Does God create energy out of nothing?
Thank you. Hare Krishna.
Question from Abhijit Sonavane Prabhu. Does God create energy out of nothing? The law of conservation of energy says that energy can be converted from one form into another, but not destroyed or created. So God transforms his marginal energy into souls.
But does he create energy out of nothing? Does he destroy energy? What is the reference for this? Answer. No, God does not create or destroy energy out of nothing. That particular idea is called as creation ex nihilo.
Creation ex nihilo means to create out of nothing. And that is the idea in certain religions of God. But the Vedic scriptures do not support this idea of creation ex nihilo.
They say that God and his energies both are eternal. So, now the energies are sometimes manifested and sometimes unmanifested. The spiritual energy, of course, is constantly manifested.
The material energy is sometimes manifested and sometimes unmanifested. bhūtvā bhūtvā pralīyate bhūta-grāma-sevāya bhūtvā bhūtvā pralīyate avyakta-dīni-bhakta-vyakta-madhyāni-bhārata There are various ways it talks about the body and it talks about the universe also. Sometimes the body is manifested, sometimes it is unmanifested.
Similarly, the universe is sometimes manifested, sometimes unmanifested. But when it is unmanifested, it still exists. It is not destroyed in the sense of not existing at all.
It does exist. So, the creation ex nihilo is an illogical concept and it is not something which is accepted by the Vedic literature. The Vedic tradition explains that God, now we are not talking here about God's omnipotence.
God can do anything if he wants. He can create something out of nothing also. And he can destroy anything also if he wants.
But God acts in particular ways because that's what scriptures tell us and because he is a rational person. He can transcend rationality when he wants to. Of course, no doubt about that.
But the point here is, philosophy means that the whole field of philosophy is possible because God acts according to certain principles. If we just want to say God can do anything, then that is the death of philosophy. There is no need to try to have any discussion, any reasoning, any analysis because God can do anything.
God's omnipotence, he exhibits on special occasions but normally he acts according to certain principles. So, creation ex nihilo is not the Vedic understanding. Energy is eternal.
Now, of course, the sense in which the word energy is used in science, in the law of conservation of energy is different from the sense in which it is used in the Vedic philosophy. The energy which the law of conservation of energy talks about is primarily material energy. But the sense in which the word energy is used in the Vedic context is to refer to the attributes connected with a particular person.
So, in that sense, the souls are the marginal energy. The matter is the external energy. So, these are all attributes of Krishna, not attributes in terms of his beauty, his strength.
These are more inner attributes. But these are also connected with him. The word energy is used in Padma Purana to refer to this.
Now, Ramacharya uses it slightly differently in his Vishishtadvaitabad. In Dacchinta Veda Veda, she uses it differently. But the important point is that yes, both material and spiritual energies are eternal and God does not create out of nothing.
Rather, things are unmanifested and they are manifested by the plan of God under his supervision.