Senior Expert
Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 8,177
Netherlands
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Well, anything anyone says on this is conjecture. But I meant a physical nothingness. God isn't a physical being, even if He can manifest Himself in the physical universe. So technically I don't think a physical nothingness means no God.
Who says God isn't physical? I heard people say they thought God is in all and everything (it's a possibility), so he might aswell be more or less physical, or maybe bounded to the physical. Why shouldn't he be? How do we know this? Or better, what reasons are there to believe this to be true? I know you've got faith in this and base your thought upon this, but where's the real motivation? Infact, I couldn't think of any motivation to justify these thoughts enough to be able to believe them. We simple can not know this, just like the nature of any God and any of it's habits, influence or shape, unless we get some clear evidence about any of this.
Like you said yourself in another thread;
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There are some things we can never know for sure, because we weren't there to witness them. Science doesn't determine what God is capable of, its just knowledge determined by testing the known universe.
Since science didn't find anything pointing towards a God, the general consensus it that it thus doesn't exist. Some consider God to be impossible to prove because he supposedly is outside of the physical, not that we could even know this off course when true. Nice ...  Anyways, my point is, and I think you've stated that too, we can't really know in the end, we haven't witnissed him. And my conclusion would be, then why believe?
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So...In that case no matter what explanation, or theory on a pre-universe state, you give me, I can always ask, "Where did that come from?" You'd have to have a cause. But then what caused that cause? It would have to be an infinite regress of causes, otherwise you would have to say that it all came out of nowhere. And that takes us back to the problem of the second option.
Yes, you are right, these kind of questions partly make no sense, but when a religion does seem to give certain answers to something we can never know (pre-universe state is quite unlikely to be ever found out I think, pure theories only(?)). I tend to think about these kind of questions to explain that we really can't know.
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Ah, but where in the bible does it claim to reveal everything about God? He really tells us very little about Himself. So He reveals only what we can understand. We can understand that He is creative, that he is absolutely just and holy, and that He is loving. I don't see why that would be a lie.
The bible does state that God is so great, that we could never understand him, still it does give certain definitions, just try reading between the lines more, actually a lot is being told about God himself.
Partly it's not about the part he does mention about himself, but the part he doesn't or didn't explain.
The most questions we have are about what we don't know, not about what we do know.
People state God doesn't lie, God supposedly gave information about who or what he is like and this was written down in the bible, right? God supposedly is greater than any set of human definitions could possibly describe him by, that's also straight out of the bible, which makes his own explanation about himself incomplete at least, and in error in my opinion. It's not the bible that claims that God totally reveals who he is, it's the theists who claim that, and they also say, as is mentioned in the bible, that God would never lie. Well then, if he gives incomplete information about himself, by the lack of human definitions that could do justice to God, then he lied, being not able to properly explain who he is. Like said, the bible should have stated that we could never comprehend what's he like or what he is, "greater than any man could possibly conceive", and maybe this would render this 'argument' irrelevant... It may sound as a difference of interpretation of the bible, but remember I'm reading the same words in the book you are ... I might have found out that what God said about himself, and what the writers thought is not a clear match or anything, but when I have a bit more time on my hands, maybe I could come with some examples.
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Really, it all relates to which idea is more egocentric (theism or atheism). The only problem is, if one system of belief (religion) is more egocentric, does that make it false?
My personal world view theory is actually quite egocentric too. It's based on theories about actions/reactions, events, (hopefully ) by reason and evidence. I won't get into details to much, because then I would still be typing for some 8 hours I think, but it's egocentric too. It is however not ignorent by stating that we know things we can't know (it's relativistic).
Cheers
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