A very strange universe

[colmywaykurtz]

But maybe it’s not about material beings at all. We are informed that angels somehow have a role in the universe. I have wondered, since we really don’t know what their nature is, whether perhaps they ARE the principles by which the universe operates. Are they perhaps something vastly more magnificent than singers before the throne of God? One, perhaps, “thinks into operation” the action of quarks, for example, as a conduit from the Mind of God? Another IS the action of black holes or time? Maybe the vastness of the universe (particularly any part we will never see or even imagine) is not so much for us as for them. Is the “celestial harmony” their interaction; their “song”?

I recall St. Francis of Assisi’s seeing some immensely vast presence in the heavens, or perceiving it somehow. What was it?

We don’t know here, but it’s interesting to think about.

That could well be, that “principles” thing. In the cosmology of Shintoism, the “kami” are such beings. Similarly for the “teoyoma” of Aztec cosmology.

 

[Ridgerunner]

That could well be, that “principles” thing. In the cosmology of Shintoism, the “kami” are such beings. Similarly for the “teoyoma” of Aztec cosmology.

There is nothing other than the limitations of human imagination that says a “principle” can’t be a self-aware being or an aspect thereof.

I don’t think we really know a whole lot about angels except that they exist, are non-corporeal beings and are so magnificent that if we ever “met” one, we would be convinced that it was God.

 

[norain]

If there is *no *God or natural processes work entirely independently of Him then obviously there is not a problem. Predators are seen, not from the perspective of good and evil (there being no such things), but from the viewpoint of convenient and inconvenient. The philosophical conclusion from this line of reasoning is that it is better to be a predator.

Lions eat, they are carnivores and were designed that way. I don’t think they can be considered evil by what they naturally do. This is further argument in favor of the notion that evil exists not in the act but as the disconnect between intent and action.

 

[ricmat]

But maybe it’s not about material beings at all. We are informed that angels somehow have a role in the universe. I have wondered, since we really don’t know what their nature is, whether perhaps they ARE the principles by which the universe operates. Are they perhaps something vastly more magnificent than singers before the throne of God? One, perhaps, “thinks into operation” the action of quarks, for example, as a conduit from the Mind of God? Another IS the action of black holes or time? Maybe the vastness of the universe (particularly any part we will never see or even imagine) is not so much for us as for them. Is the “celestial harmony” their interaction; their “song”?

I recall St. Francis of Assisi’s seeing some immensely vast presence in the heavens, or perceiving it somehow. What was it?

We don’t know here, but it’s interesting to think about.

CS Lewis wrote a series of books along this line … Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength. They’re fun to read if you haven’t yet done so.

 

[ReapReason]

Actually, in classical Thomistic metaphysics deism is also excluded for the mere fact that God needs to sustain the world in each moment (that has to do with such concepts as esse and actus essendi, actus and potentia; I recommend Feser’s Aquinas for that, available at Amazon). He cannot simply “walk away”.

This is true. Fessers book is a good guide to Aquinas. One of the easier books to understand regarding metaphysics.

 

[Justin_Swanton]

Lions eat, they are carnivores and were designed that way. I don’t think they can be considered evil by what they naturally do. This is further argument in favor of the notion that evil exists not in the act but as the disconnect between intent and action.

Maybe I need to clarify what I mean by ‘evil’ in this context. I define it as the lack of some due natural perfection. For an animal, its natural bodily integrity is destroyed by a predator, which is good for the predator (its own bodily integrity gains thereby) but bad for the prey.

Goodness spreads itself around, according to the scholastic saying: bonum is diffusivum sui, hence it is not in the nature of goodness to bring harm to others. God is perfect goodness and the cause of everything that exists so, logically speaking, He should bring nothing into existence that causes harm to others. Fallen angels and sinful men are evil by their own choice, not by God’s creation, but a predator brings harm to its prey because it is made that way by God. My point is that the formal cause for this is the sin of Adam, whilst God is the efficient cause. The final cause is the redemption of humanity, which requires precisely this kind of world.

God then, is not the formal cause of evil but will allow the evil of free and intelligent beings to have an impact on his creation, even actively abetting that impact with an ultimate greater good in mind.

 

[Ridgerunner]

CS Lewis wrote a series of books along this line … Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength. They’re fun to read if you haven’t yet done so.

I have read them. I just imagine certain angels as being far more massive and complex than Lewis represented them. But then, Lewis didn’t know about supernovae, quarks, black holes, branes, etc. We don’t really know what angels are like. We only know they are astonishing in their glory beyond our power to comprehend, and that they serve particular purposes established by God. We know they have elected to be servitors notwithstanding their magnificence, and that their wills, purposes and actions are all a unity and that they are in constant communion with God.

 

[norain]

Fallen angels and sinful men are evil by their own choice, not by God’s creation, but a predator brings harm to its prey because it is made that way by God. My point is that the formal cause for this is the sin of Adam, whilst God is the efficient cause. The final cause is the redemption of humanity, which requires precisely this kind of world.

God then, is not the formal cause of evil but will allow the evil of free and intelligent beings to have an impact on his creation, even actively abetting that impact with an ultimate greater good in mind.

So is the lion evil or not? I’d say not because the lion’s intent was to eat, not to cause harm.

 

[Justin_Swanton]

So is the lion evil or not? I’d say not because the lion’s intent was to eat, not to cause harm.

Morally, of course not. Lions don’t have an intent (or conscious purpose); they run on instinct. Physically, yes, in the sense of bringing physical harm to other creatures. I see this physical harm as a mirror image, in the natural, non-sentient order, of the harm caused by evil, egocentric beings. It is the behaviour and effects of sin transposed onto the natural order, without the natural order becoming morally culpable or spiritually evil. A kind of retroactive transmission of some of the effects of Original sin, not only to the descendants of Adam, but also to the whole biological system. This makes sense (at least to me) of Romans 8:19-23:
For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only so, but ourselves also, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for [our] adoption, [to wit], the redemption of our body.

 

[norain]

It is the behaviour and effects of sin transposed onto the natural order, without the natural order becoming morally culpable or spiritually evil. A kind of retroactive transmission of some of the effects of Original sin, not only to the descendants of Adam, but also to the whole biological system.

I don’t agree entirely with the concept of original sin, such that sin leads to suffering and all that. We see all forms of suffering even among those who seem entirely innocent, like cancer in children, and genetic abnormalities.

I see suffering as a necessary possibility in a world that is rational. Which makes me wonder if paradise, at least the kind without suffering, is at all possible.

 

[tonyrey]

In other words emotions and intentions can supposedly be explained in terms of material objects…

Until someone demonstrates how emotions and intentions - and thoughts and decisions - are explained in terms of purposeless particles (which have no emotions, intentions, thoughts or decisions) materialism is a hopelessly inadequate hypothesis, regardless of how the mind works…

 

[norain]

Any defense of materialism can be reduced by its own premise into phrases, words, letters, and punctuation.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Any defense of materialism can be reduced by its own premise into phrases, words, letters, and punctuation.

Excellent! uch:uch:

 

[Red_Godfather]

Has anyone picked up on the fact that there is something distinctly odd about the universe inasmuch as one considers it as created by God. From the point of view of humanity one can say two things about it: it is incredibly vast and incredibly hostile to life.

1. Incredibly vast. Why create such a big universe? To impress us with God’s power? But the world by itself does that. We don’t need to know about groups of galaxies to believe in God’s omnipotence. So the universe is not made primarily to impress us.
2. Incredibly hostile to human life. With the exception of an extremely narrow band on planet earth extending about 6 km up and 4 km down, life cannot survive in the universe. You would die in space in seconds, a little slower on Mars, quicker on Venus or any of the gas giants, instantaneously if too close to any sun. Even if there are habitable oases on other planets (not proven), we cannot reach them. The universe is not made for us.

Why then did God make it the way it is?

I’m looking for sources to any in-depth thinking on the subject. I have a little theory of my own but would like to hear what others think. Thank you!

By means of analytic unity, the transcendental aesthetic has lying before it the thing in itself, and the architectonic of pure reason proves the validity of, so far as regards reason, our sense perceptions. The phenomena exist in our experience; therefore, the paralogisms of pure reason, in the study of our understanding, can be treated like the pure employment of our judgements. Since knowledge of our ideas is a posteriori, the paralogisms of human reason, consequently, are by their very nature contradictory. This is what chiefly concerns us. We can deduce that the Categories are what first give rise to our a posteriori concepts; consequently, philosophy stands in need of, so regarded, philosophy. The fact is that multiplicities of a transcendental grounding of noetic acts, even with respect to the evidence in which cogitationes present themselves, are only modalities of cognition. The thing in itself, insomuch as the transcendental unity of apperception relies on the noumena, is what first gives rise to the employment of the intelligible objects in space and time, and the discipline of human reason, indeed, can never furnish a true and demonstrated science, because, like our experience, it is the clue to the discovery of disjunctive principles. Our hypothetical judgements can be treated like the Antinomies, since none of the noumena are hypothetical.

 

[ReapReason]

By means of analytic unity, the transcendental aesthetic has lying before it the thing in itself, and the architectonic of pure reason proves the validity of, so far as regards reason, our sense perceptions. The phenomena exist in our experience; therefore, the paralogisms of pure reason, in the study of our understanding, can be treated like the pure employment of our judgements. Since knowledge of our ideas is a posteriori, the paralogisms of human reason, consequently, are by their very nature contradictory. This is what chiefly concerns us. We can deduce that the Categories are what first give rise to our a posteriori concepts; consequently, philosophy stands in need of, so regarded, philosophy. The fact is that multiplicities of a transcendental grounding of noetic acts, even with respect to the evidence in which cogitationes present themselves, are only modalities of cognition. The thing in itself, insomuch as the transcendental unity of apperception relies on the noumena, is what first gives rise to the employment of the intelligible objects in space and time, and the discipline of human reason, indeed, can never furnish a true and demonstrated science, because, like our experience, it is the clue to the discovery of disjunctive principles. Our hypothetical judgements can be treated like the Antinomies, since none of the noumena are hypothetical.

Are you a Kantian?

 

[Red_Godfather]

Are you a Kantian?

A post-postKantian.

 

[Marie1234]

We humans by nature are compelled to try to find answers to explain the universe around us. We do our best to explore the expanses of the universe and the micro-universe. But when we dive deeper and deeper for answers, we end up with even more questions than we started with.

The universe is more expansive than we can even imagine. I scares us in its vastness; we feel like we have no control over anything. So we try to search in the other direction; the microscopic level. Humans for thousands of years have searched for the “building block of life.” But what we have found out recently is that infinity goes both ways: the universe is infinitely expansive and the “building blocks of life” are infinitely small. (i.e. individuals are made of tissues and organs which are made of cells which are male or atoms, which are made of quarks, which are made of the six different flavors which are made of…etc to infinity).

We will never be able to find the definite smallest particle and we will never be able to reach the end of the universe. Yet we keep searching.

It is strange, terrifying, and an amazing universe. I think it’s good to be inquisitive to an extent. But I don’t think it’s good to search for the sole purpose to find a definite answer and control of your surroundings. You will never find it. That’s where faith comes in.

Appreciate the beauty and complexity that is the universe and thank the Lord that He created a safe haven for us to live in here on Earth. Don’t dwell on how the universe is a hostile environment. Focus on the miracle that we are even alive today.

 

[tonyrey]

We humans by nature are compelled to try to find answers to explain the universe around us. We do our best to explore the expanses of the universe and the micro-universe. But when we dive deeper and deeper for answers, we end up with even more questions than we started with.

The universe is more expansive than we can even imagine. I scares us in its vastness; we feel like we have no control over anything. So we try to search in the other direction; the microscopic level. Humans for thousands of years have searched for the “building block of life.” But what we have found out recently is that infinity goes both ways: the universe is infinitely expansive and the “building blocks of life” are infinitely small. (i.e. individuals are made of tissues and organs which are made of cells which are male or atoms, which are made of quarks, which are made of the six different flavors which are made of…etc to infinity).

We will never be able to find the definite smallest particle and we will never be able to reach the end of the universe. Yet we keep searching.

It is strange, terrifying, and an amazing universe. I think it’s good to be inquisitive to an extent. But I don’t think it’s good to search for the sole purpose to find a definite answer and control of your surroundings. You will never find it. That’s where faith comes in.

Appreciate the beauty and complexity that is the universe and thank the Lord that He created a safe haven for us to live in here on Earth. Don’t dwell on how the universe is a hostile environment. Focus on the miracle that we are even alive today.

Your positive outlook is refreshing in the midst of so many disparaging aspersions!

Welcome to the forum.

 

[PeterGStanley]

God knew we would one day look out upon the universe and look down to the smallest particle and created the Universe as it is to befuddle us in our greatness.

 

[WeSeeLight]

Justin Swanton,

1. The Universe is unimaginably vast to us, but honestly it’s not even comparable to a grain of sand from God’s point of view. The real question is: if this vast Universe really is infinite and everlasting, as atheists say, why is there change and growth and expansion in it at all? A thing which is utterly infinite and eternal has no variety whatsoever, or else its variations would be counted as new and old. Eternity does not become, nor does it grow old.
2. The Universe is ever-so hostile to man, yet here we are. We are alive to ask these very questions. Perhaps God allows us to see the massive dangers of this little place in order that we may realize how gracious He is in creating us from nothing, sustaining little Nothings, and giving immortal life to nothing.

In the end it is all God’s good pleasure. He is infinity itself, eternity itself, life itself, being itself, and truth itself. God does not “exist”, as if existence were some category which precedes God; no, God gives reality to Existence. If you really believe that, none of the Universe is mysterious or one bit strange.

Look to Romans 1:20:

“The invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things which are made, even His eternal power and Godhead…”

A grand, dangerous, matter & energy-spewing Quasar 14 billion light years away may be there so we can know the terrible glory and awesome majesty that is God. The delicate Pulsar, rotating 30 times a second like a lighthouse in the depths of space, may be there to remind us of the light and beauty that is God. Why not? These are strange and hostile things, but notice that they’re all far away as can be.