Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Cato1

Are you certain that the void (i.e., blank non-entity, perfect emptiness) has to have come from something or from somewhere? Why?


6 posted on 02/01/2005 6:08:40 AM PST by snarks_when_bored
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies ]


To: snarks_when_bored

I have to leave but I really want to hear the answer!
sundero


7 posted on 02/01/2005 6:44:11 AM PST by brytlea
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies ]

To: snarks_when_bored; Cato1

I think you and certainly Cato1 misconstrue the philosophical and theological notion of the void.

The void is not 'perfect emptiness' since 'emptiness' implies extent
without content. The void simply isn't, therefore it doesn't 'come from something or from somewhere' because it isn't.

Theology is the one place where ordinary language and concepts collapse into complete irrelevancy in a more complete failure than in discussing quantum mechanics (where they don't do very well either).

Outside of creation (I don't want to use 'before' since time, as well as space are created), there is not God and the Void, but only the Uncreated God. 'EgO eimi ho On' (using o for omicron and O for omega and an h for the 'rough breathing') God replies from the burning bush when asked His name. (As an Orthodox Christian I regard the Septuigent, Greek Old Testament as authoritative, as did, evidently, the authors of the New Testament). In English, roughly "I am The Existing One" (or better "I am The Being" but with 'being' as a part of the verb to be rather than the English noun). Only God has absolute, uncontingent, unconditioned existence. As a guard against attaching to Him our finite conception of existence, some of the Church Fathers said things like "It is not strictly correct to say that God exists. Not that He lacks existence,
but that his supraexistential being is beyond existence." (from Dionysius
the Areopagites' The Names of God), or even "I believe in God, God does not exist." (I forget which of the Cappadocian Fathers).

All binary distinctions, being vs. non-being, fullness vs. emptiness, unity vs. multiplicity, even transcendence vs. immanence, are created. God is Uncreated.

(As an aside, I would note for Orthodox and Latin Christians creation ex nihilo is a Biblical doctrine, while for protestants it isn't: the only Scriptural testimony for the doctrine occurs in 2nd Macabbees--the widow Solomonia in exhorting her sons to accept martyrdom rather than abandon Judaism for paganism, testifies 'He created the world from nothing".)

BTW: Is the snark a boojum?


9 posted on 02/01/2005 7:07:10 AM PST by The_Reader_David
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson