We cannot have a relationship with God

[Immanuel Can]

As I point out in my post above, it depends on what exactly he requires ontologically for something to be changeless. In the case of my (a) above, something could be changeless yet cause and experience effects. In the case of my (b), it's dubious--and really I'd say incoherent--to suppose that there can even be anything changeless.

I think I like your argument there.

[Dalek Prime]

Movement. Many have the impression that movement implies change, but the acting nature of God, the personality of God, is changelessness in the presence of change.

God cannot move since it is spiritual and cannot occupy any location.

Actually, God asked if he could sleep on my couch. I said no, until he got his shit together.

[bahman]

Maybe if you gave some (literature) examples.

Changeless God is a well accept concept among Catholic. I can refer you to work of Aquinas. You can find his work easily by googling. I however think that that is simple concept to understand: Change/time is property of creation and not God.

Sure,that's a different issue though. Presumably one way it's solved is due to the religious conception of time you're referring to above: if God created time, then "without beginning" doesn't suggest extending infinitely back in time. It would just be "existing prior to time with no starting point."

That I agree but only changeless God can do that (as it is discussed in previous comment).

[bahman]

That seems wholly reductional, or maybe even dead wrong.

What do you mean with reductional?

Is the relationship between, say a man and his wife just a matter of how the wife causally alters the husband and how he changes her? Is it "cause and effect"? Or is that, at most, a single aspect of a much more multifaceted "relationship"?

I think the latter is obvious, don't you?

I think that my definition is general when we discuss about relationship between two beings.

If "cause and effect" are definitionally sufficient for the word "relationship," then we would have to say a falling rock has a "relationship" with the car it crushes, or a forest fire has a "relationship" with the animals it kills. That seems a possible but very, very insufficient use of the word.

There is of course a relation involved in these examples you provided but that is not what I meant with relationship between two beings.

What sort of "relationship" is intended by the original question? Is it just "cause and effect"? If so there would be no reason to question its possibility if God existed at all...of course He could "cause" or "effect" us...but so what?

I think I am more clear on what relationship means.

[bahman]

Relationship is simply about cause and effect between a pair of beings.

Do you require both cause and effect? I'm just asking for this reason: if we imagine something like a (small, irreducible/monadic/part-free) billiard ball, we can imagine that for whatever reason, its momentum can't be affected by other things, but that wouldn't stop it from hitting another sort of billiard ball and changing its momentum. So we could have something that's unchanging but that causes effects in other things.
[/quote]

Relationship should be mutual. This means that the billiard ball changes its momentum when it hit another ball and its momentum also changes.

Of course, that doesn't allow effects to obtain in the unchanging thing, but we could have a (small, irreducible/monadic/part-free) billiard ball that otherwise doesn't change aside from its momentum as a reaction to coming into contact with other like billard balls.

Momentum in this case is one of properties of the billiard ball.

Which basically comes down to whether you're counting sameness vs change (a) as an issue of something "with respect to itself" only, or (b) a la relations (in a broader ontological sense) to other things.

Please read the following.

If (a), then cause and effect can obtain with something changeless, so that a God could be changeless and we could have a relationship with God after all.

So that means that God is like a painting and it is able to affect us but we cannot affect Him. This is not a mutual relationship. The mutuality is already explained in the example in OP.

If (b), then it's dubious that you can have something changeless period, because the changes of other things would be changes of the thing in question, too. For example, x might not interact with anything else and might not change with respect to itself, but maybe x was 5 meters to the right of y from perspective p, and since y moved, x is now 6 meters to the right of y from perspective p, and thus x changed, because relations (in that broader ontological sense) to other things count as a change in x, too.

I don't mean such a relationship.

[bahman]

If it's just that you're stipulating "Let's say that we have an unchanging God," that's another story than saying that God is (conventionally, somewhere) defined as unchanging.

Before getting too much into a hypothetical stipulation, though, I think that for one it's important to define just what you mean by "relationship." What are the characteristics and limits of relationships in the sense of the term as you're employing it?

We already explained what we mean with relationship in OP: A relationship is a mutual causes and effects between two beings.

[bahman]

bahman

I have not had the "time" to read the whole post yet, but if and when we get further into this discussion, then it will be discovered that not just 'time', itself, does not exist but also 'space', itself, does not exist, in the way most people think they exist.

Do you think that could also be a possibility?

We can say with 100% certainty that we only experience forms and motions. Without space we couldn't have any form hence space exist. Time in another hand is a concept that we define it in term of relative motion between two things, one of the things is our standard clock and another is subject of our study (as it is illustrate in OP), hence time does not exist.

[Terrapin Station]

If it's just that you're stipulating "Let's say that we have an unchanging God," that's another story than saying that God is (conventionally, somewhere) defined as unchanging.

Before getting too much into a hypothetical stipulation, though, I think that for one it's important to define just what you mean by "relationship." What are the characteristics and limits of relationships in the sense of the term as you're employing it?

We already explained what we mean with relationship in OP: A relationship is a mutual causes and effects between two beings.

How about addressing any of this (which is one of the reasons why I prefer chatting--it's less easy to just ignore stuff:)

Which basically comes down to whether you're counting sameness vs change (a) as an issue of something "with respect to itself" only, or (b) a la relations (in a broader ontological sense) to other things.

If (a), then cause and effect can obtain with something changeless, so that a God could be changeless and we could have a relationship with God after all.

If (b), then it's dubious that you can have something changeless period, because the changes of other things would be changes of the thing in question, too. For example, x might not interact with anything else and might not change with respect to itself, but maybe x was 5 meters to the right of y from perspective p, and since y moved, x is now 6 meters to the right of y from perspective p, and thus x changed, because relations (in that broader ontological sense) to other things count as a change in x, too.

[Immanuel Can]

That seems wholly reductional, or maybe even dead wrong.

What do you mean with reductional?

Oh. I just mean that the definition is deficient by way of failing to cover the territory we associate with "relationship."

For example, if I call a car a "lump of metal," I'm not precisely wrong -- from one perspective it is a "lump" and most of it is indeed "metal" -- but I'm hardly doing justice to the idea of "car," since I've left out the essence of what makes a car a car. You can see this if you reflect on the fact that my definition would serve as well for "lamp post," "hammer" or "sculpture." It's reductional, not sufficiently informative.

What I need to do is have a better definition: one that honours the car's design, function, social role, value, etc. I'm just suggesting that maybe "relationship" is similarly a complex idea worth nuancing better.

[bahman]

How about addressing any of this (which is one of the reasons why I prefer chatting--it's less easy to just ignore stuff:)

Which basically comes down to whether you're counting sameness vs change (a) as an issue of something "with respect to itself" only, or (b) a la relations (in a broader ontological sense) to other things.

If (a), then cause and effect can obtain with something changeless, so that a God could be changeless and we could have a relationship with God after all.

Do you mean that God can cause something while being in a relationship without changes?

If (b), then it's dubious that you can have something changeless period, because the changes of other things would be changes of the thing in question, too. For example, x might not interact with anything else and might not change with respect to itself, but maybe x was 5 meters to the right of y from perspective p, and since y moved, x is now 6 meters to the right of y from perspective p, and thus x changed, because relations (in that broader ontological sense) to other things count as a change in x, too.

I understand this but that is not what I mean with relation.

[bahman]

...What I need to do is have a better definition: one that honours the car's design, function, social role, value, etc. I'm just suggesting that maybe "relationship" is similarly a complex idea worth nuancing better.

I see what I mean. I just don't understand why the definition provided cannot exhaust all things that you mentioned.

[ken]

bahman

I have not had the "time" to read the whole post yet, but if and when we get further into this discussion, then it will be discovered that not just 'time', itself, does not exist but also 'space', itself, does not exist, in the way most people think they exist.

Do you think that could also be a possibility?

We can say with 100% certainty that we only experience forms and motions.

You may say that, but I would be very reluctant to speak for ALL others.

I also could argue against what you said but for now I will leave it.

Without space we couldn't have any form hence space exist.

Before we discuss/argue this point, I want you to answer My question first. 

Time in another hand is a concept that we define it in term of relative motion between two things, one of the things is our standard clock and another is subject of our study (as it is illustrate in OP), hence time does not exist.

I am not sure why you are repeating things to Me regarding the non-existence of time. I agree wholeheartedly "time" in the general concept of time does NOT exist. I said that previously. I just asked the question, Do you think that there could be a possibility that space could also not exist? A simple yes or no would suffice here.

I just want you to see that if you are not open to the possibility that space does not exist, then that will explain and as such is the reason WHY it is so hard for you to explain to others that time does not exist, in the way you are talking about "time" here, if they believe time does exist. If people are not open to a "new" idea or a new way of looking at (some) things, then just saying and repeating things, even with proof and evidence, will not work on most occasions. What is needed is a new way to express/explain, which by the way if that new way is found or discovered please let me know of it.

Explanation: I clicked on a "notification" and replied to it, then submitted it, not sure why but it ended up here?

[bahman]

Explanation: I clicked on a "notification" and replied to it, then submitted it, not sure why but it ended up here?

Perhaps that is a bug.

[Immanuel Can]

...What I need to do is have a better definition: one that honours the car's design, function, social role, value, etc. I'm just suggesting that maybe "relationship" is similarly a complex idea worth nuancing better.

I see what I mean. I just don't understand why the definition provided cannot exhaust all things that you mentioned.

That's the problem. What you actually said was, "A relationship is a mutual causes and effects between two beings." That is far too broad. It could be a description of a whole bunch of concepts that fail to grasp all we mean by "relationship".

For example, the same wording could be a definition of "line," "movement," "origin," "distance," "gravity," "causality," "interaction," or a whole bunch of other terms -- adequate to none of them, really, but rightly a part of a better definition of any of them.

But "relationship" is a key word in the key question of the strand. How can we decide if it's possible to have an X with God if we don't properly know what X is, in the question as you intend to pose it?

[Terrapin Station]

How about addressing any of this (which is one of the reasons why I prefer chatting--it's less easy to just ignore stuff:)

Which basically comes down to whether you're counting sameness vs change (a) as an issue of something "with respect to itself" only, or (b) a la relations (in a broader ontological sense) to other things.

If (a), then cause and effect can obtain with something changeless, so that a God could be changeless and we could have a relationship with God after all.

Do you mean that God can cause something while being in a relationship without changes?

??? That comment didn't have anything specifically to do with the idea of God. It's about two different ways that you can posit something as changeless. Both of them have some problems, though (with respect to what you're attempting to argue).

If (b), then it's dubious that you can have something changeless period, because the changes of other things would be changes of the thing in question, too. For example, x might not interact with anything else and might not change with respect to itself, but maybe x was 5 meters to the right of y from perspective p, and since y moved, x is now 6 meters to the right of y from perspective p, and thus x changed, because relations (in that broader ontological sense) to other things count as a change in x, too.

I understand this but that is not what I mean with relation.[/quote]So then presumably you meant my (a) above. However, under (a), nothing precludes something from causing effects in other things yet being changeless.