TPF : God & Time

[Gnomon]

But if God created time, then time was not needed for that initial act of creation. We can conclude, then, that there can be creation without time, for otherwise time itself could not have been created. — Bartricks

I'm a late-comer to this thread, and haven't read much of the subsequent discussion following the OP. But I may have something to add, relevant to the quote above. I don't have any direct knowledge of the Creator of our temporal world -- it could have been a tower-of-turtles in a time-bound Multiverse, for all I know. But I think it's more reasonable that the creator of Space-Time & Matter-Energy was independent of such limitations. In other words, whatever caused the hypothetical initial Singularity to explode into space-time must have existed in some sense prior to Space-Time.

So, it seems that the Creator (which I label ambiguously as "G*D") could only have existed as Eternal-Potential, instead of Temporal-Actual. Admittedly, Aristotelian "Potential" does not exist in any physical empirical sense. You can't examine it under a microscope. But as a metaphysical theoretical Platonic "Ideal", it encompasses unlimited infinite Possibilities. In the Real world, only lawful things are possible, By that, I mean, Natural Laws are the boundaries of Nature. In which case, only something not subject to those laws --- not natural ; unbounded --- could create the laws themselves : The Lawmaker.

Therefore, I conclude that the Singularity, and its subsequent Big Bang blowup, was not a physical thing --- subject to limits & laws --- but a program (design ; plan) for world creation, existing as an ethereal idea in the timeless Mind of G*D. And that is what I would call "creation without time". Real world Space-Time --- an ideal mathematical model --- exists only in the presence of Matter-Energy --- the physical elements of the real world. Hence, the Eternal Cause of our Temporal World cannot be Real ; so must be Ideal : existing only in unbound Potential. That is the assumption of PanEnDeism.



"Turtles all the way down" is an expression of the problem of infinite regress.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

Aristotelian Potential :
In philosophy, potentiality and actuality[1] are a pair of closely connected principles which Aristotle used to analyze motion, causality, ethics, and physiology in his Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, and De Anima. . . . The concept of potentiality, in this context, generally refers to any "possibility" that a thing can be said to have . . . Actuality, in contrast to potentiality, is the motion, change or activity that represents an exercise or fulfillment of a possibility, when a possibility becomes real in the fullest sense
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential ... _actuality

Platonic idealism usually refers to Plato's theory of forms or doctrine of ideas. It holds that only ideas encapsulate the true and essential nature of things, in a way that the physical form cannot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_idealism

Panendeism is an ontological position that explores the interrelationship between God (The Cosmic Mind) and the known attributes of the universe. Combining aspects of Panentheism and Deism, Panendeism proposes an idea of God that both embodies the universe and is transcendent of its observable physical properties. https://panendeism.org/faq-and-questions/
http://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page16.html