> I figured this card would be played fairly
> soon. In evaluating it note
> 1) There is no empirical support at all
> for a cyclic model.
There are several different versions of a "cyclical"
model (or something which figures in the
God-and-World, so to speak, correct? 1) a Phoenix
universe of expansion and contraction, which the
latest data suggests no big crunch will occur, 2) many
worlds -- all possible worlds are realized, and 3)
"budding" universes where new universes are born out
of old through black holes, where local collapse
results not in a singularity but in a re-expansion
into a new Universe region to form a new big bang
phase.
> 2) The statement "the Ultimate Reality is
> God-and-World" goes well
> beyond the claim that the world exists eternally in
> dependence upon God, which
> is one way of interpreting _creatio ex nihilo_. It
> removes any qualitative
> distinction between God and the world, and thus,
> among other things, is
> fundamental conflict with the First Commandment.
It depends whether God-and-the-world are conceived as
independent or panentheistically. Unless the view is
panentheist, this proposition of God-and-the-World
creates two eternally existing "things" without giving
a necessary reason for them being at all related. In
other words, you cannot assume they are related in any
way, why should they be? How can you describe the
relationship of two "things" possessing aseity? Why
should the relationship you postulate necessarily be
true? Even assuming the two can be postulated to be
related, it sets up an unnecessary dualism.
It also unnecessarily violates the Ockham's razor
principle (not that Ockham's razor is necessarily or
always true), which is not violated if the cosmos is
created or part of the Creator.
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