Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Oct 29, 2025 6:01 pm
Don't be sorry. The mathematical argument is not intended to do more than it does, which is to show that the universe is not past-eternal. There are other arguments that fill the role you're thinking of, but I haven't presented them here. We're still on step 1.
The point at which everything began, dear Immanuel, is the seeming point. But the ever-created and never not-created (you love the word “God” so why not? I’ll use it) has done and will do the same thing ever and again.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Oct 29, 2025 6:01 pm
Don't be sorry. The mathematical argument is not intended to do more than it does, which is to show that the universe is not past-eternal. There are other arguments that fill the role you're thinking of, but I haven't presented them here. We're still on step 1.
...the ever-created and never not-created (you love the word “God” so why not? I’ll use it) has done and will do the same thing ever and again.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Oct 29, 2025 6:01 pm
Don't be sorry. The mathematical argument is not intended to do more than it does, which is to show that the universe is not past-eternal. There are other arguments that fill the role you're thinking of, but I haven't presented them here. We're still on step 1.
...the ever-created and never not-created (you love the word “God” so why not? I’ll use it) has done and will do the same thing ever and again.
What's your evidence for that?
The evidence is “written on the winds” my beloved son. If I communicated the metaphor you’d knit your brow, say “That’s not evidence I will accept!”
This is the point, dear Immanuel, where mathematical reasoning can go no farther!
Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Wed Oct 29, 2025 7:30 pm
...the ever-created and never not-created (you love the word “God” so why not? I’ll use it) has done and will do the same thing ever and again.
What's your evidence for that?
If I communicated the metaphor you’d knit your brow, say “That’s not evidence I will accept!”
Right now, it's no evidence at all...so that would be at least one step up from what you're offering.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Oct 29, 2025 3:32 pm
Well, flip it around: if you can't explain God, can God not still explain Himself to you? Why would an all-powerful Being be unable to do something (explanation) that even you and I can do routinely?
But the point of the mathematics is not to "explain God": it's merely to point to the inescapable necessity of the existence of some origin point for the universe. That's a much more humble and limited goal than you're supposing.
Sorry Immanuel, but "the origin point for the universe" is not sufficient to describe the personal God who intervenes in history."The origin point of the universe " also describes nature .
Don't be sorry. The mathematical argument is not intended to do more than it does, which is to show that the universe is not past-eternal. There are other arguments that fill the role you're thinking of, but I haven't presented them here. We're still on step 1.
But let's test your alternate explanation: how can "nature" be the origin of nature?
I see what you mean. By 'origin' you understand entity . Nature is not an entity , nature is a coherent system. I understand system is origin.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Oct 29, 2025 7:52 pm
Right now, it's no evidence at all...so that would be at least one step up from what you're offering.
Because you are utterly humorous, and mentally rigid, humor in reply escapes you. You are a trillion times right: there is no ‘evidence’ of an endless — eternal —chain of creations-destructions-creations.
And yet, and yet, God whispered this truth into my ‘ear’.
Eternity, my child, is ever-so-long. Fourteen billion years is like the blinking of the hummingbird’s eye.
Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Oct 29, 2025 4:57 pm
Sorry Immanuel, but "the origin point for the universe" is not sufficient to describe the personal God who intervenes in history."The origin point of the universe " also describes nature .
Don't be sorry. The mathematical argument is not intended to do more than it does, which is to show that the universe is not past-eternal. There are other arguments that fill the role you're thinking of, but I haven't presented them here. We're still on step 1.
But let's test your alternate explanation: how can "nature" be the origin of nature?
I see what you mean. By 'origin' you understand entity .
No, I'm just asking a very straightforward question: how can one thing be both the alleged cause and the alleged effect?
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Oct 29, 2025 7:52 pm
Right now, it's no evidence at all...so that would be at least one step up from what you're offering.
Because you...
Ah, back to the boring ad homs. I'm not bothering with that. I just know you've run out of relevant things to say, and have fallen to being petty again.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Oct 29, 2025 6:01 pm
Don't be sorry. The mathematical argument is not intended to do more than it does, which is to show that the universe is not past-eternal. There are other arguments that fill the role you're thinking of, but I haven't presented them here. We're still on step 1.
But let's test your alternate explanation: how can "nature" be the origin of nature?
I see what you mean. By 'origin' you understand entity .
No, I'm just asking a very straightforward question: how can one thing be both the alleged cause and the alleged effect?
Unlike the God of Moses, nature is not an entity but is a system.
Are you not Trinitarian? God is both cause and effect. The Father is cause, and the Son is effect.
To paraphrase: God the Father is functionally transcendent and God the Son is functionally immanent .
Thus, nature is wholly immanent, unlike God who is functionally also transcendent.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Oct 29, 2025 9:38 pm
I just know you've run out of relevant things to say, and have fallen to being petty again.
There’s a lot I can’t tell you right now (like Michael Corleone said to his brother).
Still, you are not a very good judge of what, in the conversation about existence, being, spirituality and religion, as well as philosophy, is relevant. I mean really.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Oct 29, 2025 9:36 pm
No, I'm just asking a very straightforward question: how can one thing be both the alleged cause and the alleged effect?
Unlike the God of Moses, nature is not an entity but is a system.
That's not an answer. How can "nature" be the cause of "nature"?
What can be the cause of God?
And, if God, supposedly, created every thing, then what created God?
Let 'us' see if 'you' will begin to answer, and clarify.
