Let us know about it when you come to the Eureka moment. — Corvus

Sure.

What is substance? Would it be some sort of mass or matter? Mass or matter would be perceivable i.e. sensible i.e. tangible, visible and locatable. Is this what you mean by substance? — Corvus

By substance, I mean something that exists, such as matter, and has a set of properties.

God's decision to create the universe on 2/11/25 at 3:22 p.m. has always been a part of God and when it occurred on that date and time, nothing changed in God. It was always his decision within him. The decision didn't occur at 3:21. It was always there, forever and ever, just like everything else about God. — Hanover

A few issues are here: 1) How can a timeless agent act within time? 2) How can a timeless agent know what time is? 3) Your scenario requires that God wait until the proper time and the waiting requires time.

Because we are no longer mortal creatures when we are in that state of contemplation. And since we are mortal creatures right now, we cannot comprehend it. — Arcane Sandwich

Are you saying that we cannot contemplate when we are mortal? What do you mean by contemplation then? Elsewhere in this thread, you mentioned that we cannot understand God's essence even in Heaven. I then asked what the point of contemplation is if we cannot understand God's essence.

Change reqires time whether the change is psychological or physical. If by real you mean the physical time is a substance then one has to study Hole argument which denies time to be a substance. There are all sort of responses to the Hole argument though. This is still subject to debates. Gravitation waves however were observed and that to me means spacetime is a substance. The psychological time is however another beast. It is required since otherwise we cannot function well. It is however contingent on brain function. I am currently thinking about nature of psychological time so I cannot by certainty say if it is a substance or not.

Thanks for the comments on Hegel's ideas. I will read it tomorrow since it is very late now and the text is dense. I will then comment on it if I understand it well.

Which is why the essence of God is incomprehensible from the perspective of creatures, such as you and me. — Arcane Sandwich

Why should we get involved in contemplating something incomprehensible? It is eternal torture as well.

The same thing that Hegel means in The Phenomenology of Spirit, when he says that God is both substance and subject. — Arcane Sandwich

I am not familiar with Hegel and his work. Do you mind elaborating?

Let me speak clearly, Mok. There is no happiness in Heaven. And there is no beauty either. There is only the contemplation of the Image of God. There is nothing else to do. The souls of men and women that have entered Heaven do not engage in small talk amongst themselves. They are not catching up for old time's sake. There is only the contemplation of the Image of God. Everything else is worthless by comparison. — Arcane Sandwich

So you only enjoy intellectual activity!? I do but I also enjoy other things as well. By the way, how about other creatures, like animals?

What makes you so sure "options" are ontologically real things, and not just a feature of maps rather than a feature of territories? — flannel jesus

They are real because I have had doubts in many situations in my life. It could be a feature of maps rather than territories but then we have to deal with the question I raised.

And if options ARE ontologically real things, why couldn't they be physical? — flannel jesus

I cannot see how they could be physical accepting that physical entities are deterministic by deterministic I mean that any state of matter only leads to one unique state later. If we accept that options are real in the physical world then it means that one state of matter may lead to one state or another state later and this is against the very definition of determinism.

Maybe a wave function is the physical manifestation of an option. — flannel jesus

I believe in De Broglie-Bohm's interpretation. No Schrodinger cat paradox, no wave-particle duality, etc.

God is also a subject, as are we. A human being is both a substance and a subject. — Arcane Sandwich

What do you mean by a subject here?

No, I am not. If I was, I would have said so. The concept of beauty does not apply to God, in any way, shape, or form. Aesthetic notions do not apply to a divine being. — Arcane Sandwich

But the article you mentioned is only about the image of God and the act of creation of humans in it.

I talked about a situation when you are not certain, by this I mean you do not the the consequence of your decision.

Are you talking about the beatific vision?

God is a substance. By change, I mean a change in the substance.

I like it, but I still don’t see how P2 necessarily follows from P1.

God exists, and created things only exist after God creates them, but how does it logically follow that the situation before God creates created thing is a situation where only God exists? We can assert “God exists” and we can assert “nothing else but God exists before God created,” but I don’t see that only God existing has to follow. The “if so, then” need not be so in P2. — Fire Ologist

If God is the creator of the creation then there is a situation in which creation does not exist. God exists. Therefore, there is a situation in which only God exists. It is late now. I will see if I can change the argument to implement these points tomorrow morning.

Just like we don’t know God exists and have to assert it to get going here, and just like we don’t know God creates from nothing and have to assert it, we don’t know from these two assertions that God was the only thing that existed before God created from nothing. “If P1, then P2” is not logically necessary. There could be other uncreated things.

I don’t think you need God to be the only thing that exists to make your argument.

You need God to create from nothing, but you don’t need there to be nothing else besides God before creation from nothing, you just need God not to use anything else to cause the creation. — Fire Ologist

Yes, there could be other uncreated things but we can change the argument slightly to include them. There is a state in which uncreated things and God exist and there is a state in which uncreated things, God, and created things exist. The rest of the argument then follows naturally.

You are assuming that a decision making process must occur that didn't previously exist and then concluding what you've assumed, which is that the entity went from State A to State B. That is, if you assume that God is in the undecided State A at T-1 and then he moves to the decided State B at T-2, then you're assuming your conclusion, which is that there is a change from A to B from T1 to T2 and thus the entity is different and changed. — Hanover

Correct.

If you assume though that the eternal being God is so constructed at his inception that he will decide at T2 to create the universe, then nothing changes in God over time. Every instance of behavior of God could be posited to exist eternally within God within his initial constitution and he would not be changing. — Hanover

I don't understand what you mean by eternal being and state. If the act of creation is necessary then the scenario in which the existence of God and the act of creation lay at the same point is feasible otherwise we are dealing with a scenario in which God as an agent is able to not create and this means that there is a situation in which only God exists.

Well, what else would there be to do in Heaven? Nothing, really. — Arcane Sandwich

As intellectual agents, I don't think that there is anything to be known once we figure out everything. We could still have fun, have sex, drink fine wine, listen to music, smoke weed, etc. until we get used to everything, and living further turns into torture! Perhaps there are things like meaning that we don't have access to right now and that could make the living eternally meaningful and durable. I know a friend from another forum who claims that he experiences meaning! Perhaps we could become Godly and create our creations and have fun by confusing our creatures. So who knows!?

Life after death although is a very interesting topic it is beyond the scope of this thread. An eternal life requires an incorruptible substance though something people call the soul. I am agnostic to the idea of soul and life after death since I don't have any argument in favor or against it. It is a subject that I am currently thinking about. I have a simple picture in my mind, there is an omnipresent substance, the unmoved mover that is the cause of all changes. There is also a substance that is subject to change and it is the object of causation. So, to the best of my understanding, I am dealing with substance dualism, and that suffices to explain the material world. Whether there is a spiritual world is the subject of debate and it is only valid if one has a spiritual experience such as life after death. Regardless, the claim that God's essence requires eternal contemplation requires proof that I am not aware of any.

You say "How could we have a single thought, knowing that all that exists is matter and forces?" As if you know of some other way to have a single thought. — flannel jesus

Having a thought requires an entity to experience it, what I call the mind. Putting this point aside, we are returning to my former point: How could we have options in our thoughts knowing that our thoughts are the result of the motion of matter and electromagnetic fields where these motions are deterministic? So we have to either exclude the existence of options, which I highly doubt to be possible, or we have to find a proper answer to this question. To be honest, I don't have an answer to the question and I doubt if anyone has an answer for it either so it is an open question.

I did take on board your question and I answered it to the best of my knowledge. If you have a better answer, I am happy to read about it. — Truth Seeker

Yes, we are not all-knowing, which is why we are unsure in certain situations. We don't know whether it is better to do something or not. That means we are dealing with options in those situations where we are not sure.

I am sort of Nietzschean when it comes to the God of the philosopher - everyone sort of makes up their own placeholders when they mean "God" in a philosophical argument. So if reference to "Father" not moving, "Son moved" as one and the same thing called "God" is off-putting because it admittedly sounds Christian, then all that was poor choice of words that didn't help me describe what I'm trying to say to you. — Fire Ologist

I use two concepts here, the unmoved mover and God, the unmoved mover is the ultimate cause of everything whereas God is the creator of the creation. So we are on the same page. We are just using different words for different concepts.

First of all, I agree, God, itself, changes, is moving. If someone else, like Aquinas or anyone thinks God can't move, or doesn't change at all, I am suspicious of what they mean if they mean an agent can create without moving; even creation from nothing doesn't mean an agent has not moved to effect something new, and therefore this agent has changed. So I agree with your ultimate conclusion.

And I agree that if you accept the premises of your argument, the conclusion follows. — Fire Ologist

Cool. :up:

So it's an interesting question - we Catholics learn that God is eternally perfect, unmoved, and never changing, not deprived of anything ever that would beg something be moved. He could not move as he is already where he would move to. Etc., etc. — Fire Ologist

That is the definition of the unmoved mover to me and not God (the bold part).

Yet, God must have moved in order for his creation from nothing to have been first not created, and then by God's movement, created. Without God changing, nothing would have been created. Nothing itself would have changed, if God were not changing nothing to something. And since nothing did change to something (because now is something), and only God could do it, God had to do, had to move, has to change. — Fire Ologist

Yes, God is the creator hence that requires a change.

I like the use of "undecided state" to represent before nothing was changed into creation, because it makes an agent out of God, which makes sense for a creator God. Agents need hands to move things, even if those things are nothing into somethings. So agents, are moving, changing things, changing their hand from here, to now there, holding something, from what was nothing in hand. — Fire Ologist

Yes, God is an agent like us that can be in an undecided state and a decided state.

But, if I am going to analyze not the validity of your argument, but whether I think you've created a proof for the motion of God who is creator, I think P2 is not necessary, and so C1 would not necessarily follow. — Fire Ologist

I already made the argument shorter by removing C1 and C2. Here is the new form:

P1) God exists and is the creator of the creation from nothing
P2) If so, then there is a situation in which only God exists
P3) If so, then God is in an undecided state about the act of creation when only God exists
P4) If so, then the act of creation is only possible if God goes from an undecided state to a decided state
P5) If so, then the act of creation requires a change in God
P6) If so, then God changes
C) So, God changes

P2 necessarily follows from P1. If God is the creator of the creation then there is a situation in which creation does not exist. God exists. Therefore, there is a situation in which only God exists.

P1. God is the creator of creation from nothing. And this God exists. No reason to differ here and we are off to the races. — Fire Ologist

Cool.

P2. If God exists and is the creator of creation from nothing, then there is a situation in which only God exists.

Although I understand why you are referring to a situation before creation as a situation in which God only exists; before anything else existed, there was nothing, but God, and if God created creation from nothing, then all that needed to be was God for there to be creation. I get it. Before many things were created, there was only one creator only, so "only God exists." — Fire Ologist

Cool. So, you agree that P2 follows from P1.

But couldn't God create all of creation from nothing, and yet not be the only thing that exists while he is doing it? Like this: before creation, there was God and a blob of X (imagine anything, in a blob or a heap if you will, shaped in some limited way, and imagine whatever you imagine as "God" next it, and imagine absolutely nothing else).

So P1 works still in the God plus blob pre-created situation; God can exist and be the creator of the creation from nothing, as long as God doesn't create anything using that blob of X. The problem with P2 (for me) is the "If so, then".

If God is the creator of the creation from nothing, it does not follow that, if so, then there is a situation in which only God exists. It could be otherwise. — Fire Ologist

Yes, there could be other things. If so, therefore, God is not the creator of those things. We can change the argument slightly and still follows that God has to change to create other things.

Now we can assert P2 anyway and, like P1, just assert: 1, there exists a creator God, and 2, the God, before creation, was the only thing that existed.

But now C1 is not a logical conclusion from P1 plus P2, but is instead a restated of P2.

But let's move on anyway. — Fire Ologist

I already removed C1 in the new form of the argument. Please see above.

Let's assume, for the sake of arguing whether God as we conceive of it is changing or not, we have established that God exists, is a creator from nothing, and that prior to any such creation, "there is a situation in which God only exists."

P3 and the rest of the argument follow without any issues I can see. — Fire Ologist

Cool. Let's go ahead.

I like the term "undecided state" because it requires both a Decider (presumably God), and a new state after a decision has been made. It works. — Fire Ologist

Cool. Let's go ahead.

But it includes time, which may be fine, and necessary (as any change seems to require time be spent changing), but if time can be eliminated, maybe the point about God changing, even outside of time, would be made sharper. — Fire Ologist

No, any change requires a time so God cannot act outside of time and He indeed exists within time.

At P3 you said:
If so, then God is in an undecided state about the act of creation when only God exists.

How about:
If so, God exists in relation to nothing (as only God exists from P2). — Fire Ologist

I don't understand what this means. Are you reformulating P3?

And then P4 would be:
If so, then, by creating, God exists in relation to the created things, (no longer in relation to nothing). — Fire Ologist

I don't understand what "in relation to" refers to here.

And then we need a new P5:
Created things exist. — Fire Ologist

I don't think we need this premise.

C2: So, God changes. — Fire Ologist

I don't see how that follows.

So my totally new argument, based on yours, but left on the stove probably too long, (and certainly an analytic mess but I'm just spit-balling about "God" and we can work out the logic later if useful):

P1) God exists, and created things exist from nothing.
P2) There is the situation in which created things do not exist (have not been created).
C1) So, since God exists, God is the creator of the creation from nothing.
P3) If so, absent creation, God exists in relation to nothing.
P4) If so, then, by creating, God exists in relation to the created things.
P5) Created things exist.
C2) So, God changes. (from creator in relation to nothing, to creator in relation to things.) — Fire Ologist

I almost spent a day reformulating my argument in OP in a form that is suitable for first-order predicate logic. I don't think that your formulation is suitable for that yet. I don't understand your P3 and P4 either.

:up:

The essence of God is incomprehensible to human reason. — Arcane Sandwich

Does God understand His essence? If so, then God's essence is also comprehensible to humans.

God changing is at odds with divine simplicity. — Banno

That is the uncaused cause (what I call the Mind for the reason I have) that is simple and not God.

So if you are going to say god changes, you will need to re-define god in a fairly extreme way. — Banno

I define God as the creator of the creation from nothing. God is an agent who acts, thinks, etc. within the Mind.

Perhaps you can do so. For my part, i remain unconvinced that the notion of god can be made coherent. — Banno

As I mentioned before I believe in a version of substance dualism in which the Mind is the unmoved mover and It has certain abilities, namely the ability to experience and cause. The object of experience and causation is another substance that is subject to change. So everything is coherent.

There is no argument for God being unchanging in the context you're using. — Philosophim

There are several arguments for that. Please see @Count Timothy von Icarus post here. By change, I mean going from one state to another state.

I'm noting that 'immutable' in this sense is the fact of the eternal nature. — Philosophim

I am saying there is a difference between the uncaused cause and God. I distinguish between God who is the creator and the uncaused cause who is the ultimate cause of everything.

You have to be very careful to understand the context and not just use out of context meaning of the words. No one, and I mean no one, is saying that God literally cannot act, think, evolve, etc. Your argument is a straw man. — Philosophim

What argument are you talking about? I am arguing that acting, thinking, etc. require a change. Don't you agree?

If you want to attack what people are saying, note the fact of God's eternal existence or ineffability. — Philosophim

God does not exist eternally. That is the uncaused cause that exists eternally. And there is nothing ineffable here. People use ineffable when they face a contradiction.

As I already said in my previous post, we are uncertain because we are not all-knowing. Only an all-knowing being is always certain about everything. — Truth Seeker

I understood your point but it seems that you didn't take my point.

What do you mean?

We are uncertain because we are not all-knowing. Which lottery numbers will be the winning numbers? If we knew that we would always be able to pick the winning numbers for the jackpot. — Truth Seeker

So you agree that we are uncertain on many occasions. If the existence of options is not what causes us to be uncertain then what it is?

First of all, I would like to ask your opinion about my argument:

P1) God exists and is the creator of the creation from nothing
P2) If so, then there is a situation in which only God exists
P3) If so, then God is in an undecided state about the act of creation when only God exists
P4) If so, then the act of creation is only possible if God goes from an undecided state to a decided state
P5) If so, then the act of creation requires a change in God
P6) If so, then God changes
C) So, God changes

Hebrews 13:8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Malachi 3:6 - For I the LORD do not change
James 1:17 - Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
Numbers 23:19 - God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind.(This is repeated in I Samuel and I'm pretty sure elsewhere).
Hebrews 6:17–20 - So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.
Psalm 102 - to paraphrase: the world will wear out and pass away, but God never changes (Ecclesiastes has similar lines) — Count Timothy von Icarus

Please let's put the Bible verse aside since many verses tell otherwise.

Aristotle's argument that the Prime Mover must be pure act with no potency. Something without potency cannot change. If God had any potency, then the part of God that was pure act would be the part that was really the Prime Mover (and in any event, God having parts was also denied). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I am familiar with that argument. I am however wondering how we can relate the Prime Mover to God who is the creator of the creation. According to my argument God, the creator, is the subject of change therefore, God and the Prime Mover cannot be identical.

Boethius and others argument that God does not exist in time and is not a thing. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But according to my argument, God not only changes but He is the subject to time. There is a point before creation and a point after creation which requires that God is subject to time. God cannot possibly create unless He decides to create and that requires a change too.

Moreover, how could God be the cause of every change if He does not exist in space and time?

The difficulty of explaining what God's will would be attracted towards if it changed since God is the Good itself by which all things are good. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Good and evil are fundamental properties of the existence. So, I won't buy that God and all things that exist are good.

The difficulty in explaining how anything would act on God if God is the ground of all being "in which we live and move and have our being" — Count Timothy von Icarus

I simply differentiate between God and the Unmoved Mover. God is the creator of the creation whereas the Unmoved Mover is a substance that all changes are caused by It.

The idea that causes/principles have a higher ontological level than their effects (downwards causality), but that God is the first principle. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Are you talking about the argument from contingency here? I agree that that all things owe their existence to the Prime Mover but as I said before I differentiate between God and the Prime Mover.

The idea that true knowledge must be of the immutable "intelligibles," and that these were generally thought of as "ideas in the mind of God/Logos." If they were changing, knowledge would be impossible; but knowledge is possible, thus they cannot be changing. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The true knowledge that I call the Absolute Truth is objective and it does not require God to be true.

My understanding again is this is meant to convey that God cannot be created or destroyed. God always was, and always will be. — Philosophim

I asked for the argument for God being unchanging. I didn't ask whether God is immortal or not.

Then there is also the distinction between knowledge of God's energies, which are immanent and mutable in effects, and God's essence (generally held to be unknowable and immutable). — Count Timothy von Icarus

What is the argument for God's essence to be immutable?

By territory, I think you mean matter and forces, and by representation, you mean thought. However, that does not answer my question. How could we have a single thought, knowing that all that exists is matter and forces?

There are maps, and there are territories. Our brain is a territory in itself, but it's a territory which contains maps of other territories. Those maps can be wrong. Being wrong is a feature of the map, not the territory. Uncertainty is a feature of the map, not the territory. — flannel jesus

What do you mean by map and territory?

I don't understand why there's a problem to think about at all. Our brain doesn't have direct access to all the knowledge of the world. Our brains build models of how we think the world is, based on limited information, and sometimes those models aren't actually close to how the world is. — flannel jesus

How are thoughts created in the brain? What is the source of the information and how the information could be processed in the brain? All we know is that there is motion of matter and change in the electromagnetic field in the brain. Without these, I am sure we can tell that no thought is possible. You have certain thoughts when you are unsure in a situation, for example when you are in a maze though. The question of how we could possibly have a sense of uncertainty when the motion of matter and electromagnetic field are deterministic is then valid.

When it comes to a situation, you are either sure or unsure. This is a valid dichotomy. You do what you want to do if you are sure. But what about when you are unsure? I think we can agree that we all experience a sense of uncertainty in a situation, as in the maze example. That is when we say we are unsure in a situation. The important question is how could we possibly be uncertain if matter is a deterministic thing. In other words, how the sense of uncertainty is created in the brain considering that the brain is made of matter. This is something that I am currently thinking about and I believe no one has a clear answer to it.

I agree that options are real. I have been in mazes but not labyrinths. — Truth Seeker

Then you can always choose to do otherwise if you agree that options are real. The example of a maze is one. Think of a situation in which you have plenty of money but you are unsure about investing in the market. There are many examples in our lives in which we are unsure about the situations. This means that options in such situations are real so you can always choose to do otherwise.

Yes, several verses in the Bible indicate that God even changed his mind: Exodus 32:14 for example and there are more.

Sure options are real. Have you ever been in a labyrinth?

Your second premise contradicts your first. If God created something, then that something came from God, not nothing. — Philosophim

Not at all. I just defined the act of creation in D1. The act is due to God. The type of act is defined as an act of creation of the creation from nothing. By from nothing I simply mean ex nihilo or out of notion. I don't mean that creation comes from nothing.

We can still hold C1, but that only comes from P1 if we assume D1 is false. — Philosophim

No, D1 defines the act of creation and C1 follows from P1 and D1.

Yeah, everything else leads to that, no issues here. My greater question would be what you're trying to point out. — Philosophim

This is against the idea that God is changeless and is the uncaused cause. I also started this thread for my future thread when I will discuss what is the uncaused cause.

If you're trying to say that in prose writing someone said, "God is unchanging", do you understand what the term means? — Philosophim

By unchanging I mean something that is not subject to change.

Do they mean unchanging as in, "God has never moved and is frozen in time," or "God has always existed." — Philosophim

By unchanging I simply mean that it never moves or changes. God could have existed since the beginning of time and by unchanging I don't mean that.

By the way please consider my new version of the argument for future discussion. Here is the final form (this version is the result of my discussion with @Arcane Sandwich and I am very thankful for his contribution):

P1) God exists and is the creator of the creation from nothing
P2) If so, then there is a situation in which only God exists
P3) If so, then God is in an undecided state about the act of creation when only God exists
P4) If so, then the act of creation is only possible if God goes from an undecided state to a decided state
P5) If so, then the act of creation requires a change in God
P6) If so, then God changes
C) So, God changes

I agree partly. If those words were said by Jesus before His death then Jesus and God are not one. Whether the doctrine of the Trinity is logically coherent is another topic though but let's put this aside and say that we agree.