How did God create everything from nothing?

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Nanotwerp

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I know I’m going to get fussed at for this, and all, but this bothers me. I know God is infinite in power, but it just doesn’t add up to me. This is probably the deepest I’ve ever been philosophy-wise, and I’m under a huge mental block. It almost seems more logical for the universe to not exist at all, or maybe much less complex. Am I over-thinking this?
 
We don’t know how God created everything from nothing.

Either way, it’d be beyond our understanding…whether stuff came from nothingness or whether it all went back infinitely with stuff.

It’s a little like the story of St. Augustine with regards to trying to contemplate the mystery of the Holy Trinity. frtommylane.com/stories/God/Trinity/saint_augustine.htm

We can’t understand it, because it’s more than our little brains can handle.
 
Quite simply my friend, God is creation itself. He upholds everything in existence and without Him, you and I and everything in this universe would cease to exist.

Blessed be God forever
 
Ask Him.

It’s amazing how he created and sustains a tiny little ant.
 
What I find amazing about this question…

That we, as humans, are capable of asking this question!

Nanotwerp,
It is one of the great mysteries of our faith.
I wish I had a better answer for you… even as a chemist, I couldn’t even begin to take that on beyond what the other posters have given you.
 
z_0101 said:
What I find amazing about this question…

That we, as humans, are capable of asking this question!

Nanotwerp,
It is one of the great mysteries of our faith.
I wish I had a better answer for you… even as a chemist, I couldn’t even begin to take that on beyond what the other posters have given you.
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Yes, except maybe to ask another question in another thread… where does thought come from? How can a mass of brain matter and a little fluid allow THOUGHT??? God is marvelous, even though we use HIS creation against HIM so often!!!
 
Apart from God there is no existence, nothing. In God we have our being, yet we are not part of God, He gives us existence, and He sustains us in existence. He causes all that we are. To completely understand this we would have to have the Mind of God, In an allegorical sense we are the products of His Mind and will which are one with His nature which is existence, Enough said!
 
ynotzap said:
Apart from God there is no existence, nothing. In God we have our being, yet we are not part of God, He gives us existence, and He sustains us in existence. He causes all that we are. To completely understand this we would have to have the Mind of God, In an allegorical sense we are the products of His Mind and will which are one with His nature which is existence, Enough said!
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Yes, this is a good answer 👍.

I suspect that the problem the OP is struggling with is that the OP is thinking along some kind of inherently deistic lines, where God is existing through infinite time and decides to sit down and create the universe one day in eternity. Well when you assume that God’s creating things is essentially the same type of thing we do when we create, you have a difficulty because we can’t create anything without some kind of stuff to work with. The doctrine of God creating from nothing just means He doesn’t mold something that exists outside His nature when creating, since everything that exists participates in some finite way in His nature. Extending that insight even further reveals that God’s been eternally creating the universe; there was never a time when God was not creating the universe.

I like the analogy Aquinas uses. God is not like an engineer that puts together a machine when creating. It’s more like God is a musician playing a song. If God were ever to stop playing the song (creating the universe), the song would be over (and the universe would cease to exist).
 
DaddyGirl said:
I guess this means Lawrence Krauss is right!
That something can, indeed, be created out of nothing.

.
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A material nothing isn’t the same as an absolute nothing. God’s word , God’s thought isn’t nothing.
 
He used a good casserole recipe. It’s marvelous what you can do with just nothing.

*With apologies to Peter Ustinov
 
Nanotwerp said:
I know I’m going to get fussed at for this, and all, but this bothers me. I know God is infinite in power, but it just doesn’t add up to me. This is probably the deepest I’ve ever been philosophy-wise, and I’m under a huge mental block. It almost seems more logical for the universe to not exist at all, or maybe much less complex. Am I over-thinking this?
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Hi Nano,
It is not as complex as you might think. Here are a few ideas for you the chew on:

One can never know just how mind boggling creatio ex nihilo is until you wrestle with the numbers involved. The best we humans can do in attempting to describe “creation from nothing” is to invoke the big bang theory that proposes that the entire universe emerged in an explosive manner from and infinitesimal object called the singularity. The scope involved in such an event is beyond imagination because try to imagine squeezing the universe that weighs 10^+53 kg into an object the size of the Planck length = 10^-35 m. That’s an awful lot of matter squeezed into an infinitesimal object.

The big bang theory proposes that not only the matter that comprises the universe emerged from the singularity, but so too did space, energy, and time. The emergence of space is an intriguing thought in that it is impossible to imagine anything from which “space” emerged other than a something that is “space-like”. However, if one thinks long and hard about the big bang as it relates to creatio ex nihilo, space offers the best hope for an explanation. Consider:

Only 5% of the universe is matter. Dark matter and dark energy are abstractions created to make sense of the current equations of physics and they too can only be space-like. Furthermore, since the hydrogen atom, a single proton “circled” by a single electron, is 30,000 times the size of the proton that consists of three quarks and since electrons and quarks are point particles, the universe that is mostly hydrogen is virtually empty. The idea that the universe is virtually empty makes it easier to believe that there is a plausible explanation for creatio ex nihilo.

For example, if you assume that objective reality is constructed from discrete space that emerged from an infinitude of continuous space. Since the universe is finite, then the universe could be constructed from a finite amount of discrete space. Discrete space is composed of dimensionless points, therefore, a finite number of discrete points, however large a number of them, would still be be dimensionless. Thus the entire universe came from what from a physical point of view is “nothing”.

I helps to have an understanding of the mathematical view of infinity to understand what discrete space and continuous space are.

Yppop
 
rossum said:
He didn’t. He didn’t start with nothing; He started with Himself + nothing. That is different from pure nothing.

rossum
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God didn’t take creation out of Himself. That is heresy
 
yppop said:
Hi Nano,
It is not as complex as you might think. Here are a few ideas for you the chew on:

One can never know just how mind boggling creatio ex nihilo is until you wrestle with the numbers involved. The best we humans can do in attempting to describe “creation from nothing” is to invoke the big bang theory that proposes that the entire universe emerged in an explosive manner from and infinitesimal object called the singularity. The scope involved in such an event is beyond imagination because try to imagine squeezing the universe that weighs 10^+53 kg into an object the size of the Planck length = 10^-35 m. That’s an awful lot of matter squeezed into an infinitesimal object.

The big bang theory proposes that not only the matter that comprises the universe emerged from the singularity, but so too did space, energy, and time. The emergence of space is an intriguing thought in that it is impossible to imagine anything from which “space” emerged other than a something that is “space-like”. However, if one thinks long and hard about the big bang as it relates to creatio ex nihilo, space offers the best hope for an explanation. Consider:

Only 5% of the universe is matter. Dark matter and dark energy are abstractions created to make sense of the current equations of physics and they too can only be space-like. Furthermore, since the hydrogen atom, a single proton “circled” by a single electron, is 30,000 times the size of the proton that consists of three quarks and since electrons and quarks are point particles, the universe that is mostly hydrogen is virtually empty. The idea that the universe is virtually empty makes it easier to believe that there is a plausible explanation for creatio ex nihilo.

For example, if you assume that objective reality is constructed from discrete space that emerged from an infinitude of continuous space. Since the universe is finite, then the universe could be constructed from a finite amount of discrete space. Discrete space is composed of dimensionless points, therefore, a finite number of discrete points, however large a number of them, would still be be dimensionless. Thus the entire universe came from what from a physical point of view is “nothing”.

I helps to have an understanding of the mathematical view of infinity to understand what discrete space and continuous space are.

Yppop
Click to expand...
This appears to be heresy too. The Catholic Church teaches that creation came from abosolutely NOTHING.

I too like the idea of a song. The violin exists (God’s thoughts) but the noise and song are completely new and from nothing
 
thinkandmull said:
This appears to be heresy too. The Catholic Church teaches that creation came from abosolutely NOTHING.

I too like the idea of a song. The violin exists (God’s thoughts) but the noise and song are completely new and from nothing
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Actually, the song is from the vibration of the strings, which is caused by the action of the bow against the strings, caused by the violinist moving the bow. There is a transfer of energy.

I don’t know if you can illustrate ex nihilo creation with a mundane model. We are bound by physical laws (like the conservation of mass and/or energy). God is not.
 
There is a natural law that governs the universe. God cannot violate natural law. Because of his infinite knowledge and power, he is able to control the universe and create worlds without number, always in obedience to natural law. Worlds are not created out of nothing but of existing matter. God knows the laws that govern the creation of earths and applies those laws in creating worlds. Perhaps we in our pre-earth life have assisted him in this endeavor.

The above knowledge came to us from revelations that God gave to Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet.

Dallas Murdoch
 
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