The Creation

[PsychoticEpisode]

Your question is no more complicated than this one - What did the sun illuminate before it started emitting sunlight?

The Sun had a place to be created in. Before it emitted light it didn't illuminate anything. Anything meaning the other celestial bodies nearby. I fail to see your point.

And there cannot be a god upon whom the very nature of spatial existence is contingent because?

I supposed we are about to make the hyper-leap into the realm of the incomprehensible once again but this time we need to add that God can exist nowhere.

 

[lightgigantic]

The Sun had a place to be created in.

well sure, but in regards to the sun, we're talking about light

Before it emitted light it didn't illuminate anything.

And why is that do you suppose?
Where is the sunlight?

Anything meaning the other celestial bodies nearby. I fail to see your point.

The point is that we can reconcile sunlight as a contingent potency of the sun, so any discussion of what was illuminated beforehand is necessarily absurd.

I supposed we are about to make the hyper-leap into the realm of the incomprehensible once again but this time we need to add that God can exist nowhere.

Or alternatively, somewhere cannot exist without god ... much like sunlight cannot exist without the sun.

 

[PsychoticEpisode]

well sure, but in regards to the sun, we're talking about light


And why is that do you suppose?
Where is the sunlight?

The point is that we can reconcile sunlight as a contingent potency of the sun, so any discussions of what was illuminated beforehand are necessarily absurd.

Sorry, not a good analogy. You're trying to tell me that a place for god to exist is a contingent potency of God. That still means God didn't actually exist anywhere. He exists you say, but with a contingent potency, that which he would choose to employ or not. As I understand it, you say God existed but didn't have a place to exist, didn't need to, He could on a whim create a place to exist because He had built in to his being the potential to create a place. Where did the contingent potency come from?

Or alternatively, somewhere cannot exist without god ... much like sunlight cannot exist without the sun.

You have things out of order. Sunlight is secondary. Maybe you agree or not but a lot of people believe the sun was created by God. This is no different than a place being created by God. In order for the sun to exist it needs a place to exist. I am placing the same requirement upon the Almighty, in that He needed a place to exist before He even existed. Where did that place come from?

Ironically cosmology and related science are trying to provide an answer that you cannot provide. You are faced with the same problem they have. Until you can tell me how the place God existed in prior to His creating the universe came to be then you cannot even start to believe in God, in good conscience and in fairness to yourself.

 

[lightgigantic]

Sorry, not a good analogy. You're trying to tell me that a place for god to exist is a contingent potency of God. That still means God didn't actually exist anywhere.

Or alternatively, its a good introduction to omnipresence

He exists you say, but with a contingent potency, that which he would choose to employ or not.

actually its the contingent potency that makes us recognize and identify the source. For instance most people recognize the sun by it's sunlight.

As I understand it, you say God existed but didn't have a place to exist, didn't need to, He could on a whim create a place to exist because He had built in to his being the potential to create a place. Where did the contingent potency come from?

Actually what I am saying is that god is eternal and this in turn empowers his potencies to be eternal. For instance if a sun was imbued with eternality, would you expect it to emit sunlight eternally?

You have things out of order. Sunlight is secondary.

well yeah, that's the gist of it.

Maybe you agree or not but a lot of people believe the sun was created by God. This is no different than a place being created by God.

Actually there are distinctions between sarga (primary creation - namely the very substance of existence in the material world) and visarga (planets, populations etc)

In order for the sun to exist it needs a place to exist.

hence it belongs to visarga and not sarga

I am placing the same requirement upon the Almighty, in that He needed a place to exist before He even existed. Where did that place come from?

Which makes it remarkably similar to placing the same requirement on the sun, that it needed to have sunlight first. IOW if you want to place things out of order, you simply have an absurd question.

Ironically cosmology and related science are trying to provide an answer that you cannot provide. You are faced with the same problem they have. Until you can tell me how the place God existed in prior to His creating the universe came to be then you cannot even start to believe in God, in good conscience and in fairness to yourself.

Fortunately for us, good application, the precursor to good conclusions, has a foundation in good theory. If a person insisted on ruminating on the origins of an impotent, transient god, then yes, they would most certainly be plagued by the issues you mention.

Actually your analysis of god in relation to the universe is more in line with polytheistic orthodoxy than monotheistic. In a Polytheistic scheme of things you have gods in operation within the confines of visarga.

 

[PsychoticEpisode]

Actually there are distinctions between sarga (primary creation - namely the very substance of existence in the material world) and visarga (planets, populations etc)

Through the annals of etymology I'm never surprised that somewhere in the world there are words for every conceivable situation. Add to that the fact that so many of our words are related to religious philosophical thought. I can only imagine the thinness of a dictionary if all language with religious origins were eliminated. I wonder if Frag knows?

Back to topic...God would still need a place to operate. You know, someplace to weave his magic, creating matter and such. Do they have a word for the space that was provided for God to exist in? Contingent potency makes it sound as if God lived within Himself. Is God a place first, creator second?

 

[lightgigantic]

Through the annals of etymology I'm never surprised that somewhere in the world there are words for every conceivable situation. Add to that the fact that so many of our words are related to religious philosophical thought. I can only imagine the thinness of a dictionary if all language with religious origins were eliminated. I wonder if Frag knows?

Actually precise terminology is a requirement of philosophy.
Even discussing science in pidgin english could prove a challenge.

Back to topic...God would still need a place to operate. You know, someplace to weave his magic, creating matter and such.

no more than the sunlight is a prerequisite for a sun to come into existence

Do they have a word for the space that was provided for God to exist in?

Do they have a word for the sunlight that existed prior to the sun?

Contingent potency makes it sound as if God lived within Himself. Is God a place first, creator second?

Contingent simply means that the potency has no scope for independent existence from what it is sourced

 

[Dirty Dan]

Does The Little Match Girl support the scientific evidence for death by hypothermia?
Genesis is a myth, based on nothing.
Why should it be taken as evidence?

Exactly what do you mean a myth? Are you saying that it didnt happen?

 

[Cris]

lg,

...what I am saying is that god is eternal and this in turn empowers his potencies to be eternal....

That does not follow. Potency is not dependent on the property of eternity. I can equally argue for an eternal god that is entirely impotent. Or a god that was potent but lost it. I.e. these is no dependency here, only dogma.

 

[Cris]

Re Creation.

The BB is often postured as the start of the universe. Science does not assert that.

For example how do we know that what we perceive as a big bang isn't any more than a single bubble in an infinite sea of a potential infinite number of BBs that each start and expand and fade away.

What no one has ever shown is that there can be something from nothing. All we can say about the BB proposal is that it was a point in time where everything we know was at a much denser state than it is now. We do not know what there was before that point or what caused that condition.

Creation simply postulates magic occurred - it is not an explanation for anything.

 

[lightgigantic]

lg,

That does not follow. Potency is not dependent on the property of eternity.

I never said it did, after all, even a candle has potency.
What I did say, however, is that if you have a source that is attributed with eternality, it's potencies also become eternal.
I mean would you suppose that an eternal fire has eternal heat?
Yes or no?

I can equally argue for an eternal god that is entirely impotent. Or a god that was potent but lost it. I.e. these is no dependency here, only dogma.

sure, you can argue like that (much like someone can argue that the moon is made of cheese), but such arguments lie outside of the definitions of the discipline ... what to speak of the conclusions drawn by application

 

[iceaura]

What I did say, however, is that if you have a source that is attributed with eternality, it's potencies also become eternal.

No, you said if the source were imbued with eternality, its potencies would become eternal.

Personally, I think its only the visarga of the eternalities that can be attributed with imbued potency. The potencies of the sarga remain unimbued in attribution, regardless of the eternalities contingent on the empowerment of the postulations.

 

[lightgigantic]

No, you said if the source were imbued with eternality, its potencies would become eternal.

I'm not sure how that makes for a different distinction.

Personally, I think its only the visarga of the eternalities that can be attributed with imbued potency. The potencies of the sarga remain unimbued in attribution, regardless of the eternalities contingent on the empowerment of the postulations.

I don't think its possible to attribute eternality to anything within the confines of visarga (and actually, technically speaking, not even sarga. It is understood to cycle through manifestation and annihilation from a further potency of god .... but perhaps that only makes things more complex at the moment, so maybe we'll just stick to teh simple version)

 

[Jan Ardena]

Cris,

Creation simply postulates magic occurred - it is not an explanation for anything.

No it doesn't, it basically postulates a process of sound vibration.

jan.

 

[Dywyddyr]

Cris,
No it doesn't, it basically postulates a process of sound vibration.
jan.

What?
Sound vibration where?
From what?

 

[Dywyddyr]

Exactly what do you mean a myth? Are you saying that it didnt happen?

Keep trying: I'm saying it didn't happen the way Genesis says it did.

Re Creation.
The BB is often postured as the start of the universe. Science does not assert that.

Does it not?

For example how do we know that what we perceive as a big bang isn't any more than a single bubble in an infinite sea of a potential infinite number of BBs that each start and expand and fade away.

Er, and since we can't access or even show that any other bubbles exist then what we "see" is defined as the universe: as started by the Big Bang.

What no one has ever shown is that there can be something from nothing.

Also wrong.
Link, again.

 

[786]

Also wrong.
Link, again.

The idea of perfect symmetry just shows no differentiation, it hardly shows nothingness... and if we assume it does then how can one explain the non-symmetric breakdown if there were no distinctions that lead asymmetric breakdown... if the distinctions were there then its not in perfect symmetry and so the whole argument is circular- at least as far as I can understand.

Also reading the PDF the guy actually doesn't show anything about nothingness in reality, rather he is making astounding assertions:

Quote: "Since “nothing” is as simple as it gets, we would not expect it to be very stable."

Simple? If nothing is there there is no such thing as simplicity or complexity- I find the concept of 'nothingness' to be much more complex than 'something'. Stability of a system depends on something in the first place- By first asserting that 'nothing' is simple he is trying to spoon-feed us his conclusion by first changing nothing into something and then something into something.

And read the example in the end he is giving for a snowflake:

Quote : Nature is capable of building complex structures by processes of self-organization;
simplicity begets complexity. Consider the example of the
snowflake. Our experience tells us that a snowflake is very ephemeral, melting
quickly to drops of liquid water that exhibit far less structure. But that
is only because we live in a relatively high temperature environment, where
heat reduces the fragile arrangement of crystals to a simpler liquid. Energy
is required to break the asymmetry of a snowflake.
In an environment where the ambient temperature is well below the
melting point of ice, as it is in most of the universe far from the highly localized
effects of stellar heating, any water vapor would readily crystallize into
complex, asymmetric structures. Snowflakes would be eternal, or at least
would remain intact until cosmic rays tore them apart.

First of he is a saying if a complex (snowflake) is put in a high temperature environment you get simplicity.. while if you put a simple (water) in a low temperature situation you get complexity (snowflake)- But it seems the author is first of all neglecting that 'water' is something which you would have to put in an environment to get complexity... Also it seems the author is unaware that 'nothingness' would require that temperature be absolute 0 or non-existent because there are no particles that will move around to give us a temperature- and since temperature is absolutely 0, asserting that everything in nothingness is complex is more logical by his own example then to assert that something simple goes into this nothingness which resulted in something complex. Or that nothingness is simple- how when the temperature is absolute 0- or non-existent?

Peace be unto you

 

[Dywyddyr]

The idea of perfect symmetry just shows no differentiation, it hardly shows nothingness...

Really?

and if we assume it does then how can one explain the non-symmetric breakdown if there were no distinctions that lead asymmetric breakdown... if the distinctions were there then its not in perfect symmetry and so the whole argument is circular- at least as far as I can understand.

How much work have you done on symmetry-breaking?

Simple? If nothing is there there is no such thing as simplicity or complexity

Simple - not complicated. If there's nothing there can't be complications.

I find the concept of 'nothingness' to be much more complex than 'something'.

Then that's your problem, neh?

Stability of a system depends on something in the first place

Not quite. It could be stable because there's nothing to be unstable...

 

[spidergoat]

Things in physics do arise spontaneously, therefore there is more likely to be something than nothing. Nothing is as simple a state as it is possible to be.

 

[786]

Really?

Well I can't see how it does otherwise.

How much work have you done on symmetry-breaking?

None, how about you?

Simple - not complicated. If there's nothing there can't be complications.

Are we just talking about words? Because if there's nothing then there is nothing? Obviously we're talking about the properties of it. If nothing is there, there is no way to tell if the state of the system is complex or simple. Wasn't the author trying to take out the 'point-of-view' from the whole debate? So why are you placing your point of view in the discussion. The fact is that you can't say anything about a system that is nothing.

Then that's your problem, neh?

Wonderful response?

Not quite. It could be stable because there's nothing to be unstable...

So its stable? That would breakup his whole argument!

Peace be unto you

 

[786]

Nothing is as simple a state as it is possible to be.

And how can you show this? You practically know nothing about the system of nothingness... or is this preconceived assumption?

Peace be unto you