R&P Reading Group - Book 1: Time and Eternity

[lasher]

He was probably irritated or amused by the irrelevancy of the question. I probably would have asked Nash if he knew his (or my, for that matter) wife existed and, if so, how.

Probably, I just recalled the story and thought it was funny.

[209vaughn]

Appreciated, greenz for you. I have a long ass commute every day and tear through books, looking to expand my materials.

Do you have any paticular topics regarding Christianity or God? Or just big picture arguments/thoughts?
I'll just list some people whom I enjoy. Some of these peoples i've read, some of them I watch on YouTube or listen to there podcasts...

Francis Collins, Ravi Zacharias, Alister McGrath, JP Moreland, NT Wright, Hugh Ross, WLC, Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburn, John Lennox, Robin Collins, John Polkinhorne, Dean Zimmerman, George Ellis (I think he's a Christian)... These are just current day Christian thinkers, I'm sure someone else could name some of the classics better than I could, such as CS Lewis, St. Augustine, St. Aquinas, William Ramsay, Martin Luther, Calvin, Wesley,

Some other authors who are not philosophers or scientists, but who are great thinkers non the less are... Rob Bell, Phillip Yancey, Rick Warren, Lee Strobel...

[Maiar]

as a side note, I second vincent chaung's work. He is very well written, and covers a myriad of topics. And he's free. http://www.vincentcheung.com/

I would also recommend Dr. Ronald Nash. Specifically his books "Faith and Reason", "The word of God and the mind of man" and "Christian faith and historical understanding".

Nash is a real favorite of mine.

Faith and Reason sounds right up my alley

No problem. I do a bit of commuting myself, so if you have a long drive, you might prefer to check out the free mp3 material on that same website (link). I would have mentioned it in my last post, but you only asked for stuff to read. In particular, I would recommend Collection 6, and even more particularly the last two lectures: A Christian Construction, Part 1; A Christian Construction, Part 2. They are audios of the last chapter of Clark's book Language and Theology (a book also contained in his Modern Philosophy).

I would also recommend Ronald Nash, even though he somewhat disagreed with Clark's epistemology (cf. Clark and His Critics). I enjoyed Nash's The Word of God and the Mind of Man.

awesome. Audiobooks are perfect actually and I have to say I'm not too familiar with Calvinism.

Do you have any paticular topics regarding Christianity or God? Or just big picture arguments/thoughts?
I'll just list some people whom I enjoy. Some of these peoples i've read, some of them I watch on YouTube or listen to there podcasts...

Francis Collins, Ravi Zacharias, Alister McGrath, JP Moreland, NT Wright, Hugh Ross, WLC, Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburn, John Lennox, Robin Collins, John Polkinhorne, Dean Zimmerman, George Ellis (I think he's a Christian)... These are just current day Christian thinkers, I'm sure someone else could name some of the classics better than I could, such as CS Lewis, St. Augustine, St. Aquinas, William Ramsay, Martin Luther, Calvin, Wesley,

Some other authors who are not philosophers or scientists, but who are great thinkers non the less are... Rob Bell, Phillip Yancey, Rick Warren, Lee Strobel...

Overwhelming responses.
Religion is a pretty big part of the people I associate with as well as several family members, so the more I know the more I can form an educated opinion on the matter as well as relate to people of different denominations/faiths.
I'm also a big Tolkein and Lewis fan, and most of my favorite authors are theists, so the more I can learn the better. I also have way too much time on my hands and I like to know everything.
Thanks for the recommendations, I recognize a lot of names from the bunch. Religious sources of peace.

[psiconoclast]

note: take a break half way through chapter two, or you may find yourself napping.

Indeed.

Having finished chapter two, I am definitely getting a sense of the objections that I am going to have to WLC's thesis,

I am finding his approach to be a bit of a shotgun blast - there are so many individual things thrown out that I could take issue with, but I don't want to simply pick nits (nor, truthfully, do I feel overly inclined to dissect all of them individually), and I think that would be getting lost in the weeds anyway, there is a simpler. . . crystallization of the underlying disagreement.

The major area of contention that I have with WLC at this point in the text (well, other than the fact that he is comfortable presupposing God and specific attributes of God):

His attack on "verificationalism" - he makes a pretty big deal about how verificationalism has fallen out of favor (and launches a qualified attack on Einstein's interpretation of relativity on that basis), and uses that to leverage unverifiable propositions into the realm of reasonableness, which struck me as a substantial mistake, since verificationalism hasn't given way to "anything goes", but has given way to falsifiability. He then goes on to assert that Lorentzian relativity may be preferable "in light of recent discoveries" and alludes to "a 'sea change' in the attitude of the physics community toward Lorentzian relativity." Perhaps I simply don't occupy WLC's privileged frame, but I did a search, and it does not seem that I missed a neo-Lorentzian revolution of physics any time in the last couple of decades.

[Meatros]

Craig's position is not quite that God is timeless, he'll get into it I assume later in the book, but he sort of combines the concept of timeless and temporal by positing that the moment of creation was when God both created, and simultaneously entered time. It's much more nuanced than that, so don't take my clumsy articulation of it to be his full position.



edit: I threw nuanced in there just for you, meatros.

:-)

Yeah, i feel like Craig is setting things up a bit - timelessness is coherent, but contradictory to a personal being. A personal being has the problem of what did it do for the eons prior to creation? The solution is a combination of both.

It's a bit difficult to articulate, I agree, but then again, so is practically any view of time.

[Meatros]

I think it's summarized up well here (below). I assume he moves away from quoting ancient scripture now, and more philosophical inquiry? I would think a modern mind more capable of solving this "riddle" verses ancient writers who were barely, if at all, exposed to any philosophy (plato, aristotle, etc). As you noted, there is a large window for the Biblical writers, but often WLC is referencing the OT, and Genesis story, etc, as if those writer's had greater insight. This seems illogical to me, but maybe it's a Christian faith thing (Bible divinely written/inspired, everything written as it is for a reason, no imperfections, etc)...

I don't fault him for this - he's a Christian after all. I would think that any religion with a text or deep history would have a similar motif. If his view of time cannot be reconciled with scripture, then he's either got to throw it away or throw scripture away.

To me, it seems he is just first setting up a biblical background for the two possible theories of the nature of God and time in chapter 1, not attempting to solve them through ancient understanding, or some sort of greater insight. In fact he claims the issue is not at all clearly resolved in the bible, and needs to venture out into the metaphysics and philosophy of time to go further. You will find he pretty much leaves the biblical study of the issue as he ventures into the modern philosophical discussions of the issue in chapters 2+. In fact, he pretty much defacto states that in the last paragraph of chapter 1.

Agreed. He just has to link them with scripture. He will provide the understanding, at least, supposedly.

Did you read the section on the hypertime theory attributed to Dr. Ross? Any insight on that? I've never heard of hypertime. Is it just some made up philosophical crap or does it have roots in physics?

You didn't see Cube 2?

I think it does have some roots in physics, but I don't know much about it.

I had started reading this book some months ago before deciding to switch to God and Time: Four Views. Since then, I've come to tentatively accept Paul Helm's theory of time (i.e. divine timelessness; B-series view of time), although I think Craig has a point that the primary reason for accepting this position - that God must be immutable in a strong sense - requires better arguments than Helm provided in his book Eternal God.

I have that as one of my future books to read. I like the 'four views' series.

He then goes on to assert that Lorentzian relativity may be preferable "in light of recent discoveries" and alludes to "a 'sea change' in the attitude of the physics community toward Lorentzian relativity." Perhaps I simply don't occupy WLC's privileged frame, but I did a search, and it does not seem that I missed a neo-Lorentzian revolution of physics any time in the last couple of decades.

Yes, this is one of Craig's biggest handicaps - the interpretations of relativity don't really support his view of time, since Lorentzian physics seems the out view. I remember Craig got excited at the discovery of faster than light travel, because he said it was evidence of Lorentzo's view point. I don't recall reading anything from him when it was discovered to have been a result of bad physics (in short, it turned out not to be true). I'm curious as to what recent discoveries he's referring to, since this book was published prior to that experiment anyway.

[IAMRED]

:-)

Yeah, i feel like Craig is setting things up a bit - timelessness is coherent, but contradictory to a personal being. A personal being has the problem of what did it do for the eons prior to creation? The solution is a combination of both.

It's a bit difficult to articulate, I agree, but then again, so is practically any view of time.

Craig may have been criticizing certain views of timelessness, but if I recall correctly, he later admits that Helm's is at least possibly coherent, cf. link:

In chapter 4 "Eternity and Personality," after effectively refuting objections that a timeless being cannot be personal based on considerations of memory, purpose, and knowledge, Helm proposes to solve the objection that a timeless being could not causally create a universe which unfolds serially in time by asserting that the universe as a whole does not exist in time and that God produces the whole universe, the entire temporal matrix, by a single, timeless act of causality, rather than producing each event by a separate exercise of causality (cf. p. 27). This solution is coherent, I think, but only if one assumes a B-theory of time, which Helm never discusses nor justifies.

[GregariousWolf]

Why would God delay for infinite time the creation of the universe?

This is an interesting line of thought. It's even a compelling question in naturalist contexts:

Why now?

[SheHadMANHands]

Agreed. He just has to link them with scripture. He will provide the understanding, at least, supposedly.

I can see this. Of course, this is the "danger" of discussing a book after the first chapter !

[psiconoclast]

Finished chapter 3, and am starting to be reminded of the battle of wits from "The Princess Bride".

Instead of taking quite so much time walking through (by WLC's own admission) incoherent positions on the God's relation to time (perhaps WLC is a major stockholder in Bayer?) I think that the notion that a static view of time is the only way to resolve the issues being grappled with could have been laid out earlier, and and then the other notions could have been examined and dismissed more quickly.

That nit aside, the really inescapable conclusion is that things get ugly fast when one starts with the conclusion, and then works backwards.

I'm guessing that there are plenty of Christians (presumably of the NOMA-esque variety) that view attempts to reconcile God and physics in this sort of way as a bad idea.

[lasher]

Finished chapter 3, and am starting to be reminded of the battle of wits from "The Princess Bride".

Instead of taking quite so much time walking through (by WLC's own admission) incoherent positions on the God's relation to time (perhaps WLC is a major stockholder in Bayer?) I think that the notion that a static view of time is the only way to resolve the issues being grappled with could have been laid out earlier, and and then the other notions could have been examined and dismissed more quickly.

That nit aside, the really inescapable conclusion is that things get ugly fast when one starts with the conclusion, and then works backwards.

I'm guessing that there are plenty of Christians (presumably of the NOMA-esque variety) that view attempts to reconcile God and physics in this sort of way as a bad idea.

Do you think WLC supports a static view of time?

[lucious]

even tho im still an atheist i cant see how a timeless god needs to be within time and experiencing temporal passage to be personal? as long as he hears prayers, that should be enough?


I'm on page 60 atm, right in the heart of the epistemology of God and tenseless time-if God is timeless, there is something he doesnt know namely, a tensed fact. I dont see the force behind this argument since it isnt as if 'it is going to rain today' is a piece of knowledge completely different from 'there was rain on july 14th'-just a different way of arriving at the same knowledge?

[psiconoclast]

Do you think WLC supports a static view of time?

I actually don't know much about WLC's positions, and I don't want to get too presumptive about where he is going, but it seems pretty clear that he intends for the reader of his book, at this point [end of chapter 3] to feel that the only way to have both a personal and an omniscient God is to have a timeless God and a universe in which time is static.

The last two paragraphs of Chapter 3 (trimmed for clarity):

The defender of divine timelessness therefore has a way out: He can adopt a static theory of time and deny the reality of tensed facts and temporal becoming.[snip]
.
.
.
If our discussion of the nature of divine eternity is not to end at this point, we have no option but to explore the viability of this escape route. Is the tenseless theory of time as credible as the tensed theory of time? In raising this question, we enter into the very heart of the philosophy of time and space. This is difficult and mysterious territory. One eminent metaphysician has called the nature of time "the most puzzling and paradoxical feature of the world. But we have no choice: If we are to understand eternity, we must first understand time.

(emphasis added)

So. . . Unless he has a rabbit up his sleeve, it does appear that he intends to thread the needle between a personal and an omniscient God by supposing a static theory of time.

[psiconoclast]

even tho im still an atheist i cant see how a timeless god needs to be within time and experiencing temporal passage to be personal? as long as he hears prayers, that should be enough?

I think that the objection is that a timeless God would know about the prayer, but because he/it would experience all of time simultaneously/atemporally, those prayers could not be reacted to in the way that we think of reacting/interacting.

I'm not seeing that as an issue myself, because a static theory of time does not imply a static universe - God could mold the universe just like a potter molds clay. As temporal creatures, we would have no conception of the various changes that the universe has gone through, but assuming that we are consciously experiencing the unfolding of the "final" product, then any of our prayers would already have been listened to, and taken into account by now.

Or something like that.

I'm going to need more bourbon to finish this book, I think.

[lasher]

I think that the objection is that a timeless God would know about the prayer, but because he/it would experience all of time simultaneously/atemporally, those prayers could not be reacted to in the way that we think of reacting/interacting.

I'm not seeing that as an issue myself, because a static theory of time does not imply a static universe - God could mold the universe just like a potter molds clay. As temporal creatures, we would have no conception of the various changes that the universe has gone through, but assuming that we are consciously experiencing the unfolding of the "final" product, then any of our prayers would already have been listened to, and taken into account by now.

Or something like that.

I'm going to need more bourbon to finish this book, I think.

Well, you may be an atheist ... but I can't fault your taste in good alcohol.

[lucious]

if static meaning the 4-d universe where each time point is equally real as the next, whos to say it has to be one line? At each infintisamally small division of time, isnt there the possibility of an infinite number of branching points one can freely choose from? i.e i have cereal for breakfast on july 14th....thats one 'time slice'....if i have bacon and eggs for breakfast, thats another 'time slice' which i chose freely to pursue rather than move from timepoint to timepoint helplessly like drifting down a river toward a waterfall

[lasher]

if static meaning the 4-d universe where each time point is equally real as the next, whos to say it has to be one line? At each infintisamally small division of time, isnt there the possibility of an infinite number of branching points one can freely choose from? i.e i have cereal for breakfast on july 14th....thats one 'time slice'....if i have bacon and eggs for breakfast, thats another 'time slice' which i chose freely to pursue rather than move from timepoint to timepoint helplessly like drifting down a river toward a waterfall

Not within the same universe, I don't think. How could all of those branches exists simultaneously in our single universe? Those time slices represent before and after relationships, not what if relationships.

[lucious]

Not within the same universe, I don't think. How could all of those branches exists simultaneously in our single universe? Those time slices represent before and after relationships, not what if relationships.

the point being tho there isnt jst one line ahead of us waiting, or a 'chain' of time slices-there are infinite branching points any of which we can choose and all are equally real.

i think quantum physics allows for this with all the wavefunction jargon and i dont think its problematic, to me its the same as having infinite locations to travel to in space but i can only eventuate one at a time. likewise, i can only eventuate one 'time' at each space. lol?

after re-reading that post i think the options are never 'this universe' until we choose one, which becomes incorporated into the universe from there on in. The others are consigned to a 'possible world' from there on in, even tho they all still exist.

[psiconoclast]

if static meaning the 4-d universe where each time point is equally real as the next, whos to say it has to be one line? At each infintisamally small division of time, isnt there the possibility of an infinite number of branching points one can freely choose from? i.e i have cereal for breakfast on july 14th....thats one 'time slice'....if i have bacon and eggs for breakfast, thats another 'time slice' which i chose freely to pursue rather than move from timepoint to timepoint helplessly like drifting down a river toward a waterfall

It does not have to be one line, but that would imply a multiverse, and although I am pretty sure that WLC would be a sport and discuss it, I don't think that he, or the majority of Christians, for that matter, are willing to suppose a multiverse in which each of us effectively winds up with multiple souls for all of the nearly limitless different paths that our lives could (and therefore have/will have) taken. For those theists that believe in hell, it would mean that most people would wind up in both heaven and hell many times over. For those theists that don't believe in hell, it might be a little easier to resolve this multiverse, in that all of the souls could collapse back into one, perhaps even providing a basis for humans transcending our limited perspective in the transition to the afterlife.

[lasher]

the point being tho there isnt jst one line ahead of us waiting, or a 'chain' of time slices-there are infinite branching points any of which we can choose and all are equally real.

i think quantum physics allows for this with all the wavefunction jargon and i dont think its problematic, to me its the same as having infinite locations to travel to in space but i can only eventuate one at a time. likewise, i can only eventuate one 'time' at each space. lol?

after re-reading that post i think the options are never 'this universe' until we choose one, which becomes incorporated into the universe from there on in. The others are consigned to a 'possible world' from there on in, even tho they all still exist.

This sounds more like the static "growing" universe to me, where all of the past and present is real, but the future is incrementally added to the universe?

[psiconoclast]

Well, you may be an atheist ... but I can't fault your taste in good alcohol.

Ha! Thanks. I've been nursing a bottle of Woodford Reserve recently, but am tempted to get Bookers or something else with a bit more kick for this book.

[IAMRED]

I actually don't know much about WLC's positions, and I don't want to get too presumptive about where he is going, but it seems pretty clear that he intends for the reader of his book, at this point [end of chapter 3] to feel that the only way to have both a personal and an omniscient God is to have a timeless God and a universe in which time is static.

The last two paragraphs of Chapter 3 (trimmed for clarity):
(emphasis added)

So. . . Unless he has a rabbit up his sleeve, it does appear that he intends to thread the needle between a personal and an omniscient God by supposing a static theory of time.

No, you just missed the point. Craig doesn't at all hold to a static, B-series view of time. He doesn't believe God is timeless. Just the opposite: He believes God is in time and holds to an A-series view of time. What Craig is doing is presenting the opposing side's attempt to reconcile divine timelessness with time, divine personality, omniscience, etc.

Craig, as a Molinist, knows as well as anyone that the defense of the coherence of a viewpoint doesn't establish its necessity. But what a defense of coherence does do is establish a legitimate alternative to some position. Craig doesn't think divine timelessness is a legitimate alternative to his position, but to show that it's not, he has to show it's incoherent. To show it's incoherent, he has to accurately represent his opponent's position and fail-safes. That's just part of being a good debater.

[psiconoclast]

No, you just missed the point. Craig doesn't at all hold to a static, B-series view of time. He doesn't believe God is timeless. Just the opposite: He believes God is in time and holds to an A-series view of time. What Craig is doing is presenting the opposing side's attempt to reconcile divine timelessness with time, divine personality, omniscience, etc.

Craig, as a Molinist, knows as well as anyone that the defense of the coherence of a viewpoint doesn't establish its necessity. But what a defense of coherence does do is establish a legitimate alternative to some position. Craig doesn't think divine timelessness is a legitimate alternative to his position, but to show that it's not, he has to show it's incoherent. To show it's incoherent, he has to accurately represent his opponent's position and fail-safes. That's just part of being a good debater.

Thanks for pointing that out - reps on RC.

That's what I get for not reading the jacket or any reviews. Or perhaps I've just become far enough removed from the notion that there has to be a Real God™ that it is hard for me to get in the right mindset for the material, but I will redouble my efforts.

[HDMiBarry]

Not sure how far you guys are through this but I'd like to join in.

[lasher]

Not sure how far you guys are through this but I'd like to join in.

Still in the first week. Good timing.

[Meatros]

Not sure how far you guys are through this but I'd like to join in.

I didn't get a chance to read this weekend. I'm still at Chapter two, I'm going to try to get through Chapter 2&3 this week (if I have more time, then obviously I'll read more. :-) ).

[HDMiBarry]

Cool! I might toss some some posts in a few other threads in the meantime. Personally I'm having some trouble with the second premise of the Kalam, so I suppose if we're reading Craig we'll get to that eventually

[lasher]

Cool! I might toss some some posts in a few other threads in the meantime. Personally I'm having some trouble with the second premise of the Kalam, so I suppose if we're reading Craig we'll get to that eventually

You'll likely see that addressed when he presents his case against the b-theory of time.

[HDMiBarry]

You'll likely see that addressed when he presents his case against the b-theory of time.

Hey, did you get my PM? It was in regards to post #9 itt, not sure if it went through though.

[IAMRED]

I had started reading this book some months ago before deciding to switch to God and Time: Four Views. Since then, I've come to tentatively accept Paul Helm's theory of time (i.e. divine timelessness; B-series view of time), although I think Craig has a point that the primary reason for accepting this position - that God must be immutable in a strong sense - requires better arguments than Helm provided in his book Eternal God.

In Craig's first chapter of Time and Eternity, I think one of the more important agreements between Helm and Craig would be that while biblical data certainly has a bearing on which view of time one should take, the arguments for one theory or the other will primarily be philosophical rather than exegetical. Showing that God utters tensed indexicals, for example, no more demonstrates that God is in time than does the fact that God utters spatial indexicals demonstrates that God is in space, as Craig notes both in Chapter I.II and in his review of Helm's Eternal God:



One could suggest that in both cases God chooses to use a form of divine accommodation (anthropomorphic language) which, while not true if interpreted literally, communicates truth more efficiently.

I won't go through the rest of this chapter because most of what Craig writes is at this point superficial, but I would probably define "time" in relation to "change."

Finished reading chapter's 2 and 3, the other two chapters I had originally read. I won't address Craig's comments on divine simplicity or personality since I agree with both of them. I also won't address his comments on relativity theory because it's not my area of expertise and would in any case presuppose a philosophy of science with which I disagree.

In chapter 2, I don't think Craig does justice the argument from divine immutability, especially given his willingness to consider Scriptural input. He mentions and quickly dismisses as irrelevant Malachi 3:6 and James 1:17. But not only doesn't he offer any exegesis, he doesn't consider any other passages which allude to divine immutability (Exodus 3:14, Psalm 102:27, Hebrews 1:12, 13:8, etc.). As Craig is a philosophical rather than a biblical theologian, this doesn't really surprise me. But I would have preferred a book written for Christians to deal with what the Bible says rather than (or at least in addition to) what current scientific theory says. Many in this group may disagree.

It is interesting that Craig while offers arguments against divine fullness, the idea that the perfect mode of "being" is a timeless one, but none against a strong doctrine of divine immutability, Craig nevertheless considers divine fullness to be a more serious argument in favor of divine timelessness. I think Craig sometimes gives "intuitions" too much weight in matters like these.

In chapter 3, Craig presents two arguments against divine timelessness which he thinks hold merit: the argument that God cannot be really related to a world in which temporal becoming is an objective reality and that He cannot simultaneously be omniscient, timeless, and know tensed facts. But both of these objections are based upon an A-series view of time, so one who holds, like Helm and I (at least I lean this way), a B-series or static view of time in which creation is eternal (though metaphysically dependent on God), that tensed facts are false or reducible to tenseless facts, and that there is no such "objectively" privileged time as the "present" or "now" would have no trouble with these objections. I will be interested to see, then, how Craig proceeds.

I do think Craig is a bit prejudicial in his conclusion to chapter 3. He mentions Helm's alternative as an "escape" and "a way out," which makes it seem as though proponents of the B-series view of time are being forced into these beliefs after having been conquered on other fronts. Maybe it's just me, but it's as if Craig considers the A-series view of time to be de facto true. And even if that is the case, I would have liked a bit less rhetorical effect and a little more objectivity, at least while introducing another's position. Anyways, that's all for now.