If the B theory of time is true, if the Universe is four dimensional and time is one of the dimensions (and any Uncaused Cause would have to exist outside of time), would that argue against a personal God?
I mean if conscious thought is essential to personhood, and it’s a process, would it be possible to think without existing in time?
Are the ideas of a personal God, and a timeless God mutually exclusive?
Please post stuff like this in the Religion section- it’s in desperate need of this kind of thread. 
Anyway, in answer to your question, maybe! I haven’t thought about it a lot, but there’s at least one very prominent Christian apologist who defends A-series time.
I think a timeless God figure would already know me before I tried to talk to it. It would already know my needs and desires, also, because it would be beyond time. So something like worship would not be needed by it, even if I felt I needed to worship it. Let’s say it is beyond time or a master of time, but the God does require I talk to it or try to access it, then it would not be futile to try to gain the being’s favor. In christianity I think it’s all about gaining the God head’s forgiveness and favor, through acts and efforts. This is an assumption. What if we were like a fly and God was like a giant brain? It wouldn’t be a personal God. It probably wouldn’t bother showing us any favor or anything else other than the purpose of our creation.
My own belief about time is that it is like a tree. All the consequences of events are happening in their own reality. There is also a prime source reality which everything grows from. Most people believe we are the only time line.
A timeless God?
We can only coherently imagine existence or the nature of existence using ourselves and the nature of ourselves as a guide (as existence only manifests in the form of oneself: existence beyond the person is merely speculative). That being said, time is ultimately nothing more than change, and change is nothing more than difference. A timeless God would be a “frozen” God, forever stuck without movement or progressive thought or consciousness.
A philosopher once speculated that there may be two types of time: physical time and Metaphysical Time, or change or difference (an intrinsic property of consciousness itself, as a God is a form of conscious being) outside the causal “moving pictures” of galactic, planetary, and biological existence (if these exist).
J.
sacred-texts.com/cla/ari/oth/oth01.htm
I remember Aristotle saying that there is nothing other than the three dimensions.
I’m tempted to agree although I can’t prove it.
Maybe this answers my question.
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/divine-timelessness-and-personhood#ixzz2cBrSThhM
There’s much more to this article, and I’m still reading it.
Well, whatever we mean by personal is something we experience with other humans. So if it is the case that there is a block universe, then it would seem similar experiences could be had with a deity, if there was one.
Maybe it is simply that “timeless” is the wrong concept…an “all time” God is a better explanation of God’s state of being ? Infinite doesn’t necessarily imply timeless.
A time related concept is one which evolves over time. The timeless concept is inherent in itself,by definition it is in time and time is in it. In fact god by definition does not evolve as a concept, it is complete in itself, but not frozen. An in-itself is not frozen, it can be dynamic within it's own structure.
God is simply the concept of totality, the Other beyond where separation is appearant, as in the construct of our subjectivity. So in a subjectively perceived concept of an objective god, claims of an objective/subjective differentiation is denied. Is there anything wrong with this argument? And if such a claim is arguable then it is also demonstration of differences between change and un change. The result is a Plotinus type holism of the cosmos and a personal solipsism on the other. In this type of scheme, man can become a measure of god, and vica versa. Degrees of separation between man and god determine the temporal and impersonal description versus the personal and timeless, as god and man draw closer together.
This interpretation becomes possible as the analogy between cosmology and man's awareness becomes more obvious on many grounds, logical, mathematical, and a provisional nominal/abstractly conceptual.
obe:
If by “evolve over time” you mean the change of an entity from a previous state to a completely distinct or dissimilar state, then of course God is “timeless” in the sense that “he” does not change in terms of basic personhood, personality, beliefs, values, essential being, etc.
I was thinking of time not as change from similarity to dissimilarity, but of what it is in itself: time being change or a progression or sequence of difference qua difference in terms of a being not thinking the same thought into infinity, not experiencing a particular thought, and only that thought, for infinity, etc. For example, I’m quite sure, in faith, that God is not “stuck” or “frozen” on the thought: “2+2=4”, such that this is the only thought he thinks and he has been frozen with this thought for an eternity. If God is capable of thinking of something other than “2+2=4”, then the very fact that the mathematical surmise disappears to be replace with a completely unrelated thought is a progression or evolution of basic difference (as opposed to evolution of personality and essential being): this is time.
Phenomenal: I do understand your argument, however I didn't mean to say that the mathematical underpinnings are a necessary quality to god, only one of many. God's relation to mathematics is not necessary or sufficient to define him, they are only attributes dependent on god. As mathematics changes, god does not change, only comes into closer approximation of his absolute. I am pretty well fixed in this view, however I am not god, and therefore can be convinced of the wrongness of my argument.
I am not god, but on some level I do share some attributes with god, as everyone does.
Obe
I think, in the end, that consciousness is the absolute, and the only difference between man and God is transience vs eternity an the content of mind.
I’m with pg in believing that consciousness alone is enough to explain the whole of reality.
I think that if there is a God as described in the bible then it is necessary that we exist within His mind.
I think that God (if there is one) is necessarily conscious of all (including our own) experience at once . The way I visualise this is to consider that from God’s perspective every moment of my life exists as part of a chain of experience that He can perceive all at once, so that in effect He views my whole life as if it is a solid object.
God is not timeless, time simply does not bind God because He is the past, present and future simultaneously.
Chester:
Bravo.
The above induction, which is now the sum of my philosophy, for me came as a supposition that human consciousness or mind might indeed be not so much a “leggo structure” produced by the most ridiculous luck by a non-conscious substance in the external world, but that human consciousness or mind is a smaller example or repetition or pattern of the external world itself, with the external world being not an infinite space, but an anthropomorphic mind.
I have problems, however, with the ability of anything, even God, to perceive everything “at the same time”. This is why I’ve adopted the concept of “selective innatism” given the problem of informational or apprehensive simultaneity.
But it is nice to see the induction voiced by someone else.
J.
pg, When you have a dream you intuitively know the truth about the events within it. No one has to explain to you why such and such within your dream is evil, you just know it is.This is God’s dream (with regard to this theory), He knows everything intuitively.
Just to make clearer, intuition does not require time.
Chester:
In terms of knowledge of the events within the Dream and God’s total intuitive knowledge of everything (that emerges within God’s working memory), I must agree. The intuition is a form of innate knowledge, but in my view it exists, even in God, in Freudian pre-conscious and unconscious form. My most controversial charge is that most of God’s knowledge is unconscious or subconscious. While in theological prejudice I am willing (sort of) to accept that God can “somehow” consciously and simultaneously entertain all knowledge, the very notion is inconceivable (given our finite nature). If one is willing to stretch the rubber band of the concept (introduced in Genesis) that man is created in God’s image, one can stretch it to the point that man inherited God’s “finite” ability to only entertain or have working memory of a limited amount of current information, with the remainder being pre-conscious or unconscious.
I could be wrong, but the truth or falsity of the matter lies beyond our minds.
J.
Well mate, one thing does not lie beyond our minds…there is no more reason for believing in the sub-conscious than in materialism.
In answer to the OP:
Yes it would have to be. Evolution and time. In the interest of evolution of species. A hands on personal aproach would be needed. To see a species get so far and to allow one idiot to ruin it would be even more idiotic.
Here’s another thing to consider…
People tend to think of time in the way we experience it , ie, moving forward ,whereas God may experience a more expansive sense of time,ie, all time now.This would not imply that God can not experience time as we do , merely that He can experience it in other ways too.