What Matters

Consider two atoms moving back and forth. Does God truly care about the fact that those atoms are moving or how they move? There are two answers, and both are correct. First: Yes, but only inasmuch as the atoms play a role in affecting a person's life. By God's divine control, all of the complications of reality sum up in such a way that every particle plays an important role in affecting choice of the free will of each and every person in the universe. Hence, each particle is significant in that respect. The second answer: No. Particles are only a medium through which God conveys His love and we convey our love to God (via acts directed to please Him, especially such acts of loving neighbor). The motion of these particles is irrelevant. With respect to how I perform an act of love, God does not care if I move particular molecules of air around someone in order to perform the act of hugging or if I move the molecules of air a quarter inch above the other molecules in order to perform the same action. To summarize, in and of themselves, particle motion is meaningless or without significance.

Amongst theists, there are various points of view as to how God created the human race. Did God do things exactly according to a literal, six-24-hour-day interpretation of Genesis, or did it God use a more gradual process, perhaps macro-scale evolution? The answer to this question is hidden within the reason as to why God made the universe in the first place.

See "for-love-of-humanity".

So if God created humanity for their love, why would He watch the world build itself up, even if does seem instantaneous to Him? Why wouldn't God get started on what is significant immediately? Critics have commented that they don't like to put-thoughts-in-God's-mind, so-to-speak, implying that I might be doing so. Honestly, I am in a sense, but this is not because I think I know God inside out, but because we CAN know what God has revealed to us about Himself. It is not putting-a-thought-in-God's head to quote First John and say that God is loving and loving leads to self-sacrifice ("This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." - 1 Jn 4:10). Hence, since God is Love, it is not wrong to have certain expectations of that love. For example, love considers the beloved significant. Everything else is not necessarily insignificant, unless it has no meaning to the lover apart from the beloved. Hence, considering all this and the fact that the motion of the particles is meaningless, it is impossible to conclude that anything besides humanity is worth occupying God's attention before humanity's creation. Thus, the ideas of macro-evolution (in which creation progresses towards the point of humanity) or even six-24-hour-day creation are absurd theologically-speaking. It would make more sense for God to do everything instantaneously.

Concerning macro-evolution and six-24-hour-day creation, there are problems with each.

First, macro-evolution relies purely on scientific arguments. Instead of relying on God to instantaneously do His will, the viewpoint attempts to conform religion with science, essentially putting God in a box where the idea of God becomes the well-criticized model of "the god of the gaps". There are also some people who may take a different viewpoint and say that God was taking pleasure in forming creation. However, once again, forming creation is essentially the meaningless motion of particles. How long would God, an eternal being of infinite patience and creativity, "watch" His creation take shape via the meaningless motion of particles? It might be argued that, in this case, the motion of the particles is not meaningless since it is building up for the human race. However, this argument is flawed in that it fails to realize that God, when He instantaneously creates something, can arrange the particles in the exact setup they need to be in and with the exact speeds they need to have in order to fulfill the exact same role as if they had a 60 billion year head start. When "God saw that it was good" (various verses in Genesis 1 say this), it does not necessarily mean that God's creation was now an enjoyable thing to watch for its own sake. On the contrary, it simply points to the fact that God instilled Himself in His work, and He is thus visible in it. Notice that it never says, "God delighted in His creation" in the accounts of creation.

The 24-hour-day creation has similar problems. First is the time delay, which has already been accounted for. Second is the indescriptive nature of the word "day". The original word in Hebrew is "yom", meaning some indeterminate time period: anywhere from a moment to however long you wanted; it does not specifically mean "day". The word is used for "day" occasionally, but remember that the Hebrews only knew of a "day" with respect to the sun. A day for them could just refer to the morning hours (6 AM to 6 PM), and not restricted to 24 hours. Considering that Genesis is written to the Hebrews who would have interpreted "day" in that way, it would seem peculiar that the first "day" of creation would be over before the earth (dry ground) even existed, since light was created first.

In conclusion, there is little or no Biblical evidence to support either the macro-evolution hypothesis or the six-24-hour-day creation. What is most probable is that God instantly created everything.

For the Love of Humanity

God, who is love itself, decided, in His divine wisdom, to expand His community of love that existed between the three persons of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This extension was meant to include free wills, like Himself, and thus made in His image and likeness. This being His objective, God created humanity, people, each person possessing a free will like Himself. Being an act of God, creation is an act of love. God did not create free wills to be subjected to Him, but rather, free wills must be truly free. To be part of God and become one with Him in order to enjoy existence in the Divine Trinity's community of love, each free will must willingly love God - choose God and pursue of Him - in order to share in His nature. Free wills in the realm of eternity make a single, eternal choice that cannot be altered. In this respect, all of the angels of God who choose to follow Satan had chosen to disobey God from the moment of their creation, and all of those who choose obedience remained with God. In order that it would be possible for the free will of each person to change from evil to good, that is, to choose God, supposing that the free wills would first chose evil, God created humanity to exist within the framework of finite time.

Love from the free will is God's desire from people, considering that He wants to bring us into His divine community of love. This gives people significance in the eyes of God, and for no other reason than humanity did God create anything. In order that His creation might communicate love for Him or rejection of Him, God created the physical universe as a medium through which love can be conveyed. The medium in and of itself is meaningless (physical matter and motion are meaningless), bearing no significance that is not in relation to human persons. This being so, God had no need to form it in a state of less-than-complete before the formation of humanity. That is, God did not create a universe that needed to build humanity for God, whether directed by His divine guidance or not. Instead, God instantaneously began His work of significance by creating humans. By His divine patience, God waited for the progression in finite time of humanity's decision to love or reject Him. In hope, the servants of God waited for God to reveal His promised act of restoration, the death of Himself in His Son, an act already at work since the fall of man. At every moment, God calls men to Himself, yet they are free from the moment of bodily conception to choose to love Him or reject Him. It is when they have grown to an appropriate age are they fully capable of an informed decision concerning God and fully responsible for the choice they make.

Theology of Nothingness

From my stack of random musings...

Sunday, September 19, 2010

10:45 PM

When there is true nothingness to work with, there is philosophical chaos, that is, indescribable pure contradiction. From this, God used logic, His Word, His Truth, Jesus Christ, His Son to form the definition of existence with His wisdom, as given through the Holy Spirit. Hence, that which exists was created from nothingness by God the Father, through the Son, and with the Holy Spirit.

Now since God is good, and therefore that which has God in it or sustaining its existence it is good, that which does not have God in it or sustaining its existence (save God Himself) is not good. That which is not good must then be evil. There cannot be anything less than a dichotomy between the two, for God is either in it and/or sustaining it or He is not in it and/or sustaining it. Hence, all things are either good or evil. Indeed, all creation in and of itself is good, since God sustains its existence. Now whether or not it is morally good, that is, complying with God's law, is irrelevant. This particular quality or property applies to the physical realm, which is entirely good because God made it to be so (a direct result of Him creating it). Therefore, anything that exists and any motion that is in the physical realm is good. However, such acts are neither good nor evil with respect to morals. Moral goodness is on a different plane than natural goodness.

Moral goodness is spiritual goodness, that is, having God in oneself spiritual. From the fall of man, sin came into the world, not to remove its physical goodness (as though that were even possible) but to remove its spiritual goodness. When sin entered the world, goodness, by natural definition, left the world, and hence sin entered. Sin, in its essential form, is evil. Rather, it is the act of evil, which is synonymous with motion. However, it is notable that particles in the physical universe are a peculiar unity of matter (substance) and energy (ability to generate motion). Therefore, it is not impossible to imagine that term "sin" (motion/act of evil) correlate with the term "evil" (lack of the substance of divinity in the spiritual realm). The overlapping of the meanings of "sin", "evil", and "death" are thence inseparable. This is not surprising, since God, who is life, would have left this world (or rather, the world left Him since He does not move due to His absoluteness) and sin entered it. If then God, who is life, is gone from the world, death has entered.

The most peculiar relationship, however, is the philosophical relationship between philosophical chaos and evil. The two are almost entirely synonymous, since evil is derived from philosophical chaos. The nature of philosophical chaos is pure contradiction: something is both true and not true, existing and not existing. Truth itself is and yet is not. The surprising attribute about this fact is that from philosophical chaos there can, with divine logic, spawn something that is both truth and existing. That is, the Logos of God (the Word, or Logic) of God, which is Truth itself, can imbed itself into this philosophical chaos and cause it to be in conformity with itself: that is, force this contradiction to become truth and to exist. Thus, in this manner, God sustains the universe. This is true if nothingness, from which God created the universe, is itself philosophical chaos. Yet how could it be anything else, unless God made the universe out of Himself (which is certainly not the cause, or else He would have been making it out of something). Nothingness itself is the absence of everything, including God. And if God is not in nothingness, than neither is anything belonging to His nature, especially truth, divine logic, and existence. If something does not have truth or anything else as part of its essence, it is, by definition, philosophical chaos and nothingness. Furthermore, to speak of it as though it had truth is a lie. And a lie is evil. Hence, all of the words describing the absence of God are linked, one deriving another: evil and sin are the spiritual forms of nothingness and philosophical chaos; lies and darkness (in the spiritual sense of the term, considering that God is in glory, which is spiritual light) are the spiritual forms of the absence of truth. The words "evil" and "sin" are describing particularly that spiritual absence of God not the physical absence of Him. The entrance of evil is the soul's (or object's) departure from the spiritual world as sustained by God. This departure leaves an emptiness in man. Considering that the spiritual world as sustained by God did not exist before Creation, and then came to be, it was evil that was swallowed up, just as philosophical chaos was. Thus, it is logical to say that God created the spiritual realm (universe) out of evil, and then "God saw that it was good."