George: Since my arguments based on Stenger's ideas of the universe originating from a void don't seem to have been understood, I've been looking for other ways of expressing similar ideas. Maybe these ideas of Plotinus go some way to bridging the gap between reason and mysticism:
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> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plotinos#One
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> Maybe this is a way of reconciling all our views.
> One instead of Nothing!-Now we are into philosophy. Good, and thanks for showing us this approach. Havng biefly reviewed the Wiki, Plotinus seems close to my own thoughts that come from Einstein and Spinoza. Their approach was that God is everything in nature and in the universe, and cannot ever be fully understood. I am a panentheist who believes God is a universal consciousness, both within and without the universe, and our consciousness is a tiny portion of the universal. thus there has always been an eternal something.

GEORGE: Since my arguments based on Stenger's ideas of the universe originating from a void don't seem to have been understood, I've been looking for other ways of expressing similar ideas. Maybe these ideas of Plotinus go some way to bridging the gap between reason and mysticism:
 
[link=http://]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plotinos#One[/link] -Maybe this is a way of reconciling all our views.
One instead of Nothing!
-Thank you for this, George. I fear there is no way it will reconcile all our views, but I couldn't help being struck by the fact that Plotinus's "The One" is "without sentience, self awareness or any other action." It is a "potentiality without which nothing can exist". And it is "beyond all attributes including being and non-being" but is also "the source of the world".-With just a little bit of latitude, couldn't we call that "energy"?