Just an article my dad sent me. It was too heady for me and boring. I rarely allow myself to fall into discussions this deep, but for my dad I entertained.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson...ontent=259
(I lost some of the italics in the original article that might make it easier to understand)
My response to my dad:
That was really confusing. I've never heard the "thought over matter" position before other than the idea - and I'm sure I'm muddling this idea - that the universe and it's contents (animals, plants, planets, stars, matter, anti-matter, quarks, neutrons, black holes, photons, etc) only exist because humans observed them. To me, just an extrapolation of the Uncertainty Principle. If I remember correctly, there's a podcast interview between Joe Rogan and Lawrence Krauss where Krauss touches on this idea. Something about the size or age of the universe perhaps simply being predicated on our understanding of it (and something about time and light). As you'd expect, the Uncertainty Principle ultimately distills to a human-centric perspective.
Rogan has had a few interviews on these metaphysical topics with physicists. I think in that same interview (could be a different one) they talk about how the net of the universe is zero. Energy, matter anti-matter, gravity, etc...all net to zero. For every +1 in the universe, there's a -1. In that sense, I could see a conclusion where thought precedes matter. I'm sure this either stems from or is a conclusion of a modulating universe that expands and contracts.
But then my own logic kicks in and I think, if something can maintain a net of zero (or any other constant) and change in size, age, contents...why can't it maintain a continued expansion into the nothingness. At that point you've killed math, because 0 = infinite. This idea is appealing though.
Once you've killed Math, seems like you've killed the most basic of hard science, and you've killed God. Once you've killed God, as the Jewish Rabbis during the holocaust said, "now that we've decided God doesn't exist, let's bow our heads and pray".
In relating to God, well, I think the atheist and the theist are having the same discussion. One is trying to discussing the true nature of God, and one is discussing the origins of the Universe. I've never been able to figure out how metaphysical discussions have any bearing on whether God exists or not.
But then there's Mere Christianity where, if I recall correctly, he uses metaphysics as the foundation of his God exists argument, and he makes sense of it. He uses Right vs Wrong though. That's a book I should re-read. I remember an atheist friend starting the book. He only made it to the point where CS Lewis assumed humans are different than animals.
You should read Mere Christianity if that article interested you.
Well that's more than I thought I'd reply...just my musings on that guy's musings.
(so glad I no longer involve myself in these thoughts) (hopefully my dad doesn't react with "oh you're an agnostic now, I guess you're out of the will")
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson...ontent=259
(I lost some of the italics in the original article that might make it easier to understand)
Quote:Quote:
Deep Thoughts (Musings) about the Metaphysical Implications of “Creation out of Nothing”
Unfortunately, in my opinion, too many Christians have given up the traditional (and I think biblical) concept that God created everything outside himself “ex nihilo”—“out of nothing.” The early church fathers rightly emphasized this doctrine to avoid metaphysical dualism and metaphysical monism. I still agree with them that creation ex nihilo is necessary—even if not explicitly taught in the Bible—to avoid those heresies.
Simply put, if God created the universe (all things outside of himself) out of some eternally existing something, then God is not ultimate reality and we have no clear reason (as Augustine and C. S. Lewis right argued) to claim that good and evil are really opposites. Dualism leads to cosmic moral chaos. (I have gone over this matter and argument in detail in my most recent book which is now also a DVD “Essentials of Christian Thought” [Zondervan].)
Also, simply put, if God created the universe out of himself, then creation is worshipful and there is no good reason not to worship trees and rocks and mountains and…ourselves!
But! Creation out of nothing seems to have some implications (beyond being beyond our finite comprehension). What follows here are some mere musings about those possible implications.
First, creation out of nothing seems to require believing that the possible is ontologically prior to the actual—which has been been believed by some Christian scholars in Christian history but has always been controversial. (If you want to go deeper into the history of this idea read the following article by Ingolf Dalferth: “Possibile Absolutum: The Theological Discovery of the Ontological Priority of the Possible.” (Rethinking the Medieval Legacy for Contemporary Theology edited by Anselm K. Min [University of Notre Dame Press, 2014].)
Is that a problem? Well, it depends on whom you ask. Some orthodox Christians think it is a problem because it seems to divide God’s essence from God’s existence and they are supposed to be one—in God only. In other words, it introduces into the being of God, and therefore into ultimate reality itself, becoming whereas much traditional Christian theism has rejected that in favor of being only in God (without becoming). The implications for divine immutability would seem to be tremendous.
Even more troubling, however, for some orthodox Christians, is a second implication. Creation out of nothing seems to justify what is commonly known as “German idealism” (although the Germans didn’t exactly invent it!). Put most simply and basically, that is the idea that thought is primary and takes precedence over matter. Taken to its logical conclusion it could mean that thought is all there is and that matter is a form of thought.
By “matter” here is not necessarily meant “that hard stuff that we experience without senses;” it also means all that exists—reality itself. Think about it. If God’s thought came to expression in the creation of a material universe then it seems the material universe must in some sense, ontologically, have thought as its essence.
I am not pretending here to say anything new; of course this is the pattern of metaphysical reasoning we find in much theistic idealism throughout the centuries. It has taken many, many forms. One of those, of course, is New Thought including so-called “Christian Science.” (But there are many “milder” forms of New Thought than Christian Science which denies the very existence of matter.)
But doesn’t modern physics at least point to the idea that all of reality is composed of what philosopher Alfred North Whitehead called “energy events”—rather than traditional hard substances?
If we simply define “idealism” as any ontology (across a spectrum) that elevates thought above matter…doesn’t “creation out of nothing” seem to support it in some form?
And how is it possible to conceive of matter as being composed of anything but thought if 1) we believe in God, and 2) we believe God “thought” creation into being?
If it is not taken to an extreme, as in, say, metaphysical monisms such as “absolute non-duality” (e.g., Advaita Vedanta or Christian Science), what is wrong with “German idealism” at its most basic level—simply claiming that thought is the basic “substance” of all reality?
My response to my dad:
That was really confusing. I've never heard the "thought over matter" position before other than the idea - and I'm sure I'm muddling this idea - that the universe and it's contents (animals, plants, planets, stars, matter, anti-matter, quarks, neutrons, black holes, photons, etc) only exist because humans observed them. To me, just an extrapolation of the Uncertainty Principle. If I remember correctly, there's a podcast interview between Joe Rogan and Lawrence Krauss where Krauss touches on this idea. Something about the size or age of the universe perhaps simply being predicated on our understanding of it (and something about time and light). As you'd expect, the Uncertainty Principle ultimately distills to a human-centric perspective.
Rogan has had a few interviews on these metaphysical topics with physicists. I think in that same interview (could be a different one) they talk about how the net of the universe is zero. Energy, matter anti-matter, gravity, etc...all net to zero. For every +1 in the universe, there's a -1. In that sense, I could see a conclusion where thought precedes matter. I'm sure this either stems from or is a conclusion of a modulating universe that expands and contracts.
But then my own logic kicks in and I think, if something can maintain a net of zero (or any other constant) and change in size, age, contents...why can't it maintain a continued expansion into the nothingness. At that point you've killed math, because 0 = infinite. This idea is appealing though.
Once you've killed Math, seems like you've killed the most basic of hard science, and you've killed God. Once you've killed God, as the Jewish Rabbis during the holocaust said, "now that we've decided God doesn't exist, let's bow our heads and pray".
In relating to God, well, I think the atheist and the theist are having the same discussion. One is trying to discussing the true nature of God, and one is discussing the origins of the Universe. I've never been able to figure out how metaphysical discussions have any bearing on whether God exists or not.
But then there's Mere Christianity where, if I recall correctly, he uses metaphysics as the foundation of his God exists argument, and he makes sense of it. He uses Right vs Wrong though. That's a book I should re-read. I remember an atheist friend starting the book. He only made it to the point where CS Lewis assumed humans are different than animals.
You should read Mere Christianity if that article interested you.
Well that's more than I thought I'd reply...just my musings on that guy's musings.
(so glad I no longer involve myself in these thoughts) (hopefully my dad doesn't react with "oh you're an agnostic now, I guess you're out of the will")
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
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