# Evidence of a Creator **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 17, 2010, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-of-a-creator/525307 "2010-01-17T12:15:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-of-a-creator/525307/21 "2010-01-17T14:26:56Z")
I’ll just remind respondents that I am ignoring posts with the word “faith” in them. You are quite free to do the same. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-of-a-creator/525307/22 "2010-01-17T14:38:45Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > For me, I find it odd that the universe itself have no cause. I find it odd because we can point to nothing else that is causeless. Some people like to claim that quantum mechanics has particles being created with no cause. But the sudden and apparent random appearance of a particle is hardly proof that it’s _appearance_ in new location means that is was spontaneously _created_. So, for me, the simpler explanation is that since everything must have a cause, anything that does not would have to be extra-natural. A Creator God is the only thing that fits that bill. It’s something beyond our current ability to understand. I’m content to accept that, and simply hope that we learn more about the nature of reality as we advance. I disagree that only a “Creator God” fits the bill, since that tends to conjure up images of something intelligent and deliberate, and there’s no reason to suspect that whatever happened necesarily requires a concious, deliberate entity and isn’t the result of natural forces. > [@](#): > > I couldn’t agree more. (Though I don’t often see people claiming this.) It’s usually implicit. In extremely simple terms: “My religion is the true belief of god!” “There’s no reason to think that god exists” “well, something had to create the universe, right? If not god, what!??!” [implicitly: a god must exist, therefore my god exists and I am right] Really, for us to speculate on the nature of the creation of the universe is ignorantly grasping at straws. It’s almost like an ancient people who decided the movement of the sun across the sky is evidence of a sun god pushing it. It’s beyond our ability to understand - we should accept our ignorance and hope to learn rather than to fill in the gaps with whatever we feel most comfortable believing. ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-of-a-creator/525307/23 "2010-01-17T14:44:13Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > So, for me, the simpler explanation is that since everything must have a cause, anything that does not would have to be extra-natural. “Extra-natural”? You mean like, super-natural? ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-of-a-creator/525307/24 "2010-01-17T14:45:54Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > It’s something beyond our current ability to understand. I’m content to accept that, and simply hope that we learn more about the nature of reality as we advance. > > I disagree that only a “Creator God” fits the bill, since that tends to conjure up images of something intelligent and deliberate, and there’s no reason to suspect that whatever happened necesarily requires a concious, deliberate entity and isn’t the result of natural forces. One of the problems with this is that even in the Abrahamic traditions conjuring up an image of God is not something one is supposed to do. Christianity handles this by using Jesus as a placeholder while implying that God the Father is simply beyond our comprehension. In Judaism you simply don’t conceive of YHVH as having some kind of image and in Islam it’s straight up blasphemy. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-of-a-creator/525307/25 "2010-01-17T14:46:28Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > It’s something beyond our current ability to understand. I’m content to accept that, and simply hope that we learn more about the nature of reality as we advance. > > I disagree that only a “Creator God” fits the bill, since that tends to conjure up images of something intelligent and deliberate, and there’s no reason to suspect that whatever happened necesarily requires a concious, deliberate entity and isn’t the result of natural forces. I see your point, but the one attribute I think a Creator God might necessarily have is will. I see the “natural forces” argument as pointing to things that exist with no cause. If you go back to the very beginning and are the tiniest step away from “nothing”, you’d just have the Creator God at the moment before he created. Now we might not have been the focus of his creation, we might be the detritus fro his creating something else in another universe, but in between nothing and creation there would, I think, have to be the will to create something. ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-of-a-creator/525307/26 "2010-01-17T14:52:05Z")
Eh, you get back to the recursive argument of “then what created God?” - to which the counter is usually God has always existed/exists outside of time/etc. So then why can’t some sort of natural process get the same credit and be assumed to have always existed or exist outside of time? There’s no point at which a deliberate, concious entity is necesary, even if you conclude for this type of model of reality. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-of-a-creator/525307/27 "2010-01-17T14:53:03Z")
> [@ivan\_astikov](#): > > “Extra-natural”? You mean like, super-natural? I guess. Something other than what we accept as natural. The prefix connote “outside of”. It feels better to me to use it in lieu of “super” in this context, as supernatural has connotations that I think can be unhelpful. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-of-a-creator/525307/28 "2010-01-17T14:56:17Z")
> [@SenorBeef](#): > > Eh, you get back to the recursive argument of “then what created God?” - to which the counter is usually God has always existed/exists outside of time/etc. So then why can’t some sort of natural process get the same credit and be assumed to have always existed or exist outside of time? There’s no point at which a deliberate, concious entity is necesary, even if you conclude for this type of model of reality. If you have something creating God, you have not gone back far enough. You’d be talking about A god, not God, not the _Prime_ Mover. And natural processes can’t enjoy the same position because anything that can exist without being caused would be, by definition, extra-natural. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-of-a-creator/525307/29 "2010-01-17T15:00:19Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > If you have something creating God, you have not gone back far enough. You’d be talking about A god, not God, not the _Prime_ Mover. And natural processes can’t enjoy the same position because anything that can exist without being caused would be, by definition, extra-natural. I don’t think people give enough thought to the idea that the universe always existed. That it is eternal. Even within that context the Big Bang can still be a workable hypothesis. Because all of the matter in the universe expands and contracts, like breathing. I’m not sold on the Big Bang myself, partially because I lack the understanding of physics to contemplate the theory fully, but also because there is no way to experimentally verify it and in the time since that theory was realized so many other theories that people have accepted have been debunked, disproven, or simply evolved into something far more complex and nuanced. It seems to me that the limitations provided for how far we can see back in time are the limitations of the apparatus of perception than it is any real or hard limit regarding the macro-cosmos. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-of-a-creator/525307/30 "2010-01-17T15:01:57Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > I guess. Something other than what we accept as natural. The prefix connote “outside of”. It feels better to me to use it in lieu of “super” in this context, as supernatural has connotations that I think can be unhelpful. Making up a new word that means the same as a commonly accepted old word doesn’t change its meaning, and makes us suspect your reason for doing so. ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-of-a-creator/525307/31 "2010-01-17T15:03:57Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > I guess. Something other than what we accept as natural. The prefix connote “outside of”. It feels better to me to use it in lieu of “super” in this context, as supernatural has connotations that I think can be unhelpful. One could describe consciousness as extranatural, does that mean we need deistic concepts to define it… hey, maybe I’m god, inhabiting this body and I’ve just forgotten how to do my shit? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-of-a-creator/525307/32 "2010-01-17T15:08:36Z")
I just did some checking on the word “extranatural”. Apparently, “extranatural” is when events of a supernatural nature have a religious basis. It is a recent attempt to separate religious magic claims from all the others. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-of-a-creator/525307/33 "2010-01-17T15:09:24Z")
> [@ivan\_astikov](#): > > One could describe consciousness as extranatural, does that mean we need deistic concepts to define it… hey, maybe I’m god, inhabiting this body and I’ve just forgotten how to do my shit? Forgotten what? Maybe you just don’t have enough respect for what you CAN do. Think about it, through a complex chain reaction you are moving atoms around. Your body has a remarkable power to set off atomic chain reactions. ATP moves around in your brain and ultimately ends up as you typing this, at which point ATP moves around in my brain as I read what you write and then type a response. That’s a pretty powerful ability. But we take it for granted and give ourselves less respect than we maybe deserve. And by respect I don’t mean respect of the ‘I’m awesome’ kind but more in the terms of, ‘It’s amazing that I have the power to do this.’, kind. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-of-a-creator/525307/34 "2010-01-17T15:10:42Z")
> [@ivan\_astikov](#): > > One could describe consciousness as extranatural, does that mean we need deistic concepts to define it… hey, maybe I’m god, inhabiting this body and I’ve just forgotten how to do my shit? To define it? No. To understand its origins? Possibly. ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-of-a-creator/525307/35 "2010-01-17T15:11:15Z")
That “Holy Ghost” business has never done religious proponents any favours. ---
**Author:** ![ivan\_astikov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@ivan\_astikov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivan_astikov)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-of-a-creator/525307/36 "2010-01-17T15:12:50Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Forgotten what? Maybe you just don’t have enough respect for what you CAN do. Think about it, through a complex chain reaction you are moving atoms around. Your body has a remarkable power to set off atomic chain reactions. ATP moves around in your brain and ultimately ends up as you typing this, at which point ATP moves around in my brain as I read what you write and then type a response. That’s a pretty powerful ability. But we take it for granted and give ourselves less respect than we maybe deserve. And by respect I don’t mean respect of the ‘I’m awesome’ kind but more in the terms of, ‘It’s amazing that I have the power to do this.’, kind. Wow, I just made you type all that! Perhaps I haven’t lost it after all? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-of-a-creator/525307/37 "2010-01-17T15:13:37Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Forgotten what? Maybe you just don’t have enough respect for what you CAN do. Think about it, through a complex chain reaction you are moving atoms around. Your body has a remarkable power to set off atomic chain reactions. ATP moves around in your brain and ultimately ends up as you typing this, at which point ATP moves around in my brain as I read what you write and then type a response. That’s a pretty powerful ability. But we take it for granted and give ourselves less respect than we maybe deserve. And by respect I don’t mean respect of the ‘I’m awesome’ kind but more in the terms of, ‘It’s amazing that I have the power to do this.’, kind. Wouldn’t a common garden slug also have this “amazing ability” to set off atomic chain reactions? ---
**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-of-a-creator/525307/38 "2010-01-17T15:13:41Z")
> [@magellan01](#): > > If you have something creating God, you have not gone back far enough. You’d be talking about A god, not God, not the _Prime_ Mover. And natural processes can’t enjoy the same position because anything that can exist without being caused would be, by definition, extra-natural. I guess we’re hung up on the semantics of “natural processes” - so let me clarify. In this context, I mean anything that resulted in the creation of our universe that’s some sort of unthinking process. I don’t think you’ve demonstrated why one must suppose a conscious entity even if one supposes process beyond our understanding. > [@mswas](#): > > I don’t think people give enough thought to the idea that the universe always existed. That it is eternal. Even within that context the Big Bang can still be a workable hypothesis. This may be true. The Big Bang does not necesarily dictate anything that may exist beyond our understanding of our universe - it could, for example, simply be the starting event of our particular chunk of a multiverse. > [@](#): > > Because all of the matter in the universe expands and contracts, like breathing. This is possible, but by no means proven. > [@](#): > > I’m not sold on the Big Bang myself, partially because I lack the understanding of physics to contemplate the theory fully, but also because there is no way to experimentally verify it One not need to verify things experimentally to practically prove them. We have no way to experimentally prove that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, but we have many lines of observational evidence that leads us to conclude that it is. Similarly, we have a huge amount of observational evidence that the big bang took place. It’s not really a matter of scientific controversy as to whether or not the big bang happened. > [@](#): > > and in the time since that theory was realized so many other theories that people have accepted have been debunked, disproven, or simply evolved into something far more complex and nuanced. It seems to me that the limitations provided for how far we can see back in time are the limitations of the apparatus of perception than it is any real or hard limit regarding the macro-cosmos. What theories are you talking about here that have been debunked and disproven? I would imagine you aren’t using the word “theory” in the scientific context, since I’m not sure what you think we’ve massively gotten wrong that was widely accepted in the last century but then debunked. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-of-a-creator/525307/39 "2010-01-17T15:14:25Z")
> [@ivan\_astikov](#): > > Wow, I just made you type all that! Perhaps I haven’t lost it after all? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2010, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-of-a-creator/525307/40 "2010-01-17T15:14:34Z")
> [@ivan\_astikov](#): > > That “Holy Ghost” business has never done religious proponents any favours. Heh. This is more a statement of atheist id than anything. Where the atheist’s idea of ‘favors’ relate to the atheists opinion of the religious people. As though an idea is held in order to impress atheists in an argument. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-of-a-creator/525307.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-of-a-creator/525307.md?page=3)