Why couldn't God have made the universe instantaneously?

birds flew ‘upon the face of’ (Al Pene) the ‘plate’.

The answer to the question, Why couldn’t God have made the universe instantaneously?, is God could have, but the evidence indicates that God did not. John 1:1-3.

Whilst not wanting to start an argument here, but as a Mormon, that’s not what Sealing is about. If it’s true then it’s a service. If not, well we have one heck of an genealogical archive which all are welcome to share in.

Ok, carry on.

Ps/ I thought the Biologos forum was for discussing Theology and Science, not one to be used to knock the other person’s view and differing practices of Christianity? Could an Admin confirm this?

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Welcome, @HeatherTN! I’m not sure what the allusion above it to-- but anyway, maybe @gbrooks9 can comment if you addressed it to him.

I look forward to seeing what you have to say about science and faith from your perspective.

Hi, Heather, You’re correct that the site and forum are here to help people see the harmony between science and Christian faith (my way of putting it here, though you can check out the official statements published by Biologos here.)

As to not “knocking other people’s views”, you are also correct that we here at the forum don’t encourage such adversity for its own sake. But realistically people who care about truth and want to promote their best understanding of that cannot always do so without being perceived as stepping on others’ toes who have different understandings. So it can actually be that truth is more like a sword of division at times rather than a snuggly teddy bear. But if people are unnecessarily being jerks in their discussion of said truth, then yes - its our job to step in and help set more gracious tones.

Just a technical note for you … since it isn’t clear what the context for your comment above is, you may want to find the previous post to which you were reacting, highlight the bit of text that got your attention, and then click the grey ‘quote’ box box that pops up. That will open a new post for you (if you aren’t already composing one) and will insert the quoted material for you so that people can see the context for your response.

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@Randy and @HeatherTN

Ive spent about 15 minutes trying to figure out which posting trigger Heather’s comments.

Heather, can you point me?

If you had used the “Quote Wizard” to quote even one word… i would have been able to have responded by now.

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Search is your friend.

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It is ideally a place for discussing theology and science regardless of what religious tradition one comes from, and people have been warned in the past about bringing up their anti-LDS sentiments into discussions. Moderators don’t always carefully read every post (especially when threads get long and rambling), so things slip by. Feel free to continue pointing out anything you feel is an unfair characterization.

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@HeatherTN

Hmmm… I wrote this (with a thank you nod to @Jay313 for finding it!):

I don’t believe I was knocking anybody. Was there something about what I said that I should be aware upsets Mormons?

Yours, George (Unitarian Universalist, the Other Controversial Brand)

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Here I am, 3 years later! The aim of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is to bring people to Christ, as is common to all Christian churches. What it’s NOT there to do is make anyone dead a ‘Mormon’. Rather than me waffle on, it’s best if you pop on over to www.churchofjesuschrist.org and go from there.

Pax.

To the OP. God did - indirectly - make the universe instantaneously. For definitions of instantaneous <<10^43 s (though a centimicroattoattosecond is as a thousand years). But what you mean is a cosmos that looks like He made it. Then it wouldn’t be a universe. It wouldn’t be natural. God grounds being, nature; it makes universes. And He has always grounded existence, natural and supernatural. If He’s there/here. God creates as if He didn’t. What does that say about Him? If He does, then it has nothing to do with our learning anything at all. It’s to do with being and becoming and is otherwise meaningless, but for what we purpose, until we transcend. And even then we will only acquire more meaning.

Welcome back, @HeatherTN . I have not seen George around here lately, so he may not reply, but there are a few of the old faces still here as well as a lot of new ones. I hope the pandemic has gone easy on you, but it has been a rough patch for many. Perhaps this is not the post to discuss it, but it would be interesting to hear how the LDS handled Covid and how it faired compared to the evangelical church.

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God might have made the universe instantaneously. The Bible doesn’t really say how God created the universe. Finding that is left to science. It says simply that He created it “in the beginning.” The “days” of Genesis 1:3-2:4 are not about the creation of the universe but of the re-making of the earth at an unspecified time after the absolute creation, as shown in the article linked in another topic here.

There is no beginning of beginnings. And as nothing changes, did God have to custom create every single universe of the infinite from eternity?

Total nonsense. The laws of thermodynamics prove that the universe began at a specific point. The universe is in a process toward thermal equilibrium. That process cannot extend infinitely backwards as, if it were, it would already be in a state of thermal equilibrium (“heat death”).
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Just as I don’t have to disprove what even the NT doesn’t claim, neither do I have to disprove an unnecessary, imparsimonious entity that explains nothing which quantum mechanics does, for infinitely less complexity.

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More disingenuousness. No one claimed you had to disprove what the NT doesn’t claim. You have to prove what you claim. Of course, you can’t. That’s the problem. You make baseless claims. I don’t care whether or not Peter went to Rome. I do care that people don’t make up nonsense from their imagination and claim it’s true, as you’re doing with the laws of physics. Please go ahead and block me.
The laws of thermodynamics prove that the universe had a beginning, since it is in a process toward thermal equilibrium. That process cannot extend infinitely backwards since, if it did, it would already reached heat death.

I’ll never block you John. Who’s talking about the infinitesimal universe?

Is that a theory, a fact or a Truth about origin
of the unjverse

Pronouns only work if we know what they refer to. “That” what?