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Corey
Five with a Four-wing
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893
| Posted 3/4/2006 11:27 AM (GMT -6) |   | | Modes: Is God energy? Is energy spirit? I understand that physics allows energy to convert to mass, but where's the energy in nothing (creatio ex nihilo)?
Corey: Like I tried to clarify for Tom above, I don't intend to reduce God to "energy"... I'm just explaining how I'm mentally "doing" this right now; I don't think it's all that outrageous to believe that God had the resources (whatever that might specifically be) to manifest the universe as we know it. Ex Nihilo is a matter of perspective; from God's side it likely looks quite different, but we can't really know much about that.
Modes: Are we talking about a theological assertion that God created ex nihilo? If so, the value in this is that OUR God does the impossible.
Corey: It seems nonsensical to me to claim that God does the impossible, so that's not a position I'm trying to defend. If he does something, by definition it was possible.
Modes: The problem of infinite regress doesn't go away with the question of creation's beginning.
Corey: But the problem of infinite ontological causation would. There very likely would be an infinite experience of sequence within the godhead, but not of ontological causation. This level of paradox is pretty easy for me to just live with; it's so far beyond my purvue that I can't rightly to know what it's like.
. . .
P.S. I don't think it's a contradiction to say that God's experience of sequence is infinite while the particular sequence WE're embarked upon had a beginning. As metaphor (only), I think of the two-dimensional nature of time; God's sequence is independant of, though involving, our sequence.
"You are too skilled in the art of talking in generalities about everything without letting yourself be personally involved." SK in Either/Or.Post Edited (Corey) : 3/4/2006 11:00:53 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 3/4/2006 11:40 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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Corey
Five with a Four-wing
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893
| Posted 3/4/2006 12:28 PM (GMT -6) | | Modes: We have to remember, often assertions meet theological needs that are not particularly friendly to the science-religion dialogue. Trying to make these assertions stand in other camps is often problematic.
Corey: Sure, sadly flags are often planted where they ought not be (by all camps). But the dialectic is still useful. God knows how my earlier misplaced flags have moved as a result of this sort of dialogue. Actually, most of my flags are just not planted at all anymore. I'm okay with that. At least now I'm better aware of what I don't know.
Modes: Here's a form of impossibility that I think you'll affirm... Corey: I agree that the scenario has obtained, so I'd still resist calling this an "impossibility", on tautological grounds. I'd gladly call it incomprehensible if you'd like. Modes: Now, is this sort of reality less real than physical reality? Corey: This better be real, or I'm screwed. Modes: The affirmation of creatio ex nihilo is more at home in this context than the scientific conversation about first causes. Corey: I'm still trying to understand the basis for this assertion. Let's keep talking.
"You are too skilled in the art of talking in generalities about everything without letting yourself be personally involved." SK in Either/Or.Post Edited (Corey) : 3/4/2006 11:31:55 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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Starkman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 3/4/2006 2:17 PM (GMT -6) | |
Modes: The problem of infinite regress doesn't go away with the question of creation's beginning. I think most of us are Trinitarian and we supposedly beleive that God's triune nature is eternal. That is, God is internally relating within the three persons. This is dynamic-sequential thought if ever there was one. Here's the closing of the loop, coherent Trinitarian doctrine entails the infinite regress of the inner life of God throughout eternity. Or when did God become trinitarian? What was God like before that. Thoughts?
I wouldn't say there is infinite regress merely because there is infinite sequencing. I understand "regress" to mean either going back to a state one was in prior to another state, or, in the philosophical sense, going back to a related "something" prior to something else.
God infinitely sequences, and that is disturbing, perhaps, when attempting to define or determine a first-cause, or when just attempting to comprehend eternity sequencing, but I don't see this as one and the same as infinite regress.
My teacher used to say that whenever he read Scripture, he would always ask the question, "What does this have to say about the character of God?" Working off his thinking, as I read Scripture, I have come to ask, "What does this have to say about the heart and passion of God's desire for relationship for us? | | Back to Top | | |
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Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 3/4/2006 4:44 PM (GMT -6) | | |
Tom: Creation ex nihilo is NOT a “suspension of all known laws of causation.” What law did God suspend to call the material universe into existence? None that I can think of. On the contrary, the law of causation is WHY we insist on a necessary first cause for the material universe.
Jeff: I think a lot of scientifically minded folks would say that it is the NATURE of causality as we experience it in this universe that demands a first cause. That nature has to do with the 2nd law of thermodynamics. It is THAT law that makes natural causality incapable of accounting for an infinite past.
The claim by big-bangers that there exists a vacuum that can have fluctuations is non-sensical to me. How can nothing fluctuate? But if, on the other hand, the vacuum is not really "nothing," then for all we know there are events occurring in it all the time which rule out a BEGINNING OF TIME at the big bang.
Scientists who are trying to rule out the existence of a creator tend to do really counter-intuitive philosophy when doing so. Ironically, the unnecessary acceptance of some of the philosophically counter-intuitive notions of modern science (in quantum theory and relativity) have resulted in scientists thinking that knowledge can exist without valid intuitions and categories--as if positivism could possibly save us from error when ALL positive experience is CONDITIONED by our categorical modes of thinking.
Personally, I don't see how TRUE knowledge can exist if our intuitions/categories are false.
Post Edited (jefscott) : 3/4/2006 3:47:33 PM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
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PotOnWheel
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890
| Posted 3/4/2006 11:01 PM (GMT -6) | |
jefscott said...
Tom: Creation ex nihilo is NOT a “suspension of all known laws of causation.” What law did God suspend to call the material universe into existence? None that I can think of. On the contrary, the law of causation is WHY we insist on a necessary first cause for the material universe.
Moderns at the turn of the mill. probably compare God to creation, and define God with those tools.
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But, it has appeared over and over to me, that the early-on writers and defenders of the faith talked the "ex nihilo" wording to protect and declare: first, that God is not at all a creature; and, that creation is holy and spirit-bidden that it prays to God for our salvation and that the sun and stars move in response to God's love.
Protected then, in Christian language, are the sacredness of creation -- which is not alienated from God's grace except through our own sin ( ! ! ! ), and the transcendending yet imminent power and love of God.
Simply put, "ex nihilo" is _doxological_language_ -- it would appear.
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