Given Infinity, can a Universe create a God?

[Truthstalker]

There is a difference being ignored between infinite and eternal, which may explain some difficulties. Time is a created thing, and God is not created. Something infinite in time is still in time, something eternal is outside of time. God is eternal, not infinite in time.

 

[Good_Fella]

There is a difference being ignored between infinite and eternal, which may explain some difficulties. Time is a created thing, and God is not created. Something infinite in time is still in time, something eternal is outside of time. God is eternal, not infinite in time.

But there is still the question of infinite space in relation to the existence of God. Some people believe that given God’s never-ending and unbordered omnipresence his creation co-extends infinitely with him as if it were an attribute of his. The multiple universes theory is an attempt to support this belief. But God is Spirit whose presence fills the entire finite universe and beyond physical space. With eternity there might be coupled what could be called metaphysical or spiritual space which would of course be infinite - never ending and with no points and boundaries. Or perhaps there is no such dimension of any kind of space at all, since eternity is timeless. All we can do is speculate or imagine with respect to the spiritual world. By the way, Immanuel Kant believed that time and space were pure forms of intuition; in other words, psychological and not physical dimensions.

Pax vobiscum
Good Fella

 

[crowonsnow]

Because the physical universe is not an attribute of God. To believe that it is a divine attribute is to embrace the heresy of Pantheism. God and the universe are not equivalent. God is infinite and everything he has created is finite. The universe comes from God, but it is not an eternal and infinite extension of God. According to your view, a portrait on an easel is an attribute of the artist who painted it. But it would be more accurate to say that the portrait is the product or result of the artist’s internal attribute of creativity with the help of physiological attributes of perception,dexterity, and balance. In a sense, the created work is an extension of the creator or artist, but insofar that the work is a distinct visible expression of an original idea. The artist and the portrait are not substantially equivalent. If either the artist dies or the portrait is destroyed in a fire, the other would not necessarily cease to co-exist. God created the universe. The universe is not God nor an attribute of God, so it cannot be infinite as a part of God himself. There is no question of a double standard with orthodox Jews and Christians who will not compromise or reject their fundamental beliefs in the nature of God.

Pax vobiscum
Good Fella

You’re speaking dogmatically. The universe as we perceive it could be an attribute of a god. It could be a god’s shadow or be located in a god’s mind. Or it could be a very tiny, even insignificant part of a god but an attribute of same nonetheless.

Or it could be that belief in a god is an attribute of the universe. Observationally this makes the most sense, as there are no gods to be found but plenty of stories about gods.

The universe in its present form is about 15 billion years old because before that the universe contained no space, only mass. Our physics and theories presently are unable to plumb events at t=0. But the universe was still there as this singularity. And if the singularity endured then what other conditions prevailed in this eternity of which we are unaware?

I just think that to dogmatically dismiss other possibilities is shortsighted. What a person calls god today may turn out to be incredibly shortsighted and puny by tomorrow’s standards, rather like how we view the volcano gods of our ancestors.

 

[Truthstalker]

Christians make a distinction between general and special revelation. All people see the effect of general revelation. However, there is special revelation - what God has said about Himself. Some of what you mention is the province of special revelation. There are some things about God that we cannot know on the basis of observing the universe, things that God has to tell us. And He has. The insistence on the last statement is what separates those who believe in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ from those who reject His claims. He claimed to be God in the flesh. Christians believe that claim.