An Engineer's Perspective on Creation

[Josheb]

This is one of my thoughts concerning very FACT, and in particular, God's Immanence: God is the only source of "new".

I disagree. God is not the author of sin. I would also venture to say that God, The Causal Agent of the first cause, created a creation full of yet to be realized potential, or in most cases dialectics. Another way to think of creation is that God is Thesis and there are a lot of antitheses ensuing from what He created. Sin, correctly understood, is an antithesis (law/lawlessness), an absence of something. So too is faithlessness. Creation comes with destruction, another antithesis. Although acknowledged as entirely hypothetical and speculative, it is conceivable the angels might always have obeyed God and the humans might always have obeyed God eaten from the tree of life and never the forbidden kiwi. Cause and effect would not have ceased. Certain forms of death (and therefore destruction) would still exist. All kinds of things can be said to be "new." Ecclesiastes 1:9 is said in context of that which existed at that time, including an exceedingly wise man who thought life is meaningless. I wonder if he grasped the irony .

I certainly would like to see Einstein in Heaven, and laugh with him at the beauty and wisdom of Omnipotence....

That is one of the great paradoxes of Christianity that separates it from all other religions.

While Roosevelt and Churchill fought on the side of "good," they may end up in hell simply because they did not believe in the name of God's Son, and although Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were completely depraved (no pun intended) individuals the fact is if Hitler confessed Christ as his Lord the moment before that bullet passed through his skull then you and I will be laughing with him on the other side of the grave! The same goes for Einstein, Hawking, and every other human creature.

 

[makesends]

I disagree. God is not the author of sin.

Sin is not "new". It is perversion of 'what is', or, more carefully stated, "the privation of good".

I do hesitate to say that it is not a 'law' or 'principle' but such things seem to me to go beyond what we can aptly describe. I say that whatever 'it' is, God necessarily caused that it be. But the doing of sin is necessarily the doing of the beings who work rebellion, and not of God doing it in them. I even hesitate to say that sin is of its own category, because to say that includes the notion that "it is". But evil is even spoken of in Scripture as almost of its own conscious existence —a being.

This is not a concept that easily settles into our thinking, but I think that may be because of its simplicity rather than because of any complication endemic to its supposed ontology.

I would also venture to say that God, The Causal Agent of the first cause, created a creation full of yet to be realized potential, or in most cases dialectics. Another way to think of creation is that God is Thesis and there are a lot of antitheses ensuing from what He created. Sin, correctly understood, is an antithesis (law/lawlessness), an absence of something. So too is faithlessness. Creation comes with destruction, another antithesis. Although acknowledged as entirely hypothetical and speculative, it is conceivable the angels might always have obeyed God and the humans might always have obeyed God eaten from the tree of life and never the forbidden kiwi. Cause and effect would not have ceased. Certain forms of death (and therefore destruction) would still exist. All kinds of things can be said to be "new." Ecclesiastes 1:9 is said in context of that which existed at that time, including an exceedingly wise man who thought life is meaningless. I wonder if he grasped the irony .

Ha! Yes, I think he did.

I'm saying that only God can create "new", regardless of what something is called or how it is seen by us. I'm talking about change, though it be change upon something already happening or existing. That change, even spiritual "movement", is caused by God —perhaps by what we consider his Immanence. To me, what is described in physics, as merely natural and even commonplace, is miracle, of the same order as creating.

That is one of the great paradoxes of Christianity that separates it from all other religions.

While Roosevelt and Churchill fought on the side of "good," they may end up in hell simply because they did not believe in the name of God's Son, and although Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were completely depraved (no pun intended) individuals the fact is if Hitler confessed Christ as his Lord the moment before that bullet passed through his skull then you and I will be laughing with him on the other side of the grave! The same goes for Einstein, Hawking, and every other human creature.

 

[Josheb]

Sin is not "new". It is perversion of 'what is', or, more carefully stated, "the privation of good".

Did God make perversion?

Consider this: the word "new" would be nonsensical if there were nothing new. The word is a form of labeling cause and effect where one or the other did not previously exist. If words have meaning then that word could not exist.

 

[makesends]

I would also venture to say that God, The Causal Agent of the first cause, created a creation full of yet to be realized potential, or in most cases dialectics. Another way to think of creation is that God is Thesis and there are a lot of antitheses ensuing from what He created.

I know you think this way, and while it may well be more open-minded, (by which I mean something good, haha), I cannot conceive of anything else besides God being uncaused —thus not only is he first cause and all else is effect, (though as far as I know, all effects are eventually also causes)— but to invoke "potential" as a human concept is to invoke chance and multiple possibility, which I rationally can't abide. If I take "potential", like you said, as dialectic, then it admits to the same use as "chance" etc, as long as it is recognized to be mere 'talk' and not fact. Such are shortcuts to a point, and not honestly descriptive of the point and its causes. The only thing possible is whatever God has ordained to come to pass. The fact WE don't know what it is, is irrelevant.



—Or so it seems to me.

 

[makesends]

Did God make perversion?

Consider this: the word "new" would be nonsensical if there were nothing new. The word is a form of labeling cause and effect where one or the other did not previously exist. If words have meaning then that word could not exist.

No, of course God did not make perversion. But if there is perversion, God caused that it be, and that, obviously through means.

 

[Josheb]

I know you think this way, and while it may well be more open-minded, (by which I mean something good, haha), I cannot conceive of anything else besides God being uncaused —thus not only is he first cause and all else is effect, (though as far as I know, all effects are eventually also causes)— but to invoke "potential" as a human concept is to invoke chance and multiple possibility, which I rationally can't abide. If I take "potential", like you said, as dialectic, then it admits to the same use as "chance" etc, as long as it is recognized to be mere 'talk' and not fact. Such are shortcuts to a point, and not honestly descriptive of the point and its causes. The only thing possible is whatever God has ordained to come to pass. The fact WE don't know what it is, is irrelevant.



—Or so it seems to me.

What does the word "if" mean to you?

 

[Josheb]

No, of course God did not make perversion. But if there is perversion, God caused that it be, and that, obviously through means.

God caused it but did not make it, it did not previously exist but was not new and never a potentiality.

Is that what I am supposed to be understanding?

 

[QVQ]

I dunno about that... the input from breakfast is greatly different from the output. LOL

But seriously, the output from God's creation will be far greater, for believers, than the original input.

The laws of conservation apply. Nothing is lost and nothing is gained Breakfast output is valuable source of food for future breakfasts (fertilizer for grain crops

Potentiality is the only way to understand the fact that all things are possible to God but not all possibilities are expressed by God.

There is modal collapse, this argument which was posed by @Jonaitus on Christian Forums
If we affirm that God's intentional actions are identical to each other in that there is only one act, and His one act is to create is identical with His existence, then His intentional act to create itself would too be immutable. This leads to two options:
1. Creation always existed.
2. Creation never existed.
The first implies that creation is an eternal act of God that will never cease to be. The second implies reality is false in some metaphysical way.
Furthermore, God can't change it, because it immutably flows from His one act that is identical to His existence.

 

[Jarhead4Jesus]

This is one of my thoughts concerning very FACT, and in particular, God's Immanence: God is the only source of "new".

(Ha! We marvel at the 'otherness' of a new-born, and then credit ourselves for 'creating' him/her. How many times do we see the self-determinist's worldview rearing its ugly head with that notion, in arguments as to God's work and purposes, in order to prove false doctrines!)

In the law of causation, not to mention its many corollaries, there can be only one ever first cause. Therefore, only one ever "new". "A body in motion tends to stay in motion" but if it is even to go into motion, it is only by God's doing, and if it is to divert from its motion, it is by God's doing. If the universe comes into being, it is by God's doing, whether by use of the "big bang" or whatever.

The pun of, "original causation = sustaining of fact", is hilarious and beautiful to me.

I certainly would like to see Einstein in Heaven, and laugh with him at the beauty and wisdom of Omnipotence. I would like to laugh with Stephen Hawking there, too, concerning our best physics and God's immanence in sustaining the fact of very reality, but I find that a bit less likely to find him there. But, what do I know?

So, any speculation on the OUTPUT of the creation 'device'?

 

[QVQ]

Creation Device
Input = God's Will
God's Will = What God selects from all possible
Out Put = God's Will
It is a poem, actually a reflection of God's selection of all possible.
It is a mirror of what is inherent in God but it is self selected
It is One Act , the One Act is God's Will in motion, self selecting actuals from all possible.

"If we affirm that God's intentional actions are identical to each other in that there is only one act, and His one act is to create is identical with His existence, then His intentional act to create itself would too be immutable."

The intentional act to create is through God's Will and what is created at any given time or place would be according to His Will.
Therefore, God can choose to create or not to create, when, where, what and how.
The capacity and potentiality to create does not imply actuality of creation.

God's intentional act to create would be subject to His Will yet there is only one act identical to His existence and His essence.

 

[ReverendRV]

For the sake of discussion, consider the whole of creation (time, space, matter, history, everything other than eternity) as an engineered device.

According to scripture, what was the INPUT and what will be the OUTPUT?

God is the Input, and his Glory is the Output...

 

[Red Baker]

"If builders constructed buildings the same way that evolutionists construct the theory of evolution, then civilization would have been destroyed by the first woodpecker that came along." -WiseManSay

That is not just a cute saying, it's a very accurate axiom. Any true Christian who believes in the theory of evolution, hasn't really examined the theory of evolution and either doesn't understand what a Christian is, what evolution is, or both. Because Evolution is a religion that takes more blind faith (in the humanistic sense of faith) to believe than it takes to believe that God created the world in six very literal days. The truth is, it is based as much or more, upon man's faith, as any other religion in the world.

 

[Jarhead4Jesus]

INPUT = God's word
OUTPUT = Revelation 21:3

 

[CrowCross]

"If builders constructed buildings the same way that evolutionists construct the theory of evolution, then civilization would have been destroyed by the first woodpecker that came along." -WiseManSay

That is not just a cute saying, it's a very accurate axiom. Any true Christian who believes in the theory of evolution, hasn't really examined the theory of evolution and either doesn't understand what a Christian is, what evolution is, or both. Because Evolution is a religion that takes more blind faith (in the humanistic sense of faith) to believe than it takes to believe that God created the world in six very literal days. The truth is, it is based as much or more, upon man's faith, as any other religion in the world.

" Any true Christian who believes in the theory of evolution, hasn't really examined the theory of evolution "

I agree.

I also see evo-ism as a form of religion.

 

[Sereni-tea]

" Any true Christian who believes in the theory of evolution, hasn't really examined the theory of evolution "

I agree.

I also see evo-ism as a form of religion.

It would be easy to adopt this view, and it would make things a lot simpler.

Except there are true Christians who are experts in the field of the life sciences, who have thoroughly examined evolution and believe the evidence shows it to be true.

Therefore, at least for me, I will not dismiss their views, even though I myself, at this point in time, am not convinced.

 

[Sereni-tea]

INPUT = God's word
OUTPUT = Revelation 21:3

While I do not really like the way you have expressed things here (input/output to me makes it sounds like God has shoved everything into a machine to see what comes out) I understand what you are getting at.

The output is what God has always wanted - to dwell with His people - (Rev 21, as you said). Heaven and earth united in Christ for the glory of God the Father.

 

[EarlyActs]

Yall know the God and the scientists joke, right? Four scientists work out a list of things needed to create the earth, no problem. They come back to ask God for various amounts of the stuffs. And God says "I don't think you've quite got the idea of this yet. You have to come up with them, too."

 

[makesends]

God caused it but did not make it, it did not previously exist but was not new and never a potentiality.

Is that what I am supposed to be understanding?

Looks like we're heading two different directions. 'Potentiality' (to me) is whatever can happen, but it is only unknown to us --not God. And whatever can happen is all that will happen. Nothing else can happen; nothing else will happen.

 

[makesends]

Yall know the God and the scientists joke, right? Four scientists work out a list of things needed to create the earth, no problem. They come back to ask God for various amounts of the stuffs. And God says "I don't think you've quite got the idea of this yet. You have to come up with them, too."

Yep. "Oh no. No no no! Go get your own dust!"

 

[CrowCross]

It would be easy to adopt this view, and it would make things a lot simpler.

Except there are true Christians who are experts in the field of the life sciences, who have thoroughly examined evolution and believe the evidence shows it to be true.

Therefore, at least for me, I will not dismiss their views, even though I myself, at this point in time, am not convinced.

Thing is, those christians skew the Bible.
The flood becomes a fable...axes don't float and donkeys don't talk.