God, Time, and Creation | Dr. William Lane Craig & Dr. Ryan Mullins 

R. T. Mullins is my favorite reminder that I won't necessarily look old and rusted by the time I get my PhD, dude looks like he has just finished community college and not an entire doctorate process. Mullins, you're a gift to philosophy and you managed to change my mind on the neoclassical theist debate against classical theists 🙏

Hate it that Craig can only spare 60 minutes to these RU-vid discussions. That's about just 20% the length of a regular majesty of reason video.

Thank you so much for arranging this, Joe. I have been hoping these two would interact on these topics for years now. This was a dream come true.

Thank you for having Dr. Craig and Dr. Mullins taking about this topic.

Great conversation! Not a lot of schoolers like Dr. Craig who can give such great insight into the topic of time. I do also appreciate Dr. Mullins and his perspective on time as well.

Really fun discussion! Very unique position from Mullins. Coming from someone who doesn't know much philosophy of time this was very helpful intro that divided the conceptual and theoretical space without an overuse of jargon.

Oh my God. I study in Russia at the Faculty of Philosophy, finishing my bachelor's degree. Right now, I am writing my final thesis on the discussion of the eternity of God in modern analytical philosophy of religion. At some point, I began to naively believe that I understood everything) But then I came across this thread. On the one hand, I am glad because it clarified and deepened a lot in my understanding. On the other hand, I’m a little embarrassed because I understand that I misunderstood a lot and I have to rewrite so much in my study, but ... when?) The deadline for submitting the text is already tomorrow😅))

Love your exploratory type debates!!!

It's Billy the kid, Joe Schmoe, and My Chemical Romance Ryan! Lol, excited to watch.

Great video!! I always love hearing your specific thoughts on a topic, Joe, but you do great in a moderator role as well! Loved the discussion

Regarding timelessness sans creation: Assuming that god created the universe and time concurrently... and assuming that god made the conscious decision to create everything... when did god make that decision? How can god transition from not creating to creating in that singular, eternal, atemporal moment?

I think there are some serious mental gymnastics going on for god to not know his next move because of "middle knowledge" and having not yet chosen a possible reality. This such a strange ad hoc explanation to defend the nonsensical point about omniscience since its a paradoxical term, especially with "free will" taken into account

Nice video I wanted to see Mullins and Craig debate these issues

WOAH! I’m excited for this one. Let me brew a coffee first.

Already looking forward to part two! (Whenever that may be.)

It's odd but I never really expected to see a collab between David Lee Roth and Adam Young (Owl City). Such a cool video though.

I want to see Dr. Craig and Joe to discuss the Kalam so bad lol

What a great Conversation! Maybe we can have them back on to continue the conversation where it ended! A part two of the conversation.

So excited! Great guest and a great host

Can we lock up Craig and Mullins into a room for 2 days (and provide them with sustenance, just in case you're wondering) and I'm sure they will crack the 'problem' with time. I think that's much more fruitful than having them go/not go at each other like this. This 'friendly competition' is less likely to produce a net gain outcome, aside from the occasional "hmm" from one about the other's view of their own ideas, than either a full-frontal assault on each others' thoughts or (as I suggest) they're both on the same team, tackling the same problem.

We these speakers talk about not wanting to accept something. What is driving their desires here? Is it theological commitments?

Two amazing minds interacting on one of the deepest and most abstract topics - AMAZING video. Thank you :-)

Joe: "sans" Billy C: "It's Saaaaaaaaaans, not saaans."

Watching this again, I wonder if one of the main problems isn't with the question itself, "what is time?" It seems to me that a more fruitful question would be "what are we committed to by our meaningful use of time-talk?"

Great discussion! I have enjoyed a lot listening both points of view. Personally, I disagree with both, but really was an interesting and productive conversation. Thank you Joe!

I really like ontology and metaphysics. Great topic. Please make more videos about this kind of stuff.

Thank you, Joe, for hosting this. This is a big topic and I learnt a lot.

Super interesting. I think I lean towards Craig view, but definitely have a lot to learn!

I don't like the language that God in a single timeless moment knows the future, and doesn't know the future. I prefer to think of it as, in a single moment God knows all possible futures, and simply hasn't decided which future to actualize. The only thing He doesn't "know", is His own decision. Maybe I'm missing something, but that seems the better way to think of it.

Would love to have a follow up video with your appraisal of some the arguments presented Joe.

Thank you for all participants, this was absolutely great! The first video I have seen that really delves into the question of how the causation part of creation is coherent without some sense of time which provides an ordering for the cause and effect. Although I gotta say, I still don't see how it's coherent so I would love some further discussion it. However before I couldn't even properly think of the question and Dr Mullins's formulation of the question at 42:57 is beautiful. One question about a statement of Dr Craig 26:25 'I'm deeply committed to the notion that time is a fundamental feature of reality' 27:40 'to say god is timeless is to say that he is not temporal' (temporal: has temporal location and temporal duration) Doesn't divine timelessness dispute the fundamentality of time? As in reality of god is possible without time. Or is god sans creation not a reality in this sense?

Change… the definition of change could simply be: differences in the state of affairs. One need not introduce time into the definition of change. Time could be a concept to be understood logically rather than temporally.

This is a great set up! Looking forward to the discussion

We are not worthy of this content. However, I am deeply disappointed that Joe missed his opportunity to do his Swinburne impression when he was mentioned. Think of the viewers next time joe!

I also wish Joe had tried to debate more lol. I do appreciate your understanding and arguments, Joe. I need a Schmid vs Craig clash

So far this is awesome. Just thinking, “I wish Feser or Pat Flynn or Kerr were here for some scholastic metaphysics.” But we all know Feser wouldn’t appear- “too busy” (but not too busy to constantly make sassy blog posts)

Dr. Ryan is extremely smart and articulate, wow.

This is amazing 😳.

how does a "timeless" entity know when to do anything?

Excellent video! Thank you for making and sharing this!

Great conversation. And thank you for being so open-minded. Great philosophers all abroad

Is Mullins arguing that time is a mode of God, as Craig phrases it, or is he arguing that time is a property of God? What's the difference between a property and a mode? When I think of a mode, I think of modalism, where one God appears in different ways. When I think of properties, I think of qualities one possesses that are shown through actions, such as love being shown by ones acts of kindness and caring and affection, or justice being shown through impartiality and righteous anger, etc. if time were a property of God, it would be shown in some way that we could see, such as when I tell my family I want to spend my time with them, I have a limited property of time that is the unknown span of my life. To me this isn't the same as saying God is time in the same way God is Love or God is Just. At the same time, we don't avoid saying God is Love because we don't see that as pantheism, why would time being a property of God, or even mode of God, or even saying God is time, result in pantheism?

As an agnostic-atheist, this was a very interesting conversation. I may have to go back and listen again, however I never considered the idea of a god existing in "meta-time" (as I understand it, and how I'm understanding this) being able to create time from a substantival view. The difference between moments in time and time itself as a substance or some ontological fact outside of events is something I never really thought about. I could be completely off course here but I guess because the relational theory of time is so intuitive, I'm having a hard time grasping the other theory.

Amazing conversation

Let’s consider the relationship between the English language & Alphabetical order. Alphabetical order is a construct that is useful for organising words of the English language, but English could still exist & be spoken without this order. As an English speaker, I can access any English word as I need it because the construct of Alph. order exists within my mind, I do NOT exist in alphabetical order! Even so, God has access to any moment in time. Even if God adopts time to relate to things in time, & would be interpreted as temporal by temporal beings, He is never actually temporal. When we say that the person who invented the alphabet existed before “A”, we don’t mean that He existed as some letter preceding A, because whoever invented the alphabet existed independently of it.

Dr. Craig seems to believe God makes something begin to exist when He creates it from nothing. But it seems to me that he must continue creating to sustain that thing. He's like a light socket electricity flows from to keep a lamps lightbulb shining. God doesn't recreate the universe, for example. Instead, he gives it existence. So if he "unplugged" the universe, that would annihilate it. Most Christians I talk with seem to believe that after God made the universe, he quit creating, i.e., making it exist. But that sounds almost deistic. Deists believe that after God created the universe, he ignored it because it could sustain itself. People sustain their lives by eating, drinking, exercising, sleeping, and so forth. But that assumes that something or someone enables material objects, natural process, and so forth to exist to begin with. Natural science can't explain why there's something instead of nothing when science presupposes that there's something. So scientists will argue in a circle by using natural science to explain why there's anything at all.

when are they going to stop saying i'm made in god's image, since when has anyone been timeless, spaceless, immaterial, omniscient or omnibenevolent? i bear no resemblance to god whatsoever.

The "timeless sans creation" view has never been intelligible to me (and probably never will). God is either timeless or temporal; there's no other option. And if he is temporal, then he has *always* been temporal (since "always" means "at all times"). And if God has *always* been temporal, then... how can he be "timeless" in any sense?

Such an interesting discussion. These are the two analytic theologians that I trust the most, almost implicitly, but here they are disagreeing. God and time is certainly more of Ryan’s specialty or at least what he’s associated with the most (as opposed to WLC with the Kalam, Atonement, Historial Adam, etc.). They’re also two of the most clear thinkers and orators and yet can still not quite be on the same page, same line, at the same time.

47:51 well for that to be true that would indicate that the decision to create came before the actual creation. Which would mean that a temporal state existed at the point of decision not at the point of creation.

I’m baffled at the argument it’s self, my first “time” hearing this. Time is a tool of an active measurement by beings of all existence given by God, imo. A cat, dog, tree, Milky Way etc. moves in different time but perfectly sequenced in harmony, God the conductor. We witness it and play along the motif. Even as humans we experience time differently, like some would say you haven’t aged a bit! It’s dynamic in its existing and still in its capture, but useless with out the agent. If we say time was with god before existing, then we cannot exist, because the forever consumes. Time is only in the beginning, where word was born, like a nanny 😊 sweet ol nanny, could you read me a story! Yes dear, In the beginning…

Thanks for hosting such interesting discussions, Joe! I've read some of Craig's work on time, although I don't remember him addressing this particular issue. I'm on minute 25 so far and still leaning towards Craig's view, but curious to see how the rest plays out. Also I find myself wanting to hear your takes on this discussion (philosophy of time in general), but I feel like (appropriately) that's not happening here. Have you written or spoken on the topic? I'd love to be referred to it. Thanks in advance!

Joe should be getting an award for this.

I don't understand tensed theory of time, presentism. Creation does not exist so it could not have happened. Yesterday does not exist, so the stuff yesterday could not have caused the stuff today, because things that don't exist don't cause anything. Cause and effect goes out the window.

Great discussion, well hosted! I wonder how both views hold up in light of relativistic and quantum physical discoveries. For Craig, if time is tensed, it's weird that whether an event can be considered (by a viewer) future-tense, present-, or past-tense can change if an observer's reference frame changes. This makes it unclear whether there is a fact of the matter timeline (i.e. god's) For Mullins, if time is an attribute of god, then these relativistic effects on time, if real, seem to make less sense. For, if time were an attribute of god, and god is perfect, unchanging, etc, then you would expect time to be constant and unimpacted by relativistic circumstances

I see no reason to think that God's timelessness had to change at the inception of creation. Whatever God is doing is eternal. Hence, if God directly interacts with creation, that interaction has its archetype upon the eternal platform despite appearing to take place within relativistic time. I find creatio ex nihilo to be incomprehensible in the ultimate sense. Obviously, God isn't a nothing out of which creation comes about. Even when we say that creation doesn't arise from the substance of God Himself, it still necessarily follows that God, being eternally accompanied by the powers or energies that entail His omnipotence, is therefore not creating out of absolute nothingness.

Does God see you already dead buried and dust or after the resurrection talking to people for an eternity ? I am with John Polkinghorne the future is spontaneously unfolding and not here yet.If there is a god his eternity adds out time as it happens with new realities coming into existence continually

Imaginary creatures are very pliable to whatever one needs it to be.

Good discussion. Thanks 🙏

Does Craig endorse both these statements God timelessly exists without the universe God exists alongside the universe

Excellent!

Really enjoyed the discussion. Have you ever thought about Franklin Richards in Marvel Comics, when he created a "pocket universe"? I wonder if that could be used as an analogy.

Joe, do you think the Oxford school's non-metricated moment of time makes any sence? It's all dependant on a conventionalism about temporal metric which sounds so implausible to me.

I generally find Craig to be a bit insufferable, but I appreciate his willingness to show up to discuss things with people of good faith (I mean that in the colloquial sense, not the religious) like Joe, Paulogia and others.

Amazing discussion. I think both of their views are really weird though.

“God is timeless” and “sans creation” are supposed to be taken as two separate statements. God is timeless until he creates Sans Undertale, where he fights him for eternity. However, due to Craig’s Neo-Lorentzian view of time, he thinks that God would pick out a special time while he’s fighting Sans as the “metaphysical time”.

52:15 "[On molinism], Logically prior to God's foreknowledge of the future [there] would be God's natural knowledge and his middle knowledge; and in that state of affairs God does not know what will happen because he hasn't yet decreed which of the feasible worlds shall be actual". That sounds like either some sort of open theism, or you have to say that God simultaneously from all eternity knew the future and didn't know the future, which is a rather bizarre claim. I really don't understand the aversion to Open Theism. It makes so many topics insanely easier

Next please invite Ed Feser, Andrew Loke and Alexander Pruss (written dialogue)

Had no idea the lead singer of the cure was a philosophy of religion scholar.

The black fingernail polish sort of killed any of Ryan's credibility for me. I couldn't get past it. Anybody else have a problem with that?

Awesome

Craig says 'that is pantheism though I think we wanna resist that', but he never explains why we want to resist this, what is his reasoning for rejecting pantheism outright?

Please make vidoes about tier list philosophical distinctions.

Must have been tough to see city take the title, Joe. I'm a utd fan but was rooting for Arsenal since Christmas.

Thank you 🙂

Would also like to see defend his view of time against Tim Maudlin

Am I the only one who notices Joe trying to surpress a laugh or smirk at around 12 mins in haha when WLC is rattling off attributes that God has but time does not haha

Why does Mullin sound like he's referencing philosophers who disagree w WLC, as opposed to having his own thoughts. Seems like he wrote down a strategy and outlines his talking points

I somehow still believe that theists should not be afraid of embracing an infinite past, lol. If time is continuous, as seems quite conceivable (at least in principle), then infinite regress problems are no more paradoxical on an infinite past than they are on a finite interval of, say, one second. Is it so inconceivable to think of time as for example a real number line?

Fascinating discussion! I understand more know, after watching this, about how people go about doing philosophy. I think it was very telling that Dr. Craig said that he thinks his view better conforms to the bible. It seems that the bible acts as a constraint on his philosophy. Other theists may loosen those constraints, or disregard them altogether, when doing philosophy - this producing many varieties of opinions. I think bible-believing Christians would be more convincing if their ideas could be shown without biblical constraints. To be fair, all philosophers, seem to have some bedrock constraint of some kind - but their opponents will say that those constraints are merely problems to be solved by differing intuitions and constraints. I can't help being agnostic about a lot of these debates until there is convincing argument as to why some intuitions should be taken over others.

"Just give me one moment in time...." Professor Whitney Houston.

I can't heard sans and not imagine Sans

Joe, I totally agree these two gentlemen and you are well informed and educated in the field of time, theology, philosophy and so on. But you guys are talking with the assumption that 'a god' exists. Sorry, I'm afraid I might be wasting my time here. I'm not being arrogant or trying to be supersmart. One thing though, if their arguments are somewhat valid and worth listening to, what do you say for example when Dr. Bart Ehrman simply provides the likely framework for stories of the ancient figures like Gilgamesh, where the text doesn't inform much about time, is it temporal, static whatever. But they're just products that came out as our stone age ancestors were contemplating about death, what happens after death, companionship, human existence and so on and nothing about time like Dr Craig and Dr. Mullins are validating here. Because I see time and again Dr. Mullins says this civilization that eastern etc says this and that about time. The myths creating these stories must have time as a part and some might say god and universe started together or they may state God was timeless and universe was created by him. They may not even say universe or something equivalent. They might simply mean the land they see and whatever that they know exists. Again, did god create the universe out of nothing or something? That's not the goal of these ancient myth creators. Out of their ignorance about the natural world like today we have a perfect explantion for lightning, they just thought someone is up there, very fierce and gets angry and creates fire whenever he's angry. And maybe he's communicating something to us. Or threatening us to behave good. When some of the tribe asked how did he come about? Who made him, the sky fire maker? Some smarts started adding to the stories. Yeah, he was there before anything was there. So, anything was there? Did he have trees, mountains, lakes, rivers before us? A resounding yes, leads to a god forming himself with the natural elements of nature. No, he was just alone. He made everything from scratch. What did he make those things with? And questions and questions followed by myths after myths... And now two well dressed professors arguing as if those myth creators were NASA's noble price winner scientists???

Time is the endurance of reality.

Interesting

Cheers Joe

I'm confused. Why would it be wrong to have that pantheistic view of God (God is time...or god is everything)? Unless I'm missing the point. It's hard to follow

What would be the difference in saying the category of time is identical to existence? Intervals of existence being moments in time.

Every second exists eternally in chronological order. I’m not saying each second lasts forever. I’m saying that God creates them in the Eternal now. God doesn’t change, so there is no “pre-2023 God” & “post-2023 God”. He creates all time a-temporarily. Time cannot emerge from time.

Do you learn Phillipp Mainländer philosophy?

Listening to this debate feels like people discussing the merits of alchemy or humor theory. It's very frustrating, because it's a matter that science has definitively settled - and almost 100 years ago, might I add. Time is a dependent property of space; general relativity tells us this. Unless you want to deny hard experimental evidence gathered in numerous space flight missions, you must accept that time is definitely, for sure, no arguments, a substance.

04.00 : Just like proper scientists they can't agree about 'time' This should be interesting... 3.18 : But I was always told that God was timeless or exists outside time.. when did this change? 4.30 : so, God is Time? Sounds like that's what you are telling me.. 5.19 : don't think Newton said or thought any such thing. If he did, WHEN?? Y'all ought to get Sean to come talk to ya! (Sean M Carroll) He'll put you straight....

Where is it shown in the Bible God is out side of time, or is it something man has come up with to fit God in to reality. Or is this just for people who believe in God already.

I can’t wait until religious philosophers figure out what time is🥥🥥

I've always said that Craig's idea that God 'started out' timeless and then somehow 'chose' to become temporal with creation is a little bit like expecting a character in a paused movie to unpause the movie from within. If they were capable of doing then then clearly they were never 'paused' to begin with. So I think Craig's model here is just completely nonsensical.

I think Dr Mullins is the future of religion. The rigid beliefs of people like Craig don't hold up, even though he agrees that Gen 1-11 is mytho-history. Dr Mullins view has god being whatever people want him to be, to a certain extent. But frankly, I see no difference between that and an imaginary god. But if you want a religion, at least Mullins view lets you believe w/o the cognitive dissonance that must come with a rigid faith.

This is like fan theory. Two people having a discussion about the physics in their favorite anime.

I think Ryan had a good response to Bill's assertion that time wasn't identified with God, and I think Bill's objection could easily be used against his own idea that Goodness is identified with God. Goodness can be divided into different acts, God cannot. God is the father of Jesus, Goodness is not. God created the universe, Goodness did not.

I’m with Dr Craig here that there’s no way time is a substance and equivalent with God, that’s a pretty wild take. Ryan’s almost too smart to the point of losing common sense, you intellectualize yourself into believing God is a ham sandwich.

Am I petty for hating the idea that Mullins paints his nails?