Post Edited (Tom) : 10/20/2009 1:55:39 AM (GMT-5)

Tom: There’s an uninterrupted line that connects all things.

Jeff: Yeah. I think of it like this. There is a future harmonious, blissful state to which all events are being directed by divine providential acts that keep things on teleological track, however many side-tracks things go off on in the short run. Which is just another way of saying that:

1) God prefers harmony with EXISTING, volitional beings to non-harmony with, or eventual non-existence of, said beings,

AND

2) He is competent to bring about that SOFA without compromising any other original ends He has for this creation (like, e.g., rendering any suffering required by His Son worthwhile).

Indeed, Tom. This gets me thinking. You've said that the godhead doesn't need anything from creation because they are maximally satisfied without creation. If that's the case, then I would posit the possibility that, since the NT portrays the Father and the Son as diverse (allowing for the possibility that the Son is not omniscient), the Son gets something novel from creation during the significantly free phase of it that accounts for the fact that his suffering for it is worthwhile, but which he would have never missed had he never experienced it and without which creation's eventual eternal state would not have been worth the suffering.

IOW, maybe a future, eternal harmonious bliss of volitional creatures without opportunities for significant freedom (those involving significant suffering or risks of significant suffering) doesn't add to either the Father's or the Son's satisfaction. But the temporal, significantly free phase of creation does provide for NOVEL satisfaction for the Son and, therefore, for the sympathetic Father.

In short, the diversity of the godhead allows for the sympathetic, omniscient Father being maximally sentiently satisfied within Himself, but yet desirous of fulfilling every possible sentient pleasure in the Son which the Son has capacity for by extra-divine being (and yet may not know it since he may be non-omniscient, but that the omniscient Father does know). This would explain WHY the Father risked creation without having to posit that it increased His satisfaction in any "needy" sense. And yet, it leaves human teleology intact as a true analogue for understanding sentiently-motivated, divine teleology as well. IOW, the Father was sentiently-motivated to create, just as teleology would seem to imply, but not because of anything He lacked in Himself, sentiently. His need, if it is a need, is to satisfy the Son in all ways conceivably possible.

Thus, as scripture says, All things are FOR the Father and the Son. God did not create FOR us. Our bliss is an inevitable, correlative consequence of God's acting unto His own self-interest because God is perfectly and competently benevolent/sympathetic. IOW, in the perfect moral community, the highest possible natural good of any one member is consistent with and conducive to the highest possible natural good of the rest of the members of the community. I'm trying to salvage the analogue of sentiently-motivated teleology. I see no other way to do it. And without that analogue, much scriptural language seems meaningless to me.

Post Edited (Similtude) : 10/21/2009 11:57:29 AM (GMT-5)

Jeff: Which is just another way of saying that:

1) God prefers harmony with EXISTING, volitional beings to non-harmony with, or eventual non-existence of, said beings,

Tom: So long as the preference we’re talking about is logically subsequent to the creation of those beings, yeah.

Jeff: 2) He is competent to bring about that SOFA without compromising any other original ends He has for this creation (like, e.g., rendering any suffering required by His Son worthwhile).

Tom: Right. Moreover, I’m still inclined to think that there are not other options open where God creates volitional creatures. That depends upon a certain metaphysical argument that D and I have made (but which is far from proven). But he resonates with me. If a good case can be made for it, then we could say that the permanent or irrevocable loss of any created entity is, strictly speaking, impossible. Can’t prove it, BUT it makes it easier.

Jeff: Indeed, Tom. This gets me thinking. You've said that the godhead doesn't need anything from creation because they are maximally satisfied without creation.

Tom: Right. That’s really important I think.

Jeff: If that's the case, then I would posit the possibility that, since the NT portrays the Father and the Son as diverse (allowing for the possibility that the Son is not omniscient), the Son gets something novel from creation during the significantly free phase of it that accounts for the fact that his suffering for it is worthwhile, but which he would have never missed had he never experienced it and without which creation's eventual eternal state would not have been worth the suffering. IOW, maybe a future, eternal harmonious bliss of volitional creatures without opportunities for significant freedom (those involving significant suffering or risks of significant suffering) doesn't add to either the Father's or the Son's satisfaction. But the temporal, significantly free phase of creation does provide for NOVEL satisfaction for the Son and, therefore, for the sympathetic Father.

Tom: Hehe. When you sink your teeth into something you don’t let go! Ha. ;o)

We’re back to the question of whether or not God could create ‘loving’ beings with whom he could relate intimately without running the risk of their ever failing to love. If you think this is a ‘possible world’ but that God chose not to create it (creating ours instead), then you have something to explain (regarding the problem of evil) that I don’t have to explain. But assuming such a risk-free world is possible, I think you’re taking the best approach available. You have to posit some unique pleasure that God gets from creaturely determined love of God that he can’t get from divinely determined love of God. I just don’t see what it would be about divine determined creaturely love of God over creaturely determined love of God that would provide a unique pleasure to God. I agree there has to be SOME such pleasure. I just can’t imagine what that is. If God COULD create us to really ‘love’ him without risk of any failure of love, what’s pleasure does God get from our undetermined love of him? Is it a different KIND or love? Does our being free color our love, make it FEEL different to God or something? If so, then you’re very close to making a metaphysical argument about the uniqueness of creaturely determined love. But if our love of God and others is the same love whether God determines us in it or we freely acquire it, I need to know what it is IN US AS FREE that pleases God which can’t be found in our being determined by God.

Jeff: In short, the diversity of the godhead allows for the sympathetic, omniscient Father being maximally sentiently satisfied within Himself, but yet desirous of fulfilling every possible sentient pleasure in the Son which the Son has capacity for by extra-divine being (and yet may not know it since he may be non-omniscient, but that the omniscient Father does know).

Tom: I think this is really important. And how the parts line up and the argument is made is crucial.

Jeff: This would explain WHY the Father risked creation without having to posit that it increased His satisfaction in any "needy" sense. And yet, it leaves human teleology intact as a true analogue for understanding sentiently-motivated, divine teleology as well. IOW, the Father was sentiently-motivated to create, just as teleology would seem to imply, but not because of anything He lacked in Himself, sentiently. His need, if it is a need, is to satisfy the Son in all ways conceivably possible.

Tom: I take it you that by “maximally sentiently satisfied” (apart from creation) you mean unimprovably or unsurpassably satisfied. That’s the term D and I use ‘cause it’s already in the convo with Hartshorne and Greg. OK, so THEN the trick becomes explaining the substance of such an unsurpassable experience of Godself by Godself alongside the claim that the Father is motivated to create by a “desire to fulfilling every possible sentient pleasure in the Son which the Son has capacity for.”

Like you say, this capacity is God’s capacity for “contingent” expression. It can’t be said to “improve upon” God’s experience of loving relationality per se, right? It just needs to be said carefully so that God’s is really “motivated” to create without it being the case that God’s being qua God is “achieved” via creation. That’s the tight rope we need to walk. It’s difficult precisely because PART of the analogical connection with our intuitions about sentient motivation (which you want to KEEP) includes (apparently?) the notion that the end we seek improves upon our sense of well-being. We can’t extract ourselves out of this precisely because we’re finite. It’s part of our creatureliness. If so, then you might have to sacrifice a bit to say God is motivated in a way we are not motivated. But then again, perceived improvement upon (even if it's only by maintaining) one's well-being may not be a necessary component to sentient motivation. 

You have to read Greg’s dissertation on Hartshorne dude. Really. He uses the analogy of an artist to work out this very point.

Jeff: Thus, as scripture says, All things are FOR the Father and the Son. God did not create FOR us. Our bliss is an inevitable, correlative consequence of God's acting unto His own self-interest because God is perfectly and competently benevolent/sympathetic.

Tom: I don’t disagree I don’t think. But I think that if you begin, like you (and I) do, by saying God’s necessary self-sufficiency is an unsurpassably beautiful experience of loving relationality sans creation, then creation HAS to be figured into our understanding of what motivates God to create—extremely carefully of course! I’d agree that God creates for Godself, but that what it is which pleases God just is the loving of non-divine beings. Love obtains the end of its OWN existence by existing for the other. That much we get from the Trinity (God begets and spirates the divine being into personal distinctions). I’d like to extend this basically understanding of creation as love by maintaining the same understanding.   

Not sure I’m making sense.

Jeff: IOW, in the perfect moral community, the highest possible natural good of any one member is consistent with and conducive to the highest possible natural good of the rest of the members of the community. I'm trying to salvage the analogue of sentiently-motivated teleology. I see no other way to do it. And without that analogue, much scriptural language seems meaningless to me.

Tom: Right. I remember a conversation D and I had back when Greg was still online I think. The difficulty of explain how an unsurpassably sentitently satisfied God could be MOTIVATED to create unnecessarily was driving D and me mad. In the end D just said something like, “Screw it. Let’s just suppose that God’s choice to create is random. God was sitting around fulfilled one day and said, ‘What the hell? Let’s try this’.” And that’s the end of it. I don’t think D is there anymore, but I agree with you that we ought to AVOID saying this.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 10/21/2009 2:38:15 PM (GMT-5)

Tom: I’d agree that God creates for Godself, but that what it is which pleases God just is the loving of non-divine beings. Love obtains the end of its OWN existence by existing for the other. That much we get from the Trinity (God begets and spirates the divine being into personal distinctions). I’d like to extend this basically understanding of creation as love by maintaining the same understanding.

Jeff:  Well, I want to not have to commit to saying that God even needs to love non-divine beings. Cause I want to avoid having to commit to saying that God had to create prior to our created order, which seems to follow from what you're saying. Or if we do need to commit to prior creations, I want to know what absolutely makes that the case. I'm trying to account for no need in the Father to create but still account for a REASON to create grounded in the nature of the Son that is diverse from the Father's nature, in that respect. That way, I can say the Father desires to create for the Son, but only because of the nature of the WHOLE godhead, not the Father's nature, per se. The Father, per se, doesn't need nor, therefore, desire creation at all apart from the Son. Because apart from the Son, the Father may not be relational in the way we know Him to be, in the first place. Thus, adding a creation to a non-relational God would be pointless. I'm thinking scripture grounds the conspicuous relational aspect of the Father more in the relation between the Father and the Son than, say, the Father and the Spirit.

But at the same time, if the Son is not omniscient, he may not need or desire creation either. For he wouldn't necessarily know what he has to gain from it, via novelty. And yet the Father would know that by virtue of His omniscience. So in a sense, neither of them need a creation, but the Father desires a creation because of what He knows the Son will appreciate about it, once he experiences it. Then, once we exist, He necessarily loves us, because He IS love.

Similarly, we know what our children will appreciate before they do, because of analogy. So we provide for those kinds of sentient satisfaction. We may be wrong about degree or certain cases with respect to our children's sentient capacities, but you get the point.

I have no apriori problem with God needing to create throughout all time. I just want to know why that needs to be before going there. Because as I see it, we either have a known reason for infinite creations, or no more than one. Alternatively, we could have infinite instances of similar KINDS of creations.

Post Edited (Similtude) : 10/21/2009 2:43:54 PM (GMT-5)

Jeff:  Well, I want to not have to commit to saying that God even needs to love non-divine beings. Cause I want to avoid having to commit to saying that God had to create prior to our created order, which seems to follow from what you're saying.

Tom: I must have explained myself poorly, ‘cause I don’t think God needs to love non-divine beings. I can’t commit to saying God has to create. That doesn’t follow from what I’m saying. I’d say that whatever we have to say is metaphysically the case about God “as love,” can be said about God “as triune.” The triune relations fully satisfy all the ontological (and logical) requirements for self-sufficient love. Creation is superfluous to God’s necessary existence.

BUT…once God creates…I don’t think it’s meaningful to THEN say that God has libertarian option to not love us. Not that there is some non-divine moral order constraining God. Rather, God is love. He’s free to not create and be love (because the definitional requirements of ‘love’ are met by God trinitarianly). But he’s not free to be other than love to whatever he creates, should he create.

I’m repeating OLD stuff. I think we disagreed on all this already. ;o)

Jeff: Or if we do need to commit to prior creations, I want to know what absolutely makes that the case.

Tom: I don’t commit to prior creations.

Jeff: I'm trying to account for no need in the Father to create but still account for a REASON to create grounded in the nature of the Son that is diverse from the Father's nature, in that respect.

Tom: Right. I also want to say God’s unnecessary/free choice to create was motivated. But I because I deny that God is even capable of creating us unfailingly loving from the get-go, the route I take will be a bit different from yours.

Jeff: That way, I can say the Father desires to create for the Son, but only because of the nature of the WHOLE godhead, not the Father's nature, per se. The Father, per se, doesn't need nor, therefore, desire creation at all apart from the Son. Because apart from the Son, the Father may not be relational in the way we know Him to be, in the first place. Thus, adding a creation to a non-relational God would be pointless. I'm thinking scripture grounds the conspicuous relational aspect of the Father more in the relation between the Father and the Son than, say, the Father and the Spirit.

Tom: Interesting. Not sure I’m following it, but I’ll eventually get it! If you hammer it out a step at a time (like you’re doing), it’ll take shape for me.

Jeff: But at the same time, if the Son is not omniscient, he may not need or desire creation either. For he wouldn't necessarily know what he has to gain from it, via novelty.

Tom: Are you positing a non-omniscient Son sans creation? In other words, the Son isn’t essentially omniscient? That’ll be problematic (for some of us).

Jeff: And yet the Father would know that by virtue of His omniscience. So in a sense, neither of them need a creation, but the Father desires a creation because of what He knows the Son will appreciate about it, once he experiences it.

Tom: So basically, the Father says, “I know and experience love as X because I’m the Father. And this experience is part of my necessary existence as divine. The Son, however, doesn’t experience love as X because the Son isn’t omniscient. I’d really like to Son to experience/acquire/know what I know about love with respect to X, but that’ll require creating.”

And all the while the choice to create is unnecessary to the Son’s being fully divine?

Hmmm.

Jeff: Similarly, we know what our children will appreciate before they do, because of analogy. So we provide for those kinds of sentient satisfaction. We may be wrong about degree or certain cases, but you get the point.

Tom: Yeah. But positing this as a description of the relationship of Father to Son will meet the objection that you end up stripping the Son of what constitutes divine being essentially. You have the Son gaining/growing, well, improving, his existence AS SON via creation. That’s how I’m reading ya.

Tom

Tom: I don’t think it’s meaningful to THEN say that God has libertarian option to not love us. Not that there is some non-divine moral order constraining God.

Jeff: Right. God's character is what grounds the moral order of a volitional community. He's not subject to one. This is only works because God is necessarily benevolent/sympathetic. If He wasn't, then we'd have to assume moral standards exist independent of Him, which makes no sense. This was Berlinksi's stumbling block.

Tom: Right. I also want to say God’s unnecessary/free choice to create was motivated. But I because I deny that God is even capable of creating us unfailingly loving from the get-go, the route I take will be a bit different from yours.

Jeff: We're only disagreeing about degree, not kind of creation. I don't posit the the inevitable degree of moral struggle that renders sin inevitable. All libertarian choice involves sacrifice, though, however trivial in degree.

Tom: Are you positing a non-omniscient Son sans creation? In other words, the Son isn’t essentially omniscient? That’ll be problematic (for some of us).

Jeff: Yeah, that's what I'm positing. I'm allowing for radical becoming with regard to the Son, and less radical becoming with regard to the Father, but absolute fidelity and competency of the godhead with respect to all divine teleological activity, regardless of how the becoming plays out. Thus, in the sense that the Son is born, God becomes His father in THAT sense. In the sense that the Son is begotten in ressurection, The God becomes His father in THAT sense as well. So there is becoming for both, but that of the Son is more radical. Thus, I see no problem positing that the Son is significantly diverse from the Father while being a necessary being with a stability of character in all that he does.

Tom: Are you positing a non-omniscient Son sans creation? In other words, the Son isn’t essentially omniscient? That’ll be problematic (for some of us).

Jeff: Yeah, that's what I'm positing.

Tom: Ouch. I can cheer you on from the sidelines on this, then, but not join you on the field.

Jeff: I’m allowing for radical becoming with regard to the Son, and less radical becoming with regard to the Father, but absolute fidelity and competency of the godhead with respect to all divine teleological activity…

Tom: So the necessary, God-defining aspects of the Son (which are the substance of his deity, let’s say), are his “fidelity and competency to all of the Father’s teleological activity”? That’s it?

Jeff: Thus, in the sense that the Son is born, God becomes His father in THAT sense. In the sense that the Son is begotten in ressurection, The God becomes His father in THAT sense as well.

Tom: It’s not orthodox in the sense of being what the Fathers ‘traditionally’ believed, but I take it that’s not so important to you. That’s OK. But once you posit a less-than-omniscient entity who becomes the SON by means of his earthly career, I’m left wondering just what ‘experience’ it is that obtains necessarily (sans creation) between this entity and that entity which becomes  the Father which in your view does constitute the deity of the entity that becomes the Son. They don’t relate in ‘origination’ or ‘filial love’ as Father and Son (because you’re now saying that what those terms signify obtains via creation only). So how (or in what) do you posit the necessary unsurpassable satisfaction of personal love definitive of God? That’s the question.

------------------------

Tom: So basically, the Father says, “I know and experience love as X because I’m the Father. And this experience is part of my necessary existence as divine. The Son, however, doesn’t experience love as X because the Son isn’t omniscient. I’d really like to Son to experience/acquire/know what I know about love with respect to X, but that’ll require creating.”

Jeff: No, more like both the Father and the Son are necessarily benevolent/sympathetic. But the Son, like us, is not omniscient, therefore his necessary love is not omnisciently informed, but sufficiently informed for all contexts that the Father provides for him. The same will be the case for us one day.

Tom: Wherein does the Son’s ‘deity’ reside then? I can’t see it.

Jeff: But the Son may have capacities for experiencing novel kinds of sentient satisfaction from created volitional beings who are libertarianly free with respect to right-relating. The Son may not even know this, having never experienced it, but the Father knows it by virtue of His omniscience. So the Father creates FOR the Son so the Son can experience that sentient pleasure he couldn't experience otherwise.

Tom: It’s feeling more and more like Arianism to me, with a twist, but still the same ‘slightly less than divine’ view on the Son.

------------------------------

Tom: And all the while the choice to create is unnecessary to the Son’s being fully divine?

Jeff: If divine means a god to creatures, then no, obviously. If divine means existing necessarily, yes.

Tom: Take me farther. I agree it’s necessary existence (and not god to creatures) that we want to posit. But HOW does this necessary existent have its being? That is, in what manner or mode of experience does this necessity inhere? I want to say it’s not just the sheer ‘fact’ that X exists always that makes X divine. It’s a KIND of existence that exists necessarily, namely, personal loving existence. So whatever constitutes a necessary/definitive aspect of loving personal being in my view has to obtain in God sans creation. And it looks to me like you sacrifice this in the case of the Son.

Jeff: As I see it, if the godhead exists necessarily, they are fully divine, independent of any other contingency.

Tom: To me it’s a KIND of experience that exists necessarily, so saying “the Son exists necessarily” doesn’t by itself do the job of establishing his ‘divinity’.

Jeff: It's just that the way I'm defining their diversity, they can't be all they can be without one another. They need each other to BE what we would call essentially relational. And yet they don't exist FOR one another. For they exist necessarily, conditioning certain attributes of one another, like relationality.

Tom: Ahhh. Maybe this is it. Well, I wouldn’t say there’s no “for” that essentially defines the triune relations. Without that “for” I wouldn’t know how to a relation could be loving and personal. Maybe we mean something different by “for.” But for me, it’s ESSENTIAL to personal/loving being to exist FOR another being. So this is part of the KIND of experience that can said to exist necessarily. Thus, existing FOR another is an essential/deity-defining aspect of God’s triune experience.

-----------------------------

Tom: Yeah. But positing this as a description of the relationship of Father to Son will meet the objection that you end up stripping the Son of what constitutes divine being essentially. You have the Son gaining/growing, well, improving, his existence AS SON via creation. That’s how I’m reading ya.

Jeff: Not improving his divine SONNESS.

Tom: But you don’t have a SON until incarnation and resurrection. I don’t know what you’re calling this same person sans creation. But you don’t have a necessary, obtaining-sans-creation FATHER-SON relation. What DO you have sans creation?

------------------------------

Jeff: Just experiencing sentient states that are only conditioned by beings that are libertarianly free with respect to right-relating. This ends up involving him in some relatively radical becoming, like the incarnation, suffering at the hands of creatures, etc. But none of this adds to what he is as divine.

Tom: So tell me about what kind of experience it is that makes one ‘divine’, because I’m having trouble seeing what attributes you’d include. Everlasting/necessary experience is there, yeah. But beyond that, what? You don’t think omniscience is necessary, nor do you feel the experience of unsurpassable beauty and loving relationality counts (I don’t think), since you have the Son’s experience qualitatively improved via incarnation.

Jeff: Remember, I'm positing that apart from God knowing the Son has the capacity for this particular sentient satisfaction and, thus, creating to attain it, the Son would not have known about it and wouldn't have felt any deprivation therefore. Indeed, it may be that there is becoming in the godhead by the activity of the Spirit, independent of creation, such that these capacities for sentient experience ARISE in time! So long as the godhead is necessarily existent and necessarily benevolent, I see no problems.

Tom: Right. Well, we’d differ here I’m sure.

Tom

Asher: When we talk about the Trinity...Father and Son...Father and Spirit...Father, Son, Spirit...we posit the everlastingness of all three...

Tom: Right. But we also are saying something about the KIND or SORT of relations that constitute at the same time the necessary existence of God AND the personal distinction between F, S, and Sp, so that ‘necessary existence’ is a ‘quality of existence’ (more than just ‘everlasting’ existence). Hartshorne’s sixth a prior is ‘aesthetic subjectivism’ or ‘the identity of experience and value’. Necessary existence is characterized as emotive evaluation. I suck at explaining it. But essentially it means that the only thing about which it makes sense to say it is ‘everlasting’ or ‘necessary’ is a ‘kind’ of beautiful experience of aesthetic satisfaction.

So ‘everlasting’, yes, but what SORT of thing can exist everlasting. What KIND of experience can be an everlasting experience? And THIS is WHY the God-World relation is so important. To posit a necessary, everlasting, creation alongside God would mean that relation constitutes what is necessary about God as well. It would mean God achieves his being or existence as God in relating to non-divine being. A that’s a problem.

Asher: …but there is some sense in which the Father is prior...don't know if that is even the way to express it...but there is something about the Father that grounds, filiates, spirates, whatever, the other two (not to bring the whole Filioque matter into it) and we still posit the everlastingness of Father, Son and Spirit.

Tom: Right. This is what the Eastern Orthodox (and Augustine and the West, though the East doesn’t see this) say. The Father is ‘head’ or ‘fountainhead’ of the others, but necessarily so, so there’s only a logical, not a temporal, priority. And that makes ‘father’ a perfect word to describe it. But in turn, you can’t be a father WITHOUT having children. So the Father in turn depends—definitionally—upon begetting the Son. So say ‘father’ is to say ‘son’ in other words, even though it’s the father who begets the son and not the other way around. There’s symmetry on one level but asymmetry on another. And all this constitutes the essence of God’s necessary existence and precludes any input or influence from the world.

Asher: This being the case...why cannot we look at creation itself as everlasting? Not in the sense that it was not originated in God. Nor that it hasn't undergone change, so that it's current state may be very different than it was. But given the Father-Son relation (and bringing in what Jeff has been saying, some Karl Barth, some Process thought) could we look at creation as in some sense existing forever, even though it is not self-existent nor necessary.

Tom: The problem is what it ends up meaning for God’s necessary existence to say the world is necessary, or God necessarily creates some non-divine world. You want to say the triune relations don’t themselves require a world (though the world is eternal), but that’s a difficult position to maintain. Once you posit the necessity of “God + world” you can’t then posit the necessity of just “God” as if the world doesn’t play a role in the personal differentiation of God into three persons.

Even if you manage to insulate the ‘necessity’ of the triune relations from any definiteive role (in that necessity) on the part of a necessary creation, dose it make sense to say you have a necessary state of affairs (God) that doesn’t require the other (creation) to be what it is? In other words, you can't really isolate God's necessary being from creation IF creation is necessary. Now, the way you describe the God/World relation (God as being necessary ground of the World which derives from God) is what the Church has always said about the Father and the Son and HOW the Church as explicated the Son’s DIVINITY. The SON is divine precisely because the Father necessarily begets him. So waht can  we mean then if we explain the existence of the world with the same logic (God source, creation necessary but derived) if not that the world is divine? It would necessarily issue from a (necessary) act of the will. So how are we going to go back before this act of willing the world to be and then say, “Well, there are also other ‘necessary’ relations (F, S, and Sp) that obtain necessarily but in which the necessity of the world does not participate and to which it does not contribute”? We can’t have TWO ‘necessarily’ existing entities (God and World) which don’t define each other’s existence necessarily. That’s the problem with saying the world (or some world) is necessary.

Jeff sees this and rejects the necessity of the choice to creation, so that creation is an unnecessary gift and grace. The struggle I’m having with Jeff’s view is just HOW he envisions God’s motivating reasons for creating. On that score he seems to me to appeal to some of what I think constitutes God’s necessary existence to explain an unnecessary state of affairs. I don’t see how, in Jeff’s view, God’s existence is not improved upon qualitatively by creation.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 10/24/2009 9:21:52 AM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (One Love) : 10/29/2009 10:34:41 AM (GMT-5)

Thanks for Goswami, Tom. 

The idealist resolution of the paradox of the cat's existence demands that the consciousness of the observing subject choose one facet from the multifaceted dead-and-alive coherent superposition of the cat and thus seal its fate.

The subject is the chooser, and choice is fundamental to existence:

"I choose, therefore I am."

Free choice means the possibility of jumping out of an old context into a new one at a higher level. The capacity for choice, even recognizing choice, makes us conscious of the experiences we choose. From the myriad alternative possibilities, we recognize the course of our becoming, and define our self. The primary question of self-consciousness is to choose or not to choose.

More accurate than the old notion of the unconscious is that our conscious self is unconscious of most things most of the time and of everything in dreamless sleep. Paradoxically, the unconscious is holistically, non-locally conscious of all things all of the time. It never sleeps. OUR CONSCIOUS SELF IS UNCONSCIOUS OF OUR UNCONSCIOUS, AND THE UNCONSCIOUS IS ACTUALLY MORE CONSCIOUS than normal awareness.

Unconscious thoughts and feelings affect our conscious thoughts. During unconscious perception, an unconscious feeling can produce an unexplainable conscious feeling. According to Goswami, choice is a concomitant of conscious experience, but not of unconscious perception. Our subject-consciousness arises when there is a choice made. When we do not choose, we do not own up to our perceptions.

Before choice, the state of the brain-mind is an ambiguous state - like that of Schrodinger's cat. In quantum theory, the subject that chooses is a single, universal subject, not our personal ego "I." Thus, this universal choosing consciousness is also nonlocal.

Even if you introduce hidden variables to find a causal interpretation of QM (quantum mechanics), as David Bohm does, those hidden variables have to be non-local. In Bohm's theory, the light that projects the image of reality is not the light of creative consciousness, but causal hidden variables - which current research suggests may be deterministically chaotic, rather than probabilistic.

According to the idealist interpretation, violation to the EPR Paradox signifies non-local correlation between photons. Hidden variables are not needed as an explanation. Of course, to collapse the wave function of non-locally correlated photons, consciousness must act non-locally.

Therefore, simultaneously occurring events in our space-time world can be related meaningfully to a common cause that resides in a non-local realm outside space and time. This common cause is the act of non-local collapse by consciousness. Thus it is not a message transfer (from a sender through a channel to a receiver) but a communication in consciousness. This has important repercussions for information theory, based in causality.

Non-local consciousness might seem like a "hidden variable", but it doesn't constitute causal parameters. It is simply us! Non-local consciousness operates not with causal continuity, but with non-linear creative discontinuity from moment to moment, event to event.

This discontinuity, the quantum jump out of the system, is the essential component of creativity needed for consciousness to see itself, as in self-reference. It means we can exercise the freedom to be open to a new context.

Post Edited (One Love) : 10/29/2009 10:42:36 AM (GMT-5)