On Tue, 15 Feb 2000 20:54:52 +0000 glenn morton <mortongr@flash.net>
writes:
> At 11:58 AM 2/15/00 -0700, dfsiemensjr@juno.com wrote:
> >
> >It's like Glenn to describe himself as an idolater and then try to
> >wriggle out of it.
>
> Don't you understand facetiousness? And in this entire response you
> have
> not once addressed the issue that we were addressing when I wrote
> the piece
> on worshipping an oil company. That is, that your definition of
> religion
> leads to the absurd conclusion that an employee is worshipping his
> company.
> Which is silly. Working, is not worshipping.
>
I did, and figured my response was sufficiently off the wall that you
would recognize it as written with whatever is the literary equivalent of
tongue so firmly in cheek as to poke through. As for a straight answer to
your challenge, I omitted the term "ultimate," which is equally implicit
in Luther's approach, as George cited it. Because of the nature of
animistic and polytheistic deities, the qualification is better as
"ultimate or penultimate source of good ..." Your company is obviously
only a proximate and derivative source of good.
>
> It won't work. Indeed, the situation is far worse than
> >indicated so far because of what the medievals called _consequentia
> >mirabilis_, the amazing conclusion, namely, that every statement
> follows
> >validly from a contradiction. The problem arises through his claim
> that
> >the days of Genesis 1:1-2:3 are days of divine announcement before
> the
> >creation, that is, the announcement of the _UrIPO_. This requires
> time
> >before there could be time, measurement of time in the timeless.
>
> It requires not time before time but merely the only description of
> timeless events which could be understood by a temporal being. That
> is all.
> Unless you believe that God was created at the same instance as
> this
> universe and thus himself subject to time, God must have existed
> before
> time. Was he not doing anything 'then' [note the use of a temporal
> term to
> describe a timeless state]? Was he merely existence itself with no
> change?
> If so, how did God come to call the universe into existence which
> must have
> been done somehow Prior to the actual birth of time. Calling the
> universe
> into existence is a CHANGE in the timeless state of affairs. So
> activity
> can't be disallowed to God prior to our creation.
>
> You totally miss the problem of a temporal being describing events
> that
> occur prior to time. And God most assuredly was doing something
> prior to
> time.
>
> The only
> >way out that I see, in the contemporary understanding of creation,
> is
> >requiring that this announcement occurred sometime in the eternal
> >mass-energy before the Big Bang bubble began to develop. This
> requires
> >the deity to be within the pre-universe (or whatever one may call
> the
> >state before our universe began), which is a form of pantheism.
> This
> >might be rendered consistent and avoid the otherwise inexorable
> >_consequentia mirabilis_.
>
> Yes God was pre-existent to the universe, but he was not part of the
> universe. God is TRANSCENDANT!!! He was not 'in the eternal
> mass-energy'.
> God created the mass-energy. God is PRIOR to this universe and is
> the CAUSE
> of this universe. If he didn't exist in the pre-universe, then He
> couldn't create the universe. And prior to the creation, in my
> opinion,
> there was no pre-existing mass energy. Mass, time and energy were
> all
> created at the Big Bang. And for those who want to say that the
> universe
> was a vacuum fluctuation on a pre-existing manifold which ran amok,
> we must
> realize that someone had to create the manifold.
>
> Now because God existed prior to the Big Bang, and because he was
> doing
> things, we have little way to describe what he was doing except in
> temporal
> terms. It is like the square in Flatland trying to tell the circle
> what a
> 3d object looked like to him as it passed through the plane of the
> square's
> existence. His description was highly flawed.
>
> Now, there is no reason to identify the preuniverse with matter. A
> pantheist makes matter part of God and god part of the universe.
> THat is
> not what I am advocating at all. You have really not done a
> sufficient
> research job on my beliefs if this is what you think I am
> advocating.
>
> >
> >IMO, Glenn is right in denying that the days of Genesis are the
> schedule
> >of production. But his remedy is worse than 144-hour creationism.
> It only
> >denies science, but he makes reason impossible.
>
> I think you need to listen a bit more about what the view is
> actually
> saying rather than drawing conclusions first, and then having the
> investigation later.
> glenn
>
Nothing you have written changes what I have said. You still want a time
before time, which is nonsense. I fully appreciate the problem of
communicating the eternal to temporal humanity. Even the language
presents problems, for "eternal" may mean timelessness, time without
beginning or end, and time with a beginning but no end. With the first,
which applies to the deity, there can be no before. With the second,
common to the ancient Greek philosophers, there was always both a before
and an after to every moment. With the third, there is a before to most
moments and an after to all. I take it to apply to the life of the
believer.
Jesus had no problem communicating the first notion: "... Before Abraham
was, I am" (John 8:58). The first verses of John are also clear, as are
the three occurrences of "before the foundation of the world" (John
17:24; Ephesians 1:4; I Peter 1:20). But the complex temporal patterns at
the beginning of Genesis do not communicate the eternal (sense 1) purpose
of God. Indeed, the repetition of "evening," "morning" and "day" make
their assignment to God's eternity incoherent.
The day-age and literal day interpretations are not contradictory in this
way, for they ascribe time to the process within creation. Their problems
spring from incompatibility with the scientific evidence. The view that
the days are merely a literary framework for a creation mythos is not
incoherent, though the temporal references are denied relevance. I
believe you do not like this view because you want a literal reading of
scripture wherever possible. This is my attitude. But I cannot escape
these views by imposing some kind of time onto the Eternal so that there
can be a sequence of his announcements of intent, for this is eisegesis
that produces contradiction. There has to be a different interpretation
which is consistent.
By the way, I recommend John 8:58 as an adequate response to "God must
have existed before time." Jesus, as the eternal Son, could also have
said, "Before time was, I am." This does _not_ provide a time before
time, or an activity before creation.
Dave
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