> On Jan 23, 2017, at 6:15 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> > wrote: > > Whenever Peirce wrote about "nothing" as the starting point of "everything," > he seemed to have this idea of "boundless possibility" in mind, which I > associate with the clean blackboard in his RLT diagram. It is indeed a > non-traditional notion of "nothing," but I disagree with your assertion "that > Peirce’s cosmology ends up providing that God himself as something real also > emerges out of the same nothingness from which creation proceeds." > > On the contrary, Peirce identified God as Ens necessarium in "A Neglected > Argument." In several different drafts, he explicitly called God the > non-immanent Creator of all three Universes of Experience and everything in > them, without exception. In other words, God made the blackboard and draws > all of the chalk marks on it. This is perhaps most clearly evident in > Peirce's brief but fascinating analysis of Genesis 1:2-5, an account that he > attributed to a "Babylonian philosopher."
I’m not sure God as ens necessarium is opposed to what I outlined. At least I don’t quite see the contradiction. God isn’t immanent in that he is real but not actual for Peirce. As I said I think the break with Augustine oriented Christianity is rather profound. It isn’t just what the nothing ‘is’ but also the fact that God itself is under evolution. I’m not arguing any of this as theology of course. I admit I find rather unconvincing Augustine styled Christianity even though I consider myself a Christian. Just noting that Peirce’s view here is very much at odds with creation ex nihilo.
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