Checkmate in 2 moves

[empther]

Daniel,
Have you forgotten what you said so soon?

That which creates must either be equal to or greater than his creation. Because that which is lesser cannot confer what it does not have. But, God must enter the material world somehow.

The instances that humans have witnessed him as material have been few. But, they were material. Christ is one of those instances. The burning bush another. But this does not of necessity imply that He is material. I am tempted to think of him as physical in some manner. In either manifestation, his whereabouts remains a mystery so that shouldn’t be problematic to your thinking.

To be physical is to be material, not necessarily in the form of matter, which I thing you agree is impossible with God, but something can be “material” if it is energy, heat, light, electric charge, and so on and so on. All these things apply to the universe.
To say that God is in some way physical is to limit him in some way. Any physical attributes he might have would be measureable since anything that is physical is measurable, or weighable, or countable and so on. But God is infinite, and if he weren’t infinite he wouldn’t be God.

God is not physical in any way.

 

[JDaniel]

Daniel,
Have you forgotten what you said so soon?

Empther:

Try not to be too arrogant. uch:

To be physical is to be material, not necessarily in the form of matter, which I think you agree is impossible with God, but something can be “material” if it is energy, heat, light, electric charge, and so on and so on. All these things apply to the universe.

Not necessarily, not at all. Physical can be defined as, “interacting with and controlling physical structures.” Physics is called “Physics” precisely because it has a distinct meaning from “material.”

I asked, in another post some time ago, what is it that inhabits the electron shell where the electron(s) is absent? What is it that inhabits the, I can’t call it a “medium,” because a medium seems to always affect a thing in a non-beneficial way. The wave that is the electron is best benefited by an utter absence of medium there, as well as, and perhaps more particularly, when said electron is being “shared.” If God is infinite, as we more than suspect, then that space cannot be a void, a nothingness that does not participate of God.

To say that God is in some way physical is to limit him in some way.

Not so. If I said that He is material, then I would concede your point. God is not material, but, He could be a physicality that is very different from our immediate, knee-jerk expectations of what “physical” might mean.

Any physical attributes he might have would be measureable since anything that is physical is measurable, or weighable, or countable and so on.

Not so. If He perdures in places such as I described above, He would be as if Infinite Nothingness. (This is another term that must not be taken in the overly nominal sense, i.e, related to “matter, per se.”)

But God is infinite, and if he weren’t infinite he wouldn’t be God.

No where have I ever said that He wasn’t. You are coloring what I have been saying with your POV. (By the way, I did too when I first began considering this sort of thing!)

God is not physical in any way.

Though I do not consider myself to be panentheistic, I have a certain affinity for some of the philosophy.

God bless,
jd

 

[MindOverMatter2]

Though I do not consider myself to be panentheistic, I have a certain affinity for some of the philosophy.

God bless,
jd

I am an “esse-panentheist” or “esse-monist”: meaning that i believe there is only one act of existence (God). There cannot be multiple acts of distinct potential realities, because reality is a necessary nature. Existence cannot begin to exist because that would be a contradiction to the meaning of existence, since existence can never be the opposite of existing. If that could happen, this would be the act of getting something from nothing. Thus the only way any potential thing can come to exist is by God sharing his act of reality with the “essence” of things. Hence the necessity of the esse and essence distinction. God creates new beings by merging his actuality with abstract objects.

This position is to be distinguished from the idea that the “essential nature” of things is God (pantheism or ordinary panentheism). For example God is not a human nature or a mouse nature, for he transcends finiteness and thus the essence of any finite thing. This is why an essence can cease to exist, because it is not the act of reality. If it were the act reality it would never begin to exist; it would be eternal and necessary like God. In this respect there is an essential dualism which allows for there to be a real or true distinction between God and creation. But it is only an essential distinction and not a distinction between to acts of reality. Our act of reality (the act of being real) is God, because there is only one reality.

Therefore to have being is to have God.

 

[empther]

To be physical is to be material, not necessarily in the form of matter, which I think you agree is impossible with God, but something can be “material” if it is energy, heat, light, electric charge, and so on and so on. All these things apply to the universe.

Not necessarily, not at all. Physical can be defined as, “interacting with and controlling physical structures.” Physics is called “Physics” precisely because it has a distinct meaning from “material.”

Physics is the science of the interaction of “material” things, whether they be matter, or energy or something else.
But God and the universe don’t interact. It’s all one way. God creates and sustains the universe. The universe has no action on God. He doesn’t need the universe and gets nothing out of it.
But this is not even “one way interaction” with God being the driver. God creates and sustains the universe, but God himself in his essence is not involved in the process in the sense of his being acting on the universe. He says: “Let it be so” and it is so.

And with that, we part company.
Good luck.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

Physics is the science of the interaction of “material” things, whether they be matter, or energy or something else.
But God and the universe don’t interact. It’s all one way. God creates and sustains the universe. The universe has no action on God. He doesn’t need the universe and gets nothing out of it.

And with that, we part company.
Good luck.

You are correct to reject physicalism