sidelined writes:
God is in the Christian sphere the motive force behind the creation of our world that we deal with around us and the universe that surrounds our world. Now it is often bantied around that God exists outside of time and space which is a statement that I think deserves some explanation since one wonders how God communicates with people in his creation and also supposedly enacts disasters or stops the Sun in its movement across the sky, you get the picture. These actions require the ability to manipulate the time and space that He is said to exist outside of.Now either He does not live outside of time and space or the material world necessarily operates on its own.
I prefer to believe that God transcends time and space. One explanation on the definition of time in general came from a preacher that I knew about. He said this:
Bob Hill writes:
What is time? All it is in my thinking and the Bible’s statements is the measurement between 2 events. Why would God have to create that? I am saying, basically, that time is the measurement between 2 things that God did, and later, the measurement between any 2 things that happen. It was always here with God.
arachnophilia writes:
any good designer would make a self-sustaining system, rather than having to watch every aspect of it all the time, right?
What of a parent? Any good parent wants self sufficient kids, yet not distant or aloof ones.
Hangdawg writes:
God doesn't have an age and he doesn't have a size and form. He can create one for himself and he did so in JC.
Yet, even beyond this, Jesus was from the beginning. He was not the first created thing. He was, is, and always will be. Transcending Time and Space, yet very personal for many of us.
Hangdawg writes:
He may abolish all known dimensions and create completely new ones....
Matt 24:34-35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
sidelined writes:
how does God think or anticipate or verbalize His instructions to humans?
Personally, I have seen circumstances whereby I would meet someone whom I needed to meet at just the right point in time and, lo and behold, they were a believer! To me, this is quite beyond coincidence, although I cannot strictly prove that!
jar writes:
My Impression of GOD is simply that. It is internal and no more instilled in me by outside force than any other idea, knowledge or belief. It is the result of observation and reason.
jar, would you say that Holy Communion did nothing to instill the "impression" within you?
sidelined writes:
I disagree simply because my impression shows me that without invoking God as a Prime mover we arrive at a greater sense of completion in the world.
So I see what you are saying. Lets go with a predictable and orderly worldview rather than one manipulated by unexplained events attributed to the supernatural. Right? However, God procedes natural law and understanding. He frames reality rather than reality defining Him. I can see why this is rather complicated andinefficient to your worldview, however.
Feynman writes:
The stage is too big for the drama.
But is the production bigger than the producer? Can there be a thought without a thinker? A creation without a Creator? not IMHO.
ParadoxScientist writes:
I believe that the Universe that we live in, the Laws of Nature, is God.
So you are a pantheist,then?
ParadoxScientist writes:
So, perhaps God was just a large amount of Energy, or perhaps God was just a being, like a scientist, from a MUCH larger Universe, and "God" will just keep becoming races of beings who eventually become technologically advanved that they create a smaller universe, creating an endless chain of "Creations"
OK. You think that, maybe, God was just an alien who came along. Like all of us, you are unsure what to think. It is good to learn and ponder.
portmaster1000 writes:
Since God spoke everything into existance, this implies that there are corresponding thoughts behind his speech. Thus it might be reasoned that all of creation (including us) are nothing more than God's imagination.
I like that theory. I think that when God imagines, He creates. When humans imagine, they imitate the creative process to some extent,yet much of it is vanity. This gets back to the Fall. Before the Fall was only one imagination...one Spirit. After the Fall there became two imaginations....two Spirits. That is why Satan runs the show in the earthly realm. People have a choice between submitting and allowing Gods Spirit...His imagination...to become our vision and plan. If not, we ourselves as wannabe gods exercise our own vain imaginations to achieve our own fragmented visions and plans.
1.61803 writes:
Can there be a thought without a thinker is a better question.
Indeed, can there be creation without a Creator? not IMHO.
Ifen writes:
Jiddhu Krishnamurti speaks of the self as being thought, being something known, impermanent, ephemeral. For him truth lay beyond thought.
Which is also very Biblical in that Jesus was the Truth, and Gods ways are not our ways. God is a Truth beyond comprehension. Except when He interacts with us.
Ifen writes:
Thought gives rise to the ego and both have their functions, but that which was prior to the ego is prior to thought.
So human thinking can never conceive of how the Universe started because that reality is/was prior to our thought becoming alive. This explains the premise of a Creator who was, is, and always will transcend Time, Space, and thought itself. (Human thought, that is.)
Stuman77 writes:
I would recommend looking into the eastern religions, as they have many good concepts that may help you to come to a better realization of God. God is not seperate from His creation, God is in His creation. We are offshoots of God.
I understand that you are not being Pantheistic, but it is interesting what you say. Western Christianity has traditionally embraced a Creation/Fall/Redemption paradigm whereas Eastern Orthodox Christians hold to more of a Creation/Theosis paradigm whereby we are in communion with the
Creator in an ever increasing fashion and where the Fall and seperation is not so heavily emphasized.
1.61803 writes:
Maybe the ego is Satan. Or would that be the Id??
Well, I know that our vain human imaginations are not Gods imagination so, in a sense, Stu77 has a point.
This message has been edited by Phatboy, 09-15-2004 02:17 AM
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