That may seem like a bizarre question, but it’s one I’ve thought about for a while. In the Bible, the Christian god claims to have always existed. Have you ever thought through what that would be like?
If you’ve spent much time around young children — say the 3 to 4 year old range — you’ll know that they have no concept of something happening before their existence. For instance, my middle child likes to watch old home movies from when she was a baby, and when she does, my youngest child always asks where he was during whatever event we’re watching. We tell him that he wasn’t born yet, but you can tell that doesn’t really register with him. He exists now… surely he existed then?
That got me thinking what it must be like to be God. If you’re the “first cause,” then before you created anything, there would be nothing (presumably). So if you’re simply an awareness surrounded by nothing, how do you know that nothing predates you? How can you mark the passage of eternity in a meaningful enough way to know that something didn’t cause you? It might be true — but how would you ever know?
It seems to me it’s the one thing God could not possibly know. To claim that nothing came before him would either be a lie, or it would be a display of the same kind of ignorance a child possesses when he’s incapable of imagining a time before his own existence.
Well, either that, or someone just made the whole thing up… 🙂
Finding Truth 
Thanks, JudahFirst,
I don’t know for sure that there is life after death, but I would like God to help me understand, and I believe that if He wants to, He can if I genuinely seek Him. All the best 🙂
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Thanks Dave, my nose is bleeding…
Just kidding. great point. I am really enjoying this entire riddle.
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Thanks Dave! You said what I’ve been thinking in a much clearer way. I’m very glad you weighed in. 🙂
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Dave, what you are saying would be true if 4 dimensions were all there were. If that premise is true, then nothing can exist outside of time (what I am calling the 4th dimension), but if there are infinite dimensions, then whey could it not be true that a being could exist outside of any reference to time?
Again, Rob Bell’s video comes to mind where he talks about quarks. There are atomic particles which do not seem to operate according to what we understand to be forward linear time (i.e. cause and effect). If there are particles which can be perceived within our limited dimensions, but obviously follow none of our dimensional rules, what does that say about the possibilities? For me, science proves the existence of God more than the Bible. There are just too many natural evidences of intelligent design for me to ignore (apparently, that’s true for Stephen King as well). 🙂
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My head just exploded…
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Dimensions where there is no action? no past or future… anything?
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William, why not? Just because we cannot perceive it does not mean it can’t exist. Consider how far science has taken us just in the last 50 years. People used to believe the world was flat, you know. 😉
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I’m thinking about it. Just making sure I had your premise correct?
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I was not referring to time as a dimension. I was referring to time as a metaphysical way of explaining the order of events. I realize that Einstein came up with “space-time” and that this form of time is relative to the speed you are traveling (something like that), but that subject is concerning physical “space-time”. I’m not really too familiar / well-versed with that topic. To speak of time as a 4th dimension would also be a physical version of time (right?). If you are talking about string theory than I’m going to be lost. Anyway, my comment was more or less a philosophical discussion of time. If there is no time (using the metaphysical definition) than NOTHING happens. If SOMETHING happens (like a thought produced by a conscious being) than time can be used to explain what takes place before and after that event.
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Well, I’m certain I’m not explaining myself very well … seeing as I’m a secretary and not a scientist. 😉 However, I am open to the possibility that things CAN happen outside of our limitation of forward linear time. I’m not saying I *understand how these events can be ordered or anything of the sort, but I just think we are SO limited by the dimensions we exist in that it is difficult to imagine anything beyond it. Still, many have and do imagine such, including me. Even in my imaginings, I realize I can only think so far beyond my box, and I wonder if this has been the real difficulty in God revealing Himself to us. If revelation is progressive, it stands to reason that more will be revealed as we progress beyond our current dimensional state. This is my hope and belief.
As to string theory, no I cannot even begin to discuss such a thing coherently, else we will be lost together. 😉
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William, for clarification, no, not dimensions where there is no action. Perhaps one where there is no past or future. Maybe what Einstein conceived of as the always now…? Hey, it’s all theoretical, so I can’t be more concrete than that.
I wonder, sometimes, though, if one day I will be able to pop in and out of my past and watch it like a movie … or participate in it like Butterfly Effect. Who knows? I just *know there is more beyond what we can experience now. There simply has to be. For that argument, you’ll have to read my blog on believing the impossible. 🙂
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Judah First, i just read your bio page and I think get you a little better. You arent picking and choosing what to believe in the bible, you’re saying that much of the OT is parable, and not to be taken literally, such as the events detailing genocide, etc… same with the parts where Jesus is speaking of hell, it’s a figurative illustration to make a point…
am I closer?
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William, not exactly. I’m saying the *explanation of why Israel wiped out the other nations is suspect. I don’t think God “told” them to do that. I think they *thought He did… Because they *thought God was like all the pagan gods around them. It wasn’t supposed to be figurative, but the writings revealed where they were in their understanding (much as ours do). My blog itself could be seen to represent a portion of my journey. There are older posts on there I would likely completely disagree with at this point! lol But that was my understanding at the time. My thinking continues to evolve as I work through the problems I find in interpretation.
Likely the biggest change for me was when I stopped believing the text was inerrant. I realized that the men who wrote the Scriptures were groping about in the dark to understand an invisible deity, much like we are doing. This is why Jesus is critical to the discussion. If He is the exact representation of God in human form, then it’s true that everything written before (and after) His coming MUST be interpreted through what His life taught. I don’t think He was kidding when He said “Philip, if you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father.”
As to the N.T. writings, I *do believe much of what Jesus spoke (in teaching) was figurative and parable. I don’t think He did this to confuse as much as to help us understand what is beyond us to understand. How do you like THAT for a circle? 😉
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this is not just a question for believers though Nate this is a question for anyone on Earth that is actually more unanswered in any belief outside Christianity than it is within Christianity.. Even if there was no God and we got here some other way, The Big Bang Theory or any other way, and it had to happen some way, the answer to what happened before that even if it was nothing makes no sense or the explanation of anything having been here forever makes no sense either. Time having a beginning and the fact that anything was never here at one point and how did it get here will make your head hurt. Thinking anything or anyone has been here forever will also make it hurt., The explanation of God and God is the only one who can understand because he created us is the only one that makes any sense to me. Still doesn’t answer it all for me but I just trust him and it at least makes my head stop hurting lol
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Nate, I thought of another way of spinning the question you posed.
“If you existed within a matrix, how would you know?”
I just did a post on my blog that tries to explain this. I think it shows that assuming the existence of a god is not justified.
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In the previous comment Amanda says that “Thinking anything or anyone has been here forever will also make” your head hurt, but then she says that thinking God created us makes her head stop hurting. This is contradictory. If you really want to make your head hurt try imagining that there is a god, but he does not make this clear to you. Then imagine that he will hold you accountable for not believing in the correct version of himself. What a strange and awful thought. Just because something like cosmology is mysterious to us does not mean we should answer it with a non-answer. You are just answering a mystery with something even more unknown and mysterious.
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I think you nailed it Dave — I couldn’t agree more! I’ll definitely check out your new post. Thanks for letting me know about it!
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Dave: That last paragraph that you wrote is spot on. It is exactly how I would describe my own viewpoints. A God who does not come close to making himself clear to his creation but then holds them accountable also runs very much against what I would consider a caring and loving God. If the Christian wants to give up on either the omniscience, omnipotence, or all-loving attributes of the God they believe in then at least this concept might be more plausible, but without modifying one of those this main belief of the Christian worldview just doesn’t work inside my brain.
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