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AbstractionYou tell me:
But as a Christian I don't follow this belief that assumes God needed 'stuff' to work with as if He lacked capability to create out of nothing. Christian belief is that God created ex nihilo, from nothing, not from himself.
So, you are into belief, but for your information I am into knowledge not belief.
According to your belief, God can and does create something from nothingness.
No wonder, you need to believe in ex nihilo, because it is against reason and intelligence that God can create and does create something using His own substance as the 'stuff' with and by and from to produce something - that is what I know from the faculty of reason and intelligence that God Himself endows man with.
That is indeed the critical difference between you and me, you are into belief and I am into facts and truths.
Now, this is funny from your part that you are invoking science specifically physics to prove that your belief in ex nihilo is founded on a scientific fact and truth, whereas scientists themselves don't go for ex nihilo, but for ex particulo (from particle).
"All matter is made of particles that are simply excitations of energy within the field." -Abstraction
Christians are into giving God more credit than He deserves, namely, that He can create something from nothing - whereas according to the reason and intelligence God Himself endows man with, even God cannot create anything at all that is created by Him with merely using nothingness.
That is an absurdity that God creates something using nothingness as the 'stuff' - just directly unlike the baker who uses flour to produce bread.
You Christians might as well just believe that God is nothingness that can create something like us humans, that would be the nth credit to God Which is identical to literally nothingness. What an nth degree of absurdity!
Let you read in the Bible that we humans live and move and have our being in God (Acts 17:28), literally we are part and parcel of the God substance.
Abstraction · 61-69, M
@yrger In fact I did. Didn't you see my response?
I object only to this:
14. But everything that is not God Himself nonetheless is made by God with and from Himself as the 'stuff' He uses to produce everything else
It is one logical possibility and it's quite a reasonable proposition. This view that you hold is panentheism and is similar to pantheism.
But as a Christian I don't follow this belief that assumes God needed 'stuff' to work with as if He lacked capability to create out of nothing. Christian belief is that God created ex niholo, from nothing, not from himself. When you look at physics it seems more apparent. The material universe is just excitations of a series of fundamental fields that are held in balance. All energy is 'vibration' within the fields. All matter is made of particles that are simply excitations of energy within the field. Nothing 'solid'. If those fields such as the Higgs field changed its value only slightly the entire physical universe would disappear immediately and it would be just energy.
Therefore God and existence are not identical in the Christian worldview. God is both imminent (near) and transcendent (beyond) the universe. This view is theism. Deism is the view God created the universe and doesn't have any continued involvement.
