God and Time

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

Does God control time?

  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

I posed the following question to my buddy jake. Any feedback from anyone would also help my question of Time and Gods role with time if there is a role for God etc.

Can an omnipotent God stop time?

I’m not just talking about our time, freezing us in place, I’m talking
about universal time. Technically if God froze time for us and he
changed a bunch of stuff around, which I’m quite sure he could do, time
would still be passing for him. Wouldn’t it? Cause it would take time
for God to change everything around. So I’m asking do you think God can
stop all time? And if he did stop all time, could he start it again,
when he too would be frozen?

Perhaps time doesn’t exist?

Jake, say God is watching a cactus grow. (I like Cactus’s so I am going
to use a cactus as an example k.) Say God then made the cactus stop
growing for ten seconds. Okay, so, he stopped time for ten seconds, but
the cactus is there, and ten seconds have passed. The cactus hasn’t
grown, but it hasn’t not lasted, so it’s existed which is good enough
isn’t it? Do you get what I mean???

Then from there I think that well maybe time is absolute and above God.
I feel kind of bad for saying that but hear me out. By stopping the
cactus from growing for 10 seconds, the ten seconds aren’t passing for
the cactus but still are for God, meaning that God is still subject to
time. Or is he?

But from there I have thought of time being merely a “man” made tool of
measurement/reference. Hear this point out k. If time didn’t exist our
lives would still go on. Time is a concept made up by man, to simplify
things, so people could have the same reference point. Hypothetically,I
could have met you at the pool at 6:00pm or at sunset tonight. Either time
would have been our reference point to meet.

And that is where I am at right now. Any thoughts on the subject. I hate
thinking about things and standing still. I mean I hate diving into
questions and not being able to have the perception that I have figured
it out. Time’s existence and God’s control or non-control over it has
stumped me. I am “frozen” myself in finding a conclusion or a
“perceptive” conclusion which would make sleeping better at night. I am
over exmplifying things of course but you know what I mean about sleeping.

Perhaps there is no conclusion to this question. Any thoughts???

2

Here is an early version of something I’m currently writting for the Essay forum. Have a read as it’s about Time, God, and other objects. But some parts are still just a train of thought and not written correctly.

Feed back always welcome

http://indigo.ie/~wilsonj/WNT.htm

3

I am sure that you have heard that, to God, “A day is like 1000 years.” With this in mind, we must realize that time is something finite; God is infinite. Time is, as you have stated, a reference point for us. If a day can be one thousand years and visa versa, then maybe it is something not meant to be completely understood by us. After all, God has always existed, He is the Apha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. He has always been and will continue to be forevermore. We do not judge things in this manner. To us, everything has a start and a finish. Even Heaven and Hell are infinite. Depending on your choice to either accept God’s word or reject it, you will spend an eternity in either Heaven or Hell.

Here is an interesting page on God’s time netrover.com/~numbers/bible-numbers-2a.html

As I thought about this subject more I came up with another idea. Time exists in our universe, but not outside of it. In our minds, as I have previously said, everything has a beginning, but God was not created. He has always been. So He is therefore not governed my the same measures of time that we are. Heaven and Hell are said to be around for eternity, but they too are not within our universe. Thus neither can be under the same statutes of time that we are in this universe. So perhaps there are different ways to measure time outside of our known universe, or perhaps there is no such thing as time beyond our universe.

4

there is no god “i’m afraid” (http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=138529)

5

Time, like everything else, is entirely subjective. It’s all a matter of perception, as anyone who’s ever drunken a whole bottle of night nurse at once will tell you :wink: All things perceived are in the mind of the perceiver and as such affected by mood, physical and mental state and so on.

6

It’s not a vote I’m particularly keen on as there is no such thing as God or time.
By the way that reminds me the other day God left a message on my answerphone and when I came home later that day I listened to the message, it said: “This is the moment of your life; I’m giving you 20 minutes notice.”

7

Depends on your definition of God and time. Is time only dependent on matter? Is God material or non-material? If time is dependent on motion, whether it be material or non-material, is it possible that God is static, non-changing? I don’t think that an unchanging God makes any sense. How could he think or make any actions?

So, basically, I say no, because no theoretical God can exist outside of time. Unless you want to say that God is non-material and the definition of time is solely dependent on the material universe.

It is so much easier on your mind when you think of the universe as existing solely by itself with out the God nonsense. The answers to these types of questions become much easier to theorize. If there were a God, I don’t think that even he could answer such questions. He would probably say, “I don’t know. I just point and zap. It’s really a simple concept. No need to over complicate.”