In this post I will deal mainly with two questions: (1) Is it possible that transcendent God could be "personal?" (2) How can God be Immanent and transcendent? (subtext: is this just trying to have it both ways?).I will not concern myself with proving God exists. I believe in God so I will assume God and then concern myself with understanding what I believe. There is no way to have certain knowledge in terms of the transcendent so we have to content ourselves with metaphor, everything points to meaning that we never really have.
What do I mean by "personal?" I use the phrase "concision" because because persona implies different things (see my last post on Monday). I do not necessarily mean ratiocination. Go does not need to think about things in the conventional sense yet can have personal awareness; will, volition,and understanding. I think of God as being the basis of consciousness the source of the conscious. I don't say God has a mind I said God is mind. As such God's awareness is on a higher plane than our own. We can't understand the level of conscious awareness at which God dwells.
There are many reasons to believe that God is "personal." I have three or four major arguments, I will name them I wont bother to discuss them at length just enough to make clear my idea:
(1) The origin of the universe requires decision making ability including indeterminacy (exhibited in fine tuning)
In other words the ability of the "creator" or whatever originating agent is responsible for reality to alter that reality as the need arises, even if that agency is quantum interminably or is responsible or the indeterminacy.
(2) consciousness not reducible to brain chemistry.
The irreconcilability of consciousness is not proof of a transcendent consciousness it's a good reason to think there might be one.
(3) sense of the numenous--mystical experience.
The most important:
(4) Argument from temporal beginning.
This argumemt assumes that infinite causal regress is illogical [1]For this reason we must assume without God as eternal reality we start from a position of absolute nothing, not vacuum flux but real nothing since even vacuum flux must be explained, so we start with a real lack of anything. But since nothing is beyond time there is no time, thus there could be no change, There could be becoming since that would require something from nothing. This is a problem for atheists as well because they cannot explain how anything could cone to be.[2]
In the quantum world...the world that the universe inhabited when it was less than a second old...many things work very differently. One of these is that time itself does not mean quite the same thing as it does to us in the world- at-large. Although we have no complete theory of the relevant physics, there are many indications from the mathematics that yield sound experimental results, that time itself may have ceased to have much meaning near the Big Bang event. This means that there was no 'time' as we know this concept 'before' the Big Bang. That being the case, the question of what happened before the Big Bang is now a question without any possible physical answer. The evolution of the universe has always been a process of transformation from one state to the next as the universe has expanded. At some point in this process, looking back at the Big Bang, we enter a state so removed from any that we now know, than even the laws that govern it become totally obscure to science itself. In the quantum world, we see things 'appearing' out of nothing all the time. The universe may have done the same thing. What this means to us may never be fully understood.[3]Hawking tells us, "As we shall see, the concept of time has no meaning before the beginning of the universe. This was first pointed out by St. Augustine. ... he said that time was a property of the universe that God created, and that time did not exist before the beginning of the universe."[4]
The most reasonable answer is that universal mind can alter the rules at will. That is the only answer that makes sense given the rules we know and the assumptions we must make. Since I have argued that God is being itself, we can understand that if God is mind then mind and not energy/matter is the
basis of reality, This is what physicistAmit Goswami (U, Oregan) argues:
Amit Goswami: The current worldview has it that everything is made of matter, and everything can be reduced to the elementary particles of matter, the basic constituents—building blocks—of matter. And cause arises from the interactions of these basic building blocks or elementary particles; elementary particles make atoms, atoms make molecules, molecules make cells, and cells make brain. But all the way, the ultimate cause is always the interactions between the elementary particles. This is the belief—all cause moves from the elementary particles. This is what we call "upward causation." So in this view, what human beings—you and I—think of as our free will does not really exist. It is only an epiphenomenon or secondary phenomenon, secondary to the causal power of matter. And any causal power that we seem to be able to exert on matter is just an illusion. This is the current paradigm. [5]The assumption is nothing can happen in a timeless void but that assumes physics, If we assume the core of reality is ran not by laws of physics but by a mind that thinks up laws of physics then it is the imagination of mind not physics that runs things.
As to the swede question how could God possibly be in both worlds. We assume God creates time then obviously God is beyond time, But why assume that God can't stick his finger into the temporal setting? I also want to point out as Hawking documented this stuff goes back to St Augustine, I did not make it up.
It is not a matter of having it both ways it;s a matter of realizing what it would mean for God to be being itself, for mind to be the basis of reality. There are a couple of caveats: (1) Pantheism, (2) determinism. Evangelicals are paranoid of pantheism. Any suggestion of God being in physical things is abhorrent to them. I don't know how they keep from panic over of Eph, 4:10 "He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens in order to fill the whole universe,'" This is is not a pantheism. It's merely the realization that if God is the page upon which the line of time is drawn he is bigger than time and fills all physical reality in a couple of ways. That does not mean there's nay confusion between creature and creator. One thing it could mean is that Go is the strong force holding all reality together, that would not mean a blurred diction between creature and creator.
The deterministic question assumes that God as mind would have to be thinking about every move we make and thus predetermining what we do,that is not my concept. There are several alternatives to that idea within the range of God as mind that produces the universe out of thought, without assuming God must plan out all our thoughts or actions, For one thing God could imagine the concept of autonomous world ran by automatic laws and humanity that evolves out of these laws then allow it to happen without having to imagine it all. It's a matter of God thinking of the concept of autonomy. Since God doesn't need to think in terns of a series of steps or to contemplate a mental dialectic within himself.
The bottom line on all of this is God;s transcendence, It's all beyond our understanding and all we say about is metaphor, but all we say is metaphor anyway.
Sources
[1] Joseph Hinman, "Against Inanimate Casual Regression," The Religious a priori, stationary website Christian apologetic, no date given
http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com/2010/08/against-infinite-causal-regress.html
(accessed 3/7/18)
[2] Joseph Hinman, "Argument from Temporal Beginning" Doxa:Christia Thoughtin The 21st Century, List of God Arguments. Stationary website, no date given, no page number given,
http://www.doxa.ws/meta_crock/Berkeley.html#temp
(accessed 3/7/18)
[3] Sten Odenwald quoted in Hinman, Ibid. original Sten Odewald, "Before The Big Bang," The Astronomy Cafe, stationary website by Odenwald, (July 2017).
http://sten.astronomycafe.net/beforebigbang/
(accessed 3/7/18)
An even stronger quote by Odenwald speakimgof theeworld beyond the Big bang:
There were, presumably, no particles of matter or even photons of light then, because these particles were born from the vacuum fluctuations in the fabric of spacetime that attended the creation of the universe. In such a world, nothing happens because all 'happenings' take place within the reference frame of time and space. The presence of a single particle in this nothingness would have instantaneously broken the perfect symmetry of this era because there would then have been a favored point in space different from all others; the point occupied by the particle. This nothingness didn't evolve either, because evolution is a time-ordered process. The introduction of time as a favored coordinate would have broken the symmetry too. It would seem that the 'Trans-Creation' state is beyond conventional description because any words we may choose to describe it are inherently laced with the conceptual baggage of time and space. Heinz Pagels reflects on this 'earliest' stage by saying, "The nothingness 'before' the creation of the universe is the most complete void we can imagine. No space, time or matter existed. It is a world without place, without duration or eternity..."
[4]Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam, 1988,8.
[5] Amit Goswami, "An Interview With Amit Goswami." TWM from Craig Hamilton What is Enlightenment.
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~sai/goswam1.htm
(accessed 3/7/18)
notice that Goswami probably is pantheistic I am not endorsing his views,I think his initial setting up idea the basis of reality is mind as the basis is valid and I embrace that,I don't draw the same concussions from it he does.
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As to the swede question how could God possibly be in both worlds. We assume God creates time then obviously God is beyond time ... It is not a matter of having it both ways it;s a matter of realizing what it would mean for God to be being itself, for mind to be the basis of reality.
ReplyDelete- Joe, I urge you to read my article again, and this time, try to understand what I'm saying. I said that the conflict is not between OUR time and God's time. Those two things are independent. But the issue I raised is your claim that God is both impersonal/unchanging and personal/dynamic. Those two things are logically inconsistent. It's the same as saying A is true and A is not true. It's a contradiction.
Link is ---> here. <--- (do you see the link?)
ReplyDeleteGod in one aspect could be impersonal/unchanging while being personal and dynamic in his energies/properties. Like I've been saying, it all depends on the context of what we're talking about. As Moslems believe, God has many attributes and characteristics but is at the same time one.
ReplyDeleteOK. So in his essence, God is round. But in his properties, he is square. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.
ReplyDelete"The most reasonable answer is that universal mind can alter the rules at will. That is the only answer that makes sense given the rules we know and the assumptions we must make."
ReplyDeleteI don't see how this follows.
What rules are changed? How, exactly, does a mind (any mind) change them? Does the change take place in time or not?
Eric Sotnak said...
ReplyDelete"The most reasonable answer is that universal mind can alter the rules at will. That is the only answer that makes sense given the rules we know and the assumptions we must make."
I don't see how this follows.
What rules are changed? How, exactly, does a mind (any mind) change them? Does the change take place in time or not?
(1) There is no change in a timeless void
(2) the universe emerged out of as timelessvoid
(3)If 1 is true then then 2 should not have happened;no change in timeless void, we start with timeless void there should be no change thus no universe,
that rule is violated so the best answer as to how is that something changed the rule,what better to do that than the mind that wrote the rule?
- Joe, I urge you to read my article again, and this time, try to understand what I'm saying. I said that the conflict is not between OUR time and God's time. Those two things are independent. But the issue I raised is your claim that God is both impersonal/unchanging and personal/dynamic. Those two things are logically inconsistent. It's the same as saying A is true and A is not true. It's a contradiction.
ReplyDeleteI did not say God is impersonal and personal,I said i don't like the term "personal" i prefer to call it something else. I did say God's form of consciousness is beyond our understanding that is not the same as being impersonal. I said God has will and volition.
Nor did did I say that God is changing Being dynamic does not mean essential change.God can alter his behavior without changing his essence.
I did not say God is impersonal and personal,I said i don't like the term "personal" i prefer to call it something else. I did say God's form of consciousness is beyond our understanding that is not the same as being impersonal. I said God has will and volition.
ReplyDeleteNor did did I say that God is changing Being dynamic does not mean essential change.God can alter his behavior without changing his essence.
- OK. I must have misinterpreted what you said. It now appears that you believe in a dynamic, personal God whose ESSENCE is unchanging. This later post does make it more clear. But what you said earlier did seem contradictory.
(1) There is no change in a timeless void
- Why should you assume that? Physics tells us that "nothing" is unstable. It's where universes come from.
I did not say God is impersonal and personal,I said i don't like the term "personal" i prefer to call it something else. I did say God's form of consciousness is beyond our understanding that is not the same as being impersonal. I said God has will and volition.
ReplyDeleteNor did did I say that God is changing Being dynamic does not mean essential change.God can alter his behavior without changing his essence.
- OK. I must have misinterpreted what you said. It now appears that you believe in a dynamic, personal God whose ESSENCE is unchanging. This later post does make it more clear. But what you said earlier did seem contradictory.
sometimes i forget most people don;t know the socialized jargon I deal in during my seminary years,I forget to explain things.
(1) There is no change in a timeless void
- Why should you assume that? Physics tells us that "nothing" is unstable. It's where universes come from.
when they say that they are not talking about real actual nothing, they are talking about field which is what used be called Vacuum flux. it was not that long ago that it was BB cosmology swaying no change in timeless void, Hawking say it in brief history,
Quantum events only happen in time. Vacuum flux is in time not beyond time.
ReplyDeletewhen they say that they are not talking about real actual nothing, they are talking about field which is what used be called Vacuum flux
ReplyDelete- Call it whatever you like. It's still just a math equation. There's nothing there until particles come out of it.
it was not that long ago that it was BB cosmology swaying no change in timeless void, Hawking say it in brief history
- A Brief History of Time is outdated. Hawking has revised some of his views since then.
Quantum events only happen in time. Vacuum flux is in time not beyond time.
- Events that happen in our universe are in our time. Current cosmological theory posits that a quantum event initiated the universe itself. Obviously, that couldn't have happened in our time, which didn't begin until the universe began to exist. The thing is, time is not some absolute thing. Time is relative to the observer. Our time began with the universe. From a perspective outside our universe, there could still be time - just not the same time that we experience.
Joe Hinman said...
ReplyDeleteQuantum events only happen in time. Vacuum flux is in time not beyond time.
3:28 PM Delete
Blogger im-skeptical said...
when they say that they are not talking about real actual nothing, they are talking about field which is what used be called Vacuum flux
- Call it whatever you like. It's still just a math equation. There's nothing there until particles come out of it.
that's silly, you are trying to parle the fictionalization of one concept into the actuality of another based upon word play revolving around the term:"nothing,?
that's like saying superman is real because the idea of him exists,
it was not that long ago that it was BB cosmology swaying no change in timeless void, Hawking say it in brief history
- A Brief History of Time is outdated. Hawking has revised some of his views since then.
no it;s not. you are trying blur the distinction between two totally different things. I;ve already quoted experts saying QM does not ply to mega structures like the universe as a whole. One reason is because QM events take place in space/time and the nothingness that can't be violated is the nothing that is beyond space/time,
Quantum events only happen in time. Vacuum flux is in time not beyond time.
- Events that happen in our universe are in our time. Current cosmological theory posits that a quantum event initiated the universe itself.
NO it doesn't, It's not a scientific theory it's atheist psycho babble, it's an atheist statement of faith a statement of the cultus affirming its faith,
check out y post on CADRE Monday morning I will quote scientists research scientists saying so and laughing at Krauss,
Obviously, that couldn't have happened in our time, which didn't begin until the universe began to exist. The thing is, time is not some absolute thing. Time is relative to the observer. Our time began with the universe. From a perspective outside our universe, there could still be time - just not the same time that we experience.
more psychobabble, you re speaking in slogans now,
5:21 PM Delete
"Quantum events only happen in time."
ReplyDeleteActually, maybe not. The problem here is that our standard conception of time includes the presumption that there are absolute relations of temporal priority or simultaneity for events. But We already know that this is false under special relativity. Another problem is created by the fact that temporal priority tracks the thermodynamic arrow. So when we rewind things all the way to the Big Bang, we also reach the limit of the thermodynamic arrow. Beyond that, we cannot make meaningful judgments of temporal priority (that's one of the points Hawking makes). So, in particular, when we reach the BB, we can't say that it was preceded by a fluctuation within the quantum vacuum, nor that it was simultaneous with it.
"what better to do that than the mind that wrote the rule?"
ReplyDeleteThis answer only works if a mind wrote the rule to begin with.
check out y post on CADRE Monday morning I will quote scientists research scientists saying so and laughing at Krauss
ReplyDelete- I keep telling you - it is a dogmatic philosophical position that nothing comes from nothing. You certainly can't prove it. But modern observation refutes it. Still, those who refuse to give up their dogmatic belief just won't let it go. Those are the very same ones who laugh at Krauss (and many others, like Hawking, who you are touting as an expert right here in this thread). They insist that nothing really is something, but there;s nothing there. They say well, it's a quantum field. But the quantum field consists of equations on a chalkboard. It has NO SUBSTANCE.
What do you mean by "substance"? Doesn't that term become slippery at the quantum level?
ReplyDeleteCan't help thinking of this quote from the Rg Veda:
ReplyDelete"There was neither non-existence nor existence then.
There was neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond."
What I mean by no substance is no matter, no energy, and nothing that can be detected by any means. And before you start talking about the energy density of the quantum vacuum, you should be aware that that is the average energy of the virtual particles that emerge from it - not of the vacuum itself. The "quantum field" is a mathematical contrivance that explains the emergence of these particles. But there's nothing there.
ReplyDeleteI keep telling you - it is a dogmatic philosophical position that nothing comes from nothing.
ReplyDeleteThat is actually not the basis of my argument,I never advanced it in this discussion or in the one on the Cadre blog. True I believe it but it's not the basis of my argument you have not answered that.
Moreover, yours is a dogmatic philosophical faith statement that Qm particles come out of nothing,
You certainly can't prove it.
I don't have to prove it because my assertion has presumption since as your argument you have the BOP
But modern observation refutes it.
no that's what i just beat you on CADRE. you have no proof of any kind. that it is actually true nothing I demonstrated amply that it is not, you are over here begging the question
Still, those who refuse to give up their dogmatic belief just won't let it go. Those are the very same ones who laugh at Krauss (and many others, like Hawking, who you are touting as an expert right here in this thread). They insist that nothing really is something, but there;s nothing there. They say well, it's a quantum field. But the quantum field consists of equations on a chalkboard. It has NO SUBSTANCE.
physicists call something "nothing." Dr. Oddenwald says "physicists say 'nothing' they really mean vacuum flux."
"FOR a half century, physicists have known that there is no such thing as absolute nothingness, and that the vacuum of empty space, devoid of even a single atom of matter, seethes with subtle activity. "
Linki
Skep you assert that I must be advancing the bromides of popular apologetic and because you have no respect for any Christian you studly assert that rather than answer my arguments. while you are busy beating up those windmills and straw men you totality miss the arguments made.
ReplyDeleteMy argument that the universe must have a cause is based upon 100% observation with 0% support for the imposing view, WE only observe things being caused by necessities not popping out of true nothing. The issue because "do Qm particles com from true nothing?" you have no proof that they do I've offered tons of evidence that they don't,most of that i is on CADRE blog. has not been developed here.
You have not backed your position with nothing other than your own insistence that just be right, That will not cut it in debate,
Eric Sotnak said...
ReplyDeleteCan't help thinking of this quote from the Rg Veda:
"There was neither non-existence nor existence then.
There was neither the realm of space nor the sky which is beyond."
Christian Platonists such as Platinus and John of Sysiopolis say the same,
I think the Veda is saying it was nothing.
ReplyDeleteNeither something nor nothing.....
ReplyDeleteTillich reads that as existence vs being.
ReplyDeleteWhat I mean by no substance is no matter, no energy, and nothing that can be detected by any means. And before you start talking about the energy density of the quantum vacuum, you should be aware that that is the average energy of the virtual particles that emerge from it - not of the vacuum itself. The "quantum field" is a mathematical contrivance that explains the emergence of these particles. But there's nothing there
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing there the way you're defining "nothing." A common understanding of substance is "bearer of properties." A lot of what's posited at the quantum level is inferred from what can be empirically detected. the inferential chains can be indirect and long. At a small enough scale, everything physics studies and posits are just causal dispositions anyway, kinda like a "quantum field."
You say that the quantum field is a "mathematical contrivance," but from what you've written on here, I thought you were a scientific realist of some kind, not an instrumentalist. The working hypothesis of science, imo and I take it in yours, is that it's aiming at correspondence with reality in some sense.
I think of "nothing" as no substance, property, or event, no field, no information,...Is it conceivable that there are worlds with no "quantum field"? Is there anything self-contradictory about such a world?