Many creationist cannot accept the fact that the universe just exists but can accept the fact that god just exists. The argument is that someone had to make the universe it just couldn’t exist. My question is, if the universe had to have been created, then god had to have been created, so who created god? Does god have a god? Does god worship something greater than him/her/it? (P.S. Unless you are going to name god, the word shouldn’t be capitalized as if it were a name.)
It is hard enough arguing for or against the existence of a god. Now, we are on to a god of gods?
Basically, it comes down to this:
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If God is the god of the Christian bible (or most other religions for that matter) then no. God is eternal. This is a concept that is difficult if not impossible for human intelligence to grasp because there is nothing in physical world terms that is truly eternal (see thread Always on this forum).
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Some religions have creation myths/beliefs behind their gods. So who made the creator of those things that created those gods? Well, depends on the myth/belief in question. The answer usually eventually boils down to the same as 1) above (somebody/something simply is).
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If gods exist but are a different gods then the god(s) of existing religions then the answer is who knows.
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If no god exists the answer is no.
So, what do you believe is the bottom line answer.
It’s bernard, just under new management
The two are distinct. If God created the universe, then He is outside of that universe. Therefore, different rules apply to the two, and it is possible that one was created and the other was always in existence.
If yes, then that’s who we really owe our allegiance to, and that’s who I’ve really been addressing my prayers to all along. Why bother praying to middle management?
Seems to me that if you are not using any definite articles (“the”) or indefinite articles (“a”, “an”), then it it is being used as a name, and should be capitalized. For example, I would spell it “Does God have a god?”, with the first capitalized, and the second not.
I’d say that if there are no gods, then we created them, m’self…
‘They couldn’t hit an Elephant from this dist…!’
Last words of General John Sedgwick
Ahh, but if they didn’t really exist but existed as a construction of man (i.e. figments of our imagination) then the question becomes do figments of the imagination exist or not exist? And for that I think we should proceed to “Does the intangible exist?” thread on this forum. Although personally, I haven’t the slightest clue if the intangible exists.
It’s bernard, just under new management
According to the Jewish religion:
No, there was no one who created G-d. No, G-d does not worship any other being.
And, the universe is a physical thing and we know the rules by which it works, which leads to the conclusion that it couldn’t have come from nothing. (The matter of quarks appearing from nowhere is was mentioned elsewhere; I’m knowingly glossing over it for right now, except to say that I’m not quite convinced that that could explain how the whole universe came about.) But G-d is beyond physics, and is completely non-physical. As such, it is entirely possible that G-d came from nothing.
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
cmkeller:
Your “O” key seems to be defective…
Yer pal,
Satan
I disagree that any rules we know about how the universe works leads to the conclusion that it could not have come from nothing. All the data we use to derive rules about how the universe works are based on observations made after the big bang and are fully consistant with the idea that the big bang was simply the uncaused beginning of the universe. It seems to me that an uncaused universe is every bit as possible as an uncaused God.
It ain’t what a man don’t know that makes him a fool, but what he knows that ain’t so.
- Josh Billings
Yes, god/G-d/God/GOD has a creator: the human mind.
Prove me wrong.
Men will cease to commit atrocities only when they cease to believe absurdities.
-Voltaire
E1Skeptic,
You made the statement that god was created by the human mind. It’s your claim, prove it correct. It is up to the objective person to prove his/her own claims.
Your comment is sort of like the inquisitors telling you that to save your life, you must prove your innocence. If you can’t prove your innocence, then you must be guilty.
This isn’t really a God question, it is an infinity/eternity question. The human mind has trouble with the idea of anything that “always was”, but also has trouble with the idea of a “time before which there wasn’t anything at all”. Analogously, we don’t like the idea of an infinite universe that goes on forever, but we have an equal dislike for the idea of an edge or an end beyond which nothing exists.
Designated Optional Signature at Bottom of Post
Time didn’t exist before the Big Bang so nothing could be created then. Creation is a time-based event, it can’t be conceived without the existence of time. Oh oh, I just got into a chicken and egg argument.
Ah, hah! Virtual time will solve this conundrum…if only I knew what that concept meant.
Only humans do inhuman things.
“Man cannot make a worm, yet he creates gods by the dozen.”
Damn! Can’t remember who said it.
Gonna post it anyway.
You are unique - Just like everyone else.
Since we are all blinded by our already preconceived notions upon entering this thread (be they religion, science, atheism, skepticism or stupidity), what I’m about to say won’t make much diffo, but hey, I’ll say it anyway.
Man asking who created God is sort of like me creating a temporary scaffolding to help me build my house; I only intend for the scaffolding to exist for about five hours, and then I’m going to take it down and it’s gone forever. And once I have created the scaffolding, it looks at me and says, “I know who I am; but who created you? Can I be sure *you’re * the one who made me? Where were you before I came into existance? What gives you the idea that you can create or destroy me, based on my servicabilty as a scaffolding? None of the other scaffoldings I know think that. I think you’re just a figment of my imagination…” and so on, until I’m finished with it, and I take my hammer and reduce it to lumber again.
I realize this a very poor analogy, but it’s the best thing I can come up with at the moment, and you catch my drift. Man’s limited mind cannot conceive of a Being Who was always here and always will be here, since all we know has been created and will eventually perish. So we apply our limited concepts to the Unlimited and conclude that God, too, was created and will eventually perish. It’s sort of like two colonies of slime mold trying to pontificate to each other about atomic physics-----it’d be funny if it weren’t so pitiful.
I don’t think there’s anything pitiful about a couple of slime colonies dicussing physics, as long as they didn’t shout and frighten the children playing on the street.
Now if they discussed, say, the Middle Period of Art Deco, that would be pitiful. What do they know about that?
You are unique - Just like everyone else.
James Branch Cabell had a very funny series of novels that used the old Gnostic idea of a series of creators, each of which was god to the one below and worshiped the one above as God. Heinlein borrowed this for his novel Job: A Comedy of Justice filing off the serial numbers but giving credit by having Koshchei (the old Russian demigod who was supposedly the creator of the Christian God) as a civil servant in charge of “the branch office” (a description with which I will not cavil). 
Bottom line: The Universe has either:
a. no creator (materialist view; also the view of some pagans)
b. a single uncreated creator (e.g., the Christian/Jewish/Islamic God; there are other belief systems along these lines as well)
c. multiple creators collaborating (several polytheisms) who may or may not have some mystical unity (as in Vedanta Hinduism)
d. a series of creators, each creating the next one “down” and having been created by the next one “up.” If such a series is finite, then we would use the term God (with capital) to refer to the “upmost” one. This is the doctrine of Gnosticism. My mind refuses to deal with the implications of an infinite series of creators, even theoretically. A third possibility is a creator loop, which gets even more abstruse.
e. (This space has been left open for an even loonier concept.)
On the God/god/G-d question, the English language usage has been to use “God” (with capital) to refer to the entity described in the Torah and subsequent related publications as creator. He gives his actual name, an Archaic Hebrew form for the causative infinitive of “to be” in the Book of Exodus. This is the Tegragrammaton, which Orthodox Jews refuse to pronounce and write with consonants only or with the vowel marks for adonai (“Lord”). I would insert it here, but I don’t want Chaim, Akiva, et al. to feel they must go wash their hands after reading this page. (Which is a quirky way of saying I’m honoring their scruples regarding the use of his name.) The lowercase english word “god” then gets used for any alleged supernatural entity, so that I can discuss Norse mythology, for example, without having anyone think I believe in, say, Thor. Chaim, and I believe a couple of other Jewish posters, use G-d to refer to the above-mentioned deity as a way of representing in English the honor they would pay to him in Hebrew. Customarily Christians don’t worry about this sort of thing – after all, he told us to call him “Daddy” (albeit in Aramaic) – but do customarily capitalize God, Lord (and other common nouns when used to refer to him, e.g., a hymn that refers to him metaphorically as the Morning Star) and in general pronouns referring to him. (er, Him.)
So the proper answer to the OP would have to be: it’s quite possible that god could have a creator, but God doesn’t.
danielnsmith: my apologies. I wasn’t aware that this was a creationist thread with a creationist question posed,
and therefore I posted a generic answer.
You say I am the one who should prove my idea right, and I’ll do it. Just tell me please, to which god are you referring? The one that Christians believe in? Or the Jewish one? Or the Budhists? (Ooops, they don’t have one, right?) The one described in the Genesis? Or the one described in the NT? Which one?
Now, let me say something else: If you believe in a Universe created by a god, I can’t give an answer to your question, and you know why. The best answer I could come up in that case would be: I don’t know.
Men will cease to commit atrocities only when they cease to believe absurdities.
-Voltaire