Is God and His works perfect?

he does not at present do miracles.

I personally do not believe in miracles. God set the laws of the universe from the beginning. If he suspends these laws, the universe would most likely collapse. As such, what are perceived as miracles, are simply events that do not have obvious causes. These events were perceived by primitive people has miracles only because they did not have the knowledge of how they came about.

seekerjuan wrote:

Greatest I am wrote:
These come from man's own insecurity. A wish list for our comfort. I am saved, I am saved, yippee.

Just a note on this. I agree there seems to be an inborn need for all humans to believe that they are a part of something greater than themselves. I suspect, from a purely logical perspective, there is an evolutionary advantage to this which has helped man survive.

As to the 'I am saved' group, I would say, if you are telling me you are saved, then you cannot be saved because you are still here.

I guess I should start to use emotions. I meant that as a joke towards Christians.
In reality, it is my view that none of us are ever lost to the God I found. We are all destined to be part of the cosmic consciousness. In this we have no choice. There is no heaven or hell.

Regards
DL

seekerjuan wrote:First, it's important to point out that just because we cannot directly observe something does not mean it does not exist or that we can know nothing about it. Black Holes are a case in point. We know from Relativity that Black Holes are a mathematical possibility. We also know that due to the nature of a Black Hole, we will never see one. Anything that comes close to a Black Hole falls in, a probe or even light. We can therefore never see a Black Hole directly. However, we can see it's affect on the stars that orbit it. From their orbits, we can deduce that a Black Hole is present and observe some of its attributes.

The same is true of dinosaurs. We will never see a dinosaur directly, we only have the fossilized impressions of their bones or bodies to tell us they existed, what they were like, how they were born, and what they ate. This does not mean we can say they were never here or that we know nothing about them.

So it will be with our search for God in nature. We must look for God's paw print, so to speak...

OK, let me begin my turn at these hypotheses.

1. There is an intelligent entity that created the known universe. This entity is also called God.

The most compelling proof of a creator is cause and effect. From the first law of motion we learn, a body persists its state of rest or of uniform motion unless acted upon by an external unbalanced force. In our everyday experience, we see everything has a cause, and every cause has a prior cause. So from these two laws, which are well established and quite provable, we see that at some point, if you trace back to every cause/effect chain, you must come to one of two possibilities. Either this cause/effect chain stretches back to infinity, or we eventually must come to a First Cause.

Logically, it is impossible to count down from infinity to zero, you will never reach time zero. It is equally impossible to count from minus infinity to zero for the same reason. Based on the fact that we are at time zero, we can conclude that the Universe must have a beginning, and thus a First Cause.

This First Cause, logically, would have no preceding cause, and would therefore have to exist outside this universe and outside time itself otherwise it would have a preceding cause. This first cause, because it exists outside time, can have no creator, or other cause, no beginning, and no end, as we who exist in time would understand it. This First Cause is what we would refer to as the creator.

Of course, this by itself, does not prove intelligence. Evidence for intelligence, comes from the laws of physics and evolution we see around us. If the physical laws of this universe were slightly different, or the amount of energy and matter were slightly different, there would have been a Big Crunch just after the Big Bang and life as we know it would never have existed.

If we look at the Earth, we see the Earth itself is a system that seems meant to support life. There is an iron core that provides a huge magnetic shield that protects us from the sun's radiation. There is the whole cycle of life and death that provides a food chain for the existence of life here. It appears that every organ in our body has or had, at some time in the history of evolution, a purpose.

No argument to here. You seem to agree with phisicists who say that we cannot know of the conditions befor the big bang because before that, the laws of phisics break down. I do not know if this can ever be proven as fact without getting there but it does sound compelling.

Either all of these event came together in a gigantic coincidence or this is where we find evidence of intelligence.

I do not agree that it is evidence of intelligence.
There is the possibility that there was a non intelligent cause to the big bang. The cause remains unknown. We are not aware of all the laws of nature. In an endless universe, all possibilities become probabilities so I do not discount an intelligent force either.
The jury is still out.
I do know that when I communicated with the cosmic consciousness, my thinking that there was no such things as miracles, was confimed.
The gigantic coincidence you speak of for life may have occured amny times. We do not know as yet but to think that we are the only intelligent force in the universe has a low probability.

Truth is, if we are playing with possibilities and probabilities, that it is more likely, and I do not believe it for a second, that we were seeded by aliens.

Regards
DL

seekerjuan wrote:

Greatest I am wrote:
seekerjuan
If perfect is a condition that can never change then God cannot absorb new data. That would be change. That would mean that live or dead, whatever we do, he could never know unless as some believe, he already knows everything. If he does, then he cannot ever check what he knows or is because he would have to record somewhere how many times he has checked and that too is data that he cannot add to himself because he is a non changing perfect and no new data is allowed. In fact, if he was perfect on His day one, so to speak, then he could not have added us to his perfection. His perfection must remain original to his day one. Forever stagnant

The problem with this argument is that it postulates that God exists within time. If we proceed from the postulate that this entity is unlimited, it cannot exist within time without becoming limited by the 'ever becoming nature' of that which exists in time. Stagnation, also has temporal implications, and so is meaningless without time.

Perhaps, but how could we ever prove that God exists out of time and somehow made contact with time to initiate the big bang which is in time?
Heaven and hell would also have to exist out of time as well. No?
If there is a place of no time, and we know that we need time to absorb data, then being there, we could never know it, because we nor God would have the time to convey or absorb data. We could not perceive, that takes time.

Regards
DL

seekerjuan wrote:

That which is perfect cannot create that which is imperfect.

This one is a little tougher. You see, if you throw in the omnipotent angle, then God can do whatever It wants. If It chooses to leave something unfinished, that does not mean there was no perfect archetype that God was aware of and had as part of the initial plan. It simply means that the completed perfection manifested in a limited material way and may or may not continue to completion.

This, to some extent, supports your argument that the universe is in the state of becoming perfect. The draw back is the ever becoming nature of time. So long as the universe is evolving in time, it will continue to 'become' and never complete unless there is some end to time itself or this evolution exists for infinity which is that same as saying it will never reach perfection.

For the record, I think the evolution toward perfection hypothesis has merit.

Good.

If there were a God who decided to create an unfinished product, like us for instance, then whatever He would have created till that point in time where he stopped, would have to be perfect if perfection comes from perfection. If unfinished, as we are, then we, as I have stated I think, are perfection in evolution.
God did not then produce imperfection, just an unfinished perfect starting point for us to continue our perfection in evolution.
Here again though, This God would have to move from His place of timelessness to our place of time.
All this can only happen of course IF there is an intelligent creator.

Regards
DL

seekerjuan wrote:

That which is imperfect cannot create perfection.

That which is limited (us) exists in a universe that is limited. A limited environment, by definition has boundaries. As such nothing that is of this universe can exceed the boundaries of this universe. Therefore, what is here cannot create perfection, or that which is unlimited.

If I was Christian, I would be peeved because of this.

Matthew 5:48
Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

I must have missed where science found the limit or boundary to our universe.
What was there, a wall or more nothingness. If a wall then do we know what is behind it. If nothing then we can put out our hand and if it does not find anything there, then we have yet to reach the boundary or limit.
I think that this is what they call a catch 22.

Regards
DL

seekerjuan wrote:

he does not at present do miracles.

I personally do not believe in miracles. God set the laws of the universe from the beginning. If he suspends these laws, the universe would most likely collapse. As such, what are perceived as miracles, are simply events that do not have obvious causes. These events were perceived by primitive people has miracles only because they did not have the knowledge of how they came about.

We agree.

I was getting the impression that you thought that a God had created man by miraculous means.
I am glad that you do not.

Regards
DL

While religious dogma, Bible quotes, Gnostic experiences and space aliens are entertaining, they are, of course, non sequitur.

So, let me sum up where I think we are.

We agree to the follow, such that they can be considered settled and postulates.

1. The Universe had a beginning.
   
2. The chain of cause/effect which formed the universe we know today, started with a First Cause that had no preceding cause.
   
3. That which is perfect (God) can create that which has the potential to be perfect but has yet to be perfectly complete and therefore in a temporal state of imperfection.
   
4. God does not suspend His own laws, so He does not do miracles.
   

Hypothesis that remain to be proven or disproved are:

1. The First Cause was/is intelligent.
   
2. The First Cause exists outside of space-time.
   
3. That which is limited cannot create that which is unlimited.
   
4. The Universe is finite.
   
5. God could create the universe without directly interacting or existing within it.
   
6. God is unlimited, that is, perfect such that there is no state of being that represents a reality more complete than God.
   

I'm going to pass on the first hypotheses at this point and take up the second:

The First Cause exists outside of space-time.

The universe exists in a fabric of interwoven space and time. From Relativity, we know that gravity affects space-time. For example, time passes at a different rate on the Earth's surface than it does in outer space. This difference is proven and taken into account in order to make GPS technology possible. Relativity also predicts and experiments have proven that velocity also can affect time. From this, we can deduce that time is a physical property, as it can be affected by gravity and velocity.

We know, from observation, that the Universe is expanding. Given this, we know that as you go back in time, the Universe had to be smaller, much smaller. This is the basis of the 'Big Bang Theory.' From a combination of classic physics and Relativity, we have predictable mathematical models of what happened seconds after the Big Bang. At that moment, Space and Time began to form. Prior to the Big Bang, time, as we know it, did not exist. Today the Arrow of Time points forward because it is driven by the initial force of the Big Bang itself. According to the mathematical models, if the Universe were to collapse in a Big Crunch, time would flow backward toward time zero! There are some who speculate that the Universe has expanded and collapsed many times, creating time and consuming time on each expansion and contraction.

As you indicated in a previous post, science can only predict back to a few moments after the actual Bang. This would appear to indicate that the laws themselves were created as part of the Big Bang. Which would be consistent with them being defined by a creator, but, of course, not proof.

So, if we postulate that the First Cause preceded the Big Bang, or Bangs, it could not be in the Space-Time of this universe as this Space-Time did not exist.

Again, I am going to skip the third hypotheses and continue with:

The Universe is finite.

Let's start with the law of conservation of energy. This law states that the total amount of energy in an isolated system, like the universe, remains constant. A consequence of this law is that energy cannot be created or destroyed. The only thing that can happen with energy in an isolated system is that it can change form, that is to say for instance kinetic energy can become thermal energy. Because energy is associated with mass in the Einstein's theory of relativity, the conservation of energy also implies the conservation of mass in isolated systems.

So, based on experimentation and experience, we have never seen matter or energy spontaneously appear. As such, we can assume that if the universe is finite, then the matter in it is also limited or finite.

Using logic alone, we can say that a line cannot be infinite in one direction and finite in another. If you claim to have such a line, then you could say that I am going to measure this line from infinity minus one to it's starting point. Of course, you'll never find a starting point because it is infinite. So we can logically say that something cannot be both infinite and finite, by definition.

If I can prove that the Universe is finite in one direction, it follows that it cannot be infinite in another direction. It can be perpetual, i.e. lasting until the end, but not infinite.

OK, here's a simple experiment. Take a rubber ball out to your local sidewalk. Hold the ball and extend your arm level with your shoulder over the cement of the sidewalk. Drop the ball. Did it hit the sidewalk? If it did not, the universe is infinite. If it did hit the sidewalk the the universe is not infinite.

You see, just as you could say the universe is infinitely large, you can equally say it is infinity small. As the ball falls from your hand, the distance traveled can theoretically be divided by 1/2 and infinite number of times. So, if your ball starts 4 feet off the sidewalk, it will eventually fall to 2 feet, then 1 foot, then 1/2 foot, then 1/4, 1/8, ... down to an infinite number of half steps. But if this were actually true, the ball would never hit the ground. At some point, the ball hits a barrier that can no longer be divided, otherwise, it could never reach the ground.

Time has the same characteristics. Your watch says it's 5 minutes to noon. There is theoretically an infinite number of half steps between 11:55 and 12:00. If this were true, then you would never get to eat lunch. Although, there are days I suspect this may be the case...

So it follows, that the universe has a boundary at the very small. It also follows that the universe must have a boundary at the very large.

Another point, if we accept the Big Bang theory, then you would also have to accept a finite nature to space-time as it is expanding from it's initial point to where ever it is today. Now, you can ask, what would happen if I stretched my hand beyond the edge of space-time. There are two possibilities, either your space-time would expand to accommodate your hand, or your hand would cease to exist outside the edge. As to what lies outside space time, science does not know. Some speculate that the Universe is finite yet boundless, but that is speculation.

OK, let me return to #3

That which is limited cannot create that which is unlimited.

So, now that we have established the the universe is finite. It now follows that even if you arranged all of the matter and energy in the universe into one object or energy source, it could not be infinite. There is not infinite matter in the universe and the law of conservation of energy prohibits you from increasing the over all matter and/or energy in the finite universe.

God could create the universe without directly interacting or existing within it.

As Space-Time was, itself, created at the beginning of the Big Bang, there was no need for the First Cause to directly enter the universe as we know it. When you build something, like a model car or write a program, you do not become part of your creation, it is separate from you. You are outside what ever it is.

So God could be just a kid with an ant farm. Yes, we are the ants... And we are here to keep Junior entertained until mom and dad come home. There is no way or need for Junior to enter the ant farm, He can only watch and tap on the glass once in a while. He occasionally communicates with the ants telepathically, but there is no physical contact.

OK, that's it for me for tonight. I'll let you tackle the last two.

• The First Cause was/is intelligent.
  
• God is unlimited, that is, perfect such that there is no state of being that represents a reality more complete than God.
  

By the way, now that we have proven that which is finite cannot create that which is infinite, the Christians will just have to find another Biblical sound bite...

seekerjuan wrote:I'm going to pass on the first hypotheses at this point and take up the second:

The First Cause exists outside of space-time.

The universe exists in a fabric of interwoven space and time. From Relativity, we know that gravity affects space-time. For example, time passes at a different rate on the Earth's surface than it does in outer space. This difference is proven and taken into account in order to make GPS technology possible. Relativity also predicts and experiments have proven that velocity also can affect time. From this, we can deduce that time is a physical property, as it can be affected by gravity and velocity.

We know, from observation, that the Universe is expanding. Given this, we know that as you go back in time, the Universe had to be smaller, much smaller. This is the basis of the 'Big Bang Theory.' From a combination of classic physics and Relativity, we have predictable mathematical models of what happened seconds after the Big Bang. At that moment, Space and Time began to form. Prior to the Big Bang, time, as we know it, did not exist. Today the Arrow of Time points forward because it is driven by the initial force of the Big Bang itself. According to the mathematical models, if the Universe were to collapse in a Big Crunch, time would flow backward toward time zero! There are some who speculate that the Universe has expanded and collapsed many times, creating time and consuming time on each expansion and contraction.

As you indicated in a previous post, science can only predict back to a few moments after the actual Bang. This would appear to indicate that the laws themselves were created as part of the Big Bang. Which would be consistent with them being defined by a creator, but, of course, not proof.

So, if we postulate that the First Cause preceded the Big Bang, or Bangs, it could not be in the Space-Time of this universe as this Space-Time did not exist.

Perhaps not space-time the way we know it today but space certainly did exist. The universe expanded into something. That something took up space. Einstein called it the ether, I believe. Man invented space time as a good way to measure distance. We do not know how the pre bang conditions were set up, we cannot, but we can know that they had a place to go in space and that they had to have time to produce the big bang.

Youe first cause also would need space to exist in.

Regards
DL

seekerjuan wrote:

God could create the universe without directly interacting or existing within it.

As Space-Time was, itself, created at the beginning of the Big Bang, there was no need for the First Cause to directly enter the universe as we know it. When you build something, like a model car or write a program, you do not become part of your creation, it is separate from you. You are outside what ever it is.

So God could be just a kid with an ant farm. Yes, we are the ants... And we are here to keep Junior entertained until mom and dad come home. There is no way or need for Junior to enter the ant farm, He can only watch and tap on the glass once in a while. He occasionally communicates with the ants telepathically, but there is no physical contact.

It is also possible for the big bang to have obliterated any existence that was before, including a God.

Regards
DL