There is no necessity for it to have a beginning.
The same has to be said about “God” as well. The problem with arguments like “what if God is some simple, mindless natural force” or “what if God is a programmer running a simulation” is that that’s simply not what the vast majority of people mean when they talk about “God”.
Well, the former, agreed. But the latter might actually be a pretty good fit.
I don’t think so. First, such a “God” is really just an alien programmer, with no special powers himself. And second, it doesn’t resemble the Christian/Islamic/Jewish idea of God, which is the actual God the vast majority of people believe in. The vague God-who-might-be-anything that comes up in conversations like this is pretty much confined to such conversations and to science fiction; people don’t actually believe in it.
I’m not sure. I mean, I’ve heard enough talk about us all being metaphors in the mind of God, and then something about the philosophy of Berkeley, to figure believers might be okay with going beyond conversational tricks to actually mean that God is an entity who exists outside the known universe and restructures the material world by partially-understood operations referred to as “logos” that somehow involve words made incarnate – and I think that’s a heck of a lot more compatible with the concept of God being “like unto a master programmer running a simulation” than, say, the “mindless natural force” description that routinely gets trotted out and just as routinely gets abandoned.
Of course they don’t.
This is a putative god typically discussed by rational people thinking rationally.
The god that some people believe in is something that is supposed by people, either irrational or temporarily abandoning rationality, and succumbing to the ‘god delusion’.
But how many people do you think actually think about “God” like that? I’d be surprised if it was more than a few percent.
A very small percentage think rationally about the concept of a god.
The rest either don’t think about it at all or succumb to ‘the God delusion’ where rationality id ditched in favour of blind faith.
As far as I know, God as described in Judeochristian scripture isn’t omnimax at all, being stymied by iron chariots and having to ask questions like “Where’s Abel?” and whatnot.
He is that He is, but He ain’t all that.
The God of the Bible evolved over time. He become more “omnimax” later on, especially in the Christian part of the Bible.
Which is a pretty typical example of power creep in sequels. 
We have limits on what we can lift. God doesn’t - unless you bring in the creating something too heavy to lift, which, if impossible, is like asking God to create a four sided triangle. So logically possible is not at all the same as physically possible.
Omnimax collapses nicely without the need for this kind of argument anyhow.
Why does God need evolution? 
There is no necessity for a creator to be omnimax - or even to be involved. For all we know some grad student in the containing universe could have created ours in a convenient black hole, made sure the physical constants were right, then he went home and had a beer. And there is no reason at all to think a Western God was the creator, even if one exists. You’d think the creator would be able to get the story just a bit more correct than what we see. I think Eastern religions at least see the universe as very old - if we are going by evidence, all Christians should become Hindus.
Which doesn’t absolve it from the need of an explanation, as Mijin has been trying to point out for a while now. Just that something is eternal, or timeless, or without a beginning, or what have you, doesn’t stop us from asking why it is at all.
The omnimax god / god’s feature creep is one thing that really annoys me about the modern religions. God suddenly has his hand in every pie, and you can’t have a discussion about existence, morality, consciousness etc because those are all seen as inherently religious topics by many.
And the religious “answer” to all such fundamental questions is always “God sez so…God works in mysterious ways”.
- The major cop out: “That is something it is not for us to know” :rolleyes:
- The major cop out: “That is something it is not for us to know” :rolleyes:
In order to have planets produce intelligent species that would eventually build starships, naturally.
I think that depends – does god’s capacity to lift everything violate, for instance, Newton’s laws (or, perhaps, more fundamental principles that lead to their emergence)? If so, I’m not sure this is logically any more possible than creating a four sided triangle. And if it doesn’t, then it’s not qualitatively different from our capacity to lift anything; it’s a difference in degree only.
That I agree with, but still, the discussion goes on, so it can’t hurt to bring everything to the table.