@makesends -- As of Tuesday morning (October 3), I will be out of town and away from my computer for the next two weeks on a much-needed vacation. I submit the following for your consideration but I don't expect a response from you (because there is a lot here). Just mull these things over for a bit. If you would like to pick this back up again when I return, perhaps we could subject just one or two items to a deep dive.
Part 1
[If the idea of trophic cascade] relates to what I'm trying to say, it supports what I'm saying. As a "mathematical" statement, X exists, then X doesn't exist, makes no sense to my mind. It happened. It was real; it is fact. It doesn't then suddenly cease to be fact.
I can't figure out where the breakdown in communication is happening but it's definitely happening. I read your statement here and I am left bewildered, for the concept of X existing at some time and not existing at a later time makes abundant sense because it is a universally common experience for all mankind. In the spring of 1958 my mother was born, and in the winter of 2021 she passed away. She doesn't exist prior to point A, she exists through points A–B, and she doesn't exist after point B. It happened, it was real, as you say. It was a fact, and it will never cease being a fact. This applies to practically everything. For example, I made a cup of tea and drank it. My cup of tea exists at one point and doesn't exist at another point. I throw a log onto the fire, it exists at one point and doesn't exist at another point. Persepolis, the Hindenburg, Tyrannosaurus rex—the examples can be multiplied endlessly.
I am fairly certain that nearly anyone (else) would tell me this is such common sense that it would be weird to ask about it. They might be suspicious of a trap or some kind of gotcha. And yet here you are insisting that it makes no sense to your mind? Something is not being communicated here and I don't know what it is. I hope you do and that you can remedy this.
As a point of clarification: If something DOES exist at some point, then it IS real. If it DOESN'T exist at a later point, then it WAS real. Its existence never ceases being a fact, even after it no longer exists—but it changes to a
historical fact. It was real then, it is not real now.
The mental picture of argumentum ad lapidem is humorous to me, sort of like how a suitable nickname for some certain character fits that person. I hope what I said above about X and not-X and real does the job.
Unfortunately, no—as you can see above. I will wait for you to address that.
As far as I understand things (which can be mistaken), they see two kinds of death in scripture, spiritual separation from God (dead) and metaphysical separation from God (uncreated).
I'm having a bit of trouble following the description you give here. To me, the difference between them has nothing to do with whether they are created or not. They BOTH are created, as I see it.
Wait, what are you referring to by "them"? The difference between what or whom? Who or what are both created?
Metaphysical is also creation. God is not subject to anything he did not create, and there is no fact —not even the metaphysical— that he did not come from his creating.
That is precisely what I was saying, mate. "Metaphysical connection" with God is creation, and "metaphysical separation" from God is uncreation or decreation—literally, as "the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the life's breath returns to God who gave it" (Eccl. 12:7). Human existence depends on God creating and sustaining it. If God does not create you, then you don't exist. For example, he did not create my mother until the spring of 1958, so she did not exist until then. And he stopped sustaining her existence in 2021, so she no longer exists. (However, she will exist again in the future, "for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out—those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned," John 5:28-29.)
To say that God alone is the source of his own aseity is ticklish and, I fear, too easily misunderstood. God can't be said to create himself, nor even to cause himself.
It's also not what I said. To remind you and the readers, I said that "God alone is the source of existence—even his own," a divine attribute called aseity (self-existence). It is a reference to his necessary being, insofar as his existence does not depend on anyone or anything other than himself. (He also doesn't depend on anything outside of himself for his knowledge, power, or goodness.)
This is in contrast to contingent being, such as me or you or even the universe. Our existence depends on something else, a causal chain that starts with God. William Lane Craig put it like this once (although I don't remember where): "If God did not exist, the universe would not exist. If the universe did not exist, God would nevertheless exist." That's the difference between self-existence and contingent existence.
To say that God alone is the source of all existence, including his own, is just straight up Christian orthodoxy. And I don't know what ticklish means in this context. My five-year-old is ticklish, but statements are not. You were using a word in a context entirely unfamiliar to me.
If there is a mode of eternal existence in the hereafter, then it is by God's word, God sustaining its existence. If eternal conscious torment is real, ... I say God is involved in some sense.
But since scripture describes the wicked as finally being cut off from God (metaphysical separation), eternal conscious torment can't be real—for God sustaining their existence in hell entails that connection being maintained. And, again, we have no reason outside the book of Revelation to think eternal conscious torment is real.
But if, on the other hand, what you describe annihilation to be is the case, then God need not be in any capacity relevant to the facts.
Wait, what? You can call this view ludicrous and claim that it disperses into incoherence, but I'm afraid you will have to do more than just appeal to the stone, as it were.
Don't simply assert that "God need not be in any capacity relevant to the facts," but rather EXPLAIN how that's supposed to follow—especially in light of my response which had detailed how God is not only relevant to the facts but even defines them. Engage my argument which showed that God is relevant to and defines creation, regeneration, perishing, and so forth.
