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Re: Radio Satan

On Wed, 22 May 2002, ryan richards wrote:
> God . . . obviously choose to create the universe . . .

Meaning there was a time when God existed and the universe did not, and it
was followed by a time when God and the universe both existed?  Does God
exist within time, then?  I sometimes wonder about that.  For a long time
now, I've been more inclined to think of God as eternally seeing all time
as one simultaneous instant (hmmm, a "divine instant", maybe?), in which
case the universe has, in a sense, always been.

If God is always Creator, then there has always been Creation.  If there
has ever been a time when there was no Creation, then there was a time
when God was not Creator.  If God went from being not-Creator to being
Creator, then is God capable of change?  I haven't a clue.

This is where I sometimes find myself quoting the new OTR album.  I have
always wanted to believe in a God who is "transcendent" and above the
pettiness of time.  But more and more, I find I also want to believe in a
God to whom my being and my actions "make a difference".  I want God to be
"moved" by me and what I do, just as people are "moved" by other people,
by what they see in nature, and by God himself.  I want to believe in a
God who, in some sense, "responds" to me, as I respond to him.

> So the question is did God have create anything at all or could God have
> existed (in triune form in my theology) eternally without it?

That is an interesting question too, yeah.

> The answer is I Don't Know, but my position (at the moment) is that if
> the universe isn't a necessary component of God's existence then God
> didn't have to make it.

Well, that seems logical, and obvious, I think.

> In my view free will is the God given ability to act outside of preset
> conditioning.  Maybe it's best to compare humans to animals in order to
> be convincing.  Take a cat for example, a creature that is constantly
> reacting to it's environment.  Experiment on (in an uncruel matter of
> course) and observe a cat's behaviour for any extended period of time
> and you will soon learn what free will isn't.  If you make a gesture to
> strike the cat for instance it will always react in selfdense- it Cannot
> help it.  I, on the other hand, could choose to let someone strike me
> for some moral cause or what have you.  If you think that Ghandi for
> instance had an impulse to starve himself and then had no choice but to
> follow through because his brain chemistry, which function to help him
> survive, wouldn't let him eat a rice cake then your view of impulses
> don't seem to jive with what seems "natural" if you will (but probably
> won't).  More later.

Well, I think a person who didn't believe in free will would simply argue
that Ghandi, like many people, had a more complex brain than a cat, and
thus, his actions would not have been influenced quite so directly by
external stimuli.  But Ghandi was certainly responding to his environment
when he went on hunger strikes -- he observed a political situation,
formulated an opinion concerning what the most effective response to the
situation might be, and then chose to act as he did.  If he had made
political ideals more important to himself than his personal health, for
whatever reason, then his actions would have been an appropriate, and
possibly even predictable, response to his external stimuli.

--- Peter T. Chattaway --------------------------- peter at chattaway_com ---
 "I detected one misprint, but to torture you I will not tell you where."
      Winston Churchill to T.E. Lawrence, re Seven Pillars of Wisdom

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