We might consider God as ‘the absolute’, but ‘absolute’ means all, and so it is lacking in nothing and requires nothing. Why then would it create something? The only way I can see round it is assuming that what we know as God is not the absolute, but that still leaves the same question. Is there, then, no ‘absolute’, no ‘unmoved mover’, and such a concept is just a mistake based on our limited understanding of being?
I formulated this really carefully earlier, but I think I’ve rushed it and missed something out, so if it sounds like nonsense, just tell me so.
He wouldn’t. He also certainly wouldn’t make people. What would be the point? Christians I come in contact with seem to say God created man to love them and have them love Him. They say he wanted someone to love and to have their love in return. Seems blatantly contradictory to me. A perfect, whole, all powerful being wants - no needs - our love? Seems more like we need His love, thus making Him up in the first place.
This was a part of my original post. If God created the universe, then he must lack something, and so there must be something beyond God, and he is not absolute. But then if we travel down the line to an absolute, we ask, why did the absolute create anything? Did it, then, not create anything?
Someone else posted about the ‘unmoved mover’ idea. The problem with this talk of such an existent is that we can’t contemplate a finite reality, because when we ask: what then is beyond this reality? we must say “nothing.” But ‘nothing’ is an abstract concept. If I ask you to think of nothing, you just think of empty space, which is something. Yet, the alternative, that reality is ‘infinite’ is an equally abstract concept which can’t be comprehended by the human mind.
“The Absolute is the totality of things; all that is, whether it has been discovered or not.”
If the Absolute could change itself, that would indicate that it was either lacking in something, or could throw something outside of itself. This is obviously impossible in an Absolute. However, you bring up an interesting point. Could an absolute, though not gaining or losing anything, re-order what is in itself? Perhaps this could explain the existence of our imperfect cosmos. Like God has fiddled with the configuration - disordered himself - and is now gradually moving it back towards its correct order (universal evolution - the appearance of order from apparent chaos). Again though, this still doesn’t explain why it would do such a thing, unless we take God as not being the absolute, but a conscious part of the Absolute.
If we take ‘Creation’ as being a re-ordering, which only appears to our eyes as ‘creating’ (nothing comes from nothing), then that could explain how the universe was ‘created’. Nothing new came into being, but what was already there was reconfigured. How about that? An interesting idea?
Why did God create the unierse? That is an interesting question, and one that is difficult to answer. What I can answer, or at least what I can tell you based on my belief, is why God created man: He did so because He wanted part of His creation to share in His life and happiness. It is said that man was the only creature that God willed for his own sake.
“God willed that man should be ‘left in the hand of his own counsel,’ so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him” (Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et spes 17; Sir 15:14).
In Christian belief, it wasn’t necessary for God to create anything at all, so it is a mystery as to why He did so. Again, He did it out of free will, and we cannot know completely why He has done all that He’s done so far.
“The power of every necessary agent is determined and limited to one effect. That is the reason why all physical effects always come out in the same way, unless there be some interference: but acts of the will not so. But the divine power is not directed to one effect only. God then does not act by physical necessity, but by will” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, book II, chap. 23).
While we’re here, it’s wonderful to try to figure out how the universe works, and that certainly gives us a lot to chew on in regard to our desire for knowledge.