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Slight Confusion

Klerkie

Member
I have been thinking about the concept that everything must come from something, and the Abrahamic God. Can someone please help explain to me how if everything came from something, where did God come from?
 

Pastadamus

Member
I have been thinking about the concept that everything must come from something, and the Abrahamic God. Can someone please help explain to me how if everything came from something, where did God come from?

I think that's where the whole idea of "God" breaks down. If God can't be created, then God must create itself. And if God has to create itself, who's to say that universe can't spontaneously come into existence. And since Time as we know it begins with the Big Bang, there is really no need to account for what was before the Big Bang since there is no way of defining the events before it.
 

Breathe

Hostis humani generis
I think that's where the whole idea of "God" breaks down. If God can't be created, then God must create itself. And if God has to create itself, who's to say that universe can't spontaneously come into existence. And since Time as we know it begins with the Big Bang, there is really no need to account for what was before the Big Bang since there is no way of defining the events before it.
So if there is no way of defining events before it, why attempt to define events before the formation of the universe to a divinity?
 

Shia Islam

Quran and Ahlul-Bayt a.s.
Premium Member
I have been thinking about the concept that everything must come from something, and the Abrahamic God. Can someone please help explain to me how if everything came from something, where did God come from?

Let us assume that you are K,
You were created by K1,
K1 was created by K2
.
.
.
Kn was created by K(n+1)

Lets say that GOD is K(n+1),
if we to assume that something has created K(n+1), then this means that there is an infinite loop, which means that you does not exist.

But since you DO exist, this means that K(n+1), I mean GOD is the final cause.
 

LuisDantas

Aura of atheification
Premium Member
if we to assume that something has created K(n+1), then this means that there is an infinite loop, which means that you does not exist.

But since you DO exist, this means that K(n+1), I mean GOD is the final cause.

Except that even in everyday situations such a model is a bit too simplistic. Very few situations have exactly one cause.

And then there is the assumption that everything must have a cause of some sort.

It is far more natural and more elegant to just accept that existence "exists" and we don't really have an explanation or cause for that.
 

Jayhawker Soule

-- untitled --
Premium Member
I have been thinking about the concept that everything must come from something, and the Abrahamic God. Can someone please help explain to me how if everything came from something, where did God come from?
The idea that "everything must come from something" is, at best, shorthand for "everything in nature must come from something," the inference being that a First Cause must necessarily be preternatural.
 

savagewind

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Some people say the universe came from nothing with one a big bang. Maybe God came from a big bang and recreated God's own existence with another big bang but instead of getting a friend God got us.
 

LuisDantas

Aura of atheification
Premium Member
Wouldn't that mean that the Big Bang is a more transcendental creator than God, though?
 

savagewind

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Wouldn't that mean that the Big Bang is a more transcendental creator than God, though?


I wouldn't say transcendental because that implies intelligence. I never heard of an explosion being "intelligent" but maybe they're working on it. Would it be considered by some as more worthy than Yahweh to be worshiped?
Yes it would but it's long gone. ie it doesn't exist anymore.
 

Quintessence

Consults with Trees
Staff member
Premium Member
I have been thinking about the concept that everything must come from something, and the Abrahamic God. Can someone please help explain to me how if everything came from something, where did God come from?

When I took a basic philosophy of religion class in undergrad (which really should have been called "philosophy of classical monotheism" but whatever), that this god-concept has no cause itself is part of what makes it, by definition, god. A root definition of god is that god is fundamentally greater. The First Cause that, in of itself, is not caused is fundamentally greater, as it is the originator of all else, therefore the uncaused cause is god. It's a philosophical argument; Aquinas I believe? I forget. Undergrad was a while ago for me now. Some of the resources on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy may be of use to you in learning about these ideas.
 

idav

Being
Premium Member
With the idea that something always comes from something would have to work infinately into the past. That isn't logical so one can conclude that there is an exception and maybe even something from nothing at some point. People like to make god the exception. Anything that comes about on its own as a first cause is divine in that it is a source unto itself which could be the case for the universe.
 

crossfire

LHP Mercuræn Feminist Heretic ☿
Premium Member
What happens to nothingness when you introduce it to impermanence? (linear time) What do you get? Chaos?

{Dang! I should know better than to ask this question. Now I'm waiting for the madness and vexation to settle in!} :eek:
 
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1137

Here until I storm off again
Premium Member
I have been thinking about the concept that everything must come from something, and the Abrahamic God. Can someone please help explain to me how if everything came from something, where did God come from?

God is suppose to be the solution to this problem, a "necessary" being, a being who exists in terms of itself. So, god exists because it is god, end of story. However, though I agree with the premises of the argument, I hardly agree with the conclusion that whatever always exists is some type of deity, nor does anything in reality hint at a deity. I would thing of it more as the Tao of Taoism, definitely something natural / material.
 

Leftimies

Dwelling in the Principle
I'm sure someone said this already - i didn't read all the comments, probably should've - but I think that the universe is cyclic, there is even come scientific evidence to support it; essentially the fact we know there was a Big Bang, and that the universe expanded with unthinkable speed; that we know that it might be collapsing back to its starting point. In essence, all the stuff the universe has (atoms, black matter, gas, galaxies, black holes) falls into one point with speed along the lines of light, and creates U.N.T.H.I.N.K.A.B.L.E amount of energy, exploding and expanding again. A new Big Bang again. The cycle repeats and repats and repeats over and over again.

Now I cannot answer how everything came to be, but I'd suppose that reality is something that is dualistic: existence and nonexistence together give birth to mutual dependency to which everything is rooted. What is this collective existence born out of that dependency? Time? I don't know. But I believe everything is rooted back to that duality, ultimate Yin and Yang (the unity of negative and positive existence), that some call God, or as Confucians would say, Heaven/Tian. Our universe might be cyclic, but that ultimate duality has been always around. There was no beginning or end to it.

The problem of Abrahamic religions is, that while the concept of God is not itself flawed, the God has been portrayed in too individual and personal a form. People have come to think Him as a person, an individual, subconsciously associating things like birth and death with him - after all, art depicts him as an old man of blood and flesh, while Jesus is young man, dying on cross. Seriously? Age and God? This is why the book says "do not depict me nor say my real name, nor call me in vain".
Thing is, Tian (Heaven/God) for me is not a person, but the ultimate law of nature. Spiritual being, but beyond our comprehension. We live in realm of existence, and cannot know the realm of nonexistence until we die. There is no way for us to understand the ways Tian (or whatever you'd call It) exists or is. Its like trying to explain to a born blind person the experience of visual observation and sight. We can only conclude It does exist, and is the root of everything there is.

Right?
 

Kilgore Trout

Misanthropic Humanist
I have been thinking about the concept that everything must come from something, and the Abrahamic God. Can someone please help explain to me how if everything came from something, where did God come from?

Attempts at logical arguments which attempt to prove the existence of god always end up making god an exception to logic.

Forget the logic already. It's faith. It's fine that it's faith. Deal with it.
 
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