i don't quite follow given god is necessary in the creation; whether ex nihilo or ex nihilo nihil fit.
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Ex Nihilo and the Theistic Perspective
- Thread starter Fool
- Start date
nothing = nil = null or empty. no thing means empty of form, or amorphous and having no contrast. a point itself is infinite. there is nothing to define/contrast it with
I have understood creating means that one creates something out of nothing. Therefore, if God is still creating, it is ex nihilo.
firedragon
Veteran Member
That is a surprising point.
Yes. Nothing exists for a second on it's own, God can't make anything independent of him no matter how powerful he is because only he truly exists independently. Life borrows from God without adding to the amount of existence there always was nor decreasing.
Indeed, a true nothing would have neither time nor place nor qualities of any kind.
Once there's a god, there's something, and after that, nothing could be ex nihilo.
(Indeed I see no credible alternative to matter and energy pre-existing the Big Bang.)
God allows free choice, and that randomizes things (random things are independent of God). The world would be boring to God if predictable (not random). Yet, some of the future is unchanging, and unchanging things can be predicted. So, the world is partly random and partly not.
Even in clouds we see organized patterns.
"God is formless, amorphous, no thing"? And we are made in God's image? True, I have to lose weight. My doctor told me that I have to get a body of an athlete, and I chose sumo wrestler.
But maybe we are spiritually, or intellectually in God's image? I'll start making commandments immediately.
rational experiences
Veteran Member
You are all lying as you live because everything exists first. Light existed.
Nothing your mind says is black emptiness known because you see in light.
Annihilation is you using a short termed express ex nihilo.
Nothing your mind says is black emptiness known because you see in light.
Annihilation is you using a short termed express ex nihilo.
We have a choice to believe that the universe was created from nothing, or that God created the universe and God was created from nothing.
Occum's Razor says that the simplest solution is the right one.
If something can spring from nothing, could it happen again and wipe us out?
If the universe is massive enough to pull all of the matter back again (I think that science established that it is not), then it is a black hole. But I was always told that no one could get into a black hole without being crushed. As it turns out, we're in an expanding universe (not one that is crushing us).
Once the universe expanded to the point that distant parts of it are moving away at faster than the speed of light (due to the acceleration of the expansion of the universe), it outpaces gravity. So no amount of gravity could pull back matter that travels away faster than the speed of light.
As the solar wind travels through interstellar material, it suddenly slows down to the speed of sound (this is called the break point), and it was physically observed by spacecrafts. It is interesting to note that this interstellar material exists (rather than space being a vacuum, it is filled with sparse matter....hydrogen and helium atoms). That sparse matter reddens light by scattering (blue changes direction). Could it be that the red shift (that is taken to be a Doppler red shift) to measure the speed of distant stars might instead be reddening due to travel through interstellar material?
We may never know the origin of the universe, but we can see what happened after it sprang into existence. It was, at one time, a dense plasma ball and the gravity was too strong for matter to form. As the universe expanded, mass became less dense, so that the plasma coalesced into mass (hydrogen gas). While it was a plasma ball, electromagnetic energy, in the form of light, was unable to escape the plasma ball, so it scattered within the plasma. As the mass coalesced the electromagnetic energy was free to exit. This electromagnetic energy is called the background radiation of the big bang (which proves that there was a big bang, and lends credence to the Lambda Cold Dark Matter theory). It is 2.725 degrees Kelvin, and the spectral radiance peaks at 160.23 GHz.
As a plasma ball, the universe wasn't expanding as fast as it did once matter coalesced.
Cosmic microwave background - Wikipedia
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/pdf/2020/07/aa37840-20.pdf
The links above explain more.
as explained by poster @blü 2 in post Ex Nihilo and the Theistic Perspective
god already exists and creates; so there is something already existing, creating, and nothing is not the case
if you're looking at a theistic reality, then the reality of a theistic believer is that god exists and creation can not be from nothing given god's participation in the process.
the input of god's participation, energy input is something.
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a fractal, image is only a smaller reflection/aspect of the whole. it isn't the whole. so then we are part of the whole, as jesus implied in i am in the father and the father is in me, or in my father's house there are many mansions. Being instilled as it were.
john 14:20
Wildswanderer
Veteran Member
No because it started from nothing. God just reforms what he already made.
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
At what point did this current creation begin, that is, did it have a finite beginning in our universe?