Could the Universe have Created Itself?

[Linusthe2nd]

Aufung…

HERE! Ask and you shall receive!

What Steven talks about here is mere speculation, and pretty wild at that. This is not evidence. It does not even amount to a reasonalble scientific inference, since those are based on facts, not speculation.

Linus2nd

 

[Mount_Carmel]

I gather from some of the posts in this thread that many do not really mean to ask did the universe create itself from nothing, but more in the vein that something existed, maybe a highly compressed ball of matter or energy, and then something happened, perhaps within this mass that caused the “big bang”, if you will. I’m not defending the idea, but I think it’s what some scientists are toying with. In this kind of scenario, I suppose the premise is that something always existed, be it matter or energy or something else. They could be saying that the universe is constantly expanding, then contracting, then expanding again, for no apparent reason, a sort of perpetual motion, I mean, what other choices do you have if you rule out the possibility of there being a God? Gee! Isn’t it so much easier and more plausible to believe there is a God who is the first cause? But no, apparently not for those so disposed as to deny the existence of God.

At least two issues spring to mind ref. the musing I have emboldened.

1/ If this ‘thing’ of ‘inert?’ matter had a one off pop at becoming the Universe - a.k.a. the ‘Big Bang’ - just what disturbed its timeless/eternal ‘slumber’ and kicked it into frantic activity? What was it SUBJECT to?

2/ There is still the problem of existence in the physical and temporal, unless there is ‘something’ that can traverse timeless infinity and ‘create’ space for timeline physical temporality. Something that can instigate the ‘laws’ to which the Universe is subject.

If things are just a case of perpetual motion, then surely it would take infinity to get to any point within the ‘perpetual’, since any given ‘point’ of being is ‘surrounded’ by the infinite and eternal.

 

[tonyrey]

HERE! Ask and you shall receive!

There is no evidence that “… we are in fact **the only life **in our entire universe and I actually think we are very significant…”

 

[JamesCaruso]

There is no evidence that “… we are in fact **the only life **in our entire universe and I actually think we are very significant…”

I don’t know if we’re the only ones, but my Catholic faith informs me that we are very significant, at least, to God, and what else matters? We don’t know that we are the only intelligent life in our entire universe, but it does me for now, for when I start in the direction of life in differs places, and multiple universes, and the consequent Jesuses and Marys in all those places redeeming their worlds, I begin to feel a little “cuckoo” and have to shut it off. I am complacent to view us as His only ones until such time that He in His own inimitable way peels back the veil and begins to let me see.

 

[inocente]

I’d like to second that.

“When we desire to encounter God, we would like to verify him immediately by an empirical method. But you cannot meet God this way. God is found in the gentle breeze perceived by Elijah.”

“If a person says that he met God with total certainty and is not touched by a margin of uncertainty, then this is not good. For me, this is an important key. If one has the answers to all the questions—that is the proof that God is not with him. It means that he is a false prophet using religion for himself.”

That’s Pope Francis speaking. It’s basic stuff, most real world Christians know what he’s saying even if a few CAF posters don’t.

Those who want everything clear and safe and certain will inevitably always make a god in their own image, they are false prophets using religion for themselves. God is too great to be a hypothesis. God is who he is, not what we want Him to be. We cannot meet the living God in dead “proofs”.

So yes, the universe could have created Itself. We must leave room for YHWH, we must make room for Him. And once we have met the living God, we know that with God all things are possible. We preach Christ crucified, we are not frightened little rabbits.

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” - 1 Cor 13

“In revealing his mysterious name, YHWH (“I AM HE WHO IS”, “I AM WHO AM” or “I AM WHO I AM”), God says who he is and by what name he is to be called. This divine name is mysterious just as God is mystery. It is at once a name revealed and something like the refusal of a name, and hence it better expresses God as what he is - infinitely above everything that we can understand or say: he is the “hidden God”, his name is ineffable, and he is the God who makes himself close to men.” - CCC 206

I’d have thought this stuff is Christianity 101.

 

[inocente]

HERE! Ask and you shall receive!

He gave that lecture in 1996, which I think would be just before the discovery of accelerating expansion (“dark energy”), which may well have put paid to his no boundary proposal (he says his proposal implies that the universe will re-collapse eventually, which now seems very unlikely).

I think Hawking always creates a lot of confusion by flipping between known science and speculation without ever making it clear.

 

[tonyrey]

I don’t know if we’re the only ones, but my Catholic faith informs me that we are very significant, at least, to God, and what else matters? We don’t know that we are the only intelligent life in our entire universe, but it does me for now, for when I start in the direction of life in differs places, and multiple universes, and the consequent Jesuses and Marys in all those places redeeming their worlds, I begin to feel a little “cuckoo” and have to shut it off. I am complacent to view us as His only ones until such time that He in His own inimitable way peels back the veil and begins to let me see.

There is no reason whatsoever to believe God is compelled to redeem His creatures in precisely the same way on every planet…

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Innocente

Why do you persist in misinterpreting Pope Francis? Re your last post.

I’m glad you are reading Pope Francis and the CCC. However you still don’t get it. Pope Francis, as Pope and as a faithful Catholic, believers all that the Church teaches. From the CCC,
31 Created in God’s image and called to know and love him, the person who seeks God discovers certain ways of coming to know him. These are also called proofs for the existence of God, not in the sense of proofs in the natural sciences, but rather in the sense of “converging and convincing arguments”, which allow us to attain certainty about the truth. These “ways” of approaching God from creation have a twofold point of departure: the physical world, and the human person.

32 The world: starting from movement, becoming, contingency, and the world’s order and beauty, one can come to a knowledge of God as the origin and the end of the universe.

As St. Paul says of the Gentiles: For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.7

And St. Augustine issues this challenge: Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air distending and diffusing itself, question the beauty of the sky. . . question all these realities. All respond: “See, we are beautiful.” Their beauty is a profession [confessio]. These beauties are subject to change. Who made them if not the Beautiful One [Pulcher] who is not subject to change?8

33 The human person: with his openness to truth and beauty, his sense of moral goodness, his freedom and the voice of his conscience, with his longings for the infinite and for happiness, man questions himself about God’s existence. In all this he discerns signs of his spiritual soul. the soul, the “seed of eternity we bear in ourselves, irreducible to the merely material”,9 can have its origin only in God.

34 The world, and man, attest that they contain within themselves neither their first principle nor their final end, but rather that they participate in Being itself, which alone is without origin or end. Thus, in different ways, man can come to know that there exists a reality which is the first cause and final end of all things, a reality “that everyone calls God”.10

35 Man’s faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal God. But for man to be able to enter into real intimacy with him, God willed both to reveal himself to man, and to give him the grace of being able to welcome this revelation in faith.(so) the proofs of God’s existence, however, can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason. "

And again, "
36 "Our holy mother, the Church, holds and teaches that God, the first principle and last end of all things, can be known with certainty from the created world by the natural light of human reason."11 Without this capacity, man would not be able to welcome God’s revelation. Man has this capacity because he is created “in the image of God”.12

37 In the historical conditions in which he finds himself, however, man experiences many difficulties in coming to know God by the light of reason alone:

Though human reason is, strictly speaking, truly capable by its own natural power and light of attaining to a true and certain knowledge of the one personal God, who watches over and controls the world by his providence, and of the natural law written in our hearts by the Creator; yet there are many obstacles which prevent reason from the effective and fruitful use of this inborn faculty. For the truths that concern the relations between God and man wholly transcend the visible order of things, and, if they are translated into human action and influence it, they call for self-surrender and abnegation. the human mind, in its turn, is hampered in the attaining of such truths, not only by the impact of the senses and the imagination, but also by disordered appetites which are the consequences of original sin. So it happens that men in such matters easily persuade themselves that what they would not like to be true is false or at least doubtful.13

38 This is why man stands in need of being enlightened by God’s revelation, not only about those things that exceed his understanding, but also “about those religious and moral truths which of themselves are not beyond the grasp of human reason, so that even in the present condition of the human race, they can be known by all men with ease, with firm certainty and with no admixture of error”.14

And this is what Thomas is saying in S.T., Part 1, Ques 1.

Linus2nd

 

[Peter_Plato]

“When we desire to encounter God, we would like to verify him immediately by an empirical method. But you cannot meet God this way. God is found in the gentle breeze perceived by Elijah.”

There is nothing inconsistent about saying God’s existence can be proved but that you “can not MEET God this way.” I could prove to myself beyond any doubt that Vladimir Putin exists, and I can do that without “meeting” or “encountering” him. So Pope Francis need not be saying proofs are impossible or unwarranted, but that they are insufficient for coming to know God. Knowing “THAT he is” is quite a different matter from knowing “WHO he is.”

“If a person says that he met God with total certainty and is not touched by a margin of uncertainty, then this is not good. For me, this is an important key. If one has the answers to all the questions—that is the proof that God is not with him. It means that he is a false prophet using religion for himself.”

That’s Pope Francis speaking. It’s basic stuff, most real world Christians know what he’s saying even if a few CAF posters don’t.

This idea of “meeting God with total certainty” essentially would entail that “who God is” has been reduced to and completely captured by who I think God is. This a completely wrong headed notion precisely because God is not reducible in that way. He is who HE is, never who I think he is. That is an aspect of being Person.

The other problem is that God is not “a being” or “a person,” but rather Being Itself and Supra Personal. His “knowing” each of us is what makes us who we are. We do not “know him” so much as “are known by him.”

Those who want everything clear and safe and certain will inevitably always make a god in their own image, they are false prophets using religion for themselves. God is too great to be a hypothesis. God is who he is, not what we want Him to be. We cannot meet the living God in dead “proofs”.

Again, this does not entail that dead proofs cannot establish with certainty “that” God exists, but the reason they are insufficient is because “dead” proofs only “set up” the meeting of God, they do not function in the “getting to know” him. That requires personal readiness on our part and grace on his.

So yes, the universe could have created Itself. We must leave room for YHWH, we must make room for Him. And once we have met the living God, we know that with God all things are possible. We preach Christ crucified, we are not frightened little rabbits.

I just don’t see this. If the universe “could” in a final sense have created itself, then there is no room, no need, for God. The universe would be entirely self-sufficient because it could potentially exist without God existing. How is deciding the universe is self-sufficient leaving or making room for God? It appears to be shutting the door on the very possibility of God because he would be superfluous, unnecessary and unwanted precisely because we cannot possibly know that the universe could create itself. This is more of a metaphysical declaration at this juncture than a conclusion.

It certainly isn’t a conclusion from what we know about God’s power to create self-creating existents, or that such things are even possible. If something, anything, could create itself at any time from nothing, that entity would itself verge on ipsum esse subsistens since its essence would be exactly what it “creates” itself to be and since that “creation” could occur without any outside dependencies at all, self-creation would be tantamount to omnipotence.
What would limit or determine what nothing creates if it creates without any dependency but simply out of itself?

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” - 1 Cor 13

“In revealing his mysterious name, YHWH (“I AM HE WHO IS”, “I AM WHO AM” or “I AM WHO I AM”), God says who he is and by what name he is to be called. This divine name is mysterious just as God is mystery. It is at once a name revealed and something like the refusal of a name, and hence it better expresses God as what he is - infinitely above everything that we can understand or say: he is the “hidden God”, his name is ineffable, and he is the God who makes himself close to men.” - CCC 206

I’d have thought this stuff is Christianity 101.

Words like mystery, hidden and ineffable do not entail anything and everything we come up with as statements about God are on equal footing. Christianity 101 does not conclude, “God is unknowable, therefore WHATEVER anyone says about him is as valid as anything else.” It does mean words serve more as pointers towards God than as definitive of him, but it is equally true to say that some words point us away from God and serve to confuse rather than assist in “meeting him.”

 

[Charlemagne_III]

I’d have thought this stuff is Christianity 101.

I’d have thought you were going to express your own thoughts instead of Pope Francis. We know Francis is a loyal son of the Church. What we want to know is where you are coming from. That post didn’t tell us much. For example, do you have a beef with the Catholic Church? What is your beef? That is what we have all been trying to find out and the question you seem to have been dodging since day 1.

Yes, we know Christianity 101. The Catholic Church wrote the lesson plans.

 

[Tomdstone]

It certainly isn’t a conclusion from what we know about God’s power to create self-creating existents, or that such things are even possible.

Oftentimes we read about God’s power and that He is omnipotent. According to Catholic teaching, God is all Powerful and all Good. But to some agnostics and non-believers, God seems to be somewhat remote and not involved in remediating the suffering endured by some of His creatures. For example, in the case of a natural disaster, such as a tornado which may leave a family separated and hurt by killing or paralysing for life one or two small children, but leaving the rest of the family unharmed. All through the disaster, the family had prayed and asked to be spared, but it appears that God was somewhat uninterested in their intense and emotional pleading for mercy, as harm came to an innocent child. Is it possible that there might be some limitation on the power of God, although this would be contrary to Catholic teaching that God is all Powerful. Otherwise, it seems difficult to explain why an all Loving and an all Merciful God would permit such horrific suffering to innocent children, and their loving family. How should a Catholic respond to this often heard objection from agnostics?

 

[oldcelt]

Oftentimes we read about God’s power and that He is omnipotent. According to Catholic teaching, God is all Powerful and all Good. But to some agnostics and non-believers, God seems to be somewhat remote and not involved in remediating the suffering endured by some of His creatures. For example, in the case of a natural disaster, such as a tornado which may leave a family separated and hurt by killing or paralysing for life one or two small children, but leaving the rest of the family unharmed. All through the disaster, the family had prayed and asked to be spared, but it appears that God was somewhat uninterested in their intense and emotional pleading for mercy, as harm came to an innocent child. Is it possible that there might be some limitation on the power of God, although this would be contrary to Catholic teaching that God is all Powerful. Otherwise, it seems difficult to explain why an all Loving and an all Merciful God would permit such horrific suffering to innocent children, and their loving family. How should a Catholic respond to this often heard objection from agnostics?

I am not a agnostic but your list is only some of my problems with the Christian God. I was taught all those things as a child and through my 50 years as a Catholic, but was never comfortable with them. At this moment an 8 year-old girl is dying a horrid death from leukemia. Hundreds of thousands have been praying for her healing and she is only getting worse. What happened to Whatever two of you agree on in my name will be done (paraphrase)? What possible purpose will her death serve except probably drive people from the faith who will likely then be sent to hell, according to Church teaching.

The answer…there is no answer that can justify this and other similar events. We don’t just view this version of god as uncaring and remote…we view him as cruel and vindictive.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

The answer…there is no answer that can justify this and other similar events. We don’t just view this version of god as uncaring and remote…we view him as cruel and vindictive.

Job had more reason to think so than you do. Yet he remained more faithful and loyal than you.

Death is not the greatest of evils, unless you believe there is no life after death.

So you have replaced the God who died on the cross for your sins with a “cruel and vindictive god.” How’s that working for you? Does that seem to be a logical choice?

You seem to have a hapless and hopeless future, thanks to your indifferent and godless universe.

 

[oldcelt]

Job had more reason to think so than you do. Yet he remained more faithful and loyal than you.

Death is not the greatest of evils, unless you believe there is no life after death.

So you have replaced the God who died on the cross for your sins with a “cruel and vindictive god.” How’s that working for you? Does that seem to be a logical choice?

You seem to have a hapless and hopeless future, thanks to your indifferent and godless universe.

You are making the unfortunate assumption that I believe that Job was a real person. If so, this god tortured him to make a point to Satan. Makes sense, right. Nearly destroy an honorable man to satisfy your greatest enemy.

I don’t believe in the Christian God any longer, so these unfortunate events are just happenstance. Nobody calling any shots. Accidents I can forgive…intentional malicious behavior, no.

I tend to think that in the big things, you and I have the same future.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

You are making the unfortunate assumption that I believe that Job was a real person. If so, this god tortured him to make a point to Satan. Makes sense, right. Nearly destroy an honorable man to satisfy your greatest enemy.

The sufferings of Job make a point to mankind … that faithfulness to the living God is all.

Six months ago I had open heart surgery, and was filled with trepidation about that event as it approached. Days before my operation I began to read the book of Job. I was inspired by the message that no matter what was going to happen, I needed to put my trust in God. From that point on I had no fear. So in this incident, where was the cruel and vindictive god you are talking about? And how could he be cruel and vindictive if, according to you, he doesn’t even exist?

The most despised figure in the New Testament is Judas … and with good reason.

 

[oldcelt]

The sufferings of Job make a point to mankind … that faithfulness to the living God is all.

Six months ago I had open heart surgery, and was filled with trepidation about that event as it approached. Days before my operation I began to read the book of Job. I was inspired by the message that no matter what was going to happen, I needed to put my trust in God. From that point on I had no fear. So in this incident, where was the cruel and vindictive god you are talking about? And how could he be cruel and vindictive if, according to you, he doesn’t even exist?

The most despised figure in the New Testament is Judas … and with good reason.

Agnostics do not claim that God is always cruel and vindictive, just a bit of a sociopath. I on the other hand believe in a none interventionist god who may have started creation, but did not plan any of our lives. Nor does he interfere in the day to day affairs of man.

From either source, the answer to your question is God was nowhere. The tale of Job and your own strength helped you through.

Under your God, Judas was created with God’s full knowledge that he would betray. But, since that was what he wanted, God kept him, Judas’ guilt drove him to suicide an hell…yep…all-loving, all-merciful

 

[Peter_Plato]

Oftentimes we read about God’s power and that He is omnipotent. According to Catholic teaching, God is all Powerful and all Good. But to some agnostics and non-believers, God seems to be somewhat remote and not involved in remediating the suffering endured by some of His creatures. For example, in the case of a natural disaster, such as a tornado which may leave a family separated and hurt by killing or paralysing for life one or two small children, but leaving the rest of the family unharmed. All through the disaster, the family had prayed and asked to be spared, but it appears that God was somewhat uninterested in their intense and emotional pleading for mercy, as harm came to an innocent child. Is it possible that there might be some limitation on the power of God, although this would be contrary to Catholic teaching that God is all Powerful. Otherwise, it seems difficult to explain why an all Loving and an all Merciful God would permit such horrific suffering to innocent children, and their loving family. How should a Catholic respond to this often heard objection from agnostics?

As someone who has lived through almost exactly what you describe except that it was a car accident where the “rest of the family” was spared but my father remained paralyzed for life, the problem of suffering is intimately one which all of us must face and deal with. God himself faced it on the cross.

Resolving the problem by conceding that God does not have the omnipotence or omnibenevolence to see us through horrific suffering is to admit that God is not “big enough” to do so. The seemingly limitless depths of suffering together with the heights of beauty, goodness and joy that are possible, together point out that our conceptual or emotional limits fall short of pigeonholing God according to our wishes, fears, desires, hopes, imaginings and aspirations. God is more than any of these and all of these, the joyful and the painful, are, perhaps, intended as challenges to deepen and get us beyond ourselves.

Yes, horrific events can put us on the edge of abandoning hope and even to despair, but these can also call us to move beyond ourselves to glimpse the unspeakable "awe"someness of God that none of our fears, wishes, hopes, desires and even despair can hold him contained within.

To claim that God cannot bring better “good” out of those horrific events is, precisely, to limit and deny the omnipotence and omnibenevolence of God as if he is not good “enough” or powerful “enough” to bring about good that can overshadow the suffering or pain but, rather, admit that suffering and pain are, in the end, greater, more powerful and more profoundly terrible than any benevolence or good that God could ever be capable of.

Perhaps it is our own dependency on safety, comfort and security that closes us to the possibility of he who, ultimately, is beyond what is imaginable to us. Death will be the moment where each of us will need to leave the confines of our limits. Perhaps life is intended to be a preparation for going beyond ourselves. Because we cannot “imagine” does not entail God “cannot.”

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Under your God, Judas was created with God’s full knowledge that he would betray. But, since that was what he wanted, God kept him, Judas’ guilt drove him to suicide an hell…yep…all-loving, all-merciful

I’m afraid that about all your posts prove is that you don’t really understand Catholic theology. Judas had free will, as do we all. If he is in hell, he damned himself. We cannot know for a certainty that he is damned, though I wouldn’t bet money against it.

If I did not believe in free will, as you seem not to by your remarks about Judas, I could see what you see: a cruel and vindictive god. Better no god than such a god.

But your deist god is no better than a cruel and vindictive god. He walks away from the universe and offers not even hope, never mind happiness.

 

[Tomdstone]

To claim that God cannot bring better “good” out of those horrific events is, precisely, to limit and deny the omnipotence and omnibenevolence of God as if he is not good “enough” or powerful “enough” to bring about good that can overshadow the suffering or pain but, rather, admit that suffering and pain are, in the end, greater, more powerful and more profoundly terrible than any benevolence or good that God could ever be capable of.

The question raised did not deny in any way the omnibenevolence of God. The question assumed that God is all Merciful and all Good and all Loving. It asks whether it is possible, in the light of the mercy, the goodness and the love of God for all humanity, whether there could be some limitation on His power?

 

[oldcelt]

I’m afraid that about all your posts prove is that you don’t really understand Catholic theology. Judas had free will, as do we all. If he is in hell, he damned himself. We cannot know for a certainty that he is, though I wouldn’t bet money against it.

Well, I studied Catholic theology with some fervency when I returned to the Church about age 35. I still have great respect for the Church and understand its dogma, I just no longer believe it. So, it should seem natural that my answers would vary from the Magesterium now and then.

If I did not believe in free will, as you seem not to by your remarks about Judas, I could see what you see: a cruel and vindictive god. Better no god than such a god.

Judas had free will once he got here, but he had no choice in his birth. Under your beliefs God did that all by himself, knowing the role that Judas would play.

But your deist god is no better than a cruel and vindictive god. He walks away from the universe and offers not even hope, never mind happiness.

No better…when was the last time my God allowed or directly caused the slaughter of innocents? Oh, I think an absentee God is much better.