This doesn’t imply that God is actually capable of action, if he/she/it is existence in and of itself.
It does not imply that he is not either
It isn’t clear that the universe could not have caused itself.
Yes it is clear. Its metaphysically impossible.
That is a notion from the time before relativity and quantum mechanics…
No. Quantum physics says nothing about how the universe came into existence. Science merely measures its effect after the fact of its existence.
If God is the cause of all other existence, he/she/it cannot be simply ‘existence itself’, since to be, simply and uncomplicatedly, without composition, does not imply any actual ability beyond mere existence
I don’t see why an absolute act of reality cannot be an eternal creative act. It only becomes a problem when you limit creativity to physical definitions. What you have said here does not tell me that it is impossible or even unlikely because you are using the wrong epistemological context for the Job.
- not even the ability to impart existence to other beings, since that would change the nature, character, essence or whatever of the being that is mere existence into both ‘extant being’ and ‘creator’ - hence it would no longer be ‘being itself’ but ‘being and actor’.
Only if God is physical. God is his existence, which is his love, which is his creative act, which is his omnipotence, which is …so on and so forth. God’s being and act are simultaneous and synonymous.
The first part of this assertion makes sense. The second part does not. God cannot be ‘mere’ existence, and then also be specific existence with the nature and attributes of actual things that exist.
God is not mere existence, he is existence.
How can anything exist without composition?
Why can’t anything exist without composition?
And how would anyone know?
Because it has been proven with absolute certainty that the nature of the first cause must be synonymous with the act of existence. Existence has to be its intrinsic nature in order to account for all contingent things. Contingent beings cannot come out of nothing. It really is an act of desperation when people attempt make it appear otherwise by fallaciously pointing to quantum events.
Existence implies identifiability, if that is even a word - or to put it another way, it implies that it should be possible to actually define the extant being. There seems to be a great deal of difficulty in defining god - declaring what he/she/it is not seems to be about as far as most philosophers and serious theologians can get.
That something exists does not mean, and neither does it imply, that it can be defined in physical terms. You are making contextually misleading assertions which is key to the philosophy called scientism, or better yet positivism.
What does this mean, exactly? And how could essences exist without the objects that define them? Could I say, for example, that the essence of a dragon exists, without being able to define or describe what a dragon is?
But you can describe and know the essence of a dragon without it actually existing. If the essence of a dragon was intrinsically the same thing as existing, then the essence of a dragon would timelessly exist, since in this case the essence defined as “dragon” cannot logically be separated from being an actual thing assuming they are the same thing.
If this were actually the case with the universe, that would contradict the fact that the universe is finite, evolves, has potential, or essentially becomes more through the actuality of new qualities or natures. The universe is not the act of existence, it is merely sustained in existence by that which is fundamentally the act of Existence.
