Is "Why is there something rather than nothing?" a legitimate question?

[robrecht]

Done that!!!!!

You hang your hat on Thomas Aquinas, ignoring the clear and specific doctrines and dogmas involving the Trinity. This is an indeed fruitless discussion at this point.

No, you have not, and cannot, give any substantive citation of church doctrine asserting that the doctrine of the Trinity defines the nature of God. If you really believe you have, point to a single post where you think you have done so.

I have quoted from Thomas Aquinas only because the catechism itself cites Thomas. You, on the other hand, have not cited a single official source of church doctrine. Not a single one.

[robrecht]

. . . the reality of Central doctrine and dogma of the Trinity as defined and described as the nature of God is specifically and clearly a positive cataphatic truth of the nature of God, which must be accepted without question nor explanation.

Perhaps you would also benefit from a correction of the bolded above. I'm not sure where you got the idea that the Trinity must be accepted without question or explanation. Faith is a fundamentally free act. See, for example, the Catholic catechism #160:

To be human, "man's response to God by faith must be free, and... therefore nobody is to be forced to embrace the faith against his will. The act of faith is of its very nature a free act." "God calls men to serve him in spirit and in truth. Consequently they are bound to him in conscience, but not coerced. . . This fact received its fullest manifestation in Christ Jesus." Indeed, Christ invited people to faith and conversion, but never coerced them. "For he bore witness to the truth but refused to use force to impose it on those who spoke against it. His kingdom... grows by the love with which Christ, lifted up on the cross, draws men to himself."

[shunyadragon]

Back to the subject of the thread; the question of 'Why?' is only based on ones beliefs and world view, mostly to justify their own perspective. Actually, most belief systems of the world do not consider the question 'why?' important, nor even relevant at all to meaning of their belief. It is primarily Christians who press the question concerning their reasons to believe.

Most other belief systems consider the question of why? answered internally, and not as part of an argument for a reason to believe.

According to my crap knowledge of physics, there is no such thing as "nothing" scientifically speaking. What we call empty space is still full of fields and infinitesimal quantum particles popping in and out of existence (or is that arising from and going back into the background field? Depends on one's view of quantum mechanics?) Philosophically, I've been told that "Why is there something rather than nothing?" is a nonsense question because we cannot conceive of true nothingness and thus have no reference point from which to talk about it.

As I understand him, this is basically what Stephen Hawking means when he says that the universe creates itself without a God. He considers nothingness to be impossible and since there there is no such thing as a "beginning of time" therefore the universe must have an eternal past. I think Hawking killed my belief in a traditional Creator with this. All I'm left with as an alternative is the possibility of a God "eternal creating" the universe and providing a reason for it to exist rather than nothing at all. So, pretty much, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" is my last recourse at having anything like a reason to believe in God. I know the idea of a "First Cause" just pushes the question of "why?" back one layer, but I'm trying to tackle one issue at a time here.

This is not a correct representation of the view of these physicists. The following are inaccurate.

(1) They do not believe our universe nor our physical existence has an 'eternal past.' Our universe, and every other universe has it's own time/space nature which has it's origin in a singularity or a cyclic or bounce cosmology. the nature of matrix of our physical existence is timeless not eternal. It is believed to be infinite, because there is no falsifiable limits to the Quantum world of our universe and all possible universes and multi-verses, but this cannot be falsified by scientific methods.

(2) Self Creation is a misconception of the scientific view. The scientific view is simply our physical existence is the product of natural laws and the natural nature of the Quantum World.

(3) The Metaphysical Naturalists would not respond to the question and more or less just shrug; "Why is there something rather than nothing?", because, first, they do not believe absolute nothing ever existed. Second, the question 'why?' does not exist in the secular naturalist's world. Our physical existence simply exists without a metaphysical reason.

I'm not sure true nothingness really is an oxymoron, though. I feel like I can, in fact, imagine nothingness. If I think of a finite particle or field, then I also have to think of the places beyond it's reach, the places where it does not exist. What's to stop me from adding "this field is not here" to every field I can think of until I've imagined a "place" in which there none of the fields in the universe are, in fact, located.

. . .

In the same way, I think I can conceive of nothingness even if I've never experienced it and even if I can only think of a limited number of fields to negate and "add up to" nothingness. And if I can conceive of nothing, then I'm also allowed to ask why there is something rather than nothing.

Being able to imagine or conceive of 'absolute nothingness,' is not the problem. The problem is demonstrating 'absolute nothingness' outside a metaphysical framework. A review of religious belief and the question 'why?'

Jewish belief concerning 'why?' is resolved with the pragmatism of midrash.

Source: http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/2893106/jewish/Intimacy-in-the-Place-of-Otherness.htm

Abstract: Why did G‑d create the world? What is the purpose of the mitzvot? The Jewish tradition embraces a wide gamut of approaches, from the rigorously rationalist to the profoundly mystical. But the native source from which these streams flow is Midrash, a genre most obviously distinguished by its richly impressionistic literary style and by the authority of its tone. The Lubavitcher Rebbe’s reading of the wise son’s question and the Haggadah’s answer demonstrates how Chabad Chassidic thought rediscovers the Midrashic orientation, and reintegrates the intervening rationalist and mystical streams so that they collaboratively rearticulate the authoritative testimony of their source, making the intimate essence of G‑d openly resonant in the place of otherness.

© Copyright Original Source

Vedic beliefs, Taoism and Confucianism. Most Eastern beliefs do not consider the question 'why?[ relevant nor legitimate, in part because the 'Source' no matter how it is defined or undefined simply exists without reason.

More to follow . . .

[JimL]

"... like so much straw compared to what I have seen and what has been revealed to me." Not all have received such gifts so they may still find some passing value in his writings.

If Aquinas thought that his writings had any value to others, then why would he try to burn them? Seems to me that Aquinas's quote implies that his vision revealed to him that his philosophy was junk, thus worthy of destruction.

[robrecht]

If Aquinas thought that his writings had any value to others, then why would he try to burn them? Seems to me that Aquinas's quote implies that his vision revealed to him that his philosophy was junk, thus worthy of destruction.

In the more official versions of the story, there is nothing said about Thomas trying to actually burn his writings; he just stopped working on his comprehensive summary of theology (Summa Theologiae) and believed his death was approaching. Always having been given to abstraction and periods of intense contemplation, he became even more detached from the everyday world and would not return to his writing, despite the urging of others, and he submitted to the judgment of the church to properly value of his writings.

There is indeed a version of the story, which I first read some 35 years ago, whereby Thomas supposedly tried to burn his writings, but I do not currently have access to the original source of this version of the story. It may merely be an inference based on a modern assumption that this was implied by Thomas' use of the term 'straw'.

Even with the more tame versions of the story, there is room for a variety of interpretations of how Thomas valued his work and the meaning of his 'decision' to stop writing, if indeed it was a decision and, if so, what exactly his motivation was. Ultimately, the value of a text is not determined by the author alone but also by the readers.

[shunyadragon]

In the more official versions of the story, there is nothing said about Thomas trying to actually burn his writings; he just stopped working on his comprehensive summary of theology (Summa Theologiae) and believed his death was approaching. Always having been given to abstraction and periods of intense contemplation, he became even more detached from the everyday world and would not return to his writing, despite the urging of others, and he submitted to the judgment of the church to properly value of his writings.

There is indeed a version of the story, which I first read some 35 years ago, whereby Thomas supposedly tried to burn his writings, but I do not currently have access to the original source of this version of the story. It may merely be an inference based on a modern assumption that this was implied by Thomas' use of the term 'straw'.

Even with the more tame versions of the story, there is room for a variety of interpretations of how Thomas valued his work and the meaning of his 'decision' to stop writing, if indeed it was a decision and, if so, what exactly his motivation was. Ultimately, the value of a text is not determined by the author alone but also by the readers.

I essentially agree with the above. This 'story' should not be considered as a basis of Thomas's view of his writings. Though I think there may be some basis for it in Thomas's frustration in the limits of the arguments for the existence of God, and the limits of human reason and logic related to his view that the ultimate apophatic nature of God is unknowable.

[hansgeorg]

Nope. Quite the opposite, in fact. Matter is a property of space-time.

Oh. My mistake.

Is it?

[hansgeorg]

If this omniscient, multiversal observer is describing something as being Absent of Batman, it obviously has a concept of Batman by which to compare. If it does not have a concept of Batman, it cannot coherently describe something as being Absent of Batman.

God certainly did from all eternity have an idea of Batman - and a decision to leave him to Bob Kane rather than to parents of flesh and blood.

God similarily left Caractacus Potts and Truly Scrumptious to Ian Fleming (who is also responsible for some other guy, less friendly than they, less chaste - on stage - than Batman, less pious than Simon Templar ...) and Susan Pevensie to C. S. Lewis and a lot of fan fiction writers, including myself.

"Then" God decided me and you would be given real reality.

[hansgeorg]

But an absence is a thing.

It is not.

An absence like absence of sight in an eye, also known as blindness, is what is known as a privation.

An absence of sight in a stone is not a privation.

[hansgeorg]

Since science has no evidence of a time and place where there is nothing there is no falsifiable hypothesis to ultimately make this determination. As with whether the universe is infinite and eternal or finite and temporal, we have no objective evidence to answer these questions.

An evidence of a "time or place where there is nothing" is not a reasonable postulate.

Since an evidence is a trace of sth which is, and evidence can only come from something, not from nothing.

So, we do not have an evidence of it.

Of course, we can say "5511 BC was a time in which nothing existed", but that does not mean we will ever get evidence from 5511 BC that nothing existed then, it only means time started to function as time or things present in it in 5508 or 5199 BC.

There is another question whether there is evidence that time had a beginning. Not an evidence, as in a piece of evidence, but evidence as in a line of reasoning leading to that conclusion.

The serial nature of time at least strongly suggests that, like the other serial thing, natural numbers, it has a strict beginning (1 being that of numbers, and bereshit that of time).

For those admitting, as we should, Genesis was by God, since by Moses, and that implying by God since the wonders God had wrought before Israel through Moses, we also have the authority of Genesis as evidence.

In a sense, it is the only kind of "an" evidence we can have of "a time when time did not yet exist". One can with some sleight of hand say "in 5511 BC only God existed" - and so, God's word is an evidence from that non-time before time.

[hansgeorg]

Are you suggesting that God created out of himself? If so, isn't that just a form of pantheism?

I'd rather take it, that before God created, it is not true that "nothing" existed, it is only true that "nothing that was made" existed.

[hansgeorg]

I never asserted God is nothing. What sort of argument are you proposing, other then confusion?

I hope that seer is suggesting that before creation, there was not truly nothing, but there was God. So, creatio ex nihilo does not mean that there was a time when God didn't exist, or that because God in one sense created of Himself (namely as having in Himself the eternal exemplars of all that was made, directly or by men, like live persons or like novel characters, like real places or like Archenland or Beaversdam), it does n o t follow God used Himself as material for the creation.

[Boxing Pythagoras]

I'd rather take it, that before God created, it is not true that "nothing" existed, it is only true that "nothing that was made" existed.

Do you believe that Time is one of the things which God created? That is the typical position of Classical Theology; but if you hold to this, then the phrase "before God created" is nonsensical.

[hansgeorg]

Why can't the universe itself have necessary existence?

Because all of its observed parts have non-necessary existence.

Epicure could pretend that atoms have necessary existence, that has not been observed, and some of them show by either isotopishness or fusion that they did not in fact have eternal and necessary existence.

In fact, your question is why the universe itself cannot be "God" as identified in Tertia Via, and to hear St Thomas' answer, you should follow up on following questions of Summa Theologica, prima pars, not ask why the five ways, specifically the three first, needs to imply a person. That is sth which St Thomas answers AFTER dealing with the five ways.

[Adrift]

Because all of its observed parts have non-necessary existence.

Epicure could pretend that atoms have necessary existence, that has not been observed, and some of them show by either isotopishness or fusion that they did not in fact have eternal and necessary existence.

In fact, your question is why the universe itself cannot be "God" as identified in Tertia Via, and to hear St Thomas' answer, you should follow up on following questions of Summa Theologica, prima pars, not ask why the five ways, specifically the three first, needs to imply a person. That is sth which St Thomas answers AFTER dealing with the five ways.

You realize you're replying to people who haven't posted here in two or three years, right?