I like this. The noted added was a good "addition." That is, it provided the right context to elucidate the idea within the post. The post also addresses another aspect of freedom, which must be eternal and cannot depend on any external source of energy, or else it wouldn't be free.
@Frank - Yes, I realized, on re-reading, that the background needed a bit of filling-in.
I think there is little doubt that there is a deep assumption among most educated people, that something-like the second law of thermodynamics is an *ultimate* truth of reality; which immunizes people against the idea of creation - or, at least, gets people very confused about what creation must be, in order to be genuinely creative.
The same applies (mutatis mutandis) to the assumption that every action must have a cause - which renders genuine freedom incomprehensible (as you imply).
Unless a Being can generate some thoughts and other actions without these being merely an energy-driven consequence of prior causes - then there can be no freedom.
Genuine freedom must come from our Being-ness, and not from anything *external* to that; and it cannot be limited by the availability of "energy".
(Quite a few New-Age-type people - including Western Buddhists, Hindus and Sufists -seem to regard abstract "energy" as the *ultimate* reality - consequently they get confused and incoherent when it comes to recognizing and acknowledging Beings, Freedom, Purpose etc. They lose all these in the abstraction which is "energy" and end-up with a picture of a pointless and irrelevant "reality" in which Beings are just temporary "wave forms", or suchlike.)
1 March 2024 at 09:49
Alexey said...
Gifted people have higher level of energy than normal ones, while having the same energy intake(food), which I think somehow contradicts this idea of set amount of energy too
I don't believe "perpetual motion/energy" is required, nor theologically correct.
How about just going with standard theology, and apply math to it. He is all-powerful, i.e, infinite energy. Creating anything material uses a finite amount of energy. e=mC^2 is a big number, sure, but finite, and if you subtract that from His original stock of infinite, He still has infinite left, after creating everything.
Implications are profound. If He instilled even the tiniest fraction of His energy to form our souls, not only was He not reduced by the act, but that amount of energy He breathed into us, even a gazillionth of infinity, is also infinite.
Maybe Yeshua was telling us the literal truth. If we had even a mustard seed's worth of faith in the amount of sheer power He lovingly instilled in each of us, we really could move mountains...
Sorry. Been so busy getting things ready for what the minister and worship leaders want to do on Easter.
All I was getting at is that infinity is beyond our imagination. It's pointless to say God is omnipotent if we don't really grasp what that means. Like Saxe's The Blind Men and the Elephant, while we can't really understand the Infinite, we can feel around the edges and get some idea of what one particular aspect of the Infinite is like.
In the material world, the densest form of energy we know of is mass. Since He is omnipotent, infinite, he has more power than all the matter in the universe, so His "existence" is necessarily beyond this universe. And if we accept His infinite nature, perpetual motion is not necessary. It's not about a frictionless perpetual motion device. That simply doesn't decrement a finite amount of energy. We are talking about subtracting energy from Infinite and still being Infinite.
Which we technically try to teach when we learn about dividing by zero, but I'd bet very few appreciate it.
I suddenly had this thought in the bath. (...Where else?) That there have always been "way-out"/ "crazy" theories and claims concerning the existence of "free energy" - unlimited energy for no thermodynamic "cost"; and also claims to have discovered or invented a "perpetual motion" machine. And yet, my best understanding of metaphysics is that the ultimate reality of Creation consists of Beings in relationships. So, free energy/ perpetual motion simply basic properties of all Beings - including you and me. I mean that all beings are "powered" by unlimited and cost-free energy - and are themselves perpetual motion "machines". When Beings are known as the primary "units" of ultimate reality (Beings are alive, conscious, self-sustaining, eternal); then of course they (we) have properties that include an infinitely-renewable "free" energy... How else could we and other Beings be eternal? And, because all Beings are "dynamic" (not static), and all Beings exist "in" Time, in the sense that Time is property of Beings - then some kind of "perpetual motion" must be a feature. Another way of thinking about this is the divine creation does not (cannot) depend on any external source of energy else it could not be eternal; because any externally-supplied energy implies entropy, which is the opposite of creation). And creation is dynamic, entails change - and eternal change is perpetual motion. Because (by my pluralist metaphysics) all real creation is divine in nature (whether that creation is of-God or of some other Being) - that is, all creating partakes is an action of free agency, hence represents the operation of divine qualities - then, it must be a property of Beings to behave like free energy "devices" and perpetual motion "machines". So these don't need to be invented or discovered: we all already know dozens of such entities - including our-selves. NOTE ADDED: Why am I saying this?Well, the ridiculing of ideas of free energy and perpetual motion has become mainstream exactly because it is a soft-sell (i.e. an indirect and implicit promotion) of the primacy of entropy in reality; and thus the denial of creation. The fact we have come to regard these ideas as not just untrue but actually insane, is evidence that we have made false metaphysical choices at a very deep level. And it is these fundamental errors in understanding the basic nature of reality that trap so-many of us in nihilistic and despairing materialism.
"Is there "free energy"? Are there "perpetual motion" machines? Yes! (I'm one, and so are you.)"
7 Comments -
I like this. The noted added was a good "addition." That is, it provided the right context to elucidate the idea within the post. The post also addresses another aspect of freedom, which must be eternal and cannot depend on any external source of energy, or else it wouldn't be free.
1 March 2024 at 08:22
@Frank - Yes, I realized, on re-reading, that the background needed a bit of filling-in.
I think there is little doubt that there is a deep assumption among most educated people, that something-like the second law of thermodynamics is an *ultimate* truth of reality; which immunizes people against the idea of creation - or, at least, gets people very confused about what creation must be, in order to be genuinely creative.
The same applies (mutatis mutandis) to the assumption that every action must have a cause - which renders genuine freedom incomprehensible (as you imply).
Unless a Being can generate some thoughts and other actions without these being merely an energy-driven consequence of prior causes - then there can be no freedom.
Genuine freedom must come from our Being-ness, and not from anything *external* to that; and it cannot be limited by the availability of "energy".
(Quite a few New-Age-type people - including Western Buddhists, Hindus and Sufists -seem to regard abstract "energy" as the *ultimate* reality - consequently they get confused and incoherent when it comes to recognizing and acknowledging Beings, Freedom, Purpose etc. They lose all these in the abstraction which is "energy" and end-up with a picture of a pointless and irrelevant "reality" in which Beings are just temporary "wave forms", or suchlike.)
1 March 2024 at 09:49
Gifted people have higher level of energy than normal ones, while having the same energy intake(food), which I think somehow contradicts this idea of set amount of energy too
2 March 2024 at 04:59
I don't believe "perpetual motion/energy" is required, nor theologically correct.
How about just going with standard theology, and apply math to it. He is all-powerful, i.e, infinite energy. Creating anything material uses a finite amount of energy. e=mC^2 is a big number, sure, but finite, and if you subtract that from His original stock of infinite, He still has infinite left, after creating everything.
Implications are profound. If He instilled even the tiniest fraction of His energy to form our souls, not only was He not reduced by the act, but that amount of energy He breathed into us, even a gazillionth of infinity, is also infinite.
Maybe Yeshua was telling us the literal truth. If we had even a mustard seed's worth of faith in the amount of sheer power He lovingly instilled in each of us, we really could move mountains...
2 March 2024 at 22:45
Stb - My post is from an explicit metaphysical perspective, particular assumptions regarding the nature of reality (in the links).
Not sure what yours is! - a bit of mainstream science with a bit of classical theology, perhaps? On the face of it, it doesn't seem to cohere.
3 March 2024 at 07:30
Sorry. Been so busy getting things ready for what the minister and worship leaders want to do on Easter.
All I was getting at is that infinity is beyond our imagination. It's pointless to say God is omnipotent if we don't really grasp what that means. Like Saxe's The Blind Men and the Elephant, while we can't really understand the Infinite, we can feel around the edges and get some idea of what one particular aspect of the Infinite is like.
In the material world, the densest form of energy we know of is mass. Since He is omnipotent, infinite, he has more power than all the matter in the universe, so His "existence" is necessarily beyond this universe. And if we accept His infinite nature, perpetual motion is not necessary. It's not about a frictionless perpetual motion device. That simply doesn't decrement a finite amount of energy. We are talking about subtracting energy from Infinite and still being Infinite.
Which we technically try to teach when we learn about dividing by zero, but I'd bet very few appreciate it.
7 March 2024 at 15:32
@StB
I regard infinity as a wrong assumption of abstract metaphysics, e.g.:
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2019/02/infinity-versus-open-ended.html
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2023/06/four-interacting-abstract-tendencies-or.html
7 March 2024 at 17:08