Re: Creation of the Universe

Let me start with my disclaimer and say that I am in no way claiming to know the one truth, this is simply my opinion. I don't believe it is possible for us to understand timeless existence such as God. We might glimpse it even evolve to it but we can never understand it from our perspective. Mainly because at this stage humanity is stuck thinking inside of a mind that works on the corporal limitation of the brain, which runs on a successive series of events so as to order information. That said I believe there is an infinite number of other universes and each one is the body of God or the One. Thus the universe (as well as others) is the ensoulment of God and each thing within it is a series of finite pieces of the infinite One. Since time does not exist until the big bang there is no before the big bang thus the question of God coming before or after the universe is impossible to contemplate because the universe can not exist outside of time, if time exist within God (which I believe it does) then existence is God the void of infinite potentialities in which all things in themselves exist including the infinite number of universes.

Namaste

Re: Creation of the Universe

My first introduction to an emanationist perspective!  Thank you M.A.!  I guess a lot depends on what you mean by “God”!  The role implied in the original question would be similar to that of a “First Being” and moreover, a “Creator Being”, at that!  Nevertheless, it doesn't really address at all the question of where he/she/it/they came from and how “God” came to be.  The progression that is explicit in the emanationist perspective 'makes sense' from the point-of-view that the meta-physical precedes and by its existence supports the reality of the physical universe.  It has always seemed to me that the question of 'First Cause' asks as much about how “God” came to be as it does the universe itself.  Presuming that there is a “reason” for the First Cause to exist, it asks how that came to be and by derivation, from where? by who? of what?