There are 3 choices, 3 votes for GaryCGibson's debate

About the Theory of God Creating the Universe as an Art Work

Some have speculated that God created the Universe as an art work.


  • Everything God does is beautiful, so it would be redundant

    Reply to-'Did God Create the Universe as a Work of Art?'

    Oretega y Gasset wrote a good brief essay on aesthetic and arts in the 1920's named 'The Dehumanization of Art'. He noted the evolution or even revolution that had overtaken painting and music at the end of the 19th century that attacked and replaced realism and direct representationalism.

    'Aesthetics in Engineering' was the title of an interesting book on the concept of placing beauty into engineered structures. It's good reading and conveys the idea well of topology and form, function and of course shape wiithout meaningful aesthetic values too comparatively.

    Consider if that 300 dollar a plate French restaurant had good yet stinky food-perhaps even snails must have that savoir flare attractive to gormands.

    If the World Trade Center towers were made ugly enough, perhaps President Bush's next former oil partners family member wouldn't try to target it for destruction being repulsed by the hovelish character of it. Alternatively beauty may enhance survivability/reproductability not only for women and hotels in the tropics but for structures such as the Pentagon (traditionally beauty was associated with health and function); if it had been a monolithic concrete dome of a composite nature perhaps one would have had an anti-aircraft bophurs cannon in working order, or the multi dome shape would have stopped skidding incoming airliners better.

    Certainly the Universe is beautiful naturally, and humanity tends to deface it ecologically speaking. Oh well, Exxon profits were 37 billion last year, and a former board member is the U.S. Secretary of State.

    Several philosophers (don't ask which) have discovered meaningful purposes of communication in art. Art does after all become a part of the 'objective' world beyond the border of solipsism. Art transcends the limits that language places upon words to convey ideas within linguistic criteria...that is to say one may make a crude finger painting of 'the boss' that is priceless beyond words.

    'The One' such as Plotinus described had for-himself all things that could ever be as an intrinsic yet unspoken aspect of His nature. Perhaps one could call the emanations that are called 'The Intelligible' or 'The Soul' art, yet one would then be redefining or giving a definition to 'art' that is unconventional if someone artful.

    One would be described the ultimate nature or natures of God when considering a 'why' matter that isn't revelatory I would think. God or 'The One' may be about communication at a minimum that is God understands all things Himself, and all things that could ever become already were and are. If some emanation in some way reaches the material level, is there a purpose in calling it art?

    God is the absolute Good, and art is said to describe beauty, and the beautiful is an expression of the good in a small way, and so in a minor way art attempts to describe the good and God in so far as it is rather unintentional and isn't wicked. It seems unlikely that God is trying to mirror himself through creation however. In allowing other conscious beings to exist perhaps they are created after his own image, yet because God is entirely spirit the encasement of spirit in finite 'cells' of matter seems a reduction. Some spiritual traditions are toward moving away from the enchaining, encasing fog of material being incarnate. Plato's Allegory of the Cave expresses the phenomena rather well.

    In the Platonic or neo-platonic concept of realism art doesn't occupy too lofty of a realm because it is only another imperfect abstract representation (at best) of the forms of which all particulars are representative. Art is also limited to existence in the material world and not the realm of the intelligible--therefore objects of art have an implicitly lower value.

    I enjoyed your concept about creation and its purpose in relation to art however. Several months ago I had a similar concept yet fortunately happened upon other books such as 'the essential Plotinus' that offered other neo-theological ideas to consider.

    Reading recently the Enneads of Plotinus with a view toward harmonizing the emanations from 'The One' to the processes of Jesus Christ entering the world's experience I discovered Simone Weil's Spiritual Autobiography that was a letter to a priest a few months before her death. She seemed to have discovered the concept that Plotinus had of The One to The Intellect and to The Soul so far as she related the idea of communion being an opportunity for the perfection of Jesus to epiphenominalize in a human being.

    Paul in the book of Romans in writing about human sin and it's duality with the saved sould and will to be perfectly in the will of God underscored the difficulties human beings may have in correlating experience philosophically with metaphysical or ultimate and transcendent criteria. Even physicists in writing about the cosmos may find unknown paradigms of use in inducting paradigms to explain the phenomenal universe.

    Could the Universe from its inception have been cast into a multi-dimensional 'form' or 'mold' that allowed the cosmic constant to have only specific values that support the existence of ife? The hypothetical Higgs field that is believed to have super-luminally inflated a fraction of a second to balance equations had a 'cause' or preceeding existence in another form that at some point may be simply spiritual.

    Mass-energy power flows through the courses of the Universe in various special fields and relations, and if an aesthetic engineering value (an aesthetic may perhaps be a value in a sense) created a form for the entire universe that permitted virtual particles, only particular power levels in particle-physics, gravity and so forth if would not be inconsistant with the Plotinian notions or explanations about the forms that emanate transtemporally from 'The One'.

    I have noted that Sakyamuni or The Buddha's ideas about life would be consistent with the Plotinian and Weilian paradigms of metaphysics expcept for reincarnation and the absence of Jesus Christ appearing in the realm of The Soul as savior.

    In the Plotinian cosmology the world within the realm of the soul is a place of incomplete and imperfect forms-even thought is imperfect (if one had all the answers thought process isn't needed". Change happens because imperfection exists (not a thermodynamic or QED explanation but still worth considering). The One exists without thought, without forms, without dimension and is pure trans temporal perfection. The existence of the Universe filtered through the levels of The Intellect and The Soul could perhaps be considered a sort of accident--yet nothing the One does is an accident. The problem is words don't exist to describe The One adequately as Cantor's set theorem about the impossibility of a universal set including itself analogizes.

    The initial boundary conditions of the Universe include more than 19 universal constants in integrated relationship values that make it very improbable that the form of the Universe fit for life is ‘accidental’. The conditions of the Universe are those required for human life to exist. The physicist Walter Bradley in 2000 wrote an essay titled ‘The Just So’ universe’ on the topic. What proximal criterion to the Universe formation compelled the boundary conditions to be ‘just so’?

    It is certain that the boundary conditions of the Universe were not set within the Universe but outside or ‘before’ it instead. Besides the obvious intelligent design criterion, what other physical energy derived (isn’t an energy field the essential basis of reality other than spirit?) hypothetical fact could have set the initial boundary conditions of the Universe?

    Brian Greene in “The Fabric of the Universe’ described some phase-state values of a very small precursor of the universe that would expand at faster than light speed for a fraction of a second to balance the equations named the Higgs Field (for Peter Higgs). Atomic valence and eigenvalues describe what protocol relationships units of power-energy may have within various force configurations…some are stable and some aren’t, all locations are not of equal energy capacity value. In physics and in politics energy flows through channels of limited carrying ability, work and change may be accomplished per design of the medium and so far as it does not require expense of energy to overcome resistance (consider electrons moving through wire or super-conductors). Some commercial Christians in hierarchical tithing factories misunderstand the principle and transform themselves into political power stuffing for secularist political turkeys.

    Foam injected molded products and other molded product filled in from an injected source such as plastic or a big bang into some hypothetical universal form may allocate material resources within the mold in such quantities and qualities (if the design is sufficiently complex or refined) as to account for a perfect evolution of constant values in such relationships as defy odds and chance. I have therefore wondered if some sort of universal form was made to exist that ‘accepted’ the material ‘injected’ into being a Higgs Field, and if that form might not account for the allocation of energy and matter values of the Universe in such an improbable configuration?

    Voted for by GaryCGibson.
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  • Theorem of Creation

    Creation may be proved mathematically through the structuring of the Bible in chapters and citations. The mathematical behavior of the derived structures reveals all the information we need to understand our true nature.

    Voted for by panicos.
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  • It may be the best we can understand
    A work of art is usually considered to be something that is made for its own sake, rather than to serve some useful purpose. The satisfaction that comes from making it and experiencing it is a sufficient reason for someone to make it. Actually, people do produce art for other reasons, such as making money or impressing other with their skill, but we still think of art being an end in itself.

    Another part of the concept of art is that its form is determined by choice rather than necessity. If someone makes something useful, its function limits how it can be made. For example, when someone makes a chair, they must give it a shape a person can sit on comfortably, but they can give a sculpture any shape that pleases them. Of course, someone might design a chair that is visually striking but uncomfortable and even a sculpture is limited to shapes that are physically possible. Even though real objects may not fit it, we still understand the idea of pure art.

    Saying God creates the universe as a work of art means the universe serve no purpose beyond its own existence and there are no restraints on the ways it could exist. God is the ultimate source of existence, so there is nothing beyond God to cause God to have needs. If God has no needs, then God does not create the universe to fulfill some need. Also, there is nothing beyond God to restrain what God creates.

    Picturing God as an artist is putting something that is incomprehensible into a concept humans can handle. It is imperfect, but I think it may be as close to the truth as anything I can understand.
    Voted for by Xylch.
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