Or did God create everything out of pre-existent and eternal matter?
Creation Ex-Nihilo - Did God Create Everything Out of Nothing?
by Ianone 11 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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tetrapod.sapien
hmmm, neither? mm, kay? kay.
"everyone else is either making love, or else just expecting rain. and the good samaritan is getting ready for the show, he's going to the carnival tonight on desolation row." - b.d.
TS
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FlyingHighNow
When you think about it, there can't be nothing. Even nothing is something. If all that existed was black empty nothingness, it would still be nothingness. It would still be dark space, which would be something. It can tie your mind in knots, thinking on that one. If there is nothing, what's nothing like? Isn't nothing something?
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bebu
Actually, I think that the physical universe was made "from nothing". And yeah, it is nearly impossible to imagine, just like it's hard for me to think of even all of the universe in some kind of concentrated form which suddenly banged into our expanding universe. The concept of infinite is likewise hard to imagine.
I think that a spiritual realm has always existed, if God exists eternally.
bebu
"Let there be (no new) class"
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Leolaia
If we are talking about the conception behind the creation narrative in Genesis, ch. 1, there is no explicit ex nihilo concept...in fact, creation in the first three days involve basically a rearranging and ordering of uncreated chaos (described in v. 2)...so that the waters which are divided into terrestial waters and heavenly waters on the second day are the waters of the "deep" that already existed before the first creative day, heaven is created when the waters are divided (creating an expanse between the waters), the earth (= land) is created when the terrestial waters are gathered into one place, light is created when primeval darkness (cf. v. 2) is relegated into its own temporal domain (i.e. "night"), etc. The latter three creative days involve a populating of the newly created domains....the "day" temporal domain is populated with the sun, the "night" temporal domain is populated with the moon and stars (both are also in the heavenly domain), the seas are populated with sea creatures, the land is populated with vegetation and land animals, and the air is populated with flying creatures. The text does not address the question of where the matter used to create these things comes from...."matter" itself is a foreign (i.e. Greek) concept. If we compare the Yahwist account of the creation of animals, man, and woman in ch. 2, we can see there that creation involves a refashioning of soil from the ground, or a pre-existing body part...not an ex nihilo concept....
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Frogleg
Leolaia,
So, you are voting for the eternal matter?
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Narkissos
In the Bible, the closest I can see to the idea of ex nihilo is Romans 4:17 -- and it is not about original creation:
in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist (more exactly, "calls that which is not as being -- kalountos ta mè onta hôs onta).
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seven006
Morons!
The earth and all the elements of the universe are made out of Legos. Specify, the Star Wars 2 deluxe edition.
Apostates don’t know shit about anything.
Dave -
FairMind
Or did God create everything out of pre-existent and eternal matter?
I believe that God created everything and (I don't understand this) the source was himself.
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gaiagirl
I would answer that there was never a time when "nothing" was all that existed. There has always been either energy, or both energy and matter (I doubt that there was ever a time when there was only matter, but no energy). It has been demonstrated that matter can change form, i.e. become a different type of matter and also how it can, under the right conditions, transform directly into energy. This is in fact how the Sun and other stars create heat and light. The process is considered to be reversible, i.e. energy can form matter. So, the material Universe formed from pre-existing energy. In a sense, matter can be said to have "condensed" from energy. "God" was an invention by primitive people who didn't understand the process.