Digital Physics Argument for God's Existence

[SoCalExile]

Some fascinating stuff here:

Digital Physics Argument for God's Existence:


Quantum Physics Debunks Materialism:


How do I embed a vid?

[Kurieuo]

How do I embed a vid?

Like you did.

[RickD]

I fixed the imbedding issue.

For future, imbed like this:

Take the copied YouTube link, and paste it inside the YouTube brackets like this:
[youtube ]http://youtu.be/TT8t0VxZXEM[/youtube]

Then, delete from http to the back slash after youtu.be. In my example above, you'd be deleting this:

http://youtu.be/

Inside your YouTube brackets should be this:


Enjoy!

[RickD]

How do I embed a vid?

Like you did.

Actually, I fixed it for him. See my post above.

[Kurieuo]

Some fascinating stuff here:

Digital Physics Argument for God's Existence:


Quantum Physics Debunks Materialism:


How do I embed a vid?

@Jac, can Idealism fit in with Divine Simplicity?

[Jac3510]

I'm not aware of any reason that it wouldn't. The only thing idealism really challenges is the nature of matter. Strictly speaking, neither DS or the Thomstic metaphysics on which it is based require a particular understanding of matter--only that matter have some type of reality. And I don't think idealism challenges that statement. So fine, all matter is really just conceptual. But it still is different from that which is only conceptual in the way we traditionally think about it. That is, even on idealism, the essence and existence of that tree are fundamentally different from the nature and existence of unicorns.

If you are aware of a reason idealism couldn't fit with DS, feel free to share. There could be a reason. I just don't know of one off the top of my head.

[Kurieuo]

It just seems to me, if we're in God's mind, that a Panentheistic view kind of follows?
Something like parts existing within God, specifically God's mind.

[Jac3510]

I don't think it necessarily follows from idealism that we are "in" God's mind anymore than traditional theism requires that. Perhaps if you are a monist you get into that problem, but I don't think idealism requires monism. Seems to me that an idealist could still say that there are two types of substances, if you will--a "god substance" and a "created substance; it would just be that the created substance isn't really physical. It would all be a spiritual substance of some sort and we just project the idea of physicality.

But, again, if you are going to argue for an idealism that means that the spiritual/mental reality is all that there is, and that this reality is also identical with God, then sure, you would contradict DS. But I'd reject that view anyway, not because it contradicts DS, but because I think it jus doesn't work for the same reason that no monistic system works. It would seem to me that any such system necessarily rejects any kind of hylomorphism, and therefore necessarily rejects all principles of individuation, and therefore necessarily rejects all distinctions, and therefore necessarily says all things are the same thing. But all things are clearly not the same thing, so such a view ought to just be rejected out of hand.

But a more moderate idealism that just challenges the nature of what we call matter as being dependent on the mind rather than the other way around? I don't buy it, but it doesn't seem intrinsically self-contradictory or in necessary conflict with DS.

[Kurieuo]

The fact that we can remain individual in some sense, as separate conscious entities, provided that such is not illusory -- suggests a dualism of sorts as you say. I'm personally unclear myself as to what this "created substance" consists of unless an eternal substance of sort existed just as eternally as God apart from God.

Craig has reasoned from nothing, nothing comes.
But, just because you add God, doesn't mean even God can create something from absolutely nothing.
If it is absurd for the Atheist, then it is absurd for the Theist.

Therefore, the "created substance" must as I see it be necessarily derived from God. If indeed, there is even a divine substance.
Creation ex nihilo in that there was nothing but God makes sense, however a creation ex nihilo that excludes the "creation substance" being derived from "God's substance" is to me absurd.

That said, while we talk of God in terms of "divine substance" and "created substance" I believe substance-property talk is in some way inadequate. Conjures up a wrong picture of God for many, because substance is often associated with being of this or that material (at least for me). Couched in these terms, only a Panentheistic view makes sense as I see things.

Divine Simplicity replaces such language in terms of actuality-potentiality. I'm yet to think through my thoughts regarding what this really means... but, in terms of creation being a potentiality, well it seems to remove any absurdities of something coming from nothing provided such is a real potentiality God can actualise.

That's probably only going to make sense to you, because we've had minor previous exchanges regarding this.
Interested in your thoughts? Whether you think I'm seeing matters clearly...

[Jac3510]

You are actually correct with your critique of substance language. Strictly speaking, God is not a substance, so strictly, it is false to say that there is a divine substance and a created substance (there is a sense in technical language that this is true where we are speaking of secondary substances, but now we're just muddying the waters).

The act/potency language is much more precise and I think explains some of the arguments in the videos above. First, start with the idea that God is pure act. There is no potentiality in Him whatsoever. Now, like always produces like, so what God produces is act. And this is how we get around Craig's argument against creation ex nihilo. For yes, it is literally true that God creates from nothing, but that's because what God does is bring about actuality.

So let's shift our focus to the created thing. And let's start there by noting the distinction between creation (or in technical language generation) and change (or in technical language motus/motion). Something coming into existence is not a change. Change is the reduction of potentiality to actuality (note that for discussion of QM below). And this is important, because change necessarily and always presupposes some preexistent thing doing the changing. X is in act this way and has the potentiality to be that1 way or that2 way; but the act of something else, that potentiality is reduced to that2 way, and so we say a change has occurred. But on that view, two important ideas emerge. First, it seems that Craig's argument fails because it conceives of creation ex nihilo as in generation rather than in terms of motus. For it is true that nothing can't produce something when we are talking about change (for reasons just stated). But there is no obvious reason that generation requires preexistent matter. In fact, from the nature of it, generation demands no preexistent thing at all. But, again, more on that below. The second important idea from this is that change always and only occurs in the effect, never in the cause. Even in our most mundane changes, the change is in the effect and not the cause. It may be the case in our physical world that if X has an effect on Y that Y necessarily has in turn an effect on X, but the rule still holds. Y could potentially be, and X acts to cause it; X could potentially be something other than what it is, and Y (being effected by X) acts on X to cause it to be so. Again, change always occurs in the effect and never the cause.

So what about generation? Here what we have is not change. We do, though, still have a reduction of potentiality to actuality, where X has no act but stands in potentiality to be in act. Thus we say in jargon that essence is in potency to existence. That proves to be an important and fundamental theological distinction in DS. God's essence does not stand in potency to existence, because God's essence is existence. He IS act. But you are not act. Your essence--your humanity--stands in potency to existence. Your essence HAS existence. This means that, in creation, God simply has to give act to that which only had the potency to exist. Since change is always in the effect and never the cause, it follows that God does this immutably.

But that raises the question, in creation ex nihilo, what is this "it" that stands in potency to existence? And here we come to Augustine's idea of the divine ideas. All essences exist first in God, not potentially, but actually. We have to be careful here. I am not saying that the essences have existence in God. That would be absurd, because now you have all the obvious violations of DS. The problem there isn't that DS is false but rather that you end up positing an infinite regression of Gods until you get back to DS anyway. So I'm not saying that the essences are distinct entities that actually exist in God. I am saying that essences actually exist insofar as they have the act of being in potency to act. That's just to say that they might exist.

Let me clarify by talking about omniscience just a bit. When we say God knows everything what do we mean? Strictly, the only thing God knows is Himself. He knows His own essence. But because His essence is existence, it follows that He knows all things. Why? Because to know anything fully is to know all of its analytical properties as well. For instance, if you grasp the meaning of a triangle, you immediately grasp the notion of three sidedness and having three points. A mathematician or geometrician will grasp more truths still just by grasping the notion of triangularity. Now, what do all things that exist have in common? The fact that they exist, of course. And what do all things that do not exist but could exist have in common? Their potency for existence, of course. And what is the one thing that all actual and all potential things have in common? That they are modes of existence, of course. Thus it follows that God, in knowing infinite existence, immediately knows all ways in which existence really is and really could be. Therefore, God that tigers are existence in this particular way and trees are existence in that particular way. That is, God knows the essence of trees and tigers. Those things do not have discreet existence in God in themselves, but God knows them in knowing His own existence in one simple, self-comprehension. As such, in creation, God must simply will to give any of these things that stand in potency to real existence the act of existence.

But doesn't this mean that there are potential things really in God? No. Because the essence of Tigerness doesn't exist--it doesn't have act--in God in a discreet way. It's simply an analytical property, if you will, that is really identical with the divine essence itself. That's how radical this idea of DS is. Tigers are existence one particular way. God just is existence. So God just IS Tigers, but, of course, He is not contained in such an idea, for such an idea is necessarily limited. It is potency receiving act, whereas God is just act.

The long and short of all this is that when God creates ex nihilo, He is better called the Act of Acts. He is that which gives actuality to that which stands in potentiality to being made actual, and all such potentiality is a mode of existence, and all such modes of existence are found virtually in the supremely simple God--not as discreet Acts but as the single, universal Act of Existence Itself. Thus, the created substance of act/potency composition is real, but it is also really distinct from God, which is Pure Act.

And finally, I'd suggest that all of this is consistent with the videos above. At the most fundamental level, so called "matter" is just a set of potentialities. It does not have act until something that is in act brings it into existence--until it reduces the potentiality to be to what it actually is. There is a reason that Aquinas himself said that matter is pure potentiality, but since pure potentiality cannot actually exist (since by definition pure potentiality has no act) matter cannot be real until it is acted upon and thus informed by something else in act. And that strikes me as exactly what the videos are describing above. Their mistake is not to challenge radical realism/materialism, but to equate the materialist view of matter with all forms of realism and therefore suggest (wrongly) that if materialism is false then idealism is true. But they are mistaken, because they should recognize that the moderate realism of Aristotle and Aquinas doesn't conceive of matter as discreet indivisible entities that exist apart from observation. Rather, it views matter as the real potentiality to act, and it receives its act necessarily from something else in act. Idealism may fit this mold, but it is not required. In short, the problem with the view of the videos is it assumes that all forms of realism (materialism, naive realism, etc.) are all monistic in nature. They aren't considering hylomorphic realism, and thus, their move to idealism is, in my mind, premature.

[Kurieuo]

I love it when there's a simple explanation.
Now to read it a few times over.

[SoCalExile]

Interesting that panentheism was brought up. I haven't watched this one yet, but:



Edit: watched it...hmmm....is it heretical guys?

[Kurieuo]

Jac, let me see if I have a general gist.

Firstly, God is pure existence.
Secondly, we exist but aren't pure existence (we have not always existed in our form -- "that1 way").
We did exist within God's pure existence, since that which exists must be predicated upon existence itself.

Being Existence, God knows all forms of existence innately.
In act, God brings potentiality of some forms into actual existence = they become "that1 way".
In God's act, the form of creation and life forms do not strictly came from nothing, since their foundational existence was already in God.
Thus, God in a manner of speaking, reveals that which already has a foundational existence in His actual existence as "that1 way".
In doing so, our potentiality as "that1 way" is realised, rather than perhaps some other possible existence "that2 way".
As our potentiality is actualised as "that1 way" we are now separate from what is Pure Act and Pure Existence -- i.e., God.

I can't help but feel there is some hoodwinking going on somewhere.
Especially regarding "change" that needs to happen. God's Existence may not change, but transforming is going on with God's attributes.
Seems like trickery of some sort. I'm not sure if I'm truly understanding or whether some elaborate kind of wordsmithing is going out.

However, one thing I did not previous consider, is that God is Existence and therefore we who are predicated upon existence also exist.
Our being actualised is therefore more an actualisation of our existence being revealed as this form that we find our existence in.
Again, I'm not sure whether in the act of revealing, whether such necessitates a change in God.

I really do seriously feel I'm talking gibberish, but it somehow seems to make sense.
Hmm. Is a rabbit really being pulled out of a hat, or is there some trickery?

[Jac3510]

Yeah, that's the gist. There's plenty in there that I could nuance, but as you said, it's a gist.

I think my problem with the big post above was that I tried to do too much. I had a fairly simple answer in mind but I also had at least three objections, and I tried to answer them all in one post. I have a bad habit of that. So let me try again and just give a simple answer to the question of whether it makes sense for God to create ex nihilo (because if it does, there's no reason to posit any kind of pan(en)theism).

Put simply: God is act (which is to say, God is existence). Since like produces like (this is a universal rule that applies even to God), we expect God to produce act/existence. But by nature, to produce existence is to create ex nihilo. For if you give existence to some thing then that thing must in some way exist, and now we've assumed the thing we're trying to explain.

I grant that it is hard to visualize creating existence/producing act. I mean, we don't do that. Nothing in the material world does that. Even our language here is inadequate, because the moment we start talking about "nothing" we've created a "thing" that we are talking about. But in all that, we recognize that this is still necessarily true in some sense that we know but don't have an experiential understanding of.

Therefore, I charge that the claim that God cannot create ex nihilo because something can't come from nothing is actually a claim that God is not pure act, that God is not God. It is an assumption that the necessarily eternal thing that has always existed is other than God (or, alternatively, that we are in some sense God, per pan(en)theism). And I don't think that position is reasonable, much less biblical. So, again, I simply claim that God, as act, produces act. He doesn't produce act out of something. To ask that is a category error. In producing act (existence), He produces the "stuff" "out of" which everything else is. But God, as act, simply produces act.