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Outside Time and Space?

What would being outside time and space be? I hear theists say that God has always existed and they place God outside time and space. Why? And isn't that the same as saying God has always existed and he existed in nonexistence? My response to that is good we both agree your God never existed.

#god
paul1967 8 Oct 15
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0

"What would being outside time and space be?"

I had to read this one repeatedly to make sure--I think at least--I understood the question. Just say it out loud, and see if it isn't a little tricky!

That said, we might as well ask, 'What would being outside the laws of nature be?' The simple answer is either 'nothingness' or 'supernatural.' And yet, what if there is existence outside our understanding of the universe? What if there exists a domain beyond our definition of space-time? Would not such a discovery be an expansion of our knowledge of the natural? What then is left for this myth we label 'God?'

6

He's outside time and space so he's conveniently non-examinable and most importantly, non-falsifiable.

The supernatural is a useless and irrational concept, but that doesn't stop it from being deployed to fool people who don't know better.

5

I have a few thoughts to share. 1. I don’t argue the existence of any god with any theist. I don’t care if they exist or not. Based on the facts of our existence there is no way a god exists that is all knowing, all powerful and all good. If those three things were true then there is no way this existence could be the outcome. Theists say that we suffer in this existence because eve disobeyed god but that doesn’t explain why every beast on the planet suffers. What loving god would create things that ate each other? If any of the gods in these books existed then they are not worthy of worship and not worthy of my time.

Well said!

5

Being outside time and space... That means they don't know and can't explain anything... Essentially, an excuse.

@irascible thank you!

4

When theists got smart enough to say their god exists outside of time and space what they were really saying is "now I have fixed it to where you cannot threaten or bother my god in any way." I can almost see a smirk or a smile but it doesn't really arrive. God can send you to hell but you can't do anything to him coz he's outside of time and space. In fact, he can pop in and out of time and space anytime he wants to and leave no evidence and you don't even know he was here. This is how powerful my god is. Yeah, buddy!

My mind tells me this means their god does not exist. Anything outside of time and space does not exist and there would be no way of finding it, detecting it, or proving it. This is not even close to saying god is "like a radio wave" or sunshine or anything else that we know about. The reason is that everything we know about exists in time and space. Yes, even that invisible radio wave.

4

@paul1967 -- I have been trying to get this across to my fellow atheists for years. You cannot win an argument with logic when dealing with irrational people who have no trouble with anything from fluid definitions to picking up the goalposts and running with them. You can think you have won something if they shut down and go away, but in reality you have accomplished nothing.

There can be no rational argument using logic unless both sides have agreed upon the definitions of terms, what constitutes evidence, and are willing to leave the goals set in one position that has been established by both parties. What that means is that there can be no objective winners when one side uses one form of logic and the other side uses another.

The only people with whom you may actually create a chink in their mental armor and possibly cause them to change their thinking are those who are not yet true believers or who were true believers and are now having doubts. You will not shake a real believer loose, regardless of what argument you try to use. The one you presented here is particularly weak because it assumes a definition of terms inconsistent with the meaning understood by the believers. They understand the phrase as, "The Man in the Attic is not subject to the restrictions of time and space as we understand them." What that does is defeat you before the first word is thrown.

There is no way to argue against that. Oh, you can say it's irrational, and for those who understand the rules governing the scientific method and restrictions on what constitutes objective evidence will all agree that it is, but the believers don't operate in that arena. Not even those who have been trained in the sciences. As a matter of interest, it is even more impossible with those who are trained scientists.

This video is with Jason Lisle, PhD. Yes, he is a real scientist. He waves a sheepskin that says 'Astrophysicist' on it. In spite of this, listen to his irrational rationale and you may begin to understand why there is no argument, logical or not, that will make a dent in these wingnuts. I anxiously await his peer reviewed paper on starlight. Right below the video I have included the RationalWiki article on him.

[rationalwiki.org]

I watched him speaking on this same subject but a different video. He talks about one directional speed of light. It's painful to watch.

I can see him saying don t confuse me with the facts or with sciences

3

I just feel that if God existed at all then there was a duration of "time" in which he existed so if he exists outside of any concept of time then he may not exist at all..... I don't know if that makes any sense lol.

I think it makes sense and it's without a doubt a more honest approach than saying, Yes a God exists and I know what it wants from humankind because this old book tells me.

3

Well we all know that SPACE exists outside of the bounds of our planet, don't we.
But does 'TIME' truly exist beyond the needs of human kinds desire to classify things?
If this god thing exists/existed beyond time and space then HOW did it, along with time and space, know it existed in the first place?

3

You have the natural world: observable or otherwise detectable, and therefore provable to exist. Then you have the so-called supernatural world which is supposed to exist outside of our known world. If something is said to exist but there's no known way to prove it because there's no interaction with the natural world, then even if it did exist it would be irrelevant for all intents and purposes. If it were ever to interact with the natural world then it would become part of it, e.g. there would be a detectable and measurable effect. Since there has never been an event credited to supernatural forces that hasn't had a more credible natural world explanation, these can also be dismissed as irrelevant.

3

This is a convenient approach by theists. Within the universe gods have nowhere to hide so let's put them outside of the universe. It's special pleading and a conclusion reached without any evidence. Too much theology is convenient, invisible, omni this and omni that etc etc. It's all a crock.

3

Maybe there are parallel universes. maybe there is a supreme being in 1 of these universes. maybe we exist in a perfect world in harmony looked after by a benevolent god. maybe i'm hallucinating. maybe all we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. maybe i'll get me some good pot tomorrow when it's legal. maybe i won't even be a live tomorrow.

3

If something exists outside space and time, OK. It's completely irrelevant to us. But theists claim that their god is interactive i.e either that their god does indeed exist in the material world, or is powerful enough to access it at will. Thus, we can gauge their claims as to how, where and why these interactions occur - and, indeed, what they are. Since a God has never been demonstrated to be necessary for any interactions within the material world, it thus follows that their god is most likely irrelevant.

3

If he exists outside time and space, what would that matter?

I think the only thing that would matter is if an all-powerful being intervened in our reality. I think there is ample proof that everything occurs naturally - not supernaturally.

3

All I know is that when I was a kid, my mom was constantly yelling, "Either come in or go out... I'm not heating the whole space-time continuum!"

3

A god only exists in the minds of those who believe in that god. Therefore, outside time and space. Since gods are creations of man, they don't exist for people who don't believe in them.

3

My ex spends hours on this sort of christian philosophy stuff. He read so many books on time. He tried to get me to see his point and I just didn’t and frankly didn’t want to. To me it’s not a logical argument to exist out of time and space. There’s no rules for the known universe that allows for such a thing. Again, they rely on faith.. that is not in my nature.

3

i once got my sunday school teacher turning red and my mom slapping my face (when the news made it back 'round to her) for saying, "if god always has and always will exist, then why can't i?"

Seems perfectly rational question. I got banned from playing with the kid next door when he asked me what Church I went to and I told him I didn't believe in God. He must have told his mom.

@paul1967 i was spanked, grounded, and slandered for not spreading a christmas lie.

3

Everything that exists had/has a creator.
God did not/does not have a creator
God does not exist.

@Humanistheathen Touche my friend.

2

Most do not understand the truth about space and time in the quantum and universal aspects of reality. Maybe none of us do entirely yet. Light and anything else that travels at the speed of causation does not experience time. Space and location are merely aspects of a field that might have 11 dimensions. We are not able to experience the higher dimensions.

BUT, how do we truly know that even those dimensions ACTUALLY exist since measuring, classifying and rationalizing, etc, etc, are simply just the results of the human need to compartmentalize everything around him/her.
Ask yourself this with a completely open and unbiased mind; does the earth know for certain that it MUST be at a certain point in its orbit at EXACTLY the same time every year, did the dinosaurs know that at some precise time 65 million years ago an asteroid would come and wipe them or just a do birds, etc, today did they merely live by the rise and set of the sun, the subtle changes in the weather/climate and by the changes of the hormones in their bodies?
Time was NOT measured by any living thing UNTIL man came along and even that, more than likely, did NOT happen until humans began to live in communities rather than as mere hunter-gatherer troops/tribes.
The human mind is one where it sees that everything MUST be rationalized/classified , etc, and put into neat little boxes, so to speak, and anyone who does NOT think that way is shunned, vilified and often ridiculed BUT thinking OUTSIDE of those neat little boxes is from where we have gotten the advancements we experience today is it not?

Time is merely the unstoppable progression of entropy from lower to higher. It does not happen to the Earth, dinosaurs or even you and me. It happens to the smallest components and at the largest scales but we just see it as the passing of time.

2

A quote from Jonathan Livingston Seagull, "...overcome space and all you have is here, overcome time and all you have is now.."

2

Talking about science, this concept of outside time and space is generated when the modern equations that describe universe break.
We don't know if it is a real phenomenon or we are just using wrong / incomplete expressions.
Let me give you an example.
When the mass increases, the acceleration oh gravity increases as well. When acceleration increases, the space and time are stretched according to Einstein equations, we can measure it using gravity lenses for example (the same star appear on both sides of another star because the star in the front bended the light).
BUT, when the mass is so gigantic and compressed there is a line called the event horizon, from where the acceleration Isso huge that time and space goes to infinite.
Means that you would never fall in the dark hole because that last infinitesimal of millimeter (or equivalent murican measure of length) would take theoretically forever to be crossed as time for that particle is practically stopped and slower when getting closer.
So what is inside this volume is unknown, as you can't enter, you can't get closer etc.
And the big bang at some point had an event horizon, so "before" this, our science don't what happen, I use "before" because even time don't make sense as we define today in this situation.
So scientifically speaking out of time and space is just our way to talk about the missing part of the equations that we know that work for most of universe.

2

Gods have only existed as long as humans have

2

time being a relative human invention, which includes "alwaysness", means that "god", having "always" existed, is a human invention as well. bingo.

2

I wonder if the Tardis has been there? Sounds like a Dr Who episode.

2

According to the time lords of Gallifrey, the howling. Also known as the void. 🙂

2

According to “Reality is not What it Seems” by physicist Carlo Rovelli, time does not exist and space is not smooth and infinite, but finite and granular.There are no “things” in the way we usually think of things. Particles of matter exist only as interactions between covariant quantum fields.

In other words our perception of reality is nothing but an illusion based on crude symbolism of ultimate reality which lies beyond.

It’s a matter of semantics. You could label ultimate reality as “God” if you wanted—I’d prefer not to. But in the final analysis we are arguing about something of which we are totally ignorant. We need to stop.

Your response is getting into a field of physics I call philosophical physics. It defines things while at the same time admitting it has no idea. This form of thought is essential to the progress of science, so I'm not criticizing it, but until we have a better understanding of the quantum world, I think this is a brainstorm of ideas based loosely on other ideas.

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