A question about the Christian theory of creation

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Elok
Now you're just begging for it: do you "really" understand quantum mechanics?

Which interpretation are you referring to?

Originally posted by Elok
How are you with effects preceding their causes and outcomes remaining undetermined until observed and such? How well do you wrap your head around that? How about string theory, that must be beautifully intuitive...

Here's the difference. For a scientific hypothesis or theory, the important thing is it has explanatory power and you can do the maths.

Now try that with your concept of God.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
There are many nonChristians who make sense when talking about the Christian God (not saying that I agree with them, but they don't make nonsensical babble). Some even are on this site.

Jon, I wasn't asking if they make sense or not. I was asking whether you can comprehend the Christian God as according to the orthodox doctrines.

Take an example. Why would an infinite entity care about you?

[Jon Miller]

But then how does your question make sense in the context of the conversation?

JM

[beingofone]

Kuciwalker:

You aren't a physicist if you don't do math.

The limitations you apply will always be trumped by reality, it keeps us humble.


Last Conformist:

Can we have aneeshm banned for misuse of the word "theory"?

LOL


Urban Ranger:

Here's the difference. For a scientific hypothesis or theory, the important thing is it has explanatory power and you can do the maths.

Now try that with your concept of God.

Talk to me, don`t talk down to me, and we just might learn something from each other. Often two opposing views may gain the most in honest discussion, conceding when the other has a valuable thought worth considering yes?

You have a very keen mind - but there are others on both sides.

To the point:
Reality is all realities, meaning, everything, excluding nothing that can possibly exist. It must be true in all possible worlds yes?

The problem with most scientific theories about the universe and its origin is the premise is plural and then unified. You begin with the fractal of all reality and work outward. You cannot begin with everything and work inward else your conclusion will bring a separated and truncated understanding.

If you use the law of identity to apply to the whole you must first use something that is true in all possible worlds. That is where you begin, not where you end up.

You must find the fractal that is identical to the Ultimate Reality. All of the listings you can give (experience, things, beings) are being considered by the only reality you can know or experience meaning your awareness.

Most people believe that their self is the "inner" and is somehow outside everything that appears in consciousness. They believe they are separate, and peering into the world. They believe that self is really there, even though it appears in consciousness the same as everything else.

And so the divorcing of the universe from the perceiver. There is not a single thing, appearance, experience, or being that is separate from the whole. Therefore the true self is the whole excluding nothing and including everything

All things exist relative to who and what you are, there is no other comparison that is accurate. This is why science can make incredible headway for everything except understanding who and what it is making the headway.

Who you are would be the only experience of what is as you cannot separate the observer or experiencer of reality from reality in and of itself. That is to say the full set of the universe must be the perceiver not what is being perceived.

This is the tricksey part of perception, it is to easy to project what is being perceived as distinct from the one perceiving. This is the beginning and not the conclusion as when the logic goes full circle it ends up where it began, with the observer.

How does *X* and *-X* appear without perception? What is the source of the appearance?
Logic defines all perceptions through comparisons, what is the source of logic and comparisons?
who or what is considering *X* and *-X*?
Could you give me a comparison of something while excluding the thinker?

Experience is the thing you have left when everything else is gone.

Any fractal you conceive is still a construct of the mind and so it is a model at its best. The model cannot take the place of reality, reality can only be experienced not duplicated.

There is no inherent existence apart from experience and as the some say "the perceiver". So we see the experience in and of itself and we also see the perceiver of the experience. This has been called the activity and the stillness. Eternal flux being perceived by eternal stillness.

To enjoin these two great truths is to see the whole picture. Usually most will focus on one or the other and become imbalanced. True balance is to know that the eternal constant is change and so lacking inherent existence. Equally true is the perceiver of the eternal change that remains a constant (from every memory) without change. It has no beginning and no end and so trandscends existence

The only reality that is possible in all possible worlds is your consciousness as there is nothing else that can be a unified set and excludes it as being a subset.


hERE iS tHE mATH -
0=consciousness
1=universe

0/1 = undefinable or zero or singularity
1/0 = 1 or universe

You should be familiar with one`s and zero`s by now.

[KrazyHorse]

What a meaningless post.

[Elok]

UR, I am NOT interested in yet another asinine faith-versus-reason debate. They go nowhere. I was merely pointing out that the idiosyncracy of the idea of God means nothing in itself. The ultimate nature of reality isn't going to be simple and easily understood, no matter what it is or which aspect of it you look at. That's all.

[Terra Nullius]

Apologies to those of us who are allergic to reading, I cut this down as far as I could without losing relevance.

The following comes from a book called Rainbow Spirit Theology which was published as a result of a conference held involving a group of aboriginal elders. The group included Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran and Uniting Church members. The text is a “theology in process” and “does not claim to speak for any official body or group within the Australian Churches.”


Appendix 1
The Land and The Beginning
Comments on Genesis 1 and 2

In Genesis 1:2, the land is already there - but unformed and devoid of life. Also present, above and below, are waters, here called 'the deep.' It is clear from verses 9 and 10 that the land is located under these waters, and is not as yet exposed to sight, or in a form we would recognise. When God separated the land from the waters, the land comes up and is visible.
This image of the land as a given, waiting to be transformed into land and sea as we now know them, is also typical of the picture of 'land at the beginning' in aboriginal dreaming stories. This image challenges the view commonly held by scholars, who have been greatly influenced by the Babylonian myth in which creation of land is one of the results of a battle against chaos. For these scholars, the chaos image is behind this passage in Genesis.
In the context of Rainbow Spirit Theology, there is no reason to import the concept of chaos at the beginning as integral to the text. The imagery of verse 2 makes excellent sense as land covered with water, waiting for the Creator Spirit, in whatever form, to commence transforming the scene.
The presence of the Creator Spirit at the beginning, which aboriginal peoples have spoken about, and been aware of, for a long time, is also explicit in the text of Genesis. In the text, this power is spoken of as the breath, wind or Spirit of God. This Spirit moves over the waters which cover the land. Thus the Creator Spirit is present from the beginning, and is associated with transforming the unformed land. The picture here is not one of a deity descending, in spectacular fashion, from some heavenly abode to create a world out of nothing. Rather the Creator Spirit is portrayed as moving across, and closely linked with, the land from the beginning.
...
Land is not created out of nothing. Rather, at the summons of the Creator Spirit, the land lying beneath the water 'appears.' The waters covering the land are gathered into seas, and the land appears from below as 'dry land.'
...
The verb 'appear' is especially important here. The form of the verb is used elsewhere, when God or an angel is revealed or 'appears.' The image is of the hidden land below 'appearing.' The land is thus a revelation, a manifestation that appears at the summons of God.
The image of land as a revelation is similar to the aboriginal concept of the land as sacred and linked with the Creator Spirit from the beginning.
Not only is the hidden presence of the land revealed, however; hidden powers lying deep within the land are also revealed. God does not say, 'Let there be vegetation' but rather, 'Let the land bring forth vegetation' (verse 11). The life-forces of vegetation within the land emerge as plant life at the impulse of the Creator Spirit. The land is thus the reservoir of all plant life.
Similarly, in verse 20, the Creator Spirit summons the waters to 'bring forth' life, everything from the smallest creature to the great sea monsters.
Thus, both the land and the sea are portrayed as bodies where life-forces are latent and from which they emerge as creatures, all the work of the Creator Spirit.
Even more striking, perhaps, is the fact that animal life, too, emerges from the land. This image is common in aboriginal dreaming stories. Kangaroos, dingos, lizards and all animal life emerge from the land. Once again, in Genesis 1:24, God issues a summons to the land.

Let the land bring forth living creatures of every kind, cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the land of every kind.

Thus every species of animal and insect life also emerges from the land. The land, it seems, held within it, from the beginning, the life-forces of these creatures; the Creator Spirit brings each into tangible form from the land.
Unlike animals and plants, human beings do not seem to emerge from the land in the same way. The Creator Spirit creates mortals in 'the image of God' as a distinct species accountable to God, and with the responsibility to 'rule over' all forms of life in the land, sea and air.
...
God blesses human beings so that they can exercise this function. To 'bless' means to impart life-power. By being imparted with this life-power, human beings are made partners with God in the task of creating and controlling life on land and sea.
...
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till and keep it.
...
Crucial here is the meaning of the Hebrew terms translated 'till' (abad) and 'keep (shamar). The Hebrew word 'abad' has two meanings, both of which seem to be implied in this text. The first is to till or tend the soil to make it productive. The second is to serve or be a servant to someone. Tending the land, therefore implies an attitude of respect and service to the land itself.
...
The Genesis 2 story, by contrast, emphasises the kinship between human beings and animals.
The story of Genesis 2 again begins with the land as formless and empty (Genesis 2:4b-5). Here the portrait is that of a featureless desert which God transforms into a garden with four rivers (2:8- 10).
It is from the very dust of this empty land that God forms the first human, Humans beings are made from the land and return to the land (3:19), a belief common to many aboriginal Australian groups.

[Terra Nullius]

Thus, both the land and the sea are portrayed as bodies where life-forces are latent and from which they emerge as creatures, all the work of the Creator Spirit.

This part, in particular, seems to be very similar to Hindu ideas of consciousness as an emergent property of matter.

Land is not created out of nothing.

Again, this idea has more in common with Hinduism and Classical thought than with typical interpretations of Christianity.

[Ben Kenobi]

a) There was some matter , or some formless thing , which existed before god did , and that god only gave the formless the form of the current creation

or that

b) There was nothing before God , and God himself in the beginning was without form , only a potentiality . Then God decided to make the potential the real , and then proceeded to transform himself , or his potential , into matter , and thus creation ( i.e. , that because something cannot come from nothing , God could not create matter from nothing , and thus had to create it out of himself )

Oh gosh good question.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

John 1:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it

First of all, God is eternal, he existed before there was a thing called time, and has always existed. There is nothing that existed before God.

The earth after having been made by God was formless, until he gave the earth and all matter form. First he created the matter, and then he gave the matter shape and form.

Now, when you ask the question of the form of God, God does not change. He has always been the same, and such, could not give himself form, any more then he could change himself. He has form, and has always had a form.

The difficulty is when you get into the Trinity. In John we see that God was there and yet the Word was with God, and the Word was with God before anything had been created. The Word is co-eternal with God, and has been begotten 'before all worlds'. The same is true of the Holy Spirit, as we see in the Genesis account, and the spirit of God hovered over the water.'

The second part of John says that all things were made through the Word, and nothing has been made without him. So even though you have God, it is correct to say that God made creation from himself, his Word.

So b is much more correct then a, however God has always had form even before Creation.

[SlowwHand]

Closest?

b) There was nothing before God , and God himself in the beginning was without form , only a potentiality . Then God decided to make the potential the real , and then proceeded to transform himself , or his potential , into matter , and thus creation ( i.e. , that because something cannot come from nothing , God could not create matter from nothing , and thus had to create it out of himself )

[Traianvs]

Originally posted by Sandman
According to theists, God created the universe. When asked who created God, they'll say that he just inexplicably exists.

David Hume pointed out that you could just as easily say the universe inexplicably exists, and leave God out of it.

Haha, that's brilliant

[Traianvs]

double post

[Berzerker]

Ben

First of all, God is eternal, he existed before there was a thing called time, and has always existed. There is nothing that existed before God.

The waters existed before God entered the picture in Genesis. Reading the first verse into the story is a mistake, the first verse sets up the story like a chapter heading. What follows the first verse is the Bible's description of God's creation of Heaven and Earth.

The earth after having been made by God was formless, until he gave the earth and all matter form. First he created the matter, and then he gave the matter shape and form.

The Earth wasn't made by God, it appeared when the waters below the firmament receded. Remember, "Earth" literally means "dry land", it doesn't mean this planet or even the surface. So its illogical for God to create the dry land (Earth) if the dry land is without form after God created it. Your interpretation requires us to believe God created Heaven and Earth twice.

Alot happens before God creates Heaven and Earth, the scene awaiting God is described - the waters, the breath or wind of God blowing across the face of the Deep, let there be light, etc...

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

"Now" is the first word of the story, it isnt a reference to the status of Heaven and Earth after they were created.

Terra - the wind or spirit of God has a mesopotamian origin, in the battle between Marduk and Tiamat, 7 "winds" are brought forth and I believe 4 are used as weapons by Marduk to dis-embowel Tiamat.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Elok
UR, I am NOT interested in yet another asinine faith-versus-reason debate. They go nowhere. I was merely pointing out that the idiosyncracy of the idea of God means nothing in itself. The ultimate nature of reality isn't going to be simple and easily understood, no matter what it is or which aspect of it you look at. That's all.

I have absolutely no idea what you are saying. Could you explain it in a little more detail?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
b) There was nothing before God , and God himself in the beginning was without form , only a potentiality . Then God decided to make the potential the real , and then proceeded to transform himself , or his potential , into matter , and thus creation ( i.e. , that because something cannot come from nothing , God could not create matter from nothing , and thus had to create it out of himself )

This reminds me of Escher's drawings. Esp. the one where the two hands draw each other.