from the OP
In previous discussions I have had on the forum, it has been asserted that creation is about something from nothing and science knows that isn't true.
So my first problem with the idea that creation is about something from nothing, is that it is from God who could be classified as energy.
Second problem with the something from nothing arguement, is that we are not told how God created the heaven and earth. Just that it was created.
So what really has me stumped is where this idea that creation is something from nothing comes from and how anytime I try to discuss the biblical account of creation, I am talked down to because from science we know that something doesn't come from nothing? Not only do I not suggest that somthing comes from nothing, but the bible doesn't suggest it either.
Hi, razzel. Good to see you here in OT. I decided to post what I thought were the most relevant statements from your OP right up front, so that we can stay on topic. You know how these threads tend to drift all over the place. Would you agree these are the main points you made in the OP?
Now one of the first things you said was "science knows that isn't true" [that something came from nothing]. I think what you have probably been running into (and feel free to correct me if I am making a wrong guess) are references to the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy, which says briefly that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed. They can be converted one to the other, matter into energy or energy into matter, but the sum total of matter and energy in the universe is neither increased nor diminished.
This is certainly true of the created world and everything in it. But it is true of a world which is already created. It says nothing about whether or not matter and energy were needed to make the world of matter and energy in the first place. Science can know that within the created world there is no further creation of matter or energy. Any new organization of matter (into a star or a cricket or a man) uses matter and energy that already exists. It is a re-arrangement of matter and energy that existed before that specific thing existed.
What science cannot know is where matter and energy came from in the first place. Specifically where energy came from in the first place, for if you have energy, it can be converted into matter, so matter comes from energy. But energy? Where does energy--that is physical energy of the sort we can measure--come from? (Energy is basically a measure of the force it takes to do any kind of work, even it that work is only breathing.)
1. The capacity for work or vigorous activity; vigor; power. See Synonyms at strength.
2.
a. Exertion of vigor or power: a project requiring a great deal of time and energy.
b. Vitality and intensity of expression: a speech delivered with energy and emotion.
3.
a. Usable heat or power: Each year Americans consume a high percentage of the world's energy.
b. A source of usable power, such as petroleum or coal.
4. Physics The capacity of a physical system to do work.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/energy
Now there are two possible answers to this question. Either physical energy never had a beginning. It just always was. Or physical energy did have a beginning and something or someone brought it into existence. The Christian belief of course is that only God always was, so physical energy did have a beginning and God brought it into existence.
What I mean when I say from God is that something was there to start out with. ... Whether a part of God or created by Him is irrelavent to the idea that there was God, thus not nothing.
It is very relevant to Christian theology. (And Jewish and Islamic theology as well.) What is God made of? God is made of God-stuff, stuff we call divine. If nature is also made of God-stuff, then nature is divine. There are many belief-systems that would agree that nature is divine. The pagan beliefs which the people of Israel were often tempted to imitate thought of nature as divine, and worshipped aspects of nature as divine: sun, moon, stars, vegetation and fertility, storm & lightning, ocean, even plagues, locusts and war, were all thought to be gods and goddesses.
The first creation account in Genesis was probably written to oppose the idea that nature is divine. It speaks of everything in nature not as something to be worshipped for its own divine nature, but as something God made, something which God brought into existence. And this is re-inforced by several other passages of scripture which speak of God creating all things. Nature is not a part of God. That is a fundamental assumption of creation. You cannot speak of creation and at the same time say that what was created is part of God, for God was never created. God made the heavens and earth, God did not become the heavens and earth. Got it?
So what did God make them out of? Nothing. Because he did not make them out of himself, and there was nothing else to make them out of. That is why "Creatio ex nihilo" (creation out of nothing) is one of the basic fundamentals of Christian teaching.
So my first problem with the idea that creation is about something from nothing, is that it is from God who could be classified as energy.
gluadys said:
But we should not think of God's energy as being physical and measurable,
why not? If God can make Himself "real" in this world, why couldn't His energy be "real" as well.
If God is real, and if God created, then the idea of somthing from nothing is flawed at it's conception.
If God can make Himself "real" in this world, why couldn't His energy be "real" as well.
Which brings us right back to the idea that God is energy.
Your answer to my statement suggests that by "real" you mean something physical and measurable. But does something have to be physical to be real? Is spirit not real? God, says Jesus, is spirit and is not bound to a physical place like the temple in Jerusalem or Mt. Gerazim in Samaria, but we are to worship God in spirit and in truth.
So, is God not real because God is spirit and not physical matter or energy? Is worshipping God in spirit not real worship?
The whole idea that something must be physical to be real would have astounded the biblical writers and the church fathers. Indeed, they would shake their heads and wonder how people could be so foolish. To them, God and all the realms of the spirit were more real than the physical world. The physical world relies on the reality of the spiritual for its very existence, but the spiritual world exists without needing to rely on the physical world. The physical world is real only for a time, but the spiritual world is real for eternity.
God's energy is divine energy, not physical energy. Remember what Jesus said about God being spirit and therefore not bound to any physical place? Physical energy is bound to a physical place. You can locate it (at least roughly) and measure its strength. But God is not bound to any physical place. So, if God is energy, it is of a different sort than what science studies.
It would certainly be incorrect to say that God is energy if by that you mean the energy Einstein was speaking of when he formulated the equation that describes the conversion of matter to energy. That energy is not God, it is one of God's creations. It is part of the created world, not the eternal spiritual world.
As Deamiter suggests, it would probably be better not to use the word "energy" when speaking of God's power. It just causes confusion.
Second problem with the something from nothing arguement, is that we are not told how God created the heaven and earth. Just that it was created.
True, but this is not an argument against creation from nothing. As hithesh points out, even if Genesis is a bit ambiguous, we have many other scriptures which specify that God created all things. So nothing existed prior to the first creative act to make anything out of.
So what really has me stumped is where this idea that creation is something from nothing comes from
Although the phrase "creation out of nothing" is not in the bible, the idea certainly comes from the bible. (Just as the idea of the Trinity comes from the bible, though the word is never used in the bible.) All the great students of scripture over the last 3,000 years agree on this, and to object to it is to turn Christianity on its head. From a Christian and a biblical perspective, creation must be from nothing, for everything that was made was made by God and nothing came into existence by itself, nor existed eternally with God. God made it all out of nothing.
Science cannot and does not speak against this, for science can only study the created world that already exists and say what happened after the first creation, and within the parameters of creation.
gluadys said:
Now if creation is not from the same stuff God is, what did God make it from?
That question is beyond the scope of a biblical understanding of creation.
Not at all, since biblical scholars of all ages have found that the study of the bible answers the question. God created out of nothing. And not just Christian scholars either as Jewish students of the bible came to the same conclusion.
All this discussion, though interesting, goes way beyond the discussion of origins of the species as defined both in evolution and creation.
Do you mean creationism (as in evolution or creationism)? It certainly goes beyond the scope of evolution and the origin of species which both occur well after the creation of the heavens and the earth whether one takes an evolutionary or creationist approach to the origin of species. But except for an aside, the OP focused on the creation of heaven and earth, not what came afterward within that creation. If you want to discuss evolution it would be best to do that in a separate thread. In order to keep on topic, I will not discuss evolution further in this thread.
I didn't say it or believe it, it was stated to me many times over, every time I try to address it, I am told how uneducated and stupid I am for believing the biblical creation, somthing that btw, I have not discussed one way or the other as to what I personally believe, but rather have discussed what makes it invalid from a scientific standpoint.
In otherwords, the evolutionist arguement that something cannot come from nothing is a false and misleading arguement and is not consistant with either science or theories of the origins of life.
As I said, I think two different ideas have become confused here: the possibility of creating something from nothing inside of creation, and the possibility (necessity, from a biblical perspective) of creation itself being made of nothing, because there is nothing outside of creation for it to be made of. If the scientists you have been talking to thought you were talking about the first when you were really talking about the second, of course they would say it is invalid. But the second is not invalid from a scientific standpoint, because it falls outside of the realm of scientific study. It is not a question science has any answer for one way or another, because scientists cannot look at the created world from outside of the created world.
Now, all that being said, why do people (evolutionists) insist that the creation story starts with the creation of the heavens and earth.
Well, that should be "Christians" not "evolutionists". Christian evolutionists would agree, of course, but not all evolutionists are Christian. Christians insist the creation story starts with the creation of the heavens and earth, because that is where both of the creation accounts begin. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" Gen. 1:1 "In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens..." Gen. 2:4b Also see John 1:1-3, Proverbs 8:22-31 and Job 38:4-7
The story actually starts at the creation of said, not with the creation of said.
I have no idea what this means.
It would be really nice if you would respond directly to what was said instead of going off into an irrelevant tangent.
Science an absolutely study whether something is created or not, and can also study whether or not the creator was the same creator. Take a painting, we can study to see if it was printed or painted (created) and who the creator was.
Human "creators" cannot make something out of nothing. They have to use existing materials. Similarly in nature, animals make things out of stuff that is already there. They didn't create the stuff in the first place. Even in basic chemistry, we know we get salt when a sodium atom bonds to a chlorine atom, but the atoms have to be there first. You can't compare any of this manipulation of the matter in nature with God's original creation of nature out of nothing.
It is about studying the empirical world in relation to what we know about created things.
Yes, you can learn a lot about a pot from studying the pot. But the pot doesn't tell you much about the Potter. No amount of empirical study of nature will tell you a lot about who created nature or how it was created (unless it was a secondary creation--made from something else created earlier).
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