But what does that mean?
Would God experience time in any sense? Would he experience a "before" and an "after"? Would God ever change his mind, or work his way to a conclusion? If there's no concept of time to God, then I don't think we would be any more comprehensible to him than he would be to us.
I always figured that to an entity outside of time, we are bugs pinned to a display. Perhaps we are moved around in meta-time to promote the celestial feng shui.
Being locked in time makes it more than a little difficult to concieve of no time or outside of time. Perhaps being outside of time allows one to observe all points in the time sequence at once. If God created time then I think He certainly would understand it. God would certinly experience time if He put himself in it. Hmmm... sounds familiar.
Honestly, I can only go so far out in space or time before my brain starts smoking. It's just too big.
Why do you start from the premise of wanting to limit God? Logically, if one posits the existence of a creator, he/it understands its creation and the parameters in which it exists. Al Capp may have been on a totally different plane from Lil Abner, but he understood him!
Except that he created time and therefore understands it completely.
Well, NOW we're outside of my league, for sure!
But on the other hand, human beings are extraordinary, because we CAN think about concepts like "eternity" and "immortality" and "infinity" and even "pi" and "the perfect circle": things which actually do not exist in the physical universe. That intriguingly suggests that we have some "aptitude" for things outside of time and space, although it does leave your head buzzing like a little too much beer.
What I've heard, is this: it's not that God doesn't experience time at all, it's that He experiences it all at once. We're like people driving a car down a road. We can only experience the spot where we are. God is like a person on a high hillside looking down on the road and seeing the whole thing at a glance.
What that does to "before" and "after," "cause and "effect," I do not know.
I don't think it's true that there's no "concept" of time to God. He made Time and Space; they are His creatures. So He understands them thoroughly; He shaped them with precision calibration to be exactly what they are.
You mentioned before --- rather touchingly, I thought --- that you could sympathize with a lonely, bored god who would create a Universe capable of surprising him. A tender picture, to be sure, but surely you're missing something about the nature of God.
God is not a singleton. God is a Trinity: that is, three persons with one undivided essence. You may wonder how this can be, and why it makes a difference, but it makes a big difference indeed.
For one thing, God is love. An isolate cannot love; unadulterated self-love is a monstrosity which does not deserve the name of love at all. Love needs at least a subject, verb, and object. This is one way to understand the Trinity: God is, from all eternity, a community of Persons. What are they doing for all eternity? Loving.
So God didn't have to create the Universe because of loneliness or boredom, or any need at all. It was sheer overwhelming wild superfluous generosity. He wanted to show forth His glory: beauty, light, splendor. He wanted more beings capable to appreciating this. More Beloveds. Neutrinos. Quasars. DNA. Me. You.