How can I show God is eternal?
God is eternal by definition, not because I have shown it to you.
Likewise, I am not asking you to show me how before time cannot exist. But you are telling me that it cannot because that the definition of before time is meaningless. I agree with your definition of time and that there is no time before this.
But if you talk about God not being eternal, you have a different definition, and of course we will be on a different page.
You say that God had no beginning yet also state that something cannot come from nothing
Those two statements are not the same, something coming from nothing is not saying the same thing as something ALWAYS there. Since time is related to matter, and God not being matter. Maybe its more accurate to say that God exists outside of time, since God created time with matter "In the beginning God created..." instead of saying God existed before time.
Likewise, instead of saying before the beginning of time (before the big bang) we should say, outside of the beginning of the Big Bang was what???
So something has to exist outside of this time/matter relationship to set this time/big bang in motion.
Since having no beginning is equivalent to "coming from nothing"
Not true. Coming from nothing implies not existing and then existing. We can logically put this into two events, where existing is a beginning to that existance. We can even talk about the "before" this event, namely, not existing. Even though talking about "before" time makes no sense, we can talk about the "before" of an event.
God had no event before His existance, He just exists. He exists outside of time.
Now, when talking about the big bang and its beginning, we can talk about before its existence. We can say, it did not exist before time and matter existed. Two conclusions come from this;
1. Since we had nothing
before something, it either came out of nothing or
2. Something exists outside of time and matter and put time and matter in motion.
Since we cannot ever reach a point in the past where God {according to your statement} did not exist then this is equivalent to saying he never existed at all
Your logic is baffling, how can something equal not existing by always having an existance?? Maybe you meant this:
because we cannot reach a point in the past where God did not exist, then this is equivalent to saying that
this point never existed at all. This is true.
Edited by Reserve, : No reason given.