Let me first preface this by stating that I consider myself something of a staunch Lutheran, but for my Catholic school term paper, I had to write a Creation story of any sort, so I took something of a materialist incorporation. I have always been deeply into philosophy and for a while was very interested in existentialism. I was also exposed to the Emperor of the Fading Suns science fiction fantasy universe at a *very* impressionable point in my life. The concept of a Pancreator vaguely resembling the Christian God but concentrating on the older church teachings as well as some theoretical future ones interested me.
Most of our theology classes are spent in argument between our resident atheist and our blind-faith Catholic. As the Protestant intellectualist, I often find myself taking alternate sides of this argument. Everyone else pretty much sits back and watches the argument go back and forth. I tried to address some of these points here, especially interweaving superdimensional theoretical physics and semantics in the definition of God. I still maintain that He should not be defined in that sense.
So without any further ado...
What is your reaction?
Most of our theology classes are spent in argument between our resident atheist and our blind-faith Catholic. As the Protestant intellectualist, I often find myself taking alternate sides of this argument. Everyone else pretty much sits back and watches the argument go back and forth. I tried to address some of these points here, especially interweaving superdimensional theoretical physics and semantics in the definition of God. I still maintain that He should not be defined in that sense.
So without any further ado...
Quote:
VOID. Drenched in the absolute zero cold of inexistence without energy, nothingness stretched out into the blank infinity of infinities that is one over zero. God is that one.
Throughout this, there yet existed the formative, binding force essential to possibility. This force exists beneath the subatomic level and holds the fabric of matter together: Love, the echo of God. This Love accumulated and manifested itself into a point without space; the focus of the Universe, without location, as no point of reference yet existed from which to refer. From this seed grew the Universe, through an act of Love, and by a force called the LORD of HOSTS.
Without time, all actions never occur, and yet occur simultaneously. Thus, there was never any point at which the Universe did not exist, nor a point at which it did. It merely does. This is a Universe of change. From shortly after its iteration, purely ordered energy tended towards disorder, and this entropy measures all things material. Providence, the immaterial, does not choose, it does. This is how it created existence as a tool for possibility.
Before entropy, and thus time, began, but after the singularity began to germinate, the natural laws of the Universe as we vaguely know them developed. Gravity, the speed of electromagnetic radiation, and the conservation of matter all took form. As time passed, the Heavens took shape and expanded into the abyss that had set a path. Across the Universe, other bodies began to takes shape, and the Earth numbered among these.
The Earth, at first a molten ball, matured into a world. It gathered enough mass to develop a sustainable atmosphere and seethe with oceans. An act of Love, animated the first life from matter. It metabolized, grew, adapted to its environment, and, most importantly, reproduced, but even these merely serve as symptoms of life, not its animating principle. The animus that allows matter to live is the soul. That prime forebear reproduced, and its offspring went on to convert the sea and sky into a world habitable for man.
When man did evolve, God improved upon all previous life not only in physical complexity of form, but also in life force. God imbued a deeper spiritual dimension within man, such that this merely clay not only lived, but also thought, felt, and loved. This spiritual power gave man Free Will. No longer did mere chemical reactions and electrical pulses bind his actions.
God created man in harmony with the rest of His Creation, and for a time he thrived as a creature of God. He did not doubt, he knew and he did, for the glory of God lay manifest before him every day in nature. Man needed only to gaze upon the multitudinous stars at night and the mighty earth during the day, to know that God is great.
For a millennia man existed in such paradise as a tribal hunter-gatherer. So things would have continued until at last the stars died and time came to an end, had not evil seeped into the equation. What else could possibly cause a break in a viable system that had served man for millennia? For God is the Word. Through words, Satan lured man to forsake paradise, enticing him with the notion that he too might be a god with the power to define and create. The word allowed man to cooperate amongst his peers and accumulate their ideas into a whole.
Furthermore, ideas transmuted into words lead to ownership of those ideas. When words represent a physical thing, those words take on the meaning of the thing. The properties of that thing are attributed to the word, and the speaker owns and recreates the thing in his mind. Things no longer belonged to all, and man could accumulate excess resources for his individual self.
In the Fertile Crescent, its own Garden of Eden, man began to till the earth. He ceased to depend upon the available produce of the earth and began to subsist on the fruits of his own labor. Its purpose seemed originally decent: With greater agricultural yields, not all men needed to work directly for their survival. The division of labor outside of the agricultural lent itself to an organization leader to allocate resources and distribute products. This power, however, parodied that of God, and filled the heart of man with greed and self-love. When leaders realized that their born equals looked up to and needed him, they felt like gods, and ultimately deemed themselves thus. This made life apparently easier: men would have to do less work at the price of their freedom.
The necessity of a central authority for maintaining order, distributing food, and allocating labor generated a trend of greater and lesser among men.
A problem lie in the absence of direct revelation from God. Heretofore it had been unnecessary, but with increased idleness, the inquisitive nature of man had devised false gods to explain the heavens and the earth. Thus, God decided that if His people sought their Maker, they ought to find Him. He would reveal himself gradually, until all the nations of the earth knew their Heavenly Father and abandoned their selfish ways, returning again to harmony.
He began where Satan had begun: Mesopotamia. There, in the city of Ur, he found a man called Abram. A name is a powerful concept. It represents that which it defines. It takes on the persona of its subject. To name something defines and isolates it, limiting the extent of its possibilities. God changed Abram’s name to Abraham, symbolizing the new destiny that God intended for this, the first of his servants on Earth. He promised to make Abraham’s descendants as numerous as the stars and sand, and spread His revelation amongst them.
God is He who Is. As omniscient over His Creation, He knows all about all that exists, and necessarily all that will occur, outside of Free Will, which is the necessary fruition of a Universe of variability. Thus, He could not know the manner in which man would take this revelation. Knowing the weakness and nature of man, He could only develop a covenant with man and work with and through him to cleanse the souls and hearts of men.
The crusade that followed, and continues to this day, leads to salvation on the Day of Reckoning. When time ends, so will the struggle between good and evil on the face of the earth, and the LORD of HOSTS will come down from Heaven and stand victorious over evil. Until that time, we must live moral lives in a progressively immoral world and work with our personal composites of body, mind, and soul towards ultimate salvation and existence in the direct presence of God.
Throughout this, there yet existed the formative, binding force essential to possibility. This force exists beneath the subatomic level and holds the fabric of matter together: Love, the echo of God. This Love accumulated and manifested itself into a point without space; the focus of the Universe, without location, as no point of reference yet existed from which to refer. From this seed grew the Universe, through an act of Love, and by a force called the LORD of HOSTS.
Without time, all actions never occur, and yet occur simultaneously. Thus, there was never any point at which the Universe did not exist, nor a point at which it did. It merely does. This is a Universe of change. From shortly after its iteration, purely ordered energy tended towards disorder, and this entropy measures all things material. Providence, the immaterial, does not choose, it does. This is how it created existence as a tool for possibility.
Before entropy, and thus time, began, but after the singularity began to germinate, the natural laws of the Universe as we vaguely know them developed. Gravity, the speed of electromagnetic radiation, and the conservation of matter all took form. As time passed, the Heavens took shape and expanded into the abyss that had set a path. Across the Universe, other bodies began to takes shape, and the Earth numbered among these.
The Earth, at first a molten ball, matured into a world. It gathered enough mass to develop a sustainable atmosphere and seethe with oceans. An act of Love, animated the first life from matter. It metabolized, grew, adapted to its environment, and, most importantly, reproduced, but even these merely serve as symptoms of life, not its animating principle. The animus that allows matter to live is the soul. That prime forebear reproduced, and its offspring went on to convert the sea and sky into a world habitable for man.
When man did evolve, God improved upon all previous life not only in physical complexity of form, but also in life force. God imbued a deeper spiritual dimension within man, such that this merely clay not only lived, but also thought, felt, and loved. This spiritual power gave man Free Will. No longer did mere chemical reactions and electrical pulses bind his actions.
God created man in harmony with the rest of His Creation, and for a time he thrived as a creature of God. He did not doubt, he knew and he did, for the glory of God lay manifest before him every day in nature. Man needed only to gaze upon the multitudinous stars at night and the mighty earth during the day, to know that God is great.
For a millennia man existed in such paradise as a tribal hunter-gatherer. So things would have continued until at last the stars died and time came to an end, had not evil seeped into the equation. What else could possibly cause a break in a viable system that had served man for millennia? For God is the Word. Through words, Satan lured man to forsake paradise, enticing him with the notion that he too might be a god with the power to define and create. The word allowed man to cooperate amongst his peers and accumulate their ideas into a whole.
Furthermore, ideas transmuted into words lead to ownership of those ideas. When words represent a physical thing, those words take on the meaning of the thing. The properties of that thing are attributed to the word, and the speaker owns and recreates the thing in his mind. Things no longer belonged to all, and man could accumulate excess resources for his individual self.
In the Fertile Crescent, its own Garden of Eden, man began to till the earth. He ceased to depend upon the available produce of the earth and began to subsist on the fruits of his own labor. Its purpose seemed originally decent: With greater agricultural yields, not all men needed to work directly for their survival. The division of labor outside of the agricultural lent itself to an organization leader to allocate resources and distribute products. This power, however, parodied that of God, and filled the heart of man with greed and self-love. When leaders realized that their born equals looked up to and needed him, they felt like gods, and ultimately deemed themselves thus. This made life apparently easier: men would have to do less work at the price of their freedom.
The necessity of a central authority for maintaining order, distributing food, and allocating labor generated a trend of greater and lesser among men.
A problem lie in the absence of direct revelation from God. Heretofore it had been unnecessary, but with increased idleness, the inquisitive nature of man had devised false gods to explain the heavens and the earth. Thus, God decided that if His people sought their Maker, they ought to find Him. He would reveal himself gradually, until all the nations of the earth knew their Heavenly Father and abandoned their selfish ways, returning again to harmony.
He began where Satan had begun: Mesopotamia. There, in the city of Ur, he found a man called Abram. A name is a powerful concept. It represents that which it defines. It takes on the persona of its subject. To name something defines and isolates it, limiting the extent of its possibilities. God changed Abram’s name to Abraham, symbolizing the new destiny that God intended for this, the first of his servants on Earth. He promised to make Abraham’s descendants as numerous as the stars and sand, and spread His revelation amongst them.
God is He who Is. As omniscient over His Creation, He knows all about all that exists, and necessarily all that will occur, outside of Free Will, which is the necessary fruition of a Universe of variability. Thus, He could not know the manner in which man would take this revelation. Knowing the weakness and nature of man, He could only develop a covenant with man and work with and through him to cleanse the souls and hearts of men.
The crusade that followed, and continues to this day, leads to salvation on the Day of Reckoning. When time ends, so will the struggle between good and evil on the face of the earth, and the LORD of HOSTS will come down from Heaven and stand victorious over evil. Until that time, we must live moral lives in a progressively immoral world and work with our personal composites of body, mind, and soul towards ultimate salvation and existence in the direct presence of God.
What is your reaction?