God=Energy?

[infinitelord1]

I was thinking the other day about how everything is made of energy. And then i thought that if energy could not be created nor destroyed than energy must be infinite since there is no beginning or an end to energy. Keeping this in mind i thought about god........god is something that we define as infinite and cannot be created or destroyed. He just exists kind of like energy. And then i thought well if god is energy then he could basically will anything he wanted since he is made of energy and everything else is too......including us. Lets take the big bang theory (just for an example) and apply it to what im saying. If this theory is correct then what happened is this.......god basically concentrated himself into what we know as matter.........and dispersed this higher concentration of energy to other areas that didnt have such a high concentration of energy (space) forming planets and solar systems and galaxies and so on. It didnt necessarily have to happen this way. he could have just concentrated himself as planets that made up solar systems and so on. It didnt have to all come from one source like the big bang theory suggests. And i would also like to add that it wasnt like he was borrowing energy from other areas to concentrate in such a way.........since he and energy are infinite.......or like im starting to believe that energy being him.......
Anyways........if god=energy........then everything is god.......including us.......but what seperates us from actually fully being god? My guess would be consciousness. The ability to make our own decisions. And another question comes to mind..........does god have his own conciousness? He must. But would that make him imperfect? I wouldnt think so since everything comes from this one source......and everything is subject to this sources will then his will must be perfect .

[infinitelord1]

and also another thing that comes to mind is life........animals, plants, etc. They are all god. They all serve a purpose just like us but we have the ability to believe otherwise because of free-will or consciousness. So my guess is this.......our souls are consciousness which im sure many have thought this.

[Paphnutius]

You want to be careful not to run into a panthesitic heresy.

Perhaps a better way of expressing what you are saying is that God is Being, and beings partake in some way of this Being. It is Being that allows being to exist.

Edited February 11, 2006 by Paphnutius

[infinitelord1]

[quote name='Paphnutius' date='Feb 10 2006, 11:36 PM']You want to be careful not to run into a panthesitic heresy.

Perhaps a better way of expressing what you are saying is that God is Being, and beings partake in some way of this Being. It is Being that allows being to exist.
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are you saying that i should place god before being? Is that what you mean by panthesitic heresy? Yea i was trying to avoid that if thats the case.

[KnightofChrist]

[quote name='infinitelord1' date='Feb 10 2006, 11:18 PM']I was thinking the other day about how everything is made of energy. And then i thought that if energy could not be created nor destroyed than energy must be infinite since there is no beginning or an end to energy. Keeping this in mind i thought about god........god is something that we define as infinite and cannot be created or destroyed. He just exists kind of like energy. And then i thought well if god is energy then he could basically will anything he wanted since he is made of energy and everything else is too......including us. Lets take the big bang theory (just for an example) and apply it to what im saying. If this theory is correct then what happened is this.......god basically concentrated himself into what we know as matter.........and dispersed this higher concentration of energy to other areas that didnt have such a high concentration of energy (space) forming planets and solar systems and galaxies and so on. It didnt necessarily have to happen this way. he could have just concentrated himself as planets that made up solar systems and so on. It didnt have to all come from one source like the big bang theory suggests. And i would also like to add that it wasnt like he was borrowing energy from other areas to concentrate in such a way.........since he and energy are infinite.......or like im starting to believe that energy being him.......
Anyways........if god=energy........then everything is god.......including us.......but what seperates us from actually fully being god? My guess would be consciousness. The ability to make our own decisions. And another question comes to mind..........does god have his own conciousness? He must. But would that make him imperfect? I wouldnt think so since everything comes from this one source......and everything is subject to this sources will then his will must be perfect .
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If everything is made of enegry then enegry along with the object can be created or destroyed so enegry is not infinite. [color=red]G[/color]od alone is infinite, also it is a inslut to spell [color=red]G[/color]od in lowercase

Edited February 11, 2006 by KnightofChrist

[Snarf]

Very pantheistic indeed.

There are several cosmological problems with this idea, but more to the point for God to be energy would create a reflexive relationship. Why does energy exist? Because it's God. Why does God exist? Because we observe energy in the world. It just doesn't work. Furthermore, you implicitly posit all of evil as being a component of God, which defeats the purpose of Creation. There is kinetic energy in the bullet that downs the bystander, there is thermal energy in the bomb that kills innocents.

Furthermore, according to Anselm's ontological argument any cogent notion of a deity must exist "per se et ex se", "through itself and from itself". Defining God in secondary terms thus negates His being God. In my own proof of God's existence, I demonstrate that the Big Bang could not happen without an exterior motive force. This implies that God is beyond energy, and thus cannot be defined by it.

I'm not chastising you for your ideas, I grew up in my adolescence brewing similar ones in fact. I think they're well-minded, but the truth is that they just don't work out.

[Church Punk]

I think a better way of looking at it would be that energy has attributes that are reflections of the Creator. God created energy, He is above and beyond Energy, He could stop energy if he wanted. We define energy to be niether created nor destroyed. This only applys to us as humans in the realm by which we live in. God is outside of this realm and is bigger than it. Actually he created it. So more accuratley the Newtons laws simply apply to us in our realm dwelling on Earth. These "laws" could be mere suggestions in the grand scheme of things when you think of the level that God is at. It is the difference between physics and metaphysics.

A good description of God I heard was that in one hand He is fashioning the universe and placing the planets where they are to go. In the other is creating the feet of a fly! And not even by hand, He speaks things into existance. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the begining and the end. Neither created nor destroyed God IS.... The Great I AM.

Edited February 11, 2006 by Church Punk

[infinitelord1]

what i wanted to say was this......god is energy.......rather than god is made of energy. And another thing.......god made us and everything that we can observe with our senses with himself. I dont see how people have a problem with this, and i would like to see a proof of how energy can be destroyed. Under my theory.......nothing can be destroyed since it is god. If you take a piece of paper and throw it into a fire it is simply just changing form. The paper, which is a higher concentration of energy, is simply spreading its energy (the cause being the fire).

Evil, under my theory, is something that we percieve with our consciousness. Pure evil beings are consciousness's that were given free-will by god. These consciousness's were given the answer (or gods will).......but they chose to go against his will (for reasons that we dont know) and thats how they became known as evil. As far as consciousness goes........i dont know if it is energy. It could simply be energy with a choice.

[jezic]

God = I am who Am (YHWH)

[infinitelord1]

[quote name='jezic' date='Feb 11 2006, 05:12 PM']God = I am who Am (YHWH)
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right and the way i interpret this is "i am who am" means "just is". And if energy cannot be created nor destroyed then it must be infinite or "just is" kind of like how we define god.

[Guest JeffCR07]

A couple thoughts:

First, you argue that because energy cannot be created nor destroyed, it must be infinite. But by this same logic, you would have to argue that Matter must also be infinite, since the law of conservation of matter and energy applies equally to both matter and energy (particularly so once you recognize that matter can become energy and energy matter). But this is clearly false. So there is no reason to conclude that energy must be infinite simply because it cannot be created or destroyed by us.

Second, taking an Anselmian approach, we can clearly see that God is not energy, because I can imagine a being that is greater than a being constituting all energy - I can imagine a being who created energy, matter, and all other forms of particular being out of nothing. Namely, I can imagine a Necessary Being who is the precondition for all particular being. Because this latter would be greater than the former, and God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived, God is not simply energy.

Thirdly, if God is energy, then God is not something over and above His creation, rather God would be the sum of creation. Not only is this pantheism, but the Anselmian understanding of God precludes this notion in much the same way as it did on the former point.

- Your Brother In Christ,

Jeff

[Myles Domini]

Perhaps a reading of St Irenaeus of St Augustine's anti-manichean works would be helpful herein. Without the ontological distinction being made between God and the world you destroy the analogia entis, God's transcendence, and demand that God need a reason for his being since his being becomes not only the same as ours but ours in essence: pure pantheism.

[infinitelord1]

[quote name='JeffCR07' date='Feb 11 2006, 05:37 PM']A couple thoughts:

First, you argue that because energy cannot be created nor destroyed, it must be infinite. But by this same logic, you would have to argue that Matter must also be infinite, since the law of conservation of matter and energy applies equally to both matter and energy (particularly so once you recognize that matter can become energy and energy matter). But this is clearly false. So there is no reason to conclude that energy must be infinite simply because it cannot be created or destroyed by us.

Second, taking an Anselmian approach, we can clearly see that God is not energy, because I can imagine a being that is greater than a being constituting all energy - I can imagine a being who created energy, matter, and all other forms of particular being out of nothing. Namely, I can imagine a Necessary Being who is the precondition for all particular being. Because this latter would be greater than the former, and God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived, God is not simply energy.

Thirdly, if God is energy, then God is not something over and above His creation, rather God would be the sum of creation. Not only is this pantheism, but the Anselmian understanding of God precludes this notion in much the same way as it did on the former point.

- Your Brother In Christ,

Jeff
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what up jeff,

i dont mean to pick at you here but i disagree on a few of the things you talked about. First, the reason matter cannot be destroyed is because matter is made of energy and the energy cannot be distroyed. And also, i see flaw in your anselmian approach since we all percieve things differently. Im not saying at all that god is not objective because i think we can all agree that he is. However, we have the free-will choice to percieve him in false ways and the only right way. Im not saying that I percieve him the right way and you the wrong way. The way I see it........if god is infinite........whether he is energy or not........his consciousness may be what is infinite, but we really cannot define what consciousness is to the fullest.......i dont think that my theory of god being energy contradicts the notion that he is infinite at all.......i would like you or someone else to give me reason why. I dont see how god being energy implys that he is not above his creation and furthermore that he would be just a sum of his creation. Because if im right about energy being infinite, and god being energy then there is no sum involved.

Edited February 12, 2006 by infinitelord1

[infinitelord1]

[quote name='Myles' date='Feb 11 2006, 06:02 PM']Perhaps a reading of St Irenaeus of St Augustine's anti-manichean works would be helpful herein. Without the ontological distinction being made between God and the world you destroy the analogia entis, God's transcendence, and demand that God need a reason for his being since his being becomes not only the same as ours but ours in essence: pure pantheism.
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im implying that gods trancendence is his and we are his. I was also thinking that if my theory is correct that it doesnt at all contradict transcendence in the eucharist, but it defines it. Hence, since god is everything then that includes the eucharist and that it is really a matter of consciousness to accept this and remember what he died for.

[Paphnutius]

[quote name='infinitelord1' date='Feb 11 2006, 06:42 PM']im implying that gods trancendence is his and we are his. I was also thinking that if my theory is correct that it doesnt at all contradict transcendence in the eucharist, but it defines it. Hence, since god is everything then that includes the eucharist and that it is really a matter of consciousness to accept this and remember what he died for.
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But see your statement that everything is God was discussed by Jeff as God simply being the sum of all things. That is not the case. Furthermore, your statement that everything is God fails to recongize the real ontological difference between creation and Creator.

[Myles Domini]

Once again Paphnutius and Jeff are on the money (voting for the greatest Church Militant was tough with you guys in there : ). Infinitelord what you do not seem to be grasping is that if we are all part of God then God is not transcendent he looses his transcendence and evil becomes part of his essence, as does change and temporality.

Everything that is flawed in us would be equally so in Him because at the very best your ideas are emantionist like those of the Manicheans. This God would have been set in motion by the start of space and time and as such would need a prime mover.

Moreover, does this God even have consciousness? How did He manage to create out of his own substance. All of the classical pantheistic systems create elaborate cosmogny's which have the same conclusion: we're merely an offshoot or a byproduct of God. This directly conflicts the witness of Sacred Scripture and a well reasoned natural theology.

In addition what does grace consist in if we are already part of the divine essence by sharing being with the source of being? The divinisation spoken of by the Church would cease to be a union of grace and become a form of Middle Platonic gnosis if we adopted your view. Salvation could only be conceived of as the stripping away of the illusions of the world in ecstatic apprhension of The One.

[heavenseeker]

[quote name='KnightofChrist' date='Feb 11 2006, 12:19 AM']If everything is made of enegry then enegry along with the object can be created or destroyed so enegry is not infinite.  [color=red]G[/color]od alone is infinite, also it is a inslut to spell [color=red]G[/color]od in lowercase
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but energy can't be destroyed being that matter=energy can't be created nor destroyed. when an object is "destroyed" it is actualy only being changed in form. for example you can strap a bomb to a huge rock and blow it up. the rock isn't "destroyed" its form is just changed into smaller rocks and dust. the same can be said with something like water, when water evaporates it isn't "destroyed" it only seperates into seperate atoms. With that being said the theory stated in the opining two post could be true, I don't exactly agree with it. I did though want to show the flaw in what you said.

[Laudate_Dominum]

What do you mean by energy anyway? Something like Aristotelian prime matter? Just curious.
That would be a funny way of thinking: God is prime matter. Or the Divine Substance is the fundamental substratum of all physical manifestations. Or God is the measure of change in a closed system, or the sum of the temporal and spatial interaction of forces. Or God is "the force" in some Jedi sense. hehe This is fun.

[Laudate_Dominum]

Too bad all that stuff is heterodox. We aren't pantheists, monists or any of that crrrap

[heavenseeker]

[quote name='Laudate_Dominum' date='Feb 11 2006, 09:17 PM']What do you mean by energy anyway? Something like Aristotelian prime matter? Just curious.
That would be a funny way of thinking: God is prime matter. Or the Divine Substance is the fundamental substratum of all physical manifestations. Or God is the measure of change in a closed system, or the sum of the temporal and spatial interaction of forces. Or God is "the force" in some Jedi sense. hehe This is fun.
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im not sure what was ment by energy