I agree. With ya so far.
This is supposedly the case, as I see no particular reason not to run with it for the time being.
And this is where I get lost again. The conscious decision is a big if. And it doesn't quite follow in my mind that any sort of deity would even need a model or concept to create something. Model and concepts also required to be made, and thus there would need to be a model or concept for how models and concepts are even made, ad infinitum. How do you make a model or a concept without things to make it first? And these apparent "attributes" as they are referenced to seem to be a matter of an unknown "arrangement" so not appear apparent to me at all. The design I'm familiar with how humans do it is no where to found in nature.
Ad infinitum... hmmmmm... that might be the point.
I'm still considering such things -and do
not (edited from "now" -which changed the whole meaning -oooops) know the complete answer... but....
Possibly because you cannot see the forest for the trees.
Though it may be impossible to completely isolate a portion of that which we call matter -or whatever else is around us....as it is already in motion...
When we do isolate it as much as possible given our present ability, we can see that not a great deal happens to it (or we can not see anything happening) until we cause something to happen to it.
I do not know if we can completely isolate something so that nothing happens to it.
We are told that God makes something other of himself (though "he" changes not) -and it may be that God self-created...having always been what was and will be.
Religious people tend to shy away from thinking God -being eternal -
had a beginning, but God is quoted as saying he
is the beginning,
was in the beginning -and is also the end (which will never end) -but knowing what is meant by that is difficult.
God began the "universe project" (some do not believe so), and has declared from the beginning its end state -but that end state is that of the increase of the government of Christ there will be no end.
If God is that by which all things consist, then God would be the "God project"' which will never cease, and which has many beginnings. God said now I will exalt myself, so he was not always as exalted, because he had not yet put things or beings below him to be above -and it is also impossible that anything be above him, as there is no above him.
Our confusion as to what it means that God is eternal is not really different than our confusion as to how the things that were became what they are.
Some believe the Big Bang was the beginning of everything -including time.
It was certainly the beginning of the universe and universal time.
It was certainly always possible before it happened.
It may be impossible for the Big Bang to have happened without a creator or designer -but it may be that the creator or designer began himself -or has always been beginning himself -in the same manner as some believe the big bang began itself.
Perhaps the big bang was only a singularity within a singularity which extracted itself into a self-aware designer first -then designed the rest.
The difference would be that the universe was created to be self-extracting -and that God would have literally extracted himself from potential.
The Universe singularity contained or expressed massive amounts of information -but perhaps the God singularity was potential himself/itself.
Perhaps the massive amount of information contained within or expressed by the Big Bang is itself evidence or proof of God -and the Big Bang itself is evidence or proof of the nature of God.
The universe singularity caused something extremely complex -which suggests to me it was a complex singularity -even though it was as simple as the universe could be.
It seems reasonable to me that something greater than the big bang must have been responsible for causing it, but also that the something greater must have had a much more simple initial state than the big bang.
It seems true that there was always something which could become something else -and it may be true that something is an attribute of some"one".
We can know that we were always possible -perhaps inevitable.
We are some"ones".
Perhaps this could not be possible if there was not always some"one".
We create because we are configured to to so.
All that exists and becomes something else was originally -or always -configured to allow it to come to pass.
Perhaps God is the some one and the some thing which has always existed -both becoming something else -the actor and the acted upon.
As for irreducibility -I have no idea -except that everything can never be reduced to literally nothing. Perhaps because some"ones" exist, "one" has always existed and cannot literally be reduced to none.
It is easy for us to understand the possibility of eternity forward in time, but perhaps an eternity backward in time is just a matter of looking the other way.
Or.... If universal time began with the universe singularity, perhaps God time began with the God singularity.
If science believes the universe did not need a creator, why would it demand that the creator have a creator? If they are wrong about the universe singularity, they might be correct in essence concerning the God singularity.
I am not saying this is true -just thinking (and see those thoughts as in no way blasphemous or against even what is said in scripture), but we may not even have enough reference or processing ability to wrap our newbie heads around what actually happened.
My head hurts.... I'm going to do something else.
