Skip to main content

Ex nihilo

The Maverick Philosopher takes on a fascinating subject (well, to me, anyway): Does Ex nihilo nihil fit (nothing comes from nothing) contradict God creating the world ex nihilo? Bill says no, and I'm inclined to agree:
God creates out of himself: he creates out of materials that are internal to his own mental life. It is ANALOGOUS to the way we create objects of imagination. (I am not saying that God creates the world by imagining it.) When I construct an object in imagination, I operate upon materials that I myself provide. Thus I create a purple right triangle by combining the concept of being purple with the concept of being a right triangle. I can go on to create a purple cone by rotating the triangle though 360 degrees on the y-axis. The object imagined is wholly dependent on me the imaginer: if I leave off imagining it, it ceases to exist. I am the cause of its beginning to exist as well as the cause of its continuing to exist moment by moment. But the object imagined, as my intentional object, is other than me just as the creature is other than God. The creature is other than God while being wholly dependent on God just as the object imagined is other than me while being wholly dependent on me. Can this proposal steer clear of an objectionable form of pantheism? Obviously, the distinction between God and the created world must be upheld. The former is not the latter, and the latter is not the former. So they are distinct. But if two things are distinct, it does not follow that each can exist without the other. God can exist without the created world, but the created world cannot exist without God. The world depends on God for both its essence and its existence at every moment.
Note: the comments are also worth delving into.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Hiatus will be blogged

This hiatus thing isn't going to plan. As I'm reading (books and blogs) I find things I think are interesting, or things I would like an opinion on, and bingo, my hiatus is in a shambles. So, *coughs*, until further notice, I'm blogging again. The main editorial difference that I can see coming from my few weeks away is that I do not expect to resume posting six out of seven days a week. There could be, at any time and without warning, a break of a week or two between posts. Really, I think that is the only way I can start to get some books behind me, and is also inevitable in the summer season when one wants to get out and enjoy it all. Here's a few things that got my attention this past week. Chris Taylor is blogging once again and has recruited an air force for the Red Ensign Brigade. Heh. Dennis Prager asks, Are you a liberal? Anglicans and Catholics are getting closer to reconciling -over the role of Mary in the Christian faith. Quote: A working group c...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ghost in the machine

In writing up this post I have to mention that I am very impressed with the quality of discussion that one finds on blogs. This truly is a remarkable medium. Thanks go to all three of the bloggers mentioned here for providing such good reading and thinking for the rest of us to try and learn from. I have not had a chance to read all of the entries linked to here, but I do intend to. ***** George Will compares two views of man in his latest column . One is novelist Ian McEwan, who places the following words into the mouth of the leading character in his latest novel, Saturday : Endless and beautiful forms of life, such as you see in a common hedgerow, including exulted beings like ourselves, arose from physical laws, from war or nature, famine and death. This is the grandeur. And a bracing kind of consolation in the brief privilege of consciousness. This character is a neurosurgeon. The quote reminds me that there may be some truth to the observation that those in the biological and...
Post a Comment
Read more