God and Free Will

[bunny]

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Hell I dont even know how we could possibly go back in time, yet alone thinking about block time with (present past and future) all on one "landscape" [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

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I think this is a very salient point. I think it is impossible for us to conceive what it would be like to experience time like this. Nonetheless, I think the theist has to believe God exists outside of time or will run into paradox after paradox (the omniscience vs free will one being a good example).

Perhaps it is useful to think of the universe as a big novel. God is outside it and can access any single part of it, all the events are just references on different page numbers with no "flow" happening at all. This is despite the fact that the characters in the book are trapped in a past-present-future view of time. Look at the state of a character on any one page and they have a clear opinion about what has and hasnt happened yet. (This analogy breaks down fairly easily since when we read a book we do so within a meta-time and I am not claiming God has this nature - nonetheless it may help you conceptualise what I am talking about).