I hope the Rabbi is indeed right in what he says…
I’ll write at some length about the difficulties in each of the following aspects and what I mean by them.
1. A. The meaning of saying that God does not belong to the concepts of time is that time was created and God existed before creation. Therefore, at one time He did not belong to the concepts of time, because He existed even before time existed.
B. The religious claim is that God is above time. That is, God can observe the past, present, and future as He wishes = time does not apply to Him. Clearly this is an absurd thought. Time is something newly created at every moment. You cannot observe the future before the future exists!!!
C. Moreover, the accepted claim is that God could act even before the creation of time. For example, He created the Torah before creating the world. But that too is impossible. Because even if we assume that there is a reality even without the existence of time, it still seems like a “stuck” reality. For example, when you pause a video at the second minute, you cannot see movement or change in it because the frame in the picture is frozen and stuck. Of course this is an absurd idea regarding God, who is omnipotent. If in fact He can’t do anything… can’t change anything. And certainly not create something.
C. You asked what I mean by saying He is above the concepts of space—
The meaning is that God has no size or dimensions. Not even infinite dimensions. He does not belong to the class of bodies that are in space. Therefore He has no property of height/width or length. He is “above them” and can observe objects that have those properties. And they cannot observe Him, because He has no “image.”

2. You asked here why I assume these assumptions.
So these assumptions come from experience and plain, healthy common sense.
From experience we see that every body is subject to time and space. We cannot find an entity that does not operate under those definitions. An entity whose size is 0 is another name for an entity that does not exist. And an entity that is not with us in time is simply something that has passed out of the world…

From common sense, one can understand that every entity requires size in order to exist, and can there be a reality that has no size?! Therefore an entity that has no size does not exist. That’s obvious.
Likewise, no entity can exist above time. How can one exist without time at all? Clearly that is impossible. Or because an entity without time is simply stuck in place—it cannot act or move things.

I’d be glad if the Rabbi could respond and give examples of ideas, because it seems to me that the religious position here is hopeless.
Elyad

Elyad,

Of course it will be interesting to see how the Rabbi answers you, but from the sidelines these pseudo-puzzlements point to total ignorance of the theistic literature, both classical and modern, and it would be worthwhile to look into it a bit before starting to listen to all kinds of straw-man arguments from the “new atheists” or types like Dawkins and Daniel Dennett and their associates.

Elyad, rest easy. I haven’t seen arguments this weak in a long time. Really ridiculous.

1.
A. I still don’t understand the expression “the concepts of time do not apply to Him.” When I say “God exists now” or “does something now” or “did such-and-such in the year 1437,” do you think that’s an illegitimate sentence? I think it is legitimate.
B. I don’t know what exactly He can observe, but that ability is not absurd in any sense. Why is there any absurdity here? Observing the future does indeed contradict free will, and therefore in my opinion He can observe only events that occur according to the laws of nature, not our choices.
But according to your view, if it is impossible to observe the future, then indeed He cannot observe the future. What’s the problem? Likewise, one cannot make a round triangle because there is no such thing, so He cannot make a round triangle. Omnipotence means being able to do everything that is defined, not what has no content and is undefined. Simply because there is no such thing, and therefore it is incorrect to say that He “cannot do such-and-such” (there is no such thing as such-and-such).
C. Again, whichever way you take it: if it is impossible to act before there was time, then He did not act. In my opinion (and in the opinion of many), it is possible, except that the description we would give of that action will be in temporal terms (because that is our language).
You are also wrong in saying that something is stopped or stuck. One can stop only when there is a time axis. If there is no time axis, that only means one can move or stop, but it will be described in other terms (without using the time axis).
C. (That’s how you labeled it—another C.) A photon also satisfies all of this. There is no principled problem here.

2. Applying your experience to God is ridiculous. You might as well just say there is no God because in your experience you have never met Him. Why go with such strange arguments?
Its size is not 0; rather, it has no size. That is something entirely different. See the end of my remarks above. And besides, even something of size 0—it is not true to say that it does not exist. What size is a photon? And what size is kindness? What size is the green color of my table?

In short, this whole discussion is just confusion and misunderstanding on the conceptual plane. Nothing more.

Copenhagen,
As you can see from my remarks, this has nothing at all to do with the theistic literature. You don’t need to know anything about it to see that this is merely conceptual confusion.

Thank you very much for responding to what I wrote, but I did not understand much of what you said. I’ll ask according to the order of the answers, and I’d be glad if you could sharpen the points.
1. A. You wrote that concepts of time now exist in God and from here it is proved that He exists, but that doesn’t answer anything because my question is that concepts of time did not apply to God before creation… so how does it help that they apply to Him now?
B. Let me sharpen the question: how can there be an ability to observe the future if the future has not yet been created? Or the past if the past already was and is not now? One can /*remember*/ the past but not /*observe*/ the past…. There is no such “place” where the past is stored, just as “the future” does not yet exist. Only the present exists.
C. I did not understand what you answered according to my view, because if He cannot act before time was created, then how was the world created? And I didn’t understand your later answer—you wrote there that in a reality where the dimension of time does not exist, nevertheless “the description we would give of that action will be in temporal terms” — but if our description is only an illusion, that only shows you that this is an illogical and illusory situation that requires adding yet more illusions.
D. Indeed, you corrected properly later on, I’ll address it:

2. We do not learn everything from experience—otherwise we would never arrive at the unfamiliar. We can only learn principles from experience and project them onto the unfamiliar.
You gave examples of things without size—like ‘kindness’ or the green color. But one must remember that these are states in our mind, not actual reality. Therefore these examples are problematic.

Everything was explained well, and I get the impression that you didn’t really read what I wrote. I’ll try once more, and if it’s still not clear, we’ll part as friends.

1.
A. I didn’t write a word of that. I asked you what you mean by saying that the concepts of time do not apply to Him. I offered you several sentences and asked whether in your eyes they are legitimate sentences or not. You didn’t answer me.
B. I answered. I see no problem with observing the future even if it has not yet been created. For example, I can predict the future when I kick a ball. I know it will fly. Of course, as I wrote, regarding human actions He cannot anyway because of free will. In general, I also added that even if in your opinion it is somehow impossible to observe the future (which of course is not true, but let us assume it for the sake of discussion), then indeed He cannot. What’s difficult about that?
C. I didn’t say He cannot act before time. You said that. What I wrote afterward is that if before the creation of the world there was no time, that does not mean actions could not have been performed then. At most, our description of those actions would be temporal even though there really was no time then. That is not an illusion, but a use of language. For example, I can describe in English what happened before the English language was invented.

2. I also gave the example of a photon. And besides, green is not a property in our mind but something that exists. Our thoughts, too, exist.

I read the words many times, and I’ll complete the questions you asked. I do think there has been a great deal of progress even if the Rabbi doesn’t see it that way. I only still have a few misunderstandings here. I’d be glad if you could complete them.
1. A. You asked whether those sentences are legitimate, so in my opinion too they are indeed legitimate. But they still don’t help with my question. Because my question concerns God’s existence before time was created… how could there have been a reality without a time dimension?
B. Apparently I did not understand your words and you did not understand mine. Indeed, I accept that there is no problem for God to /*foresee*/ the future and remember the past. In a deterministic reality that is just doing calculations.
But the common religious claim is that the whole dimension of time is spread out before Him and He can /*observe*/ the future just as He observes the present. Not in the sense of prediction and calculation, but in the sense of observing-seeing-looking. Like the idea that we see present things with our eyes. That is the usual meaning of the concept “God is above time” = that He looks “from above” the time axis and sees all moments of time.
C. Why, when there is no time, can actions be done? I am willing to accept that we can describe things in time even without time, but it is still not clear how change can occur without time?!
Maybe I’ll ask another way—assuming that time is now stuck at 8:00 PM, does the Rabbi understand that in such a case everyone subject to time cannot do anything because all reality is “stuck”? Is that equivalent to a reality in which there is no time?
I think it is. But from your words it seems not. Why?

2.
Does the dimension of size not apply to a photon? Earlier you claimed that its size is 0, but the dimension of size does apply to it.
Green is a state of a certain thought; it is not a property but a temporary state. The thought exists in my brain, as is known. It can be described with a certain size, even though I do not know how to calculate it.

This is a strange question. “How can there be a reality without a time dimension?” There can be! What’s the problem? How do you want the Rabbi to explain such a thing? In order to raise an objection, you first need to define precisely what reality is and what time is.

Since God does not “see” with eyes but simply knows what happens, from His point of view the present and the future (the deterministic future) are the same. If you disagree, why do you care what the common religious claim says? Then don’t accept it. That doesn’t refute anything and doesn’t matter at all.

Elyad,

Earlier I pointed out a simple fact that you can presumably admit: you don’t have much of an idea about theistic literature, neither past nor present. And to that it should be added that the “logical refutation that may be among the strongest from one of the atheists on the internet” (I don’t know exactly who) only makes the atheistic enterprise look ridiculous in my eyes.

You declare: “Every existing entity is subject to the laws of time and space,” but this is a baseless assertion. It is true that every entity *we perceive with the senses* is in time and space, but one cannot infer from that that *every possible entity* must be in time and space. The concept of existence as such does not force anything regarding space and time. Regarding such realities, we will have to let the evidence lead us. If there is evidence for their existence, then they exist (and the fact that we do not perceive them is because there is no reason we should be able to perceive with the senses things that the senses were not designed to perceive in the first place). And indeed that is what happens. It has been demonstrated (see, for example, the cosmological argument) that a necessary being, to whom the concepts of time and space do not apply, is the necessary condition for the existence of all contingent beings. From here, there is a being that is not in time and space. There is no shortage of Platonic philosophers and scientists who, for philosophical reasons, came to believe in the existence of entities like the number 7, Fermat’s theorem, or the form of cat-ness in a non-spatiotemporal world of ideas—including explicit atheists. The dispute between them and Aristotelians is generally not about some problem in the very concept of “non-spatiotemporal reality,” precisely for this reason—that it is a weak “problem.”

Your claim regarding divine knowledge tries to rely on the idea that “the future is created anew every moment,” but that stands in contradiction to the view of a substantial part—if not most—philosophers and physicists, who adopt some version or other of what is called the B Theory of Time (you can search the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy online for a short explanation). The idea is that time, like space, exists as a block—past-present-future. You indeed see only a very narrow segment of the universe’s total space, but that does not mean that the space you do not see does not exist. You experience only the present, but that does not mean that the past and future do not exist. If the future exists, there is no reason God could not “observe” it. In any case, it seems that God knows the future not because He “observes” it, but because by knowing Himself He also knows what He creates. For Him, creation is not something that happened in the past, but the constant causal dependence of the universe on His existence. He created the past in the same act by which He creates the future.

All the alleged clashes between a stuck and unstuck reality are irrelevant, because in the classical theistic view no change ever occurred in God, and with Him there is no “before” and “after”—but there is a universe that depends on God’s reality, and within it relations of before and after take place. Think about the Big Bang. You do not need to be able to imagine what happened before the Big Bang (nothing happened because there was nothing, not even time, and the term “before” has no meaning) in order to think the theory is correct. Now think that there is a *cause* for the Big Bang. That is a perfectly coherent thought. But by definition, the cause of there being such a thing as “space-time” cannot itself be in space-time. Because in principle, the concept of time plays no role at all in the basic concept of cause and effect except for the meaning “if not for A, B would not have happened,” which reflects dependence in counterfactual terms between objects or events.

You say there is no experience, etc. But there are many things of which you have no experience. For example, you have never had experience of any psychological entity beyond your own self. Will you infer from that that the only self in the world is you? In addition, have you ever experienced a present decision affecting a decision that occurred billions of years earlier? Yet that is precisely the conclusion arising from Wheeler’s thought experiment, which has been confirmed in experiments (search for Delayed choice quantum eraser).

I too already answered everything, and Copenhagen added his own layer.
You are repeating things I already answered. If there is something you don’t understand or don’t agree with, that is perfectly fine, so ask something new. But there is no point in repeating the same thing again and again.

1. A. If those sentences are legitimate, then I return to the question: what does it mean that God is above time? That was my first question, and we shouldn’t mix in points from the following sections here. By the way, I already explained there how there could be a reality without a time dimension, so why return again to the same question?
B. Common religious claims should be asked of those who make them. Beyond that, I already explained to you that if something seems to me logically absurd, then indeed God also does not instantiate it. So whichever way you take it, there is no problem here even with the common claims. At most they are not true (and even that, of course, is only your unsupported assumption, but I keep explaining that even according to it there is no problem).
C. I already explained at least twice that time is a language for describing changes, not a condition for their occurrence. And I also explained that absence of time and frozen time are two entirely different situations. What connection is there between them?

2.
A photon has no size (if anything, then its size is infinite and not 0), and neither do my thoughts. The thought does not exist in my brain but is produced by my brain. What exists in my brain are electrical currents. But we are churning water here—there is no problem at all with entities that have no size, because the concept of size does not apply to them. I gave several examples, and that suffices.

I will not answer further unless there are new questions.

Thank you very much. I think I understood question 2 about existence without space, and parts of question 1.
I’d just be glad if perhaps the Rabbi could try one last time to explain the idea of why, when there is no time, that does not mean time is frozen. I’ll explain why I think the ideas overlap.

So what is time at all? As I understand it, time is a condition for changes and motion to occur. In a reality without time, everything remains stuck and standing still. As I understand it, one can translate the idea of ‘time’ as a kind of moment-to-moment “renewal” of the world.
It is not an axis that runs parallel to the existence of reality, and therefore it is convenient for us to attach the various events to it relationally (and we could survive even without it). Rather, time is the “force” that enables the existence of the events themselves. When a second passes, that supposedly shows that the world is renewed in the second that follows. Just as in a film, one image and then another image creates for us the feeling of continuity, even though it is made of many momentary points.
Therefore, where there is no time, I do not understand why that is not essentially different from frozen time (for example at 8:00 PM), where the picture “freezes” and nothing can be done. After all, if there is no time there is no renewal and no continuation. How can one bring about changes—such as the creation of the world?!?

Copenhagen,
I’m willing to accept the idea that not every entity is in space. But every entity must exist under some concept of time; therefore where there is no time it cannot do anything. (I explained this in the comment above.)
Therefore, when we are in a paradox trying to explain how an entity without time can act, we will have to give up one of the assumptions. (And one should consider why not the cosmological argument’s assumption?…)

Later you contradicted yourself: at first you gave an extreme theory of time in which all times exist even now (and the future is not created), and afterward you wrote: “He created the past in the same act by which He creates the future.” That implies that there is indeed creation also in the future, and not the whole box of time existing all at once. But if so, again, how can one create without time?…
You wrote that the concept of time plays no role at all in the basic concept of cause and effect, only the meaning does. I did not understand that—do you mean a conditional statement? If so, then time is indeed a condition for causality…

The last paragraph, for a change, I accept. (P.S. Notice that I’m no longer challenging with respect to space but only with respect to time.)

With frozen time, there is time. Only the length of the time axis is 0. When there is no time, it is not frozen; rather, it is simply not a relevant parameter at all. For example (borrowed analogy), the length of a point is not 0. A point has no length at all, because length denotes a property of lines and not of points.
Another example. The claim that virtue is triangular is not false but meaningless. The reason is that triangularity is not in the semantic field of virtue. It is neither triangular nor non-triangular. Triangularity is irrelevant to it. Therefore it does not have a zero degree of triangularity; rather, it simply does not belong at all to the question of triangularity.
Maybe it will be easier for you to think about this if you take into account Kant’s view that space and time are forms of our intuition of reality and not parameters in reality itself. So if there are creatures not endowed with this form of intuition, they would use a different language to describe it. But it could still be the very same reality.
By the way, it seems to me you could sharpen the point further if you read my article here:

חיצו של זינון והפיסיקה המודרנית[1]

There I explain exactly the difference between motion as a collection of snapshots and real motion. That will also illustrate for you forms of intuition as language.

Elyad,
The concept of causal dependence includes no conditional statement about the past, but rather what is called a counterfactual: were it not for fact (or object) A, there would not be fact (or object) B. (“Would have been” not in the temporal sense but in the sense of possibility, the way the world might have been.) This can express both temporal relations (as in, were it not for the father’s activity, the son would not have been born) and timeless “hierarchical” relations (as in, were it not for the necessary being, there would not be a contingent world). Try imagining a chandelier hanging on the wall in a frame in which time “froze.” The dependence still exists and does not require time. The example does not capture the principle, though it helps illustrate it. In any case, in both cases the statements are highly coherent.

I raised the B Theory of Time as a serious intellectual possibility for understanding the concept of time. Many philosophically minded philosophers lean toward it; there are strong scientific and philosophical arguments in its favor, and it is very common among contemporary analytic philosophers, including many atheists. According to this view, your whole question collapses on its own, since according to it the future really exists just like the present and the past. In any event, this view shows that philosophers have no problem with the very claim that the universe itself exists as an unchanging totality (contrary to how the “passage of time” appears to us). If one can think that about the universe, certainly one can think it about an immaterial thing—the necessary being.

I did not contradict myself. The act of creation in the classical theological sense has a technical meaning that is not necessarily the meaning atheists give it—namely, the causal dependence of the principle of existence of contingent objects on the necessary being. Again, the principle of dependence is expressed in the said counterfactual, in which the concept of time has no role whatsoever.

Correction: “have no problem with the very claim that the universe itself *exists* as an unchanging totality, etc.” (not “does not exist”).

Rabbi,
I read it, but I did not understand whether you accept here my idea that time describes the flow of the world. Of course, if you describe time as merely a subjective property in our consciousness, then the question is moot from the outset.
But! If time is indeed another name for the continued flow of the world’s existence (something like what Copenhagen calls A-theory, which you mentioned in the article), then the deficiency in a world without time is an essential deficiency in the ability to change. Because time is the basis and condition for changes.
So your example of virtue being triangular is fundamentally different, because there we are dealing with two unrelated topics. But in our case, time is the property in the world that allows changes, and without it everything is stuck.

Maybe the Rabbi can explain what is meant by “time”? Then it will be easy to distinguish whether we attach changes to the time axis, or whether the time axis is the condition and basis of changes.

Really thank you for the help so far!

To Copenhagen,
Let’s set aside for a moment the questions about knowledge of the future and B-theory and so on.
Let’s focus only on whether there can be a cause that exists without time and affects entities that exist under time.

As I understand it, you argue here that a relation of dependence does not always require time, but even so you of course agree that sometimes such a relation does indeed occur under time and sometimes even requires it.
But even so, according to your own view, all the cases in which one can explain a relation of dependence in a reality that occurs without time are possible only for two kinds of reality:
1. Realities not under time at all.
2. Primordial realities.

But these explanations do not apply to explaining a world that was /*created*/, because a created world indirectly means that there was a period in which it was absent and did not exist. A factor that occurs in a dimension without time cannot act and create a reality in which time occurs and in which time is not primordial.
Likewise, your explanation still does not explain how there can be /*change*/ in a dimension without time. For example, according to your view it is not possible that God do X, and “afterward” do Y.

Elyad,
Even according to “atheistic” physics, the world was created and the time axis came into being with the Big Bang. So your remarks are unrelated to the question of belief in God. It is simply a mistake.
Time describes the flow but is not a condition for it. Certainly if time is a form of our intuition,
but even if time is in the world itself, you have to concede that things occur “before” it was created, except that their occurring is in a different sense (for us, who exist within conceptions of time, it is hard to understand and describe).
The examples I gave show you that there are things for which certain properties are irrelevant, and therefore even if you think there is a difference between them and our discussion, that changes nothing. You cannot object from the assumption that everything must take place within time when there is a possibility that is not so. The burden of proof is on the objector, not on the one trying to resolve the issue.
And again I repeat: it is not true that “without it everything is stuck.” Without it everything looks different and operates differently and is described differently. That’s all.
As far as I’m concerned, we’ve exhausted this.

Thank you.
Indeed, the Rabbi is right that in the Big Bang time was also created, but the Rabbi should remember that the atheistic approach claims it came into being out of nothing. The Rabbi can see this in the Weizmann Institute video (as I understand it, that is what they claimed) and in the summary of their video’s words: https://davidson.weizmann.ac.il/online/maagarmada/astrophysics/%D7%9E%D7%94-%D7%94%D7%99%D7%94-%D7%9C%D7%A4%D7%A0%D7%99-%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%A4%D7%A5-%D7%94%D7%92%D7%93%D7%95%D7%9C-%D7%95%D7%9E%D7%94-%D7%92%D7%A8%D7%9D-%D7%9C%D7%95
“It may be, as also suggested in the last part of the video, that the problem is simply with human logic and biology, which tries to find a cause for every process because that is how phenomena behave in the universe in which we live, whereas ‘before’ the Big Bang not even causality existed.”

In any case, if time describes the flow and is not the flow itself, then indeed your words are understandable—that there is no dependence between the two.
But then what is unclear is “where” that time is found… and where we encounter it if not through the flow itself… and if we encounter it in the flow itself then it is not clear why to separate the concepts.
I did not understand why you claim that even if time is in the world I must concede that things occur before it was created. The option of creation ex nihilo is the preferable option, as the scientists agree.

————————————————-
Thank you, Rabbi,
I thought about the matter and I think I understood most of it, except for a few relatively small puzzles.
I also looked at another discussion that took place on the site about a year ago called “A Cosmological Proof in the Shadow of the Big Bang Without Time.”
In any case, as I understand it, the Rabbi distinguishes between time and change.
If time is some abstract axis, then change is a process that things undergo.
And we simply attach and describe changes relative to time. From this it follows that in a world in which there is no time there is no reason to assume there would be no changes.

But the questions that remain unclear to me are:
1. If time is not embedded in matter and symbolizes the flow of reality, then where is it “located” and “advancing”? (In some Platonic dimension?) And how do we identify it? (By intuition? And what about the claim that time is relative?)
But if we encounter time in the ‘flow’ itself, then it is not clear why to separate the concepts rather than unify them.

2. If time is not connected to the state of affairs in the world, and changes can occur even without it, then ostensibly it follows that even when we stop time at a certain point (for example 20:00), changes could still occur. But here reality is surely frozen..?

1. In our language, changes are described along the time axis. But that is our description of the changes. Therefore, even when another language is used (or in a world without time), there are changes, except that they will be described in another language.

The question of the meaning of the flow of time itself is a philosophical question not related to our discussion. The question is not where it is located (what does the question “where is the time axis located?” mean?), but along what it advances. There are claims (which I share) that it flows along another, more fundamental time axis (in relativity it has a symbol—tau). I discussed this at length in the fourth book in the Talmudic Logic series (on the conception of time in the Talmud). You can also see this in Avshalom Elitzur’s book “Time and Consciousness,” in the Open University series (his doctorate under Larry Horowitz at Tel Aviv University dealt with developing physics under the assumption of two time axes. The philosophical justification for this is exactly your difficulty. But as said, all this is not specifically relevant to our discussion. It is a general question about the flow of time). Briefly, you can see it in column 33 here.

2. When time is frozen, that is something that does not allow changes, because in such a state there is time and it is not flowing. That is not like a state with no time.

Thank you,
1. Thanks, but what does it help to assume that time axis 1 advances along time axis 2 unless you explain how axis 2 itself advances… (so either you arrive at an infinite regress, or you claim that time has the power to advance [perhaps God moves it? something like Descartes’ idea]) In any case, how do I identify it? Through intuition?

2. What difference does it make that the time axis is not advancing but frozen? In the end, changes do not necessarily have to occur because of the time axis.
Do you mean that one can describe only a relation between circumstances and time, and for one time point only one state of affairs in the world can exist and no more (otherwise one arrives at paradoxes)? As opposed to a situation where there is no time at all, where there is no problem that several different states of affairs occur, as happens?
Did I understand correctly?
Does the Rabbi have an example to give for this rather abstract idea? 🙂

1. See my remarks in the sources I referred you to. The basic axis does not advance.
2. When I say in English that nothing is happening, then nothing is happening even if I am speaking Hebrew. When in temporal terms nothing is happening (and that is the meaning of frozen time), then nothing is happening in any sense. But when there is no time, I did not say that nothing is happening, only that what is happening is not described in temporal terms.
I’m already quite exhausted because we keep returning to the same point over and over. It seems to me we’ve exhausted it.

1. I didn’t encounter this in column 33; it may be in your other references. Is the fixed time axis infinite? Or finite? If it is finite, can it be imagined like a hand moving on a clock? And if it is infinite, is there not a problem of infinite regress here?
2. I do understand it, but it is still not completely clear to me 100%…

In any case, thank you very, very much for the help, for the effort, and for everything, and especially for dedicating your time to the subject ;).
I will summarize the discussion as I saw its central points, so that whoever comes across this question can find a summary of the matter. [The summary includes the great help of all the participants and of me, and especially the Rabbi and Copenhagen (I also added many things I remember from outside sources and also from Moshe Ratt).
The question divides into two (and according to some interpretations into one): every entity is subject to the laws of time and space; we encounter this from experience and common sense. Therefore, how can a different kind of reality exist.
Subjection to space:
The main question lies in our familiarity from experience only with spatial bodies, and therefore it tries to infer from this to all other bodies in the world that they too are subject to space.
The problems:
1. The question attacks only those who deny corporeality, not those who do not deny corporeality.
2. The concept of existence as such does not force anything regarding space and time. From the questioner’s assumption that every entity *we perceive with the senses* is in time and space, one cannot derive that *every possible entity* must be in time and space. Regarding such realities, we will therefore have to let the evidence lead us. If there is evidence for their existence, then they exist.
3. Even analogically speaking (aside from the difficulties inherent in analogy itself), there is no reason to make such an analogy from the familiar to such an extreme universal rule about the unfamiliar. Certainly not when one does not see in the matter a paradox or logical contradiction. In such a case the burden of proof passes to the objector who denies this possibility, not to the responder.
4. Even according to physics there are entities that have no size—not because it is 0, but because that dimension does not apply to them at all—for example, the photon.
5. There is no shortage of Platonic philosophers and scientists who, for philosophical reasons, came to believe in the existence of entities such as the number 7, Fermat’s theorem, or the form of cat-ness in a non-spatiotemporal world of ideas—including explicit atheists. The dispute between them and Aristotelians generally is not over some problem in the very concept of ‘non-spatiotemporal reality,’ precisely because this is a weak “problem.”
6. There are many things of which we have no experience and still we assume they exist. For example, we have never had experience of any psychological entity beyond our own self (problem of other minds). Would you infer from that that the only self that exists in the world is you?
7. The claim that experience teaches that all the entities we know are subject to space is not at all correct. For example: 1. the self (as Descartes defined it, the thinking substance as opposed to extended substance). 2. Emotions. 3. Sensory qualities: “color,” “smell.” For example, what is the size of the color green?
[Of course all this is according to the dualist interpretation, and certainly the idealist one, but even one who holds materialism cannot infer from here that all realities in the world are subject to matter and space, and the burden of proof is on him (2,3), especially when human understanding accepts these views quite easily and readily.]
8. If we always stand only on the familiar, we will never be able to discover unfamiliar phenomena. As in the problem of the philosophy of science.

Subjection to time:
The main question claims that a reality without time cannot exist, either from experience or because a reality without time is a stuck and frozen reality, unchanging, etc. Likewise, the Big Bang theory claims that the whole world was created, including the time within it.
The problems:
As for the experiential part, see the previous section.
As for the part about stuckness and change:
1. One must define in advance what is meant by saying that the concepts of time do not apply to God (for example, is the sentence “God did such-and-such in the year 1437” an illegitimate sentence?)
2. Even assuming that a reality without time is a frozen reality that cannot change, this poses no difficulty for theistic views according to which no change occurs in God and there is no “before” and “after” in Him.
Even so, God can be the cause of the universe, in a relation of dependence / a relation of cause and effect. Sometimes such a relation does indeed operate under a reality of time (as in, were it not for the father’s activity, the son would not have been born), but sometimes it operates without it as well (as in, were it not for the necessary being, there would not be a contingent world). To get the idea, one may think of a picture in which a chandelier hangs from the ceiling in a frame where time “froze.” The dependence between the chandelier and the ceiling still exists and yet does not require time.
The same idea can also apply in the case of the Big Bang: even if there is a cause for the Big Bang, the cause need not be within the bounds of time.
3. The equation the objector assumes (time = change) is nonsense. There is no identity between the two. Time is some abstract axis, whereas change is a process that things undergo.
Rather, time is the axis on the basis of which we describe changes (not that time itself is the change). From this it follows that in a world in which there is no time there is no reason to assume there will be no changes. What is true is that the inhabitants of such a world would simply describe the changes differently (they would not use temporal terms). One may think of a being not endowed with a perception of time or place. Would the world not exist for such a being? It would exist, but would be described in a different conceptual system.
It may be that even in a reality without time we would describe the reality in temporal terms—as a use of language. For example, I can describe in English what happened before the English language was invented.
4. If so, the question arises: what is the difference between time stopped at 8:00 PM, for example, and a reality with no time at all? It seems the idea should be understood that for time t (as an independent variable) there is only one *single* state of affairs that occurs (see column 33). By contrast, where there is no time at all, it is not true that there is only one state of affairs occurring there; rather, we simply do not ascribe and connect the property and parameter of ‘time’ to the ‘state of affairs’ in that reality.

A few examples of this idea—that with frozen time there is time, only the length of the time axis is 0; whereas when there is no time, it is not frozen, but simply not a relevant parameter at all:
A. The length of a point is not 0. A point has no length at all, because length denotes a property of lines, not of points.
B. The claim that “virtue” is “triangular” is not false but meaningless. The reason is that the shape of a triangle is not in the semantic field of “virtue.” It is neither triangular nor non-triangular. Triangularity is irrelevant to it. Therefore it also does not have a zero degree of triangularity; rather, it simply does not belong at all to the question of triangularity.

Another idea to understand section 4 is this: when I say in English that nothing is happening, then nothing is happening even if I am speaking Hebrew. When in temporal terms nothing is happening (and this is the meaning of frozen time), then nothing is happening in any sense. But when there is no time, I did not say that nothing is happening; only that what is happening is not described in temporal terms.
5. After these preliminaries, the objector cannot challenge on the assumption that everything must be conducted within time when there is a possibility that is not so. The burden of proof is on the objector, not on the one trying to resolve the issue.
6. It is not clear that time indeed exists in reality. For example, Kant held that space and time are only forms of our intuition and not things that exist in the objective world as such. By way of analogy, just as someone wearing pink glasses will see all reality as pink, even though in reality outside him there is no pink at all. Likewise, someone not wearing glasses cannot see, but that does not mean there is nothing to see.
Therefore, according to such views the question is moot from the outset.

Elyad. Regarding your original and short question.
Certainly God is not an existing entity.
After all, when speaking of the world as created, they say it was created “something from nothing.” In other words, God is the “nothing” in that expression.

And another way: if you and I exist, then surely you cannot say of God that He exists. God is not like you and me.

All the rest are just using words like magic; they believe that by using words they create worlds.

Elyad,

You are repeating an erroneous claim you raised earlier, namely that a created world indirectly means there was a period in which it did not exist. But I already explained that the concept of creation in your usage is not the concept theists have used in the present context. For Maimonides, creation is the atemporal dependence of a contingent world on God, not something that happened “before” the beginning of the universe. Maimonides emphasized in his words that time itself is an accidental property accompanying motion, and without moving bodies there is no time (from which it follows that there is no time that preceded the universe, and in general the use of the term “before” the universe, in the temporal sense, is improper).

In any case, from his point of view the existence of God as Creator of the world is proved regardless of whether the material universe extends infinitely backward in time (as Aristotle tended to think) or whether it is bounded on the time axis in the past (as emerges from the plain sense of the verses and from modern science). For illustration, think of train cars moving at constant speed while overcoming friction so that each car passes this property to the one behind it. Suppose you are watching the cars pass by you and have no idea whether there are finitely or infinitely many cars. You can still infer with certainty that there must be some locomotive imparting this property to the cars, by virtue of which they do not immediately slow down to a complete stop, because otherwise there is no possibility that such a contingent property could continue to exist even for one additional moment in any of the cars—except for the locomotive, in whose case this is a capability arising from the very essence of what it is as a locomotive. The universe’s property of existence is similar to that, and it is entirely irrelevant whether we are dealing with a universe that extends infinitely backward in time or one that has a beginning.

You complain: “Likewise, your explanation still does not explain how there can be *change* in a dimension without time. For example, according to your view it is not possible that God do X and ‘afterward’ do Y.” Correct. According to my view this is impossible (and so it always appeared to most classical theistic thinkers, who did not hesitate to quote supporting biblical verses). Still, in ordinary language there is no need to refrain from phrasing things like “God took Israel out of Egypt and afterward brought them into the Land,” but the meaning is only that the causal relation between providence and the world brought about different results along the time axis as it is from our point of view.

Point,
If God does not exist, why worship Him at all?
Your words stem from an overly extreme and really illogical denial of positive attributes (“I exist, and God cannot be like me, so He does not exist”).

Point,
I understand simply that creation ex nihilo does not mean that God is nothing. Rather, He is something that created reality despite the nothing…
If there is absolute nothingness, Heaven forbid, then no something could come out of it.

Copenhagen, if so, you cancel God’s free choice, because a change of will entails some sort of change. And you erase parts of providence and the meaning of prayers, unless you create a robot that receives prayers according to various parameters. Or we change as a result of prayer. And the same with providence. For state X, robot Y will operate.
Likewise, the physico-theological argument contradicts your words, because if there is an entity that is compelled to do something, then that entity itself requires a cause.
In any case, I did not understand the cosmological argument you present: why does every contingent entity require an explanation? It sounds far too philosophical and not necessary.

You raise beginner’s questions with deadly seriousness as though in another moment you are going to collapse the whole theory. God’s immutability is one of the central motifs among theologians in all the monotheistic religions. Do you think it never occurred to them that this is a revealed God who also exercises providence and answers prayers? Lack of change has nothing to do with roboticity, but again, I won’t present the explanations here because this is basic reading in the literature that discusses the subject.

I did not understand how, in your view, the physico-theological argument contradicts the points.

Every real and positive contingent *property* that does not express a relation but rather a state in the thing itself requires that the cause connecting it to the thing continue its act of connecting or fusing, otherwise the thing would lose the property. The example I gave dealt with resistance to frictional forces in train cars (but you can imagine any other contingent property, given the stated qualifications), and it was not meant to explain the cosmological argument but to show that the question whether the universe began in time is irrelevant.

I thought people usually refer to sources… (if it’s a big book, then at the level of the part/chapter) so you can refer to sources. 🙂

I don’t currently have time to explain the objection to the physico-theological argument.

Why can’t one say that the objects are endowed with the property of preservation against the ravages of time..? And I didn’t understand what the proof shows then—that there exists an entity that creates or preserves the objects so they remain, and that it is its own cause? If so, why not say that the universe is its own cause with respect to this property.