Food for Thought: We Believe in God; But What Do We Actually Know About God?
-
There is a question that has been troubling and fascinating me for some time.
Suppose a person reaches the conclusion that there must be a Creator.
The next questions arise almost automatically:
What is this Creator?
What does He look like?
Does the idea of "looking like something" even apply to Him?
Does He have a form?
What is He made of?
Where is He?
How does He exist?
These are completely natural human questions. But this is precisely where I think we reach a wall.
We simply do not know.
In fact, asking what God is "made of" may itself expose the limitation of the human mind. Everything we encounter is made of something, located somewhere, exists within time, changes from one state to another, and can somehow be compared with something else.
So naturally we try to apply the same categories to God.
But God is supposed to be the Creator of those categories in the first place.
Matter is created.
Energy is created.
Space is created.
Time is part of creation.
Shape, dimension, movement and physical location belong to the reality in which we exist.
So asking whether God is matter, energy, physical, non-physical, inside something or outside something may be like trying to describe something completely beyond our dimensional existence using vocabulary developed entirely inside that existence.
The Quran gives us descriptions of God. He is Merciful, Knowing, Just, Forgiving, Powerful. The Quran speaks of God seeing, hearing, speaking, loving, being displeased, creating, judging and willing.
These descriptions are meaningful; otherwise revelation would be meaningless.
But how far can we take them?
When I understand "mercy," my only experience of mercy comes from creatures.
When I understand "anger," I know human anger.
When I understand "knowledge," I know what it means for a human being to know something.
When I hear "seeing" and "hearing," my mind immediately thinks of sensory experience.
Yet the Quran simultaneously says:
"There is nothing like Him." (42:11)
That creates a very interesting tension.
God communicates with us through concepts that our minds can understand, while at the same time telling us not to imagine that He is comparable to anything within our experience.
Therefore I can know something about God without comprehending what God is.
And I think those are two very different things.
The same limitation appears when we discuss death, resurrection, the ruh, destiny, Paradise, Hell, divine intervention and the unseen.
We know whatever God has chosen to tell us.
But once we move beyond that information, how much are we discovering and how much are we imagining?
Take the story of Moses and the mysterious servant in Surah al-Kahf.
Moses sees a boat damaged.
He sees a young person killed.
He sees a wall repaired for people who had refused hospitality.
According to everything available to Moses at that moment, these actions seem unreasonable or even wrong.
Only afterward is another layer of reality revealed to him.
That story has always struck me as much bigger than those three incidents.
Moses was not unintelligent.
He simply did not possess the information necessary to understand what he was seeing.
If Moses could misunderstand events happening directly in front of him because part of reality was hidden from him, what does that say about us when we confidently explain why God allowed this event, punished that person, blessed another person, caused this tragedy, prevented that outcome, or intends something particular through events around us?
We see a tiny section.
God, according to the Quran, sees the whole.
This is also why the subject of destiny becomes difficult for me.
History appears to us one second at a time.
Something happens, then something else happens, then another thing happens.
We describe this as past, present and future because that is how consciousness experiences existence.
But we have no basis for assuming that God's relationship with time resembles ours.
The Quran sometimes speaks of God giving people respite, allowing events to proceed, telling people to wait, and describing a future Judgment as absolutely certain.
We understand these statements through human language because there is no other language available to us.
But what the reality behind that language looks like from God's perspective is something else entirely.
And this brings me to something more practical.
The greatest danger may not be that we fail to understand God's physical nature.
The greater danger may be what happens when human beings begin behaving as though they possess God's viewpoint.
We decide who God loves.
We decide who God hates.
We decide whose prayer God accepts.
We decide who is condemned.
We decide exactly why someone's suffering occurred.
We decide that some disaster was God's punishment.
We decide who is "guided" and who is beyond hope.
We sometimes speak with extraordinary confidence about another person's standing before God.
At that moment, without realizing it, we have crossed an enormous boundary.
We are no longer merely believing in God.
We are placing ourselves in the position of knowing what God knows.
And we do not.
We are extraordinarily small creatures inside an enormous reality.
Our entire awareness depends upon a consciousness that we did not create.
We appeared in this world without choosing to appear.
We will leave it without being able to prevent ourselves from leaving.
Even the mind with which we are trying to understand God was given to us by God.
The Quran tells us that resurrection will happen, so as believers in the Quran we accept that. But what resurrection actually feels like, what consciousness is at that stage, what the reality of the next existence is, and how existence itself operates outside this present world we do not know except for what has been revealed.
That, to me, is the real meaning and seriousness of believing in the ghayb.
Not abandoning reason.
Not believing something simply because it is mysterious.
Rather, recognizing that reason itself operates within limits.
There are things we can investigate.
There are things we can infer.
There are things revelation tells us.
And then there is a boundary beyond which human confidence becomes speculation.
Maybe the humility demanded by belief in God is much deeper than bowing, fasting, reciting or performing religious rituals.
Those things can have enormous value.
But a person can perform every ritual and still carry inside himself an exaggerated certainty about God, other people and the unseen.
Perhaps real humility begins when a human being truly realizes:
I am not God.
I do not see what God sees.
I do not know what God knows.
I cannot judge existence from God's position.
I know only what has reached me through revelation, observation and the limited consciousness I have been given.
And outside that small circle lies an unimaginable amount that I simply do not know.
So my question is not, "Can we know God?"
Clearly the Quran teaches us something about God.
My question is:
Where does legitimate knowledge about God end, and where does the human imagination begin?
And perhaps even more importantly:
How often do we unknowingly cross that boundary and begin speaking, judging and acting as though we are standing where only God can stand?
Another thing that keeps coming to my mind is the question of time and God's relationship with events.
When we read the Quran in ordinary human language, God sometimes appears to be waiting, responding, becoming displeased, being pleased, giving people time, seeing what they will do, and then judging them according to what they did.
There are also narratives such as the people of the town in Surah Ya-Sin, where messengers are rejected and a man comes running from the farthest part of the city urging his people to follow them. He dies and is told, "Enter Paradise," and wishes his people knew what his Lord had done for him. The whole event unfolds before us like a human story: warning, rejection, death, consequence.
But this creates a philosophical difficulty for me.
If God already knows the ghayb, including what every person will eventually choose, then what exactly does it mean when we say that human beings were created "to see" who will obey, who will reject, who will do good, or who will do evil?
The word "see" or "know" becomes difficult here.
A human being tests something because he does not know the result beforehand.
But God cannot be learning the result.
If God already knows the outcome completely, then creation cannot be an experiment through which God acquires information He previously lacked.
Similarly, when the Quran speaks of waiting, watching, testing, deciding, becoming angry or being pleased, we naturally understand those expressions according to our own experience. A human being waits because the future has not arrived yet. A human reacts because something has just happened. A human becomes angry because an event has affected him.
But does any of that describe the actual reality of God?
Or is this simply the only kind of language through which a creature living inside time can understand something about a Being whose relationship with time may be completely different?
Even the Quranic statement that God "knows the ghayb" raises this strange thought in my mind.
We hear the expression and unconsciously imagine the ghayb as some hidden territory containing secret information, with God being the only One who has access to it.
But surely that mental picture cannot be quite right either.
The ghayb is hidden from us.
It is not necessarily a mysterious external database which exists independently of God and which God happens to know better than everyone else.
The very distinction between visible and unseen may be a distinction belonging to creatures like us.
This is where language begins to fail me.
We say God "knows the future." But the word future itself belongs to beings who experience time sequentially.
Does God have a "future"?
Does God wait for tomorrow?
Does an event become known to God when it happens?
Obviously, if God truly knows the ghayb, that cannot be what is meant.
And then an even more unsettling thought appears.
Our existence itself is completely dependent.
God did not owe us consciousness.
He did not owe us resurrection.
He did not owe us Paradise.
If God had created conscious creatures who lived for a short period and then permanently ceased to exist, what independent power could have demanded otherwise?
Of course, this is not to say that resurrection might not happen. The Quran repeatedly promises resurrection, judgment and the Hereafter, and the Quran also says that God does not break His promise.
My point is different.
The fact that resurrection will happen is something we know because God has told us.
It is not something that creation could impose upon God.
There is no external authority above God requiring Him to create an Akhirah, a Judgment Day or a Paradise.
That realization makes existence itself rather extraordinary.
We appear.
We become conscious.
We experience love, fear, pain, pleasure, morality, choices and relationships.
Then consciousness apparently disappears at death from our present perspective.
Anyone who has been deeply asleep or under anesthesia knows how strange this is: hours can disappear completely from subjective awareness. There is no experienced passage of time.
So even the concept of "waiting until resurrection" may only make sense from the viewpoint of those who remain alive. For the person who has lost consciousness, whether the interval is one second or ten thousand years may have no experienced duration at all.
All of this makes me wonder whether reality is vastly stranger than the simplified picture we naturally construct while reading religious language.
Sometimes we speak as though God created humanity and is now observing the experiment to discover what happens.
But that cannot easily fit with the idea that God already knows the outcome.
Sometimes we speak as though God is waiting for Judgment Day.
But waiting implies experiencing time.
Sometimes we speak as though God reacts to our actions.
But reaction suggests receiving new information.
So what is actually happening?
I don't have an answer.
Maybe words such as waiting, testing, knowing, anger, pleasure, before, after, future and even ghayb are perfectly meaningful at our level of existence, while the reality they point toward at God's level is something our minds cannot reconstruct.
And this is ultimately what makes the subject so profound for me.
The more deeply I think about God, the less comfortable I become with overly confident descriptions of how God's "mind" works.
At some point I reach the boundary of the human imagination.
I believe there is a Creator.
I believe what He has revealed.
But what this Creator actually is, how His existence relates to time, how knowledge operates without learning, how action operates without reacting to new information, and what reality looks like outside the categories of creation—I genuinely do not know.
I just thought I would share this because these questions sometimes come into my mind when reading the Qur'an at a more philosophical level. I would be interested to know how others understand this.
-
There is a question that has been troubling and fascinating me for some time.
Suppose a person reaches the conclusion that there must be a Creator.
The next questions arise almost automatically:
What is this Creator?
What does He look like?
Does the idea of "looking like something" even apply to Him?
Does He have a form?
What is He made of?
Where is He?
How does He exist?
These are completely natural human questions. But this is precisely where I think we reach a wall.
We simply do not know.
In fact, asking what God is "made of" may itself expose the limitation of the human mind. Everything we encounter is made of something, located somewhere, exists within time, changes from one state to another, and can somehow be compared with something else.
So naturally we try to apply the same categories to God.
But God is supposed to be the Creator of those categories in the first place.
Matter is created.
Energy is created.
Space is created.
Time is part of creation.
Shape, dimension, movement and physical location belong to the reality in which we exist.
So asking whether God is matter, energy, physical, non-physical, inside something or outside something may be like trying to describe something completely beyond our dimensional existence using vocabulary developed entirely inside that existence.
The Quran gives us descriptions of God. He is Merciful, Knowing, Just, Forgiving, Powerful. The Quran speaks of God seeing, hearing, speaking, loving, being displeased, creating, judging and willing.
These descriptions are meaningful; otherwise revelation would be meaningless.
But how far can we take them?
When I understand "mercy," my only experience of mercy comes from creatures.
When I understand "anger," I know human anger.
When I understand "knowledge," I know what it means for a human being to know something.
When I hear "seeing" and "hearing," my mind immediately thinks of sensory experience.
Yet the Quran simultaneously says:
"There is nothing like Him." (42:11)
That creates a very interesting tension.
God communicates with us through concepts that our minds can understand, while at the same time telling us not to imagine that He is comparable to anything within our experience.
Therefore I can know something about God without comprehending what God is.
And I think those are two very different things.
The same limitation appears when we discuss death, resurrection, the ruh, destiny, Paradise, Hell, divine intervention and the unseen.
We know whatever God has chosen to tell us.
But once we move beyond that information, how much are we discovering and how much are we imagining?
Take the story of Moses and the mysterious servant in Surah al-Kahf.
Moses sees a boat damaged.
He sees a young person killed.
He sees a wall repaired for people who had refused hospitality.
According to everything available to Moses at that moment, these actions seem unreasonable or even wrong.
Only afterward is another layer of reality revealed to him.
That story has always struck me as much bigger than those three incidents.
Moses was not unintelligent.
He simply did not possess the information necessary to understand what he was seeing.
If Moses could misunderstand events happening directly in front of him because part of reality was hidden from him, what does that say about us when we confidently explain why God allowed this event, punished that person, blessed another person, caused this tragedy, prevented that outcome, or intends something particular through events around us?
We see a tiny section.
God, according to the Quran, sees the whole.
This is also why the subject of destiny becomes difficult for me.
History appears to us one second at a time.
Something happens, then something else happens, then another thing happens.
We describe this as past, present and future because that is how consciousness experiences existence.
But we have no basis for assuming that God's relationship with time resembles ours.
The Quran sometimes speaks of God giving people respite, allowing events to proceed, telling people to wait, and describing a future Judgment as absolutely certain.
We understand these statements through human language because there is no other language available to us.
But what the reality behind that language looks like from God's perspective is something else entirely.
And this brings me to something more practical.
The greatest danger may not be that we fail to understand God's physical nature.
The greater danger may be what happens when human beings begin behaving as though they possess God's viewpoint.
We decide who God loves.
We decide who God hates.
We decide whose prayer God accepts.
We decide who is condemned.
We decide exactly why someone's suffering occurred.
We decide that some disaster was God's punishment.
We decide who is "guided" and who is beyond hope.
We sometimes speak with extraordinary confidence about another person's standing before God.
At that moment, without realizing it, we have crossed an enormous boundary.
We are no longer merely believing in God.
We are placing ourselves in the position of knowing what God knows.
And we do not.
We are extraordinarily small creatures inside an enormous reality.
Our entire awareness depends upon a consciousness that we did not create.
We appeared in this world without choosing to appear.
We will leave it without being able to prevent ourselves from leaving.
Even the mind with which we are trying to understand God was given to us by God.
The Quran tells us that resurrection will happen, so as believers in the Quran we accept that. But what resurrection actually feels like, what consciousness is at that stage, what the reality of the next existence is, and how existence itself operates outside this present world we do not know except for what has been revealed.
That, to me, is the real meaning and seriousness of believing in the ghayb.
Not abandoning reason.
Not believing something simply because it is mysterious.
Rather, recognizing that reason itself operates within limits.
There are things we can investigate.
There are things we can infer.
There are things revelation tells us.
And then there is a boundary beyond which human confidence becomes speculation.
Maybe the humility demanded by belief in God is much deeper than bowing, fasting, reciting or performing religious rituals.
Those things can have enormous value.
But a person can perform every ritual and still carry inside himself an exaggerated certainty about God, other people and the unseen.
Perhaps real humility begins when a human being truly realizes:
I am not God.
I do not see what God sees.
I do not know what God knows.
I cannot judge existence from God's position.
I know only what has reached me through revelation, observation and the limited consciousness I have been given.
And outside that small circle lies an unimaginable amount that I simply do not know.
So my question is not, "Can we know God?"
Clearly the Quran teaches us something about God.
My question is:
Where does legitimate knowledge about God end, and where does the human imagination begin?
And perhaps even more importantly:
How often do we unknowingly cross that boundary and begin speaking, judging and acting as though we are standing where only God can stand?
Another thing that keeps coming to my mind is the question of time and God's relationship with events.
When we read the Quran in ordinary human language, God sometimes appears to be waiting, responding, becoming displeased, being pleased, giving people time, seeing what they will do, and then judging them according to what they did.
There are also narratives such as the people of the town in Surah Ya-Sin, where messengers are rejected and a man comes running from the farthest part of the city urging his people to follow them. He dies and is told, "Enter Paradise," and wishes his people knew what his Lord had done for him. The whole event unfolds before us like a human story: warning, rejection, death, consequence.
But this creates a philosophical difficulty for me.
If God already knows the ghayb, including what every person will eventually choose, then what exactly does it mean when we say that human beings were created "to see" who will obey, who will reject, who will do good, or who will do evil?
The word "see" or "know" becomes difficult here.
A human being tests something because he does not know the result beforehand.
But God cannot be learning the result.
If God already knows the outcome completely, then creation cannot be an experiment through which God acquires information He previously lacked.
Similarly, when the Quran speaks of waiting, watching, testing, deciding, becoming angry or being pleased, we naturally understand those expressions according to our own experience. A human being waits because the future has not arrived yet. A human reacts because something has just happened. A human becomes angry because an event has affected him.
But does any of that describe the actual reality of God?
Or is this simply the only kind of language through which a creature living inside time can understand something about a Being whose relationship with time may be completely different?
Even the Quranic statement that God "knows the ghayb" raises this strange thought in my mind.
We hear the expression and unconsciously imagine the ghayb as some hidden territory containing secret information, with God being the only One who has access to it.
But surely that mental picture cannot be quite right either.
The ghayb is hidden from us.
It is not necessarily a mysterious external database which exists independently of God and which God happens to know better than everyone else.
The very distinction between visible and unseen may be a distinction belonging to creatures like us.
This is where language begins to fail me.
We say God "knows the future." But the word future itself belongs to beings who experience time sequentially.
Does God have a "future"?
Does God wait for tomorrow?
Does an event become known to God when it happens?
Obviously, if God truly knows the ghayb, that cannot be what is meant.
And then an even more unsettling thought appears.
Our existence itself is completely dependent.
God did not owe us consciousness.
He did not owe us resurrection.
He did not owe us Paradise.
If God had created conscious creatures who lived for a short period and then permanently ceased to exist, what independent power could have demanded otherwise?
Of course, this is not to say that resurrection might not happen. The Quran repeatedly promises resurrection, judgment and the Hereafter, and the Quran also says that God does not break His promise.
My point is different.
The fact that resurrection will happen is something we know because God has told us.
It is not something that creation could impose upon God.
There is no external authority above God requiring Him to create an Akhirah, a Judgment Day or a Paradise.
That realization makes existence itself rather extraordinary.
We appear.
We become conscious.
We experience love, fear, pain, pleasure, morality, choices and relationships.
Then consciousness apparently disappears at death from our present perspective.
Anyone who has been deeply asleep or under anesthesia knows how strange this is: hours can disappear completely from subjective awareness. There is no experienced passage of time.
So even the concept of "waiting until resurrection" may only make sense from the viewpoint of those who remain alive. For the person who has lost consciousness, whether the interval is one second or ten thousand years may have no experienced duration at all.
All of this makes me wonder whether reality is vastly stranger than the simplified picture we naturally construct while reading religious language.
Sometimes we speak as though God created humanity and is now observing the experiment to discover what happens.
But that cannot easily fit with the idea that God already knows the outcome.
Sometimes we speak as though God is waiting for Judgment Day.
But waiting implies experiencing time.
Sometimes we speak as though God reacts to our actions.
But reaction suggests receiving new information.
So what is actually happening?
I don't have an answer.
Maybe words such as waiting, testing, knowing, anger, pleasure, before, after, future and even ghayb are perfectly meaningful at our level of existence, while the reality they point toward at God's level is something our minds cannot reconstruct.
And this is ultimately what makes the subject so profound for me.
The more deeply I think about God, the less comfortable I become with overly confident descriptions of how God's "mind" works.
At some point I reach the boundary of the human imagination.
I believe there is a Creator.
I believe what He has revealed.
But what this Creator actually is, how His existence relates to time, how knowledge operates without learning, how action operates without reacting to new information, and what reality looks like outside the categories of creation—I genuinely do not know.
I just thought I would share this because these questions sometimes come into my mind when reading the Qur'an at a more philosophical level. I would be interested to know how others understand this.
@Fusion said in Food for Thought: We Believe in God; But What Do We Actually Know About God?:
Therefore I can know something about God without comprehending what God is.
Peace Fusion.
Faith and reason coexist together , and still we struggle to comprehend "GOD", quote:"..The darkness sacramental of the Eucharist is unfathomable. Besides, if it were intelligible, it would not be divine. If the God we serve could be understood by reason, he would not worth to be served, said Tauler *; ... if the works of God were such that the intelligence of man could easily grasp them, they cease to be wonderful and could not be described as ineffable. "
- John Tauler, theologian of the 14th.
When we reason, we think we are following logic and therefore we will reach certain conclusions that are backed up by evidence, yet reason itself has been provided for us.
So reason that does not lead to faith in a Supreme Authority does not reveal the entire truth. It is flawed since it cannot be fully traced, backed up and verified.
How far do we go about knowing GOD with both faith and reason?
What is necessary for us to know about GOD?
Is GOD hiding from us or is it dangerous for us ,as we are, to see GOD?
Why is GOD asking so many questions from us, like:
[Qoran 29:61] If you ask them, "Who created the heavens and the earth, and put the sun and the moon in your service," they will say, "God." Why then did they deviate?
[Qoran 29:62] God is the One who increases the provision for whomever He chooses from among His creatures, and withholds it. God is fully aware of all things.
[Qoran 29:63] If you ask them, "Who sends down from the sky water, to revive dead land," they will say, "God." Say, "Praise God." Most of them do not understand.
[Qoran 29:64] This worldly life is no more than vanity and play, while the abode of the Hereafter is the real life, if they only knew.[Qoran 31:29] Do you not realize that God merges the night into the day and merges the day into the night, and that He has committed the sun and the moon in your service, each running in its orbit for a specific life span, and that God is fully Cognizant of everything you do?
[Qoran 2:170] When they are told, "Follow what God has revealed herein," they say, "We follow only what we found our parents doing." What if their parents did not understand, and were not guided?
[Qoran 2:171] The example of such disbelievers is that of parrots who repeat what they hear of sounds and calls, without understanding. Deaf, dumb, and blind; they cannot understand.[Qoran 9:31] They have set up their religious leaders and scholars as lords, instead of God. Others deified the Messiah, son of Mary. They were all commanded to serve/ worship only one god. There is no god except He. Be He glorified, high above having any partners.
[Qoran 10:34] Say, "Can any of your idols initiate creation, then repeat it?" Say, "God initiates the creation, then repeats it. How could you deviate?"
[Qoran 10:35] Say, "Does any of your idols guide to the truth?" Say, "God guides to the truth. Is one who guides to the truth more worthy of being followed, or one who does not guide, and needs guidance for himself? What is wrong with your judgment?"Even both faith and reason are problematic for us. It seems the majority know of GOD but do not really know GOD. Those who think they know GOD need to know their own limit in knowledge and will always struggle in their imaginations and assumptions about the physical appearance/nature of GOD.
What can be known for sure is the traits/character of GOD . These will complete our certainty about GOD . The rest we will have to wait until we meet GOD. Quote:
The use of our brains is crucial to process what we hear, witness or observe. In other words, there is what we see and what we need to understand of what we see. There is what we hear and that we need to understand of what we hear. This is why God recommends and commands the use of brains as a basic step to grow in spirit and to strengthen the souls.Once we analyze and process given data, then, recognize and choose God, we need His guidance to understand, discern and perceive the reality beyond the materialistic illusion of this world. Those who choose to disbelieve are deprived of such divine guidance. Thus, the choice we make, belief or disbelief, will have a direct and a fundamental impact on our intellect (19:75-76, 10:33, 6:109-110, 21:79).
Then we can only attempt to get as close as possible to GOD and to know GOD more.
Yet GOD tells us a lot about Himself , everything that we need to know is here:[Qoran 1:1] In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. (Allah, Al-Rahman, Al-Raheem)
[Qoran 1:2] Praise be to God, Lord of the universe. (Rabbul-Alameen)
[Qoran 1:4] Master of the Day of Judgment. (Maliki yawmiddeen)
[Qoran 112:1] Proclaim, "He is the One and only God. (Ahad)
[Qoran 112:2] "The Absolute God. (Al-Samad)
[Qoran 57:3] He is the Alpha and the Omega. He is the Outermost and the Innermost. He is fully aware of all things. (Al-Awwal, Al-Aakher, Al-Thaher, Al-Baten)
[Qoran 3:2] God: there is no god except He; the Living, the Eternal. (Al-Hay, Al-Qayioom)
[Qoran 59:23] He is the One God; there is no other god beside Him. The King, the Most Sacred, the Peace, the Most Faithful, the Supreme, the Almighty, the Most Powerful, the Most Dignified. God be glorified; far above having partners. (Al-Malik, Al- Quddoos, Al-Salaam, Al-Moumen, Al-Muhaymen, Al-Azeez, Al-Jabbar, Al-Mutakabber)
[Qoran 59:24] He is the One God; the Creator, the Initiator, the Designer. To Him belong the most beautiful names. Glorifying Him is everything in the heavens and the earth. He is the Almighty, Most Wise. (Al-Khaliq, Al-Barea, Al-Musawwer)
[Qoran 22:62] It is a fact that God is the Truth (Al-Haq), while the setting up of any idols beside Him constitutes a falsehood, and that God is the Most High, the Supreme. (Al- Alei, Al-Kabeer)
[Qoran 12:64] .... God is the best Protector, and, of all the merciful ones, He is the Most Merciful." (Khayru Hafethan)
[Qoran 22:58] Those who emigrate for the sake of God, then get killed, or die, God will surely shower them with good provisions. God is certainly the best Provider. (Khairul razeqeen)
[Qoran 22:59] Most assuredly, He will admit them an admittance that will please them. God is Omniscient, Clement. (Aleem, Haleem)
[Qoran 22:60] It is decreed that if one avenges an injustice that was inflicted upon him, equitably, then he is persecuted because of this, God will surely support him. God is Pardoner, Forgiving. (Afuw, Ghafoor)
[Qoran 22:63] Do you not see that God sends down from the sky water that turns the land green? God is Sublime, Cognizant. (Lateef, Khabeer) [Quran 22:64] To Him belongs everything in the heavens and everything on earth. Absolutely, God is the Most Rich, Most Praiseworthy. (Al-Ghanei, Al-Hameed)
[Qoran 2:115] To God belongs the east and the west; wherever you go there will be the presence of God. God is Omnipresent, Omniscient. (Wasea)
[Qoran 3:26] Say, "Our god: possessor of all sovereignty. You grant sovereignty to whomever You choose, You remove sovereignty from whomever You choose. You grant dignity to whomever You choose, and commit to humiliation whomever You choose. In Your hand are all provisions. You are Omnipotent. (Kadeer)
[Qoran 6:18] He is Supreme over His creatures. He is the Most Wise, the Cognizant. (Al-Qaher)
[Qoran 14:48] The day will come when this earth will be substituted with a new earth, and also the heavens, and everyone will be brought before God, the One, the Supreme. (Al-Wahed, Al-Qahhar)
[Qoran 33:39] Those who deliver God's messages, and who reverence Him alone, shall never fear anyone but God. God is the most efficient reckoner. (Haseeb)
[Qoran 4:1] O people, observe your Lord; the One who created you from one being, and created from it its mate, then spread from the two many men and women. You shall regard God, by whom you swear, and regard the parents. God is watching over you.* (Raqeeb)
[Qoran 11:61] To Thamoud we sent their brother Saaleh. He said, "O my people, serve/worship God; you have no other god beside Him. He initiated you from the earth, then settled you in it. You shall seek His forgiveness, then repent to Him. My Lord is always Near, Responsive." (Qareeb, Mujeeb)
[Qoran 41:53] We will show them our proofs in the horizons, and within themselves, until they realize that this is the truth.* Is your Lord not sufficient as a Witness of all things? (Shaheed)
[Qoran 13:9] The Knower of all secrets and declarations; the Supreme, the Most High. (Aalemul ghaybi washshahadah, Al-Mutaal)
[Qoran 56:96] You shall glorify the name of your Lord, the Great. ( Al-Atheem)
[Qoran 3:6] He is the One who shapes you in the wombs as He wills. There is no other god besides Him; the Almighty, Most Wise. ( Al-Azeez, Al-Hakeem)
[Qoran 22:74] They do not value God as He should be valued. God is the Most Powerful, the Almighty. (Al-Qawei)
[Qoran 3:4] before that, to guide the people, and He sent down the statute book. Those who disbelieve in God's revelations incur severe retribution. God is Almighty, Avenger. (Thu entiqan)
[Qoran 21:89] And Zachariah implored his Lord: "My Lord, do not keep me without an heir, though You are the best inheritor." ( Khayrul waretheen)
[Qoran 51:58] God is the Provider, the Possessor of all power, the Supreme. (Al-Razzaq, Thul quwwah, Al-Mateen)
[Qoran 55:78] Most exalted is the name of your Lord, Possessor of Majesty and Honor. (Thul jalaal, Thul Ikram)
[Qoran 40:15] Possessor of the highest ranks, and Ruler of the whole dominion. He sends inspiration, bearing His commands, to whomever He chooses from among His servants, to warn about the Day of Summoning. (Rafeeu al-daragat, Thul Arsh)
[Qoran 62:4] Such is God's grace that He bestows upon whomever He wills. God is Possessor of Infinite Grace. (Thul fadl alatheem)
[Qoran 34:26] Say, "Our Lord will gather us all together before Him, then He will judge between us equitably. He is the Judge, the Omniscient." (Al-Fattah)
[Qoran 2:160] As for those who repent, reform, and proclaim, I redeem them. I am the Redeemer, Most Merciful. (Al-Tawwab)
[Qoran 11:73] They said,"Do you find it strange for God? God has bestowed His mercy and blessings upon you, O inhabitants of the shrine. He is Praiseworthy, Glorious." (Hameed, Majeed)
[Qoran 85:14] And He is the Forgiving, Most Kind. (Al-Ghafoor, Al-Wadood)
[Qoran 64:17] If you lend God a loan of righteousness, He will multiply the reward for you manifold, and forgive you. God is Appreciative, Clement. (Al-Shakoor, Al-Haleem)
[Qoran 38:9] Do they own the treasures of mercy of your Lord, the Almighty, the Grantor. (Al-Wahhab)
[Qoran 82:6] O you human being, what diverted you from your Lord Most Honorable? (Al-Kareem)
[Qoran 6:102] Such is God your Lord, there is no god except He, the Creator of all things. You shall serve/worship Him alone. He is in control of all things.
[Qoran 10:3] Your only Lord is God; the One who created the heavens and the earth in six days, then assumed all authority. He controls all matters. There is no intercessor, except in accordance with His will. Such is God your Lord. You shall serve/worship Him. Would you not take heed?
[Qoran 35:13] He merges the night into the day, and merges the day into the night. He has committed the sun and the moon to run for a predetermined period of time. Such is God your Lord; to Him belongs all kingship. Any idols you set up beside Him do not possess as much as a seed's shell.
[Qoran 40:62] Such is God your Lord, the Creator of all things. There is no god except He. How could you deviate?
[Qoran 39:6] He created you from one person, then created from him his mate. He sent down to you eight kinds of livestock. He creates you in your mothers' bellies, creation after creation, in trimesters of darkness. Such is God your Lord. To Him belongs all sovereignty. There is no other god beside Him. How could you deviate?
[Qoran 40:64] God is the One who rendered the earth habitable for you, and the sky a formidable structure, and He designed you, and designed you well. He is the One who provides you with good provisions. Such is God your Lord; Most Exalted is God, Lord of the universe.
[Qoran 16:3] He created the heavens and the earth for a specific purpose. He is much too High, far above any idols they set up.
[Qoran 10:32] Such is God, your rightful Lord. What is there after the truth, except falsehood? How could you disregard all this?
[Qoran 22:74] They do not value God as He should be valued. God is the Most Powerful, the Almighty.
May the Lord give us more knowledge to get to know Him better.
GOD bless you brother.
Peace. - John Tauler, theologian of the 14th.
-
Peace brother GL and thank you for the detailed reply.
I agree with much of what you wrote, especially that our reason has limits and that the Quran tells us many attributes of God.
But I think my question actually begins after accepting all those verses.
For example, I accept that God is All-Knowing, watching, judging, pleased, displeased, forgiving, etc. My difficulty is: what do these words really mean when applied to a Being who already knows the entire outcome and whose relationship with time cannot be like ours?
A human watches because something is unfolding before him. A human waits because the future has not arrived yet. A human tests because he wants to know the result. A human reacts because something new has happened.
But if God already knows the ghayb completely, then these words cannot carry exactly the same meaning when applied to God.
That is the part I am trying to understand.
Even when we say God “knows the ghayb,” perhaps ghayb is only “unseen” from our perspective. It is not some hidden information existing independently which God happens to have access to.
So my question is less about listing what the Quran says about God, and more about how far our human understanding of those descriptions can actually go before we start imagining God through human categories.
I think that is where the mystery really begins for me
-
Peace brother GL and thank you for the detailed reply.
I agree with much of what you wrote, especially that our reason has limits and that the Quran tells us many attributes of God.
But I think my question actually begins after accepting all those verses.
For example, I accept that God is All-Knowing, watching, judging, pleased, displeased, forgiving, etc. My difficulty is: what do these words really mean when applied to a Being who already knows the entire outcome and whose relationship with time cannot be like ours?
A human watches because something is unfolding before him. A human waits because the future has not arrived yet. A human tests because he wants to know the result. A human reacts because something new has happened.
But if God already knows the ghayb completely, then these words cannot carry exactly the same meaning when applied to God.
That is the part I am trying to understand.
Even when we say God “knows the ghayb,” perhaps ghayb is only “unseen” from our perspective. It is not some hidden information existing independently which God happens to have access to.
So my question is less about listing what the Quran says about God, and more about how far our human understanding of those descriptions can actually go before we start imagining God through human categories.
I think that is where the mystery really begins for me
@Fusion said in Food for Thought: We Believe in God; But What Do We Actually Know About God?:
But if God already knows the ghayb completely, then these words cannot carry exactly the same meaning when applied to God.
Peace brother.
GOD is complete. Past,present and future are there with Him.
GOD is unique. Nothing compares with Him.
GOD is all knowledgeable. There is nothing timewise or other that He does not know and control.
GOD has all the choices, He does according to His will and no one else chooses for GOD.
GOD has no needs , GOD is self sufficient .
GOD does not change or requires improvement . GOD is perfect and everything He does is planned with perfection.
GOD s creations learn,improve ,regress...change or otherwise.GOD s creations have purpose and experiences and accountability and life and death and ...
GOD cannot be absent ,never, everything depends on Him and is run by Him. GOD is the source and life of everything that exist.
Difficult to grasp .
GOD bless you.
Peace. -
Peace GL,
I actually have no disagreement with the general picture you are presenting. God is complete, unique, self-sufficient, all-knowing and nothing compares with Him.
But I think your reply also illustrates the question I was trying to raise.
For example, when we say:
“Past, present and future are all there with Him,”
“everything God does is already planned with perfection,”
or “God is the source and life of everything that exists,”these are very strong metaphysical statements.
They may be reasonable conclusions we derive from the Quran, but this is exactly where I become cautious. How much of this is explicitly revealed, and how much is our human attempt to construct a model of what God’s existence must be like?
Even saying that “past, present and future are there with God” still uses our categories of past, present and future. Maybe those categories themselves only belong to created beings like us.
So I am not questioning God's knowledge, perfection or uniqueness. I am questioning the limits of the language and concepts with which we describe what that perfection and knowledge actually mean.
In other words, my question is not whether God knows everything.
My question is: do we really understand what “knowing everything” means for God?
If God does not acquire knowledge, does not discover outcomes and does not move from ignorance to knowledge, then His “knowing” is already fundamentally unlike human knowing.
The same difficulty applies to God's waiting, testing his creations to see then awarding hell/heaven as a resul, watching, willing, being pleased or displeased, and His relationship with time.
So when you end with “Difficult to grasp,” I think that is actually very close to my original point.
Maybe we can affirm what God tells us with certainty while remaining much more humble about claiming that we understand the reality behind those descriptions.
-
Peace GL,
I actually have no disagreement with the general picture you are presenting. God is complete, unique, self-sufficient, all-knowing and nothing compares with Him.
But I think your reply also illustrates the question I was trying to raise.
For example, when we say:
“Past, present and future are all there with Him,”
“everything God does is already planned with perfection,”
or “God is the source and life of everything that exists,”these are very strong metaphysical statements.
They may be reasonable conclusions we derive from the Quran, but this is exactly where I become cautious. How much of this is explicitly revealed, and how much is our human attempt to construct a model of what God’s existence must be like?
Even saying that “past, present and future are there with God” still uses our categories of past, present and future. Maybe those categories themselves only belong to created beings like us.
So I am not questioning God's knowledge, perfection or uniqueness. I am questioning the limits of the language and concepts with which we describe what that perfection and knowledge actually mean.
In other words, my question is not whether God knows everything.
My question is: do we really understand what “knowing everything” means for God?
If God does not acquire knowledge, does not discover outcomes and does not move from ignorance to knowledge, then His “knowing” is already fundamentally unlike human knowing.
The same difficulty applies to God's waiting, testing his creations to see then awarding hell/heaven as a resul, watching, willing, being pleased or displeased, and His relationship with time.
So when you end with “Difficult to grasp,” I think that is actually very close to my original point.
Maybe we can affirm what God tells us with certainty while remaining much more humble about claiming that we understand the reality behind those descriptions.
@Fusion said in Food for Thought: We Believe in God; But What Do We Actually Know About God?:
Maybe we can affirm what God tells us with certainty while remaining much more humble about claiming that we understand the reality behind those descriptions.
Peace Fusion.
I agree with you.
I can summarise by asking this :
Who is the one who does everything?[Qoran 27:64] Who is the One who initiates the creation, then repeats it? Who is the One who provides for you from the heaven and the earth? Is it another god with God? Say, "Show me your proof, if you are truthful."
[Qoran 10:31] Say, "Who provides for you from the heaven and the earth? Who controls all the hearing and the eyesight? Who produces the living from the dead, and the dead from the living? Who is in control of all things?" They would say, "God." Say, "Why then do you not observe the commandments?"
[Qoran 23:86] Say, "Who is the Lord of the seven universes; the Lord of the great dominion?"
[Qoran 23:87] They will say, "God." Say, "Why then do you not turn righteous?"
[Qoran 23:88] Say, "In whose hand is all sovereignty over all things, and He is the only one who can provide help, but needs no help, if you know?"
[Qoran 23:89] They will say, "God." Say, "Where did you go wrong?"[Qoran 13:16] Say, "Who is the Lord of the heavens and the earth?" Say, "God." Say, "Why then do you set up besides Him masters who do not possess any power to benefit or harm even themselves?".....
[Qoran 67:21] Who is there to provide for you, if He withholds His provisions? Indeed, they have plunged deep into transgression and aversion.
[Qoran 67:23] Say, "He is the One who initiated you, and granted you the hearing, the eyes, and the brains. Rarely are you appreciative."
[Qoran 67:24] Say, "He is the One who placed you on earth, and before Him you will be summoned."God is the One who.... Knows everything ,without Him nothing would exist...
[Qoran 67:1] Most exalted is the One in whose hands is all kingship, and He is Omnipotent.
[Qoran 67:2] The One who created death and life for the purpose of distinguishing those among you who would do better. He is the Almighty, the Forgiving.[Qoran 85:13] He is the One who initiates and repeats.
[Qoran 30:40] God is the One who created you. He is the One who provides for you. He is the One who puts you to death. He is the One who resurrects you. Can any of your idols do any of these things? Be He glorified. He is much too exalted to have any partners.
[Quran 42:17] God is the One who sent down the scripture, to deliver the truth and the law. For all that you know, the Hour (Day of Judgment) may be very close.
[Qoran 2:21] O people, serve/worship only your Lord - the One who created you and those before you - that you may be saved.
[Qoran 2:22] The One who made the earth habitable for you, and the sky a structure. He sends down from the sky water, to produce all kinds of fruits for your sustenance. You shall not set up idols to rival God, now that you know.[Qoran 6:2] He is the One who created you from mud, then predetermined your life span, a life span that is known only to Him. Yet, you continue to doubt.
[Qoran 6:3] He is the one God in the heavens and the earth. He knows your secrets and your declarations, and He knows everything you earn.[Qoran 3:6] He is the One who shapes you in the wombs as He wills. There is no other god besides Him; the Almighty, Most Wise.
[Qoran 4:1] O people, observe your Lord; the One who created you from one being, and created from it its mate, then spread from the two many men and women. You shall regard God, by whom you swear, and regard the parents. God is watching over you.
[Qoran 11:7] He is the One who created the heavens and the earth in six days - and His (earthly) domain was completely covered with water - in order to test you, to distinguish those among you who work righteousness. Yet, when you say, "You will be resurrected after death," those who disbelieve would say, "This is clearly witchcraft."
[Qoran 6:60] He is the One who puts you to death during the night, and knows even the smallest of your actions during the day. He resurrects you every morning, until your life span is fulfilled, then to Him is your ultimate return. He will thenin form you of everything you had done.
[Qoran 6:73] He is the One who created the heavens and the earth, truthfully. Whenever He says, "Be," it is. His word is the absolute truth. All sovereignty belongs to Him the day the horn is blown. Knower of all secrets and declarations, He is the Most Wise, the Cognizant.
Wow! just Wow! The more we know about GOD the more we become certain about His existence and the more it becomes impossible to grasp.
Yet I feel His presence through everything I see,hear and interact with , everywhere..I cannot wait to meet Him:
"Wa Lakkahum.... Nadhratan Wa Surroora"
GOD bless you brother.
Peace -
Peace GL,
Yes, I think we are actually very close in our understanding now. Your last line says it beautifully: the more we know, the more certain we become, yet the more impossible the reality of God becomes for us to grasp.
Interestingly, the verse you quoted, 67:2, brings me exactly back to the thought that started this thread:
“He created death and life to test you as to which of you is best in deed.”
If God already knows everything, then obviously this “test” cannot be for God to discover who will do better. He already knows.
So the testing, unfolding of events, choices, consequences, life and death must have a meaning from our side of reality, not because God needs to obtain information.
This is what fascinates me.
The Quran necessarily speaks to creatures who experience time sequentially: we are born, choose, act, change, die and later face the consequences. So from our perspective the story is genuinely unfolding.
But from the perspective of the One who knows the entire ghayb, what does “unfolding” even mean?
That is the boundary where my mind stops.
I can understand what God tells me about Himself, but I cannot imagine what it actually means to possess knowledge without ever learning anything, to exist without beginning or end, or to know what I call “future” without waiting for that future to arrive.
-
One interesting point regarding 67:2: if I take the wording very literally that God created life and death “to test” or “to distinguish” who among us will do better I immediately return to the same philosophical difficulty that started this discussion.
A human being tests something because the result is not yet known to him. But if God already knows everything, including the complete ghayb and every outcome, then surely the “test” cannot be understood in exactly the same sense as a human test. Otherwise we unintentionally make God sound time-bound: first the test takes place, then the result becomes known.
I was looking at G. A. Parwez’s rendering of this verse, and interestingly he does not translate it in that straightforward literal manner. His explanation is more philosophical. In simple terms, he understands life as a process in which the human self develops through challenges and opposing forces. Death then reveals the condition of that self: if it has developed, it is capable of further progress in the next existence, which he associates with Jannah; if it has failed to develop, it is unable to progress, which he associates with Jahannum.
That is obviously not a literal translation of the Arabic. It is Parwez’s interpretation and philosophy of the verse, so I would not present it as “this is what the verse literally says.”
But I can understand why such an interpretation is attractive. It removes the impression that God is conducting an experiment in order to discover something He did not previously know. The process is then for the development and manifestation of the human being, not for God to acquire information.
This is really what I was struggling with from the beginning. The literal human language is understandable to us because we live inside time: we test, wait, observe, react and then know the result. But I find it difficult to transfer those same meanings literally to God, who according to the Quran already knows everything.
So I am not questioning the verse at all. I am questioning how literally our human understanding of words such as “test,” “see,” “wait,” “know” and “distinguish” can be applied to God.
Maybe the wording speaks perfectly to the human mind while the actual reality behind it is far beyond the way we experience knowledge and time.
-
Peace Fusion.
I also agree with most of what you say.
The fact that we can clearly see where we are going to end up and why means that GOD s judgement is transparent to the point where we can be our own judge and jury" Kafa Bi Nafsika Al Yawma Alaika Hasiba"
The test is for us to grow our soul/succeed or starve it/loose.
Once we realise that we have this last chance to choose between GOD s kingdom and a world away from GOD ,we know that there will be no excuses before GOD.
GOD knows our fate or not is irrelevant, GOD made sure we had the instructions and warnings.
By definition GOD knows everything and does everything. So from both perspectives there was total justice.
GOD has all the blue prints with him, GOD prepared our earth for us in billions of years, while we were waiting somewhere for our turn to be born on it and spend our determined time of life.
Time is part of what GOD creates , it does not apply to GOD . GOD has infinity and is everlasting , never started nor will finish . Always here and always will be. GOD is the source of everything and the blue prints for everything he created/will create are with Him.
Of course it is hard to get our head around this.
Sometimes it is hard to even understand why GOD has created this vast universe and gave us a small insignificant planet for billions of us to live on! We will become even more insignificant on our "dot" earth.
GOD said to us that our vision will come back to us defeated and tired just by observing a small part of our universe. It is a headache to try and comprehend this vastness of stars,planets and galaxies.
Well imagine GOD s greatness from this verse:They can never fathom the greatness of God. The whole earth is within His fist on the Day of Resurrection. In fact, the universes are folded within His right hand.* Be He glorified; He is much too high above needing any partners.
وَما قَدَرُوا اللَّهَ حَقَّ قَدرِهِ وَالأَرضُ جَميعًا قَبضَتُهُ يَومَ القِيٰمَةِ وَالسَّمٰوٰتُ مَطوِيّٰتٌ بِيَمينِهِ سُبحٰنَهُ وَتَعٰلىٰ عَمّا يُشرِكونَ
Wow again.
GOD bless you.
Peace. -
Peace brother.
I think your last reply actually gives me several examples of the very distinction I have been trying to make throughout this thread.
You said:
“GOD knows our fate or not is irrelevant.”
I agree that it may be irrelevant as far as our accountability is concerned. We receive guidance and warnings, we experience our choices, and therefore we cannot use God's knowledge as an excuse for what we do.
But for the philosophical question I originally raised, I don't think God's prior knowledge is irrelevant.
If God knows everything, including every outcome, then the “test” cannot mean that God is conducting an examination in order to discover something He did not previously know.
That is why I actually find your other statement much more meaningful:
“The test is for us to grow our soul/succeed or starve it/lose.”
In that understanding, the experience is for us. We live it, make the choices and become accountable through it. God does not need the test in order to obtain information.
You also say:
“By definition GOD knows everything and does everything.”
I understand what you mean if “does everything” means that nothing exists or has the ability to happen independently of God's will, authority and creation. Even our ability to choose exists only because God has given us that ability.
I would only distinguish that from saying that God personally makes every individual human choice for us. Our ability to act exists by God's will, but the Quran nevertheless attributes choices to us and holds us accountable for them.
Then you wrote something else which really caught my attention:
“GOD prepared our earth for us in billions of years, while we were waiting somewhere for our turn to be born.”
Again, I am not necessarily saying this is wrong. I am asking: how much of that do we actually know?
Regarding “billions of years,” our present science gives us very strong evidence that Earth is around 4.5 billion years old and that the universe is much older. Modern astronomy discovered that the universe is expanding, and measurements of that expansion, together with other observations, allow scientists to reconstruct its history.
I have no problem at all with accepting that evidence.
But this is still a scientific reconstruction based on observation, measurement and our present models of the universe. Scientific knowledge develops and becomes more precise as our instruments and understanding improve.
A century ago our observational capability was completely different from today. Hubble changed our picture of the universe, and later telescopes refined it further. Today Webb is again showing us things about the early universe which scientists are trying to understand.
Therefore I would personally say:
“According to our best current scientific evidence, Earth formed billions of years ago.”
That is different from turning the scientific conclusion into a statement about God's exact programme:
“God spent billions of years preparing Earth specifically for us.”
The latter may be a reasonable interpretation, but now we have moved from science into theological deduction.
Likewise, regarding “we were waiting somewhere for our turn to be born,” I can see why one may arrive at such an understanding from Quranic verses.
For example, 2:28 speaks of us being without life/dead and then God giving us life, and 7:172 describes the testimony concerning God as Lord. So I am not saying there is no Quranic basis from which someone could infer some pre-earthly reality concerning us.
But do those verses actually tell us that conscious souls were somewhere waiting, experiencing billions of years until their individual turn to enter Earth arrived?
That additional picture is what I hesitate to claim.
Especially if, as you yourself said, time is part of creation. Whatever reality 7:172 refers to may not even be something that can meaningfully be measured using “billions of years” as we experience them here.
Then there is the description of Earth as a small “insignificant” planet.
It is certainly extraordinarily small compared with the observable universe.
But small and insignificant are not necessarily the same thing.
And more importantly, what do we actually know about everything else God may have created?
The Quran speaks of seven heavens and “of the earth the like of them” (65:12), and 42:29 speaks of creatures dispersed in the heavens and the earth.
I am not saying these verses prove that there are other inhabited planets. I deliberately don't want to make that claim either, because then I would be doing exactly what I am questioning.
Maybe there are.
Maybe there aren't.
I don't know.
And that “I don't know” is really the heart of my thread.
Even your statement that “time is created and does not apply to God” makes considerable sense to me and helps enormously with the problem of God “waiting,” “testing,” “seeing” and knowing outcomes.
But even there I have to distinguish between what God explicitly revealed and the philosophical model through which we try to understand that revelation.
I think there are at least three levels which we sometimes mix together:
1. What God explicitly tells us.
2. What we discover about creation through observation and science.
3. What we philosophically infer in order to connect all of it together.
There is nothing wrong with any of these.
The difficulty begins when an inference from level 2 or 3 is spoken with the same certainty as level 1.
And this is exactly what started this entire discussion for me.
God knows the ghayb.
We don't.
We can reason about it, derive possibilities and construct explanations which appear coherent. But whether we are discussing God's relationship with time, what existed before our birth, why the universe took its present form, whether other conscious creation exists elsewhere, or exactly how God's foreknowledge and our choices coexist, there eventually comes a boundary.
Beyond that boundary, I think the most intellectually honest answer may simply be:
God knows. I don't.
