Quote:
Originally Posted by Shelly200
I don't have time to delve into all of this just yet, but I wanted to quickly point out that ex nihlio creation believers... I don't know how else to say that... do not believe that God introduced sin/pain/evil into the world. That was the work of Satan in the Garden. Before then there was no pain, no sin, no shame, no death, etc. It was not until the tempation and sin of Eve -- through the free will given to her by God -- that everything changed.
Ex nihlio creation belivers also believe that God is "cleaning up a mess He did not make" in a way; He had to redeem us from our sin, but He did not create sin, He created free will and we chose to use that freedom against Him.
But I don't want to be a sitting duck here alone trying to defend creation ex nihlio, so I will leave this brief explanation as is and wait some more comments from others.
A couple of clarification questions on the LDS side though: If God created matter from matter, where did the matter come from? Who created that matter? Who created the matter from God's pre-exalted world? Is there no belief in an ultimate creator at the beginning of all time, ever?
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I know - but if God made everything, then He made everything - including Satan, including evil.
Free agency? but then I don't logically see how free agency can exist in the ex-Nihlio scenario. Computers - even with random num gen's etc. etc. - will never have free agency, because
everything they do can be traced back to how they were created. To have an independent - free - will - part of you has to be independent imo.
You cannot make a perfect robot with perfect personality, and place it in a perfect world - and have something go wrong. If something goes wrong, then something is not perfect - either He set up all the dominoes to fall how they were set up to fall - or He is not responsible for setting up the dominoes...
conservation laws of thermodynamics - conservation of mass, of energy - matter has always existed, energy has always existed? so too with God. The simplest solution to me is not something from nothing, but rather than something has always existed. without end we can imagine, but without beginning? it is different somehow?
Blue Letter Bible - Lexicon
aiōnios - eternal - as in eternal life, and eternal nature of God
1) without beginning and end, that which always has been and always will be
2) without beginning
3) without end, never to cease, everlasting
eternal life would be impossible if we had a beginning it seems...
not trying to team up on you or anything - I think there is something to be learned from the ex-nihlo crowd - poetically, we are nothing without God - we are an unorganized/uncreated mess - so poetically speaking, God is making something from nothing - it's all just a matter of semantics, and being able to understand what words really mean when we use them.