Ex-Nihilo: a meaningless concept

[ChainBreaker]

God

God does not draw something “from” nothing if you are treating "nothing " as a material cause LIKE something existing, it would be understood better if we say "God GIVES existence to nothing , nothing meaning no pre-existing being, reality. Sometimes I use the expression “We who are not, are, because of He Who Is” If God did not sustain us in His existence, and God is Existence, we would not be, non-being, nothing. Again I state that "we have our being in God, but are not part of God.

I am not treating nothing as a material cause. It is precisely because Nothing is by definition the absence of any reality that the problem of ex-nihilo arises. From nothing nothing comes because it is nothing. Now I agree that God’s nature is existence because there can be no such thing as absolutely nothing and therefore there must be a being whose nature is the act of existence. So it makes sense that God exists, assuming of course that metaphysics is a valid system of inference. What isn’t clear is how it is metaphysically possible that anything else other than God exists. How is it metaphysically possible to create a nature that is “not” the nature we call existence? You cannot get the act of reality out of nothing and you cannot create a nature that is “existence”; neither can God create out of parts of his nature. Thus a philosophical dilemma arises as to what it could possible mean for something to “exist” that is not identical to God who is “existence”. Logically speaking what does it mean for God to create anything at all?

It follows that in the production of His effects God requires no antecedent matter to work from. So He create from no pre-existing subject, as in matter (in this sense is what is meant “God creates from nothing”

Aquinas shows us that God creates from no matter or existing material. He says nothing as to how it is metaphysically possible for God to create a nature that is not by nature the act of existence. If a nature is not the act of existence, what is it? Nothing.

 

[ChainBreaker]

Well, either the idea comes from nothing, which you reject, or it comes from God, which means there rae two distinct states: one in which the idea is with God and a second in which the same idea is not with God.

For God to think something is the same thing as creating something. God’s mind is pure actuality. His act is not an act in time but is an eternal act. The idea of a universe in God’s mind is simultaneously both an abstraction and an actual thing; in fact abstractions are simply actual things in God’s mind eternally created out of God’s knowledge of himself (in this case God is his knowledge). It is not two states and it is distinct from God because God is not identical to the idea of an evolving universe. As I said before God cannot form an abstraction of God that is identical to God’s nature because there cannot be two infinite beings or God’s, and thus what happens instead is the creation of a finite analogy of himself which is always going to be an imperfect representation of God’s glory ontologically speaking.

In comes mathematics and quantum events striving to be God or united with the act of existence which is God. We see this phenomenon played out in biological evolution and the survival of the species.

 

[ChainBreaker]

Well, either the idea comes from nothing, which you reject, or it comes from God, which means there rae two distinct states: one in which the idea is with God and a second in which the same idea is not with God.

For God to think something is the same thing as creating something. God’s mind is pure actuality. His act is not an act in time but is an eternal act. The idea of a universe in God’s mind is simultaneously both an abstraction and an actual thing; in fact abstractions are simply actual things in God’s mind eternally created out of God’s knowledge of himself (in this case God is his knowledge).

It is not two states and it is distinct from God because God is not identical to the idea of an evolving universe. As I said before, God cannot form an abstraction of God that is identical to God’s nature because there cannot be two infinite beings or God’s, and thus what happens instead is the creation of a finite analogy of God which is always going to be an imperfect representation of God’s glory ontologically speaking.

In comes mathematical constructs and quantum events striving to be God or united with the act of existence which is God. We see this phenomenon played out in biological evolution and the survival of the species.