The properties of God.

[hansard]

1holycatholic posted the following:
Being atemporal and uncreated are necessary attributes of God.

Why is that? Just because they appear to be the attributes of the god we have, it does not mean they are necessary attributes.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Erm…getting back to the original question:
I would (very hesitantly) offer the proposition that a creator came into existence at the same time as the universe…but, before anyone plays the “heretic” or “blasphemy” cards, let me explain.

It is possible that the singularity, that is widely held to have erupted magnificently all those eons ago, is coexistent and coextensive with a creating being.
I’m no scientist beyond the odd amateur, dumbed-down book, and maybe words fail me here, but is it at least possible that God came into existence when time and matter did? (Especially time: that’s the sticking point in the minds of most laypeople. It’s impossible for most people to imagine anything existing outside our linear notion of time.)

Maybe I haven’t really answered the OP’s question.

Is anyone still interested in the thread?

this isnt a possibility, allow me to explain

its really saying the universe is a necessary being, obviously as it might not have been it is contingent, and therefore requires a first cause, this applies even if we grant the idea of an infinite universe in which each universe is caused by a previous set of conditions. why? because a contingent being is only a possibility until acted upon by a cause in order to exist. that means that no contingent being can exist to cause the next in the series without a necessary being, commonly called first cause. such a necessary being then must exist as the maximal state of being. actus purus, or a being whose essence is existence.

therefore there is no “coming into existence” as is commonly bandied about, but rather there is existence alone. atemporal. uncreated

 

[HelenaMT]

What properties or characteristics are required by an entity capable of creating the physical universe?

Prospective posters to this thread might kindly note that this is not a request for more reiterations of a catechism or quotes from the Bible. That is why it is posted in the philosophy section. It is an opportunity to consider the necessary and sufficient (i.e. minimum) properties of our Creator in the context of modern knowledge about how the universe works.

At a minimum he must have the ability to interact with the material world in order to have set about allowing particles to form and bond and change. He must be able to use his mind to cause an action, just as we use our minds when we decide to take some physical action. His mind must be connected to the physical operation of the universe in some way, just as our minds connect to our bodies. Perhaps there are parts of the physical universe that are no longer easily accessible to him, the way we have beating hearts but can’t usually stop or start them on command.

A lot of his properties would depend on whether the laws that govern our physical universe were conceived by him previous to this universe being created, or whether they were inevitable due to what already existed. Meaning, it is important to know whether the creator created ex nihilo or whether he just used existing materials to build upon.

It’s also important to know if he formulated all the laws completely in his mind before acting, or if he gradually caused changes here and there until he wound up with this universe. Each of these scenarios point to different properties in a creator. The first points to an initially complex mind, the second to a mind that formed more akin to the way ours do.

The building- up- gradually scenario means he would be intimately involved with physical operations at the smallest levels, and be guiding reality, rather than standing back and allowing his laws go into operation. I am not sure which of those two, if either, have any more standing in light of what we know about reality today.

The problem is ,it seems necessary for the gradually developing creator to take a more active role, since he is guiding things as he grows in awareness. This doesn’t seem to fit the scientific evidence, unless he no longer can exert the control he once did before the universe got so complex.

The other scenario, the creator who set a plan in motion by crafting our physical laws and setting it all in motion, points more to a traditional theism. However, if one is looking at this from a purely philosophical view, it is hard to figure out how our creator would have had enough innate knowledge to have done this, in the absence of any previous experiences with universe development (or matter creation, or time, etc).

 

[1holycatholic]

this isnt a possibility, allow me to explain

its really saying the universe is a necessary being, obviously as it might not have been it is contingent, and therefore requires a first cause, this applies even if we grant the idea of an infinite universe in which each universe is caused by a previous set of conditions. why? because a contingent being is only a possibility until acted upon by a cause in order to exist. that means that no contingent being can exist to cause the next in the series without a necessary being, commonly called first cause. such a necessary being then must exist as the maximal state of being. actus purus, or a being whose essence is existence.

therefore there is no “coming into existence” as is commonly bandied about, but rather there is existence alone. atemporal. uncreated

Thanks for the excellent answer. I saw hansard’s post earlier today, but I didn’t have the chance to write a reply.

 

[marybridget123]

The Infinite giggles every time someone wants to quantify or possess knowlege of God.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Thanks for the excellent answer. I saw hansard’s post earlier today, but I didn’t have the chance to write a reply.

in my best elvis impersonation…thank you…thank you very much.

 

[Detales]

The Infinite giggles every time someone wants to quantify or possess knowlege of God.

Well said. You are sure you are Catholic?

 

[shoewindow3000]

Every time I hear someone ask this, I am reminded of two things:

“Who God is in His essence, nobody, neither the mind of angels nor of man, will ever comprehend.”(Revelation to St. Faustina)

and

St. Paul:

“The more they become philosophers, the more stupid they become.”

 

[tonyrey]

However, if one is looking at this from a purely philosophical view, it is hard to figure out how our creator would have had enough innate knowledge to have done this, in the absence of any previous experiences with universe development (or matter creation, or time, etc).

I like your analysis of the necessary properties of God and the possibilities. On this last point I believe it is not only hard but impossible to figure out how our Creator would have had enough innate knowledge to create this universe. To assume otherwise is to overrate our insight into reality. What we do know is that it requires an inconceivable amount of wisdom, power and, most importantly, love. God loves all creatures but most of all those with free will. The greatest love is to share the capacity for love even though it entails making oneself vulnerable - as Jesus demonstrated…

 

[hansard]

Removed. Carry on.

 

[1holycatholic]

Every time I hear someone ask this, I am reminded of two things:

“Who God is in His essence, nobody, neither the mind of angels nor of man, will ever comprehend.”(Revelation to St. Faustina)

and

St. Paul:

“The more they become philosophers, the more stupid they become.”

It appears that you are misrepresenting what the Church teaches about philosophy with private revelation and a Scripture quote taken out of context. You should read FIDES ET RATIO, or at least this commentary of it.

 

[jkiernan56]

I’m in general agreement with the sense of your idea that God and the universe came into existence jointly

You describe very well the heresy of Pantheism. Something is not true because we believe it it. The truth of Christianity is not true because I believe in it. Belief does not make something true. Belief is based on acknowledging what one has come to determine REALLY IS TRUE … TRUE IN AND OF ITSELF. What is really true is worthy of my belief. My sanity acknowledges the reality of Objective Truth. Truth is not what I make it. Pantheism is truth according to what a person “makes up”. The idea that God and the universe came into existence at the same time is PANTHEISM. Believing in that idea does not make it true.

CS Lewis describes Pantheism very well in book two “What Christians Believe” in Mere Christianity. Here is a smalll excerpt -

“Pantheists usually believe that God so to speak, animates the universe as you animate your body; that the universe almost “IS” God, so that if it did not exist He would not exist either, and anything you find in the universe is a part of God. The Christian idea is quite diffeent. They think God invented and made the universe, like a man making a picture or composing a tune. A painter is not a picture and he does not dies if his picture is destroyed.”

Everything I have learned and more importantly experienced tells me that God is NOT created and existed eternally BEFORE creation. I really do believe that is TRUE. It isn’t true because I believe it. Either it is or it is not true. I don’t define truth. The goal is to find out what really is true, and then cling to it with your whole life like you would to a life preserver. There was a day when I did not know that God existed. I was not going to believe God existed just because someone told me He existed. In my despair, I really did cry out to God and sincerely asked God to please show me if He existed. Because in my heart of hearts I knew two things: either God really did exist or He didn’t exist. Now if the first was true (I mean REALLY TRUE) … then God had the ability to make Himself known to me if He wanted to. And if God didn’t exist, then He didn’t exist and I would never know He existed.

Let me tell you folks - if you really want to know if God exists and sincerely in humility ask Him to show you … HE WILL. God slammed me with a 2x4 … with a sledge hammer … and this is the God who is UNCREATED … who existed long before His creation … and most importantly I came to know that this God is intensely in love with me … and each person.

 

[jkiernan56]

The traditional sense of an uncreated God implies that He had no origin. Saying that the Creator “came into existence” violates the “no origin” principle, which needs violation

It needs violation? Huh???

As a scientist, you have to realize that you are not the one who gets to define reality.
Reality is - and science is all about trying to discover what really is.

The “no origin” principle needs violation? That is a scientist trying to make up reality because he cannot accept reality. Yes, there are some things the human mind will never understand. Uncreated Creator is one of them. Again I say - a scientist does not define reality - but tries to determine what really is … .through his experiments. And science WILL NEVER be able to comprehend the ‘no orgin’ principle - because it is not measurable. It simply is.

God did not come into existence at the moment of creation. That is Pantheism.

 

[hansard]

Oh, come on, jkiernan56:
What scientist would surrender the battleground as completely as you have done?
I wonder if there exists a true scientist who would concede that some things are forever beyond understanding.
And the idea that science does not attempt to define reality: well, without getting bogged down in a metaphysical debate on what is real and what is not, I would suggest that scientists do, in fact, try to define, catologue, quantify, investigate and analyse reality.

 

[hansard]

Just imagine, in eons to come (and without any heresy or blasphemy) that science found a way to define God, or to objectively describe His properties.
Wouldn’t that be something?

 

[grannymh]

I like your analysis of the necessary properties of God and the possibilities. On this last point I believe it is not only hard but impossible to figure out how our Creator would have had enough innate knowledge to create this universe. To assume otherwise is to overrate our insight into reality. What we do know is that it requires an inconceivable amount of wisdom, power and, most importantly, love. God loves all creatures but most of all those with free will. The greatest love is to share the capacity for love even though it entails making oneself vulnerable - as Jesus demonstrated…

To: Tonyrey, post 109, and HelenaMT whose post 103 was quoted therein.

Have you ever philosophically thought about God as a transcendent being?
I ask because what you are describing sounds like a person [human] once known as a “jack of all trades.”

Have you ever considered how God philosophically describes Himself in Scripture?
I ask because what you are describing sounds like what was once known as a “Madison Avenue want ad”.

 

[grannymh]

Oh, come on, jkiernan56:
What scientist would surrender the battleground as completely as you have done?
I wonder if there exists a true scientist who would concede that some things are forever beyond understanding.
And the idea that science does not attempt to define reality: well, without getting bogged down in a metaphysical debate on what is real and what is not, I would suggest that scientists do, in fact, try to define, catologue, quantify, investigate and analyse reality.

A true scientist does concede that some things are–maybe not forever–beyond understanding.

It is a materialist who cannot concede that some things are beyond understanding.

Many times a person is both a scientist and a materialist which is the kind of person you may be referring to.

 

[Detales]

Hansard~~“I would suggest that scientists do, in fact, try to define, catologue, quantify, investigate and analyse reality.”

Yes, they do–the appearance and workings of it as objectification. But that is only part of the picture. Science in its quantifications does not integrate meaning. And clearly, from some of the piety on here, religion does not account for objective relationship and function. We are multi-dimensional creatures and need to include both the objective and subjective modes of accounting for our experience.

But the subject/object modality is yet contained in the field sometimes referred to as the Unified Field in physics, and as ALLness or God in religion. We have to remember that both of these perspectives are descriptors of Universe from different yet inextricable viewpoints. Yet by anecdote, whether scriptural or through individual experience, we know that the human is capable of a non-subject/object mode of awareness. It is possible to experience Consciousness, or God, as Such. In that state of Awareness there is no parsing of the feeling of BEing into time nor attributes, and there is no object of awareness but SELF, which word is used in its denotation of wholeness, and not of person.

That State might be called “I” as it is the grand ultimate Subject. It is independent of need, want, or form. Yet it has within and as itself Potentiality. When projected into manifestation and experience, it is called “AM” Taken together, the unmanliest and the manifest may be called “THAT I AM”

This is the hoary basis of the ages old gnosis of BEing and manifesting. It is the root of Catholicism as known by its esoteric practitioners. The exoteric practitioners leave it in Jesus and will wait for Him until they themselves wake up, are born again, or whatever term might be used for clear perception. What will be seen then is the actual dynamic and meaning of the ancient story of the Hero God incarnated into flesh who suffers and dies only to resurrect as a new Being with a new awareness of Source. That knowledge by gnosis of God is what begets and constitutes the only Son of God, which is properly the understanding *in form *of I AM THAT I AM. Thus glorified, the knower can rightfully state that “Iand the Father are One!” That state of Knowing is called from ancient times, The Christ.

“The God whom ye ignorantly worship, HE I declare unto you.” Paul and the early Fathers of the church knew this, and taught it, until the shadow of literalism and historicization of the Jesus story in the first three centuries of christianism bled the meaning from the form of the ancient and sacred story. As St Augustine said “There are many things which it is not useful for the vulgar crowd to know; and certain things which although thaey are flase it is expedient for the people to believe otherwise.” (~~City of God) We are in an age where the average education of the individual is light years behond that of the ordinary citizen of the time of “Pax Romana.” It is time that the chuch publicly acknowledge its actual roots, and confess as did Augustine that “The very thing which is ow called the Christian religion existed among the ancientsalso, nor was it wanting from the inception of the human raceuntil the coming of Christ in tne flesh, at which point the true reigion which was already in existance began to be called Christian.” (~~Retractions)

As an interesting sidenote to this, I find it fascinating that the word “Christ” can be traced back to Egypt where the hyroglyphs for KRST were on the coffin lid of the Osiris, which a deceased person was called. It refered to “Horus (Iusa) the anointed Son of God the Father.” It is also related to “Krshna” and “Kali” as male and female embodiments of the Child of God.

This is not to denigrate the church or anyone believing in it. It is to raise our understanding to a point of comonality with the facts of history so that we can truly understand the Sacred gift that has been given us as being created in the image and likeness of God. It is time for christianism to remove itself from the Dark Ages and re-ignite the ancient Understanding on which the Abrahamic religons, and indeed all religions, are based. There can be for each of us an experiential referent for the properties of God, as '56 and a few others well know.

 

[gearhead]

Most fundamentally speaking, existence is the only property an entity capable of “creating the physical universe” would need.

My toaster has existence, but I don’t think it’s capable of creating a universe. Surely there has to be more to it than that.

ex nihilo nihil fit

But is God not “ex nihilo” as well?

Being atemporal and uncreated are necessary attributes of God.

But are they necessary attributes of an entity capable of creating the physical universe?

BTW - to the OP: what do you mean by “universe”? Are you talking about just the limits of what we can experience and observe, or are you talking about everything, everywhere, in all parallel universes or what-have-you?

I think that changes the question a bit, since an entity living in a parallel universe could conceivably create this one even if it was, say, created itself and mortal… while it might not be able to create everything in existence.

 

[jkiernan56]

Oh, come on, jkiernan56:
What scientist would surrender the battleground as completely as you have done?
I wonder if there exists a true scientist who would concede that some things are forever beyond understanding.
And the idea that science does not attempt to define reality: well, without getting bogged down in a metaphysical debate on what is real and what is not, I would suggest that scientists do, in fact, try to define, catologue, quantify, investigate and analyse reality.

I admire scientists. They have an insatiable hunger to know the truth. The scientific method is to hypothesize and then investigate to see if the results support one’s hypothesis. It is admirable for scientists to investigate reality and to push back mystery. But scientists do not define reality - only investigate it. Scientists are on a lifelong quest to understand and make sense of the universe and more importantly the meaning of their own life. That is admirable. I just think the hypothesis that God came into being at the time of creation is just plain mistaken. It will never be true because it simply is not true - nor will it ever be. Scientists can only investigate reality - not define it.

In my learning and experience I have come to know there are some realities science will never be able to measure. God, the uncreated Creator (the Being Who Is Reality Itself) will never be able to be reduced to a science project. God is totally OTHER. God could have continued in BEING for all eternity without ever creating anything or anyone. I know that is true - from experience, not just books. That knowledge has turned my life upside down. I sympathize with Greylorn and other scientists who only accept reality they can see, hear, touch, smell, taste and measure - because I was the same way.