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To: js1138
If you bring logic to the dinner table, you have to eat it. If you tell me that God is outside of space and time, you violate #1.

Logic is all we have. Without it, we would all just make incoherent babbling noises. God is not NOTHING - Nothing is nothing. Why do you call God nothing? Even the skeptic Sartre said that without an infinite reference point, the finite is meaningless.

5,169 posted on 01/16/2003 8:31:17 AM PST by exmarine
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To: exmarine
Logic is all we have.

As we have just gone over, logic is not all that we have, it occupies a tiny, specialized niche in the universe of reasoning.

5,172 posted on 01/16/2003 8:34:34 AM PST by donh
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To: exmarine
Logic is all we have.

Apparently faith trumps logic, else you are left with the proposition that God, who is something, came from nothing. There is nothing in logic to distinguish between the assertion that the universe exists independently of space and time, and that God does so.

Your assertions about God are based entirely on your assertions. There are thousands of contrary assertions of faith.

5,177 posted on 01/16/2003 8:46:02 AM PST by js1138
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To: exmarine; js1138
Why do you call God nothing?

Ayn Sof is an ancient Hebrew name for God at creation. You might find this interesting:

Physics & Kabbalah

According to the writings of the Ari'zal, in the beginning, (what scientifically we would call "before" the Big Bang), there existed G-d. G-d was unknowable and undifferentiated, in Hebrew, "ohr pashut" (simple light). At this level, G-d is called Ayn Sof, the infinite (or "nothing"). Kabbalists are the first to admit that nothing can be known about the Ayn Sof. Even though some late generation Hasidim postulate about the Ayn Sof, their conclusions by definition have to be incorrect - for the Ayn Sof is a level of existence, which is the opposite of existence. Anything in creation, including our speculations, can never possibly conceive what was before. Scientists are able to tell us how creation proceeded from a millisecond after it started, but they too admit that what was before cannot be known.

We exist in creation, the Ayn Sof, therefore, is a type of anti-creation. Indeed, the Hebrew word Ayn is best translated as "nothing". In a manner of speaking G-d was nothing before creation. Within the nothing (the Ayn) the Kabbalists say, arose a desire for G-d to be called by His Names. The focus of this desire was said to be at the very "center" of the Ayn Sof.

This description raises a number of puzzling questions. The Ayn Sof is infinite. It has no boundaries. It is the most pure form of consistent unchanging simplicity. How then could a desire arise? This would imply change. And there can be no change in an unchanging simple nothing. So what does it mean that there arose a desire?

Another problem is the "place" where the desire arose. It arose in the "center" of the Ayn Sof. Yet, where is the center of infinity? It is clear that the Kabbalistic terminology is not literal. Yet, just what does it mean?

Another age-old question is when did G-d create the universe? According to Jewish Biblical chronology Adam was created 5759 years ago. According to a simplistic reading of the Bible, creation began six days before that. Yet, how long a "day" of creation is in human terms is a matter that some Kabbalists have interpreted using logic similar to Einstein's view of relative time. The six days of creation actually occurred over a period of 15,340,500,000 years. This date, of Kabbalistic origins, is very close to modern scientific measurements for the age of the big bang. Regardless of how old the universe is, when did G-d create it, not in relationship to us, but with regards to Himself? In other words, how long was G-d around before it finally dawned upon Him to create the universe? The question itself is a trick question being that time only came into existence with the beginning of creation.

G-d, the Ayn, in the beginning is nothing. The ultimate zero. Yet, zero maintains a property unique from any other number. It exists before all positive integers and it exists after all negative integers. In essence zero is not nothing, it is in the middle between positive and negative. So the universe was created in zero time. Time started to tick immediately with the Kabbalistic big bang, the tzimtzum.

When this occurred is a question that can only be asked within the context of time, which at that time, did not exist. So when did G-d create the universe? The answer is "when there arose a desire." And what does it mean to have a desire in an unchanging essence? It means that the desire was not an aspect of change. In other words, for G-d to have a "desire" means that such a desire is an essential aspect of the unchanging nothing. This would seem to be a process of transformation. For when nothing becomes something, this indeed does manifest an essential change in original nature. Or does it?

When we are dealing with "nothing" we are dealing with laws of nature which are totally unknown and unknowable to us. Nothing and something, desire and non-desire appear to us in creation as irreconcilable opposites. Yet, within an existence of "nothing" where the laws of its nature are possible to be the opposite of everything that we understand, opposites can indeed be one unchanging whole. Indeed the Kabbalists teach just this; that all forces in creation however different they may appear to us, are essentially one and the same. This is the secret of the unity of G-d.

So when did the desire arise in the Ayn Sof? It did not happen in time. It happened out of time. As such the arising desire in the Ayn Sof is happening now! Creation is beginning now! Not in creation, but outside of it. Inside creation, we recognize the beginning as having happened. Outside creation, creation is beginning just now and will always be beginning just now.


5,183 posted on 01/16/2003 9:07:21 AM PST by Alamo-Girl
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