On God's immateriality

[Hallyu Nori]

If God is spirit, or immaterial, I dont understand how he created everything. Is he nothing since he is not material? How could nothing create something.

 

[grasping the after wind]

If God is spirit, or immaterial, I dont understand how he created everything. Is he nothing since he is not material? How could nothing create something.

Where did you get the notion that a thing must be material to exist?

 

[Hallyu Nori]

Well I meant physically exist

 

[Crowns&Laurels]

God is a material and energy that is both different and transcendent of the universe's.

 

[Chriliman]

God can be thought of as the foundation of existence. Everything we perceive to have ever existed and everything we will perceive in the future came from that foundation of existence. The foundation of existence(God) was not created because it eternally exists with no beginning and no end.

 

[Davian]

Where did you get the notion that a thing must be material to exist?

What are the alternatives?

 

[Davian]

God is a material and energy that is both different and transcendent of the universe's.

Different, how?

 

[Winken]

Our Creator IS.

 

[Davian]

God can be thought of as the foundation of existence. Everything we perceive to have ever existed and everything we will perceive in the future came from that foundation of existence. The foundation of existence(God) was not created because it eternally exists with no beginning and no end.

And this "foundation of existence" cares about what you eat, what you wear on your head (or don't), and with whom you have sex?

 

[variant]

It seems like putting the cart before the horse to claim to know what God is made of.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

If God is spirit, or immaterial, I dont understand how he created everything. Is he nothing since he is not material? How could nothing create something.

What the alternative? Something creted something created something ....

 

[GrowingSmaller]

I dont think you could put God into a test tube, and do a chemical analysis.

 

[Eudaimonist]

If God is spirit, or immaterial, I dont understand how he created everything. Is he nothing since he is not material? How could nothing create something.

I don't think that the idea of immaterial entities ever made perfect rational sense. I agree that immaterial basically means non-existent.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[KCfromNC]

I dont think you could put God into a test tube, and do a chemical analysis.

That's true of many things which exist only in the imagination of people who believe in them.

 

[Received]

If God is spirit, or immaterial, I dont understand how he created everything. Is he nothing since he is not material? How could nothing create something.

The limit of anything isn't its physical existence, so it doesn't work to say that there's either something physical or nothing. Anything phenomenological (e.g., thoughts, feelings) would also be "nothing" in this sense, given that what we experience phenomenologically isn't reducible to the biological correlates which are involved with it and even help actualize it; e.g., the experience of redness isn't identical to the brain patterns involved in registering redness, much in the same way (to use Graham Hancock's example) that the perception of a star isn't identical to the focus in a telescope that helps us to see it.

Therefore, since thoughts and feelings clearly aren't "nothing", even though they aren't identical to physical things (brain states), you can have a whole realm of "somethings" that work beyond the physical (without even thinking about making this an argument for spirit or God or whatever, because it isn't).

If there is such a thing as spirit, and God is it, and God created the universe, then logically God (and spirit) is greater than the universe, meaning that spirit has sway over the physical (but not physical over the spiritual). This spiritual stuff (God) is something even if it isn't physical.

Of course, it's difficult to imagine how spiritual stuff, which isn't physical, could influence physical stuff (in this case create it). But it's also basically as difficult, as Hume said, to imagine how physical stuff affects (i.e., causes) other physical stuff, given (to him) we've never really witnessed causality, but have projected it onto things because of what he called "custom".

But if God exists and isn't some sort of Pantheistic deity and really influences things and interacts with the world, then it's pretty much logically necessary that he be spiritual and not intrinsically part of the physical universe. Because if the physical universe is what is created, then God can't create himself.

 

[GrimKingGrim]

The more you think about it, the less sense it makes.

 

[KCfromNC]

It is fun to pretend that magic is real for entertainment purposes. It doesn't have much utility outside of that, though.

 

[variant]

Therefore, since thoughts and feelings clearly aren't "nothing", even though they aren't identical to physical things (brain states), you can have a whole realm of "somethings" that work beyond the physical (without even thinking about making this an argument for spirit or God or whatever, because it isn't).

They aren't clearly immaterial things either.

It is interesting that theists would think that God is made out of the same thing that makes their imagination and not take pause at that idea.

 

[quatona]

Therefore, since thoughts and feelings clearly aren't "nothing", even though they aren't identical to physical things (brain states), you can have a whole realm of "somethings" that work beyond the physical (without even thinking about making this an argument for spirit or God or whatever, because it isn't).

Well, I wouldn´t disagree with the claim that God exists as your thought or feeling.

 

[Winken]

@shucks Post #15. Spot on!