They come about at the same time. Thus, fire is ontologically prior to smoke, but not temporally prior to smoke. Similarly, God is ontologically prior to time (as it is willed into existence by God), but God is not temporally prior to time. Further, God cannot be temporally prior to time when there is no temporality to begin with. For these reasons, I do not think this argument works.

As to your argument about the Word existing with God, this does not seem to be an issue with Christian theists. Christian theists affirm that the Word is of the exact same identical nature as God. Thus, there is not issue with ontological priority. On this view, there are not two Gods who both have ontological priority, but rather one God. On Christian theism, the Trinity is three distinct persons who all share the same nature, which is God. In the same way, you and I can share the same nature---human nature---but can be distinct persons from one another. I hope this helps clarify the discussion!

It is undoubtedly absurd to talk about 'before," or to use any temporal language to describe the period (another temporal term) before God created time and space. After all, there is no time, so how can we talk about a time before time existed? — Raymond Rider

Do you not feel challenged to imagine a state of being with time wholly absent? I've made your last question appear in bold letters because you're already talking about such a state with your question.

If the theist concedes your claim that God & time are coeternal, the issue of God's authorship of time becomes interesting. I say this because the scenario featuring God willing the existence of something that has always existed, as God has always existed, suggests a type of willful causation that is timeless, and, I must admit, until this writing, I've been narrow-mindedly assuming all causation & effect relationships are both temporal & linear.

Furthermore, the scenario featuring God timelessly willing the existence of time reads like a compound paradox, along the lines of "the timeless creation of time that already exists."

We can say that God has always willed that time existed in order to maintain God's ontological priority, as time would be contingent on God's will. — Raymond Rider

Let me know if my understanding of ontic is incomplete or false. I ask this question because, given a scenario wherein God & time have always existed, how can God's existence be prior to time's existence?

Let's look at your use of contingent in our context here: (contingent on/upon) - occurring or existing only if (certain circumstances) are the case; dependent on.

It seems to me coeternal existence precludes not only priority but also contingency.

I say this because with time being coeternal with God, there's an identity of priority equating the two, thus making it impossible say which of the two terms does the willing of the other and, moreover, thus making it impossible to say which of the two terms requires causal circumstances (i.e. the causal will of the other) to exist.

Perhaps you'll admit it's pretty hard for one thing to claim it created another & yet, when asked about the two births respectively, the claimant declares, "we both have always existed." It's hard to uncouple the creator/created relationship from linearity.

Also, consider the scenario with two eternals. If two things are extant, it's hard not to assume they exist somewhere. Now, given that the somewhere houses the two eternals, and the stipulation that some type of somewhereness is a necessary accommodation for existing things, the suggestion arises that the somewhere has priority WRT the two eternals, thus throwing the scenario back into the pit of eternal regress.

The other option is that somewhereness i.e., space, like time, is coeternal with God.

If there's a kernel of truth in my reasoning here, isn't it interesting how conferring eternal existence upon a thing seemingly places it upon level ground with God?

This brings us to the Trinity. God-Son-Holy Spirit, though individual, nonetheless are one. Well, if time is coeternal with God, then time is also coeternal with Son & Holy Spirit.

Does concession to time being coeternal with God entail transforming the Trinity into the Quaternity?

People say there is no evidence for God, but there is. — T Clark

Then what's the evidence? A personal experience? God talking to us in our mind? What's your measure of evidence? Someone saying he/she has seen them?

Then what's the evidence? A personal experience? God talking to us in our mind? What's your measure of evidence? Someone saying he/she has seen them? — EugeneW

I was pretty clear in the post you are responding to.

Still, if someone has experienced God directly within a religious tradition, it seems to me it would make faith in the tenets of that tradition a reasonable response. — T Clark

It seems a reasonable response. Yes. But is that evidence?

Then what's the evidence? A personal experience? God talking to us in our mind? What's your measure of evidence? Someone saying he/she has seen them? — EugeneW

I think the question for atheism is not the lack of evidence for god/s so much as the reliability of the evidence provided. Unfortunately personal accounts of religious experience offer very little to others who haven't had this experience and/or doubt its veracity. Religious experiences also cancel each other out - the Muslim, the Christian, the Hindu all have 'unique' experiences that to them 'prove' the authenticity of their version of god/s and how we should to live. It doesn't get much more problematic than constructing certainty out of something so evanescent.

It doesn't get much more problematic than constructing certainty out of something so evanescent. — Tom Storm

I agree, though at the same time, what we build certainty on can collapse like a rotten wooden bridge. Or evaporate like alcohol.

I think the question for atheism is not the lack of evidence for god/s so much as the reliability of the evidence provided. — Tom Storm

Isn't that the same? If the evidence is not reliable, is it good evidence then?

Isn't that the same? If the evidence is not reliable, is it good evidence then? — EugeneW

Not to me, but I probably wasn't very clear there. The claim 'there is no evidence for god' is false. It's important to recognise any evidence which is provided, it's a matter then of assessing how convincing the evidence is.

it's a matter then of assessing how convincing the evidence is. — Tom Storm

Which depends on the one using it. There is no legally framed evidence as in court: "Your honor, Exhibit X is clear evidence the accused was near the crime scene that night. He can't have created the universe". "Objection! Your honor, I haven't been informed about exhibit X!" Etcetera...

Can anyone think of a solution out of the "second time problem?" — Raymond Rider

Gott could arguable decide that there was no best time and that the decision was of no importance. Perhaps he used an informagical going flip to decide.

But is that evidence? — EugeneW

Yes.

I think the question for atheism is not the lack of evidence for god/s so much as the reliability of the evidence provided. — Tom Storm

I agree and that's my problem with many atheists. Just because you don't think the evidence provided is reliable, that doesn't mean there's no evidence. Questioning evidence is part of reasoning. Rejecting evidence without that reasoning is not good philosophy.

Unfortunately personal accounts of religious experience offer very little to others who haven't had this experience and/or doubt its veracity. — Tom Storm

I acknowledge there are verification issues with personal reports. As I said, that's a reasonable argument for doubting them as evidence. On the other hand, we use them all the time in the real world.

Religious experiences also cancel each other out - the Muslim, the Christian, the Hindu all have 'unique' experiences that to them 'prove' the authenticity of their version of god/s and how we should to live. — Tom Storm

I don't find this a convincing argument. Actually, the reverse is probably true. The fact that experiences of God are found in so many different cultures and which apparently developed independently is evidence that the experience is a common human one. Is it really surprising that the specific interpretations and expressions of that experience differ from culture to culture? I don't think so.

The claim 'there is no evidence for god' is false. — Tom Storm

Yes. I think this is important.

Experiences of God are no evidence of God. Then I could say my dream last night was evidence of God. Which it isn't. It was just a dream. I can wrap it up in a Christian-Judeo-Islamic tradition but that doesn't make the evidence stronger. Anyone can say every experience is evidence of God. Every schizophrenic could in fact say to have a direct contact with God. But we consider them mentally ill. Why should they be ill though? In an asylum I met this little guy running around with the bible all day. It was a funny sight. The bible looked huge, compared to his miniscule body. The bible gave him power and he told me about his nighttime encounters with God, in isolation.