The act of creation impossible unless God does not have free will

[vz71]

The problem is in claiming God to be timeless, changeless, and utterly with a potential of absolutely zero, we cannot have a creation ex nihilo. Nor could we have God become that which has itself a beginning, namely “a man”. Both of which require potential.

For us perhaps.
We are not omnipotent.

 

[Bahman]

That creation changed him.

I didn’t say so but I think that is a feasible scenario.

 

[Bahman]

Your assumption is that God needs time to make a decision.

He might able to decide eternally so He does not need time to make a decision.

Whereas the act of Creation is his will.

Yes.

 

[setarcos]

For us perhaps.
We are not omnipotent.

How does omnipotence trump zero potential? As I’ve said earlier, stating that God must be omnipotent and understanding what that means and at the same time stating that because God is God and we are not we cannot understand how he would skirt arround the contradictory statements is absolu tely meaningless. We seem to be trying to eat our cake and still have it left too. So to speak.

 

[vz71]

I didn’t say so but I think that is a feasible scenario.

Then your original conjecture is shown false.

 

[vz71]

How does omnipotence trump zero potential? As I’ve said earlier, stating that God must be omnipotent and understanding what that means and at the same time stating that because God is God and we are not we cannot understand how he would skirt arround the contradictory statements is absolu tely meaningless. We seem to be trying to eat our cake and still have it left too. So to speak.

Omnipotence is outside of our experience or understanding.
How can you claim anything?

 

[Bahman]

Then your original conjecture is shown false.

No because the OP is about the act of creation. What happens for God after creation is another topic.

 

[vz71]

No because the OP is about the act of creation. What happens for God after creation is another topic.

I see you ate in denial.
It is not always easy to give up false notions, but it can be done.

Either creating changed God or it did not.
In the OP you lay claim that God must have changed for the very act of deciding to create.
But several posts later you say it is feasible he remained unchanged.

These claims are mutually exclusive.
So which is it?

 

[noorez]

Were this a true opinion that would mean some form of creation would be as eternal as God and the creators eternal nature would be contingent upon that which was created existing eternally with the creator making its nature indistinguishable from that of the Creator which by definition of what created means is impossible. At some point the Creator must exist prior to any creation.

I don’t think it is really fair to say that the creation would be as eternal to God…there are different levels of eternity…
The creation is constantly changing, God is not changing… and while there was always some form of creation I don’t say that the physical worls always was… science clearly shows it has a beginning.

Also dont think it is fair to say that the creation would have the same nature as its creator… God is the ground of his own being, he simply just is (I AM). He is absolute being. Our existence and the creation’s existence is grounded in his existence. To say that the creation has the same nature would say that the creation can be the creation can be the ground of its own being. This would imply a second supreme being…

We can say that the creator exististed prior to his creation in a logical sense but the concepts of temporalness really only belong to our physical world and our own perception. We cannot apply that to God.

 

[setarcos]

Omnipotence is outside of our experience or understanding.
How can you claim anything?

Good scholor, you are doing exactly what my post claims. We cannot apply to God an attribute we in no way can understand lest I then claim that that attribute may not be applied to God because we cannot understand how the attribute would be applicable to God, leaving us exactly where we were before, with no knowledge either way. No information having been exchanged.This kind of thinking leaves open a window into which anyone may claim anything about God with no acceptance of any disproof of their claims. If you claim an attribute for God you must have some idea of what the attribute means. The term is clearly defined and because of that fact we may discuss the consequences.
Should you be compelled to making anything applicable to God then you should be able to deal with the relevant consequences of your reasons for doing so.
Granted it is easier to say we simply don’t have the capacity to understand when it applies to God but then again it’s not so simple to justify predicating our actions based on that same understanding of the attributes we claim God has.
Im not sure what you mean by your last statement? It’s very easy to claim something. Anything in point of fact. It’s even easier when we apply terms to something which we then claim is beyond our understanding. If it’s beyond understanding then we should make no claims at all. Including applying any attributes to God.

 

[setarcos]

I don’t think it is really fair to say that the creation would be as eternal to God…there are different levels of eternity…
The creation is constantly changing, God is not changing… and while there was always some form of creation I don’t say that the physical worls always was… science clearly shows it has a beginning.

Also dont think it is fair to say that the creation would have the same nature as its creator… God is the ground of his own being, he simply just is (I AM). He is absolute being. Our existence and the creation’s existence is grounded in his existence. To say that the creation has the same nature would say that the creation can be the creation can be the ground of its own being. This would imply a second supreme being…

We can say that the creator exististed prior to his creation in a logical sense but the concepts of temporalness really only belong to our physical world and our own perception. We cannot apply that to God.

Greatings, may God guide me to understanding your wisdom.
Forgive my ignorance but what do you mean by ‘levels’ of eternity?
I did not claim creation is as eternal as God. I actually claimed in fact there are good reasons why creation could not be as eternal as God. There are also consequences to being an unchanging God which many people I believe misunderstand. Myself included. As far as a changing creation goes…that may be a delusion from our perspective. If creations past, present, and future were created all at once, God being continually present in each that would leave precious little room for change from his perspective.
Again I’m not claiming that the creation would have the same nature as God. I’m saying that given the premise made, the consequences make this possibility highly improbable. I agree, we should not apply temporality to God. We can however apply temporality to the creation and use this fact as a basis from which we may draw conclusions about its relationship with God . Incidentally the temporal nature of Christ the man’s birth poses difficulties in my eyes with rectifying this fact with the atemporality of God.
May God bless us for trying.

 

[vz71]

We have a starting point.

We know nothing and can claim nothing since God is outside our experience.

Agreed?

 

[Bahman]

I see you ate in denial.
It is not always easy to give up false notions, but it can be done.

Either creating changed God or it did not.
In the OP you lay claim that God must have changed for the very act of deciding to create.
But several posts later you say it is feasible he remained unchanged.

These claims are mutually exclusive.
So which is it?

Let me give you an example: We believe that God is omnipresent. What that could ever mean before the act of creation? Nothing. Hence God is simply omnipresent after His creation. This however requires a change in God. The same applies to timeless state, etc.

 

[Bahman]

We have a starting point.

We know nothing and can claim nothing since God is outside our experience.

Agreed?

That is not true because you should have access to understand God from His work otherwise your God is a cruel being leaving humanity, intellectual beings, inside the box of ignorance, so called universe.

What is your God’s purpose to your best of understanding?

 

[vz71]

That is not true because you should have access to understand God from His work otherwise your God is a cruel being leaving humanity, intellectual beings, inside the box of ignorance, so called universe.

What is your God’s purpose to your best of understanding?

Correct.
So we can have agreement that God exists.
Else there is no creation.
Do we have agreement thus far?

 

[setarcos]

We have a starting point.

We know nothing and can claim nothing since God is outside our experience.

Agreed?

I personally don’t agree.
We can claim something on the basis of what God may supply to our experience to know about him. This is the religious concept of Gods reaching down to man. A God who personally interacts with his creation. You being a Catholic I presume you believe in this much.

Even if you don’t you must agree that we have proposed a concept of God and may draw conclusions from this from our reasoning together since from the conception of our starting proposition of what we have defined God to be we might draw conclusions about the meaning of said proposition using the same reasoning"language" which proposed the thing in the first place. Ultimately we may be wrong in thinking our original proposition true, Namely that there actually exists such a thing, but this wouldn’t apply to our arguments unless we were trying to prove existence. We are not. We are rather drawing conclusions about a God presumed to exist with the attributes defined for him to have. Since our conception of God does not allow for self contradictions as defined by the language in which he uses to communicate with us (his coming down to us) we may conclude that if such contradictions arrise then we must either be wrong in applying this reasoning to God or we must be wrong in concluding a contradiction has occured. Either course should be theoretically provable. Within our realm of existence.
For instance, because we have concluded God to be timeless, our conception of God’s timelessness has entered our realm of existence and conclusions should be able to be drawn. Any conception of God or his abilities that hasn’t entered our realm of existence cannot be proposed nor discussed since it would be meaningless to us and inexpressible in human language. Should someone experience such a thing it could only be subjective and never communicated meaningfully with another person.
In my opinion, problems occur when we ignore contradictions when they arrise by concluding that they have arisen only seemingly because they are from our perspective and not God’s. Yet the language that gave rise to them was given to us by God.

 

[setarcos]

Let me give you an example: We believe that God is omnipresent. What that could ever mean before the act of creation? Nothing. Hence God is simply omnipresent after His creation. This however requires a change in God. The same applies to timeless state, etc.

I don’t believe your reasoning is entirely correct.
we define omnipresence as existing everywhere. There being no place God is not. Since before creation there was nothing but God by definition anywhere there is to be, God is. Keeping in line with the definition of omnipresence. After creation God’s state in this regard hasn’t changed since he remains omnipresent throughout creation. There was never a temporal nor atemporal point at which God was not present.
Hence no change here.

 

[setarcos]

That is not true because you should have access to understand God from His work otherwise your God is a cruel being leaving humanity, intellectual beings, inside the box of ignorance, so called universe.

What is your God’s purpose to your best of understanding?

I know of no law dictating that God cannot be exactly what you state. Leaving mankind hopelessly deluded into believing that we can make any conclusions about him. So to say that the quoted statement is not true is alittle premature based upon your statement. There are other reasons though for being able to discuss the proposed attributes God .

 

[setarcos]

Correct.
So we can have agreement that God exists.
Else there is no creation.
Do we have agreement thus far?

Your conclusion here does not follow necessarily from your premise.
Proof of God’s existence is an entirely different line of argument from the original proposition.
whether or not God actually exists is irrelevant to a discussion of the nature of an “existant” God.
There are several arguments for Gods existence, some good, some not so good but your conclusion here does not follow from the premise.
There are several good secular arguments as well for how creation began without the need for God to exist.
From an absolutely proved point of view the juries still out.