Posted on 03/30/2023 7:24:41 AM PDT by Red Badger
The point I’m trying to make is that a singularity is a mathematical concept, not a physical reality. There are many mathematical concepts that simply cannot exist in the physical world. There are functions that go from - infinity to + infinity in zero time. There are functions that have finite volume, but infinite surface area - you can fill them with paint, but you can’t paint them with the paint they contain. And there are singularities. In many instances, over the immense space of the universe, black holes can be treated as singularities. The mathematics of singularities will adequately describe their behavior. That doesn’t make them singularities.
The Big Bang theory treats the universe as a singularity at its start. The problem there is that the math still doesn’t work out. That’s why cosmic ‘inflation’ was invented. The math around the start of the Big Bang works out just fine, as long as the laws of physics are ignored during the first few hundred thousand years, or so. That’s not a ‘theory’, that’s a cop-out.
My preferred viewpoint towards evolution (devolution) and long ages is:
Pantheism (wherein God and the Universe are identified with each other) is commonly considered to have been first formalized a few centuries ago by Baruch Spinoza, though numerous pagan religions going back to Antiquity had pantheistic elements.
Given that it's been around for a while, it's not exactly that radical.
It's also heretical, contradicting many aspects of Divine Revelation, and incompatible with what God has revealed about Himself. To quote from the Old Catholic Encyclopedia on Pantheism:
It has often been claimed that pantheism by teaching us to see God in everything gives us an exalted idea of His wisdom, goodness, and power, while it imparts to the visible world a deeper meaning. In point of fact, however, it makes void the attributes which belong essentially to the Divine nature For the pantheist God is not a personal Being. He is not an intelligent Cause of the world, designing, creating and governing it in accordance with the free determination of His wisdom. If consciousness is ascribed to Him as the one Substance, extension is also said to be His attribute (Spinoza), or He attains to self-consciousness only through a process of evolution (Hegel). But this very process implies that God is not from eternity perfect: He is forever changing, advancing from one degree of perfection to another, and helpless to determine in what direction the advance shall take place. Indeed, there is no warrant for saying that He "advances" or becomes more "perfect"; at most we can say that He, or rather It, is constantly passing into other forms. Thus God is not only impersonal, but also changeable and finite-which is equivalent to saying that He is not God.
It is true that some pantheists, such as Paulsen, while frankly denying the personality of God, pretend to exalt His being by asserting that He is "supra-personal." If this means that God in Himself is infinitely beyond any idea that we can form of Him, the statement is correct; but if it means that our idea of Him is radically false and not merely inadequate, that consequently we have no right to speak of infinite intelligence and will, the statement is simply a makeshift which pantheism borrows from agnosticism. Even then the term "supra-personal" is not consistently applied to what Paulsen calls the All-One; for this, if at all related to personality, should be described as infra-personal.
Once the Divine personality is removed, it is evidently a misnomer to speak of God as just or holy, or in any sense a moral Being. Since God, in the pantheistic view, acts out of sheer necessity--that is, cannot act otherwise--His action is no more good than it is evil. To say, with Fichte, that God is the moral order, is an open contradiction; no such order exists where nothing is free, nor could God, a non-moral Being, have established a moral order either for Himself or for other beings. If, on the other hand, it be maintained that the moral order does exist, that it is postulated by our human judgments, the plight of pantheism is no better; for in that case all the actions of men, their crimes as well as their good deeds, must be imputed to God. Thus the Divine Being not only loses the attribute of absolute holiness, but even falls below the level of those men in whom moral goodness triumphs over evil.
There are many more such criticisms of pantheism, but I'll leave off with this one: if pantheism is true (that the Creator and the Creation are one), then what was the point of the Incarnation of Christ?
As you would say MeganC, regarding putting God into a box: that is not the case. Rather, it is equivalent to hearing a false gospel, and declaring it anathema, as St. Paul taught the Galatians.
Is God everywhere?
For as Christ Himself said: "God is a spirit; and they that adore Him, must adore Him in spirit and in truth." - John 4:24
Now I'll ask you a question: you previously postulated that "Why is it then so hard to consider that maybe God is everywhere because He consists of everything and everywhere?"
Does that mean, then, that even Satan and all the devils and demons could also be part of God?
Did God create Lucifer?
He did. Your apparent implication — that created beings retain some aspect of the essence or being of the Creator, such that they are therefore still a part of the one who created them — does not follow.
I’ll ask again: do you think that Satan and all the devils and demons could be a part of God?
You already answered your question when you acknowledged that God is everywhere.
If God is omnipresent in creation then everywhere you look, there He is.
We retain free will yet we are His cteations and He is present in us like it or not.
If He is omnipresent then the difference between Creator and creation is semantic.
“There are many mathematical concepts that simply cannot exist in the physical world.”
I enjoy FR.
One of the most enjoyable parts is when folks make definitive statements about topics philosophers have been debating for thousands of years.
We have no clue what is “possible” and what is not in the physical world—until we understand all of it.
Homo sapiens is just beginning on that journey—arrogance is usually found in smart teenagers that are so proud of what they have learned that they can’t focus on what they do not know.
You seem to have a particular conception of omnipresence — namely, pantheism — that does not comport with Divine Revelation.
If He is omnipresent then the difference between Creator and creation is semantic.
It's hardly semantics. Distinguishing the modes and operations of God and His creatures is important if we are to avoid having erroneous ideas about our Creator, for they could easily lead to false implications (such as: if everything is part of God, then God is also the author of sin and moral evil), or to render things explicitly revealed by God into utter nonsense (such as the world's necessity for a Redeemer; if Creation is already part of God, did He therefore redeem Himself?).
These sorts of questions require distinguishing between such various things like essence, being, nature, accidents, presence, and so forth, and what it means to be everywhere to begin with: "Space, like time, is one of the measures of the finite, and as by the attribute of eternity, we describe God's transcendence of all temporal limitations, so by the attribute of immensity we express His transcendent relation to space. There is this difference, however, to be noted between eternity and immensity, that the positive aspect of the latter is more easily realized by us, and is sometimes spoken of, under the name of omnipresence, or ubiquity, as if it were a distinct attribute. Divine immensity means on the one hand that God is necessarily present everywhere in space as the immanent cause and sustainer of creatures, and on the other hand that He transcends the limitations of actual and possible space, and cannot be circumscribed or measured or divided by any spatial relations. To say that God is immense is only another way of saying that He is both immanent and transcendent in the sense already explained. As some one has metaphorically and paradoxically expressed it, "God's centre is everywhere, His circumference nowhere." That God is not subject to spatial limitations follows from His infinite simplicity; and that He is truly present in every place or thing — that He is omnipresent or ubiquitous — follows from the fact that He is the cause and ground of all reality. According to our finite manner of thinking we conceive this presence of God in things spatial as being primarily a presence of power and operation — immediate Divine efficiency being required to sustain created beings in existence and to enable them to act; but, as every kind of Divine action ad extra is really identical with the Divine nature or essence, it follows that God is really present everywhere in creation not merely per virtuten et operationem, but per essentiam. In other words God Himself, or the Divine nature, is in immediate contact with, or immanent in, every creature — conserving it in being and enabling it to act. But while insisting on this truth we must, if we would avoid contradiction, reject every form of the pantheistic hypothesis. While emphasizing Divine immanence we must not overlook Divine transcendence."
I think Thomas Aquinas would provide clarity on the exact nature of what you're trying to grasp at, per Question 8 of his Summa: "The existence of God in things."
He is indeed everywhere, in the sense that all created beings require God as their efficient cause, and therefore cannot exist without Him. It does not follow, however, that creatures — being corporeal beings — therefore retain the essence or attributes that are proper to God simply because they were created by Him.
Your ideas, insofar as they've been presented, are not new. They've been reviewed, analyzed, debated, and categorized long before you or I were born.
Pantheism is the worship of all gods. I never said any such thing. May as well accuse me of fascism while you’re at it.
The worship (or at least acknowledgement) of all gods/deities is Omnism, not pantheism.
Pantheism is "the philosophical religious belief that reality, the universe and the cosmos are identical to divinity and a supreme being or entity, pointing to the universe as being an immanent creator deity who is still expanding and creating, which has existed since the beginning of time, or that all things compose an all-encompassing, immanent god or goddess and regards the universe as a manifestation of a deity." Alternatively, "the doctrine that the universe conceived of as a whole is God and, conversely, that there is no God but the combined substance, forces, and laws that are manifested in the existing universe. The cognate doctrine of panentheism asserts that God includes the universe as a part though not the whole of his being."
Is this not an accurate representation of the ideas you've disclosed on this thread?
The word means both things and with that we are done.
“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light except for bad news which obeys rules of its own.”
I am done here.
The Infinite Improbability Drive was a wonderful new method of crossing interstellar distances in a mere nothingth of a second, without “tedious mucking about in hyperspace.”
Yes, it is quite entertaining, isn’t it?
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