End the sabbatical...can there truly be nothing?

Started by wpaolini, 09/14/2010 04:51PM
Posted 09/14/2010 04:51PM | Edited 09/14/2010 06:45PM Opening Post
Over in the Intelligent Design Forum there is a discussion where the concept of "nothingness" came up. Was wondering what others thought about this concept from a Scriptual or Religious standpoint. Can there truly be nothingness? If there is a state or a time in the past when there was actually nothingness, then to me that would imply that there was also no God either, because if there was God then that is something so not truly a nothingness.

From a religious and biblical viewpoint I'm not seeing how there could ever be nothingness. Anyone have any other thoughts?
Posted 09/14/2010 07:16PM #1
William Paolini said:

Over in the Intelligent Design Forum there is a discussion where the concept of "nothingness" came up. Was wondering what others thought about this concept from a Scriptual or Religious standpoint. Can there truly be nothingness? If there is a state or a time in the past when there was actually nothingness, then to me that would imply that there was also no God either, because if there was God then that is something so not truly a nothingness.

From a religious and biblical viewpoint I'm not seeing how there could ever be nothingness. Anyone have any other thoughts?

It is commonly taught that God created Ex Nihilo, this is out of nothing. I believe this to be true, that God spoke the universe into existance and all the laws that govern it. I ain't no stephen hawking but I think this is possible, nothingness that is, because I believe God exists in another dimension that is outside of time and matter as we know it. The Bible says that a thousand years is as a day and a day is as a thousand years to God. To me that makes time irrelevant to God. But I don't know that I have much to add to this topic since I have not given it much thought. Most of this field consists of theories and wild ideas for which I doubt there will ever by much hard evidence for.

Doug Matulis
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"I need something to put here, can you help? wink "
Posted 09/14/2010 09:08PM #2
My position as a Christian is: God always was, is, and always will be (Gen 1:1, Is 57:15, John 1:1, Rev 1:8). Whenever the universe was made, He was there to make it and did make it.


Mark Costello
Matthews, NC, USA

"I hear you're mechanically inclined. Did you ever do anything with perpetual motion?"

"Yeah, I nearly had it a couple of times."
Posted 09/18/2010 07:45PM #3
William,
I would have to agree with you. I think part of the issue of nothingness has to do with the matter of observational position. For us living in the created universe with it's rules, properties ,and physical laws, would be by definition nothingness before the moment of creation.

From a God observational position, this would not be true, especially since most of us here would define God as without limits,i.e. eternal,omnipresent,omniscient, all powerful,holy.

The account of creation in Genesis is in my opinion, an account purely from and for the created's observational position and benefit.

This discussion, I believe, is one of the reasons that so many of the things mentioned in Ezekiel are so difficult to comprehend from an earthly materialist viewpoint. We are trying to explain and describe "everything" from a quasi 4 dimensional universe and in those limiting terms and experiences and yet from a Christian world view we see "everything" as being more uber-hyper-dimensional then what we experience.
Posted 09/19/2010 03:12AM #4
William Paolini said:From a religious and biblical viewpoint I'm not seeing how there could ever be nothingness. Anyone have any other thoughts?

I don't know anything about religion, but have seen theological arguments that evil does not exist. That evil is the absence of good, and absolute evil would be the absolute absence of good. IOW, that the evil->good numeric range has a range of 0 -> infinity, rather than a range of -infinity -> +infinity.

So if you buy that "absence of good" definition of evil, then pure evil might be nothingness.

It is too deep for me. Kinda like in semiconductor theory where - substrates have an excess of electrons, + substrates have an excess of 'holes' where electrons should be, and conventional engineering "positive current" is the motion of holes thru the circuit from more-positive toward more-negative! wink