Darth Dane

God created the laws of physics so he didn't have to move them all. He made the first movement(big bang) and the rest moves according to the laws of their level of being.

So God can look in evrywhere if he wants, but for the most part he just "leaves us to our devices". Is your thoughts determined by the laws of teh mind? If you believe your body of atoms(which all follow te law of gravity etc etc., can be moved by your will, a seemingly independent act, then you are outside th elaws of physics, and thus retain your freewil, but still somewhat predetermined, as you can't, right off teh bat in any case, start to levitate, and just like that go against the gravity that pulls tha atoms of which you consist. But since we can move our arm, why can't we "link" the atoms from outside the body. Al teh atoms are interconnected, also those between your arm and teh air.



DD - Love Spliff

Theli

Is your spelling supposed to be sarcasm?

All I say is that if our minds are "controlled" by physical laws, then our will is also.

Albert Cipriani

Trecel says:
If any thing, force, or being exists independently of God, then, by definition, God is not God. Or at the very least, the things, forces, or beings are demigods, that is, the “false gods” before Him are not really false, they really are. Yahweh cannot NOT be. “Voluntary self-limitation” is just a fancy term for denying this truism.

Trecel says:
Trecel’s doubts not withstanding, God is personally involved with every aspect of every speck of the universe. Even if the Bible did not say as much, we would know this from natural law. When we misuse the universe to sin, we do not cause God to sin, as Trecel supposes, because sin subsists in our moral dimension, not in the universe’s physical dimensions.

To put it another way, Catholic theology distinguishes between material and formal reality. Ergo, God participates in our sins only materially, not formally. There is no moral dimension to such participation as there is no moral dimension to the bullet that accomplishes the sinner’s will. Of every sinful act, 99.9% of it is good. It’s just that 0.1% consisting of our evil will that renders our good acts sinful.

For example, there is no sin in a tornado that kills children. But if a mad scientist seeded clouds to create a tornado in order to unjustly kill children, that would be sinful. It’s not in the tornado nor its consequences that sin resides, but only in the will of the being responsible for both. When God creates tornadoes to kills innocent children He is merely taking back what He gave and has every right to take. It is no violation of justice and hence not a sin.

Jobar writes:
The difficulties are insurmountable.

Any theist who believes that God could create that which He cannot control is a theist in name only. That God chooses -- more or less -- not to control our will is our great opportunity to participate in His being by doing His will and becoming God-like. We are all God-like in the static sense that we are created in His image, as Satan was. It is by actively participating in His will that we are God’s moving, breathing, living shadow as opposed to His silhouette in a cheap frame hanging in His parlor. – Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Fiach

Does God have to move every atom, or do His physical laws allow that to happen naturally, given quantum aspects? I don't think so.

Does God have to do anything after the first millionth of a nanosecond of the Big Bang? Perhaps his role is just to set creation in motion and then it prceeds by purely natural processes. Energy by its properties forms particles that naturally are attracted and form protons which attract electrons. That produces Hydrogen. Hydrogen gathers in clumps by gravitational forces and clumps move away from each other by anti-gravity repulsion. Clumps grow by accretion and huge protostars form all by natural processes. Heat is produced, nuclear furnaces ignite, and fusion makes Helium, Lithium, and heavier elements. And you know the rest of the story with supernova, second generation stars, third generations stars, solar systems, planets in the biozone, necessary N, O, H, C, P, Fe form molecules that combine and combine by natural laws to replicating molecules (DNA) and life. There is no need to postulate God at any point.

We don't even know that God ignited the big bang. We don't know that god is real. Apologists say he is outside of naturre. What does that mean? I define nature as all reality. Is God natural but outside the Universe? Who knows, nobody can even measure "outside the universe" and all beliefs about "outside the Universe" are products of the imagination not data of science.

So the question of God moving atoms is just the excellent hyperbole showing that God is an unnecessary hypothesis in the first place.

Fiach

Tercel

Albert,

Is your theology consistent with the common courtesy of correctly spelling the name of the person whos position you are disagreeing with?

You sound like a Calvinist, Albert, and you are being silly. You agreed in your post that "God chooses... not to control our will". I would then wonder why you have the issues you do with what I quoted. After all to say that God voluntarily limits himself (ie "chooses not to control") with regard to the natural workings of the universe is no more shocking than to say that God voluntarily limits himself with regard to allowing us our own free will.

Regardless of whether sin is moral, or physical or anything else, your position places God as the direct inflictor of all pain and suffering. If I was to hurt another human by shooting them, then according to you, God would be responsible for guiding the bullet through the air every step of the way, God would control every single atom as the bullet pierced them, God would guide every single nerve in their body as they screamed in agony...
I had indirectly caused the pain by my actions, but you have God directly inflicting the pain and the suffering I have caused. Do you think God's some kind of giant pain-transfer conduit which happily takes my wrong decision and gleefully inflicts the suffering on others? I sincerely hope not.

My God is a good God. But you are welcome to your evil God if you so wish.

Albert Cipriani

How boring Fiach,
You assert: Then you tell us what you don't know: Then you tell us what you imagine you know: Whatever you may know, you don't seem to know that no body cares to know about unargued assertions. If you've got an argument , let's here it. If all you can muster is rhetorical questions, boring assertions, and indefinite definitions, save those broad brush strokes for your finger paintings. -- Albert the Traditional & Now Bored Catholic

K

Magus55:

You suggested that God exists outside of time. You also say He "created the universe, put the laws of physics, energy, matter etc. etc. in motion and keeps it running. He is outside the universe but can be within the universe for whatever reason He [B]chooses[B].

These are all temporal activities. It would be logically impossible for a being that existed outside of time to do any of them. A being that exists outside of time couldn't possibly DO anything because doing implies changing over time.

SLD

We've had a similar discussion before, just a few weeks ago with respect to the thread on God and Quantum Physics and the Many-Worlds Interpretation.

Our actions are not predetermined by the laws of physics from the position of atoms multiple millenia ago. Quantum physics controls the motions of atoms and ultimately quantum indeterminacy results in us having free will.

The question arises then, can God then use quantum indeterminancy to push the universe where he wants it to go?

Just a thought.

SLD

Albert Cipriani

Dear K,
Not so fast! You’re slinging your logic around like it was pizza dough:
Not if the dimension “outside” time incorporated time. Likewise, the two-dimensional geometric line incorporates the one-dimensional geometric point and extends itself via one-dimensional geometric points. And the three-dimensional geometric sphere incorporates the two-dimensional geometric circle.

You argue: Only from our time-based perspective. An eternal being (which, by the way, you and I are) in eternity experiences all things and completes all actions all at once. That magic moment incorporates both the alpha and the omega.

Time is the anomaly, not the standard. Time is the hourglass that forces us to experience only one thing at a time and then immediately swipes it away into the memory hole of the non-accessible past. Time is why reality is so unreal. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Darth Dane

The mind is also under laws, natural laws. Check hypnosis for example.

And all of these movements, all teh laws of nature is under one coherent system (universe, God, absolute, whatever).

Where does your thoughts come from?
If they come from yourself, you have created something out of nothing, creation ex nihili. Your thoughts are words not yet uttered. In the beginning there was the word(thought) and teh word was God.

If they do not come from you,where do they in fact come from?

God?

The Universe? (this is based that teh universe have thoughts to begin with, do we have a machine to verify, besides our own brain

Everything that exist must be following some laws right?






DD - Love Spliff