God

[JLPicard]

Where did god come from? I understand, well as much as we can, that god created man. But who or what created god? If he was always there then why did he wait so long to finally create us? What was he doing before the big bang? I understand that this all stems on the fact that you belive that god did create us, but for the sake of debate lets assume he did.

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Bad spellers of the world... UNTIE

[David B]

Wow. This one has "Great Debates" written all over it. :)

Ok.. I thought about it for three hours. I still think David is correct.



[Note: This message has been edited by Nickrz]

[LongHrn99]

Maybe he created another universe before the creation of our own? Isn't it kind of egotistical to think that this universe and its inhabitants are the only creation of God?

[Snappy Plissken]

::points at the original question:: *This*...is what leads me to be oh-so-confused about theological folk who all they do is just...preach on an' on about God an' all. Scientists donno varied things, theologists donno where their God appeared (different religions, different Gods)...well, 'cept some religions say how their God appeared, but it's still...all hogwash, in a sense. I'm neither atheist nor theist, I figger I'll find out when I die what happens. I prefer to think that well, I'd get reincarnated however I want...masters of our own destiny an' all. Nobody knows how their particular deity/deities came into existence, they'll never know until they come up with another li'l story to tell why. Just like the rest of most religion...started with stories.

[Monty]

Snappy: please define "an' all."

[Gaudere]

Ah, the eternal question. If we assume that everything that exists needs a creator, then we need a creator for the universe. Then we need a creator for that creator, and so on, and so on.

Theists assume God "just is", and was not created by something else. Atheists assume the universe "just is", and was not created by something else. Personally, if I'm going to believe anything could just *be*, I'll believe the thing I can see and touch. ::Gaudere slaps desk::

What was he doing before the big bang?

He was creating hell for people who ask questions like that. ;)

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"Eppur, si muove!" - Galileo Galilei

[bantmof]

But who or what created god?
Man did.

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peas on earth

[Snappy Plissken]

"an' all" is just my way of...trying to expound on things I'm stuck on trying to think about. Apparently my brain is full. I think I was meaning like, God, and the ark, and Bible/Torah/Koran/etc. stories...I think. I'm sorry.

And bantmof, good point. Man did create God. Or is in the process of creating...it's like Dogbert said in some Dilbert cartoon...gonna paraphrase here.

You have little bitty cells...they join up and become some large things, humans and animals and whatnot. Ants form huge colonies and devour animals in front of them like in the rainforest (army ants - oy, scary). Little things make big things. Maybe the Internet is going to be like, our God eventually. Little bitty information is stored, eventually it'll...be all there, and form into something great. Righty-o, or am I again forgetting how to think?

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Snappy, The Crazy Toddite - Friend of Skippy

[Momotaro]

There was no time before God created it, so He didn't have to do anything before that.

I don't really believe that, but that explanation might please more literal-minded people than me.

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Only humans do inhuman things.

[bullfighter]

The issue of how God came to be is a crucial one. People arguing for the existence of God often point to the improbability of a universe existing with physical laws that permit the formation of stars, or the improbability of a reproducing molecule that could get evolution started. How about the improbability of an intelligent being existing without a creator? Especially a super-intelligent super-powerful being!

While intelligence might seem commonplace to people who have always lived surrounded by humans (and who have never tried to write a computer program to behave like an intelligent being), intelligence is far more complex than specific physical laws or reproducing molecules. Explaining the universe by means of a god is explaining the improbable with something far less probable.

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It ain't what a man don't know that makes him a fool, but what he knows that ain't so.
- Josh Billings

[furt]

God just is. He is uncaused, unmade. He is, by definition, without origin. Any creature that HAS a cause or beginning, is by definition, not God. Recall what God said when Moses asked for his name: "I AM."

The same question exists aside from God, when you ask, what caused ____? You keep going back and back, and you know that each thing needed something previous (the one atom before the big bang...but where was the atom from?) Eventually, you need to have a First Cause. Whatever that First Cause is, is God.

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"It all started with marbles in school..."

[Rich Barr]

God is appointed by the Immortal Master of Time, Space, and Dimension, who is in turn appointed by the executive council of They and ratified by the membership.

It is a little-known fact that the position of God rotates every 30 days--you can fill out an application if you'd like to be God some month, but the interview process is a real killer. Every once in awhile the God dies in office, thus giving rise to rumors that God is dead. There are proposals to appoint a Vice God to cover this contingency, but they've been stuck in committee hearings for slightly in excess of 8,000 years.

I hope this has answered your questions.

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Rich Barr
massivemaple@hotmail.com
AOL Instant Messenger: Hrttannl

[bantmof]

It's somewhat akin to the old question, "why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?". Aside from the anthropic principle (we wouldn't be around asking the question if it did not), there doesn't seem to be any real compelling reason for it to.

One idea somebody had is that, similar to virtual particle-antiparticle pairs, the net energy of the universe might very well be precisely zero, when gravitational potential energy is counted as negative. That doesn't explain what caused it, but it does sort of explain how it could be allowed to happen. Presumably making something that has a net energy content of zero is not very hard to do and just happens randomly from time to time like the particle pairs.

Or, paraphased from HHGTTG, "In the beginning, god created the universe. This was widely regarded as a bad move, and made a lot of people very angry."

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peas on earth

[Polycarp]

Furt has a cool, if unsatisfying, answer. "God is the first, uncaused Cause." (paraphrase) It's the only possible answer unless you like "sorry, it's turtles all the way down!"

Now, investing this First Cause (which I think even the atheist crew could give intellectual acceptance to, because all It is, going into the far turn, is the ontological basis for everything else) with personality, characteristics such as goodness and love, an active interest in humanity (why?), etc. is what we've been hashing around for the past several weeks here.

One quick comment: What was God doing "before" the Big Bang? may be a meaningless question. According to traditional theology (give me this for the sake of argument for the moment), God exists in eternity. Eternity is not perpetuity; it is a timelessness in which all times are equally present. Time only started with the Big Bang.

If you travel north or south, you can arrive at a point (the pole) at which you are the furthest north/south and any continuation makes you going south/north. But that is not true for east/west. If you keep going east, you do not reach a point at which you begin going west. If you go back to the Big Bang, there is no "before" to go to, because there was no matter/energy present "before" the Big Bang to define space and time.

Snippy...if you like science fiction, a couple of stories that explore your concept: "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov (a little dated at the beginning from having been written in the 1940s/50s when mainframes were all there was), and the Spider Robinson series which includes three books:
1. Mindkiller
2. Time Pressure
1-2A. Deathkiller, a revised portmanteauing of 1 and 2.
3. Lifehouse

[cmkeller]

My take on it has always been that G-d came from nowhere. The law of conservation, which says that all things come from some previously existing thing, is a law of physics...and by the Jewish definition, G-d transcends physics. Hence, that law never applied to G-d, and he could very well have come into existence from nowhere.

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Chaim Mattis Keller
ckeller@schicktech.com

"Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks."
-- Douglas Adams's Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective

[WallyM7]

The Anthropic Principle is a philosophical wasteland. It answers no questions, and worse, it doesn't ask any. We're here because we're here. If we weren't here, we wouldn't be here to ask why we aren't here. But we are here. If we weren't here, where would we be? Not here, that's for sure.

Oh,oh. This is starting to make sense. Man, this shit is good. Hardly any seeds...

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You are unique - Just like everone else.

[tracer]

If you claim that God didn't need a creator, you're saying that it is possible for something extremely complex (God) to exist without the need for a creator.

And if "something" extremely complex can exist without a creator, why couldn't that "something" just be the universe?

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I'm not flying fast, just orbiting low.

[cmkeller]

tracer:

If you claim that God didn't need a creator, you're saying that it is possible for something extremely complex (God) to exist without the need for a creator.

Actually, in Jewish belief, G-d is not complex, but is the ultimate in simplicity. G-d is a single, indivisible unit.

And if "something" extremely complex can exist without a creator, why couldn't that "something" just be the universe?

Even laying aside my previous statement, the answer to this one is: the universe is made of physical matter, which we've pretty well analyzed, and have determined cannot come from nothing (unless there is some other force outside the realm of physics). G-d, in Jewish belief, is entirely non-physical.

Chaim Mattis Keller

[bullfighter]

The idea that the law of conservation of matter and energy proves that the universe could not have come from nothing isn't valid. The law is only derived from repeated human observations that the quantity of matter and energy is constant for our measurements. From this it seems reasonable to expect that the law has held true since the beginning of the universe and will probably hold true into the future, but it does not seem reasonable to expect it to have held true before the universe began. In fact, time itself may not have existed before the big bang, so it could still be said that there never was a time when the quantity of matter and energy was different.

The idea that God could violate this law because he is not physical is just an assumption by those who believe in God and not anything that has ever been observed. The observations that matter and energy stay constant were made in this universe that God is assumed to influence, and so any conclusion that it does not change would apply just as much to the universe including God's influence as to the universe without it.

The situation is a little like that of a bird walking along a telephone wire. The bird might correctly observe that the wire has a constant diameter, because wherever she goes the diameter stays the same. Although this is a good rule for the wire, it does not prove the wire cannot have an end. The idea that the universe started with a big, uncaused bang and from then on had constant energy is entirely consistant with the observations made by physicists. There is no logical problem here.

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It ain't what a man don't know that makes him a fool, but what he knows that ain't so.
- Josh Billings

[bantmof]

Actually, in Jewish belief, G-d is not complex, but is the ultimate in simplicity
That statement would seem to contradict the properties typically ascribed to god.

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peas on earth

[Pickman's Model]

It is a little-known fact that the position of God rotates every 30 days--you can fill out an application if you'd like to be God some month, but the interview process is a real killer. Every once in awhile the God dies in office, thus giving rise to rumors that God is dead. There are proposals to appoint a Vice God to cover this contingency, but they've been stuck in committee hearings for slightly in excess of 8,000 years.

Oh, absolutely correct. I know that I, myself, would never want to run for God. Being God is just like every other executive position in existance, only infinitely worse. The people who work under you are incompetant and ungrateful, and they resent your authority to the point where they either try to usurp you, or else they claim that you don't exist and ignore your directives. Not only do your consituents expect you to do everything, both they and the stockholders hold you responsible for everything that goes wrong. Furthermore, they're constantly demanding to talk to you day and night, and on Sunday mornings when you'd rather sleep in, they all come to your house, sit down, and start to sing---real loudly, and off-key. You never get any days off, and there is no holiday pay; in fact, you're actually expected to work harder on holidays, when everybody else gets them off. And if you think unions here are bad, believe me, Local 666 has caused the downfall of more than one guy who tried to fill the Big Chair. And besides, remember what happened to the last guy who ran for this office??? Take my advice and resign immediately if you're ever elected.....you'll sleep much better at night knowing that the responsibility is not yours.

[cmkeller]

bullfighter:

The idea that God could violate this law because he is not physical is just an assumption by those who believe in God and not anything that has ever been observed.

Of course it is. I've never said otherwise.

Chaim Mattis Keller

[tracer]

cmkeller wrote:

the universe is made of physical matter, which we've pretty well analyzed, and have determined cannot come from nothing (unless there is some other force outside the realm of physics).

Incorrect. A quantum mechanical phenomenon called "vacuum fluctuation" CAN create matter out of nothing, provided that the product of the mass-energy and the duration is less than Planck's constant.

Cosmological physicists such as Stephen Hawking have determined -- or think they have determined -- that under certain really weird circumstances, matter created by vacuum fluctuation can be made to last a lot longer. In their view, the big bang which started our whole universe going may have been nothing more than one great bug vacuum fluctuation.

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I'm not flying fast, just orbiting low.

[tracer]

BIG! I meant great BIG vacuum fluctuation! A great "bug" vacuum fluctuation would be one that caused the spontaneous creation of a Volkswagen Beetle.

Oh, and while I'm at it, vacuum fluctuation is the mechanism behind so-called "zero-point energy."

[Just Ed]

How has this thread progressed this far without mention of the famous quote: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to create him."

'Nuff said?

[cmkeller]

tracer:

I thought that those fluctuations could only create sets of opposing particles (i.e., one natter, one anti-matter) which would annihilate one another instantly.

Or did I misunderstand?

As far as the Hawking theory goes, I have a serious problem with it. Under "really wierd circumstances..." If there's truly nothing in existence (and that's what we're talking about, right?) what "circumstance" is there?

Chaim Mattis Keller

[Keeves]

Quixotic mentions the famous quote, "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to create him."

I never really understood that quote. Its meaning, it seems to me, is that "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to pretend that he does exist." That never made sense to me; it puts God right up there with Santa Claus and Washington's Cherry Tree. If God didn't exist, society would manage with various governments and laws. Am I missing something?

[andros]

bullfighter, you mentioned:

"The idea that God could violate this law because he is not physical is just an assumption by those who believe in God and not anything that has ever been observed."

Do you believe then that the only truth is what has been quantified? I can't believe that's the point you're trying to make--I think anyone would agree that science doesn't have all the answers.

I think a bigger question would be, "CAN humankind know everything?" Is there an upper limit to what we can know about the universe?

Many religious types will claim that only Ghod can know all, while humanists and science folks will tend to believe that humans can learn all there is to learn.

Show of hands?

-andros-

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There's always a bigger fish.

[Polycarp]

I was under the impression that Godel (umlaut on the O, but I'm not going to try to do one) had demonstrated that there were limits to human knowledge mathematically. Not to mention the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

The "If God did not exist..." quote always links itself in my mind with Voltaire's "If Satan became God, he would find it necessary to clothe himself with the attributes of divinity." (Of which we have an example on this board!) ;)

[Polycarp]

Or "Man creates God in his own image"?

I'll go along with that to a certain degree. Everyone's concept of God (whether accepted or rejected) is based on his own environment, personality, upbringing, hopes, fears, etc.

The bottom line, to me, is, Do we have this need to perceive God from our own necessity to find something to believe in, or Do we have this need to perceive God because there is a real God who is pushing us to perceive him?

Obviously, there we differ among ourselves. But I think it's helpful for those of us on the religious side of the debate to notice the fact that our image of God is largely created by our own wants and needs. And it's helpful for those on the other side of the debate to take note of a potential to go post hoc ergo propter hoc. For many atheists (not necessarily any of our posters, though if the shoe fits...) the fear of being accountable to a real God is a strong incentive to reject the idea, just as the wish-formation concept is a strong incentive for religionists. Scary thoughts, either way.

[bantmof]

So some of us might modify the quote to, "Because God does not exist, it was necessary for man to invent him."
And indeed, we know that man _does_ invent gods and subsequently believe in them, even rationalizing that all sorts of things constitute "evidence" for said god or gods. So given some arbitrary god (say, the christian one), it seems absurd to reject the mundane explanation ("we made it up"), without a single shred of evidence to the contrary.

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peas on earth

[bullfighter]

andros:
I agree that science doesn't have all the answers and that humankind will never know everything. Not only is there the Godel proof in mathematics but there is the uncertainty principle in physics that implies it is impossible to predict some future events. Even without these, some situations are so complex that science may never be able so solve them fully (human psychology might be like this).

On the other hand, I don't know of any ways that people can know things reliably if science CANNOT address those questions. I have heard people talk about "other ways of knowing". I don't know of any that work. We cannot guarantee something is true because somebody says so. We can't depend on the fact that a belief gives us a good feeling. I think it is extremely unwise to believe someone who claims to have a revelation from God. If that person can back up his or her claims by parting the sea or turning staves into serpents or making accurate prophesies we might have valid reason for believing, but then the question becomes one that can be tested by scientific means.

Basically, there are things that science can't know, but if science can't know it, neither can we.

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It ain't what a man don't know that makes him a fool, but what he knows that ain't so.
- Josh Billings

[David B]

Keeves said:Quixotic mentions the famous quote, "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to create him." I never really understood that quote. Its meaning, it seems to me, is that "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to pretend that he does exist." That never made sense to me; it puts God right up there with Santa Claus and Washington's Cherry Tree. If God didn't exist, society would manage with various governments and laws. Am I missing something?Yes -- the whole point of the quote. :)

Basically, I suspect that whoever said it recognizes that humans have a tendency to make up supernatural explanations for things they do not understand.

Thus were the gods born. And, as some of us think, thus was the God you believe in born as well.

So some of us might modify the quote to, "Because God does not exist, it was necessary for man to invent him."