McBell
mantra-chanting henotheistic snake handler
Seems to me that the goal is to keep god out of the same timeline as humans.
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Who Created God?
- Thread starter Dan4reason
- Start date
Seems to me that the goal is to keep god out of the same timeline as humans.
The law of nature is that everything physical has to have a cause and/or creator. God is not a physical being and therefore is not subject to the laws of nature that bind our imagination. We can't really imagine that God has always been and always will, but according to the Bible (our chief informative package about the Christian God) that is the nature of God. He is eternal.
No creator.
No creator.
Poisonshady313
Well-Known Member
That's not the argument. An eternal God isn't an effect. An eternal God isn't a creature. Those who believe in God don't call him A creator... but THE Creator.
If God was created, then it cannot be said that God is the first cause. However, the argument is that God is the first cause. Which is why asking what created God is a stupid question.
I neither want it to be nor do I need it to be. It is a stupid question. It's arguing a point that isn't being made.
It has nothing to do with not being able to answer the question. It's arguing a point that isn't being made.
If the belief is in a god that is infinite and is responsible for having created everything in the universe, it is absurd and useless to ask what came before. If the belief is in a God that is the highest being, it is absurd and useless to ask "so then what is higher than God".
Did you ever see My Cousin Vinny? Y'know the scene towards the end when Mr. Trotter asks Ms. Vito a question to see if she's qualified to testify as an expert in general automotive knowledge? Her refusal to answer the question wasn't because "she didn't know" or "she wasn't able"...
In her words, "it was a ******** question."
McBell
mantra-chanting henotheistic snake handler
We will simply have to agree to disagree.
Dan4reason
Facts not Faith
That is exactly what I intended to claim. That Christians believe in one God. There is no evidence that the Christian God exists, and according to Dawkins at least, there is no need to believe in him to explain complexity.
Copernicus
Industrial Strength Linguist
Poisonshady, let's go back to the OP, because I think that you have misconstrued what the argument is. It is not about "God as First Cause" but "God as Explanation of Complexity". The argument came from Dawkins, and the OP asked us to respond to that argument. Here is the OP:
So, as you can see, the argument was not a "first cause" issue, but an "argument from design" issue. That is, we observe a complex universe. We explain that complexity as a design implemented by God. But God must necessarily be more complex than the universe, if he invented the design for it. So who created the complexity that we refer to as "God"?
I would agree up to a point. That point would be that we do not need to posit a creator of the universe, since the universe (or physical reality) itself could just be the uncreated thing rather than God. The key idea behind the argument for God is that he explains the complexity that we observe in nature, which most people think on an intuitive level as impossible to have arisen by chance. Sure, you can define God as the "first cause", but you can also define the universe itself as the "first cause". Definitions are cheap.
opuntia
Religion is Law
Who created God? Another God.
It is the nature of man to doubt that Godhood is available to mankind. But if God knows all things and has all power, He has the ability to make a man into a God if that man has sufficient faith. Leviticus 19:1-2; Psalm 82:6; Matthew 5:48; Acts 17:28-29: Romans 14-17; cf. Genesis 1:26-27: 3:22. Some will say that there is not enough time here on earth for such an endeavor. But is time short or is it eternal?
It is the nature of man to doubt that Godhood is available to mankind. But if God knows all things and has all power, He has the ability to make a man into a God if that man has sufficient faith. Leviticus 19:1-2; Psalm 82:6; Matthew 5:48; Acts 17:28-29: Romans 14-17; cf. Genesis 1:26-27: 3:22. Some will say that there is not enough time here on earth for such an endeavor. But is time short or is it eternal?
logician
Well-Known Member
There is no such law, and the multiverse needs no cause, as matter and energy have existed forever.:sleep:
Dan4reason
Facts not Faith
Time is not eternal, it was created by the big bang billions of years ago. I do not see how creationists can say that design is the only explanation for intelligence when God needs to be explained. You cannot explain God with an infinite regress of causes because then there was no first cause. If there is no first cause then the other causes could have never happened.
Midnight Pete
Well-Known Member
Or vice-versa?
Dan4reason
Facts not Faith
A God that has existed for infinity has no cause and therefore contradicts causality. So the only explanation for God seems to be a breach of causality. This is one alternative to the design argument though it is not good without proof. There are many other alternatives to the design arguments. I hope that this has all proven how bad of an explanation the design argument is.
Midnight Pete
Well-Known Member
Time is not eternal. Evidence, please!
Dan4reason
Facts not Faith
That is a possibility, however we simply don't know. We cannot explain or prove God so there is no good reason to make God a necessary explanation for our universe.
Dan4reason
Facts not Faith
This idea arises from the big bang theory and Einstein's theory of relativity. Time is relative and therefore may not have always existed. We have evidence for the big bang including the kind of radiation we see and the fact that the galaxies are moving apart.
Midnight Pete
Well-Known Member
It doesn't make sense that everything just happened. How do you get a Mona Lisa or a Starry Night by just throwing buckets of paint at a canvas? Intellectual dishonesty does not become you, dan4reason.
Dan4reason
Facts not Faith
How is the universe like Mona Lisa? The system with space-time we have now is full of stars and planets revolving around them. This is a natural effect of the big bang and is not designed. I find your analogy unreasonable.
Anyway, how do we get the designer? Design, or something else?
demonIntegral
before speaker
After the breaking of perfection, a planetoid orbited a stellar binary. The rest of the known universe at that time was rubble; small enough to escape the gravitational attraction of neighboring bodies, too small to cause attraction. And thus it remained, for an age beyond counting. And it was something of a crystal lattice, stellar radiatiation, electricity. and the varing degree of cosmic interaction brought about by a chaotic, but stable orbit that induced varing degrees of conductivity to self-organize, and ask the first question - what am I? After the passing of a trillion years, a form of machine intelligence evolved - into the Creator of this, the third such universe.
I've seen it. Doesn't make it real. But, considering the prevelence of number, the complexity of life; introns and idiots and Enron, things like God and god and godless heathens, where the big picture says everything is gravity, and the small picture says, probably - if there was a Creator behind all creation - then I'd bet on some guy who took every step to insure that determination could not be determined, that cause can sure substitute for effect, that the simple and the complex and the chaotic could dance to the tune of relative simultaniety - even as such a being must accommodate his own origins, and fire his creation with a clockwork mechanism - like entropy, perhaps...
But Dawkins is an idiot. Good biologist, good writer... bad atheist. He's on a crusade to spread the word, for crying out loud - ain't that the kind of stuff, makes people claim that atheism is a religion? I mean, I actually kind of like the guy; but get him in a conversation with a theist, and whatever he is trying to say is lost in the effort to say it; and was is heard is only his arrogance.
Who created god? I did. That means, I was born screaming and looking to get fed just like any other animal. Part of my sustenance was an education in the English language, where god clearly exists. It is a concept to be considered, shared, accepted, or denied. Along the way, there has been far more considerations than mere semantics. There is nuance, innuendo, collusion, and unspoken agreement; but if "god does not exist," then neither do I. Who created Dawkins? Nature, that selects?
The best that science can do is state that the early quark-gluon plasma was opaque to radiation. Which simplfies to - we do not know, and we may never know. But to take causality as gospel is to make another religion. Sure, we can measure it in a lab, we can say - second law, we can write it up in the textbooks and teach it to our children. Sure, that's what science is good for, but there is no good reason that the scientific method cannot be applied to the subjective laboratory of the mind. And how many times have you looked at yourself in the mirror, and said, why did I just do that?
Who creates the creator? How do we breathe vaccuum? How do I sail the seas of Beltegeuse? Just because words can form a question, that is no guarantee that logic can provide an answer - and in a very real sense - all of us, together, are creating god. What kind of universe did you create today?
I've seen it. Doesn't make it real. But, considering the prevelence of number, the complexity of life; introns and idiots and Enron, things like God and god and godless heathens, where the big picture says everything is gravity, and the small picture says, probably - if there was a Creator behind all creation - then I'd bet on some guy who took every step to insure that determination could not be determined, that cause can sure substitute for effect, that the simple and the complex and the chaotic could dance to the tune of relative simultaniety - even as such a being must accommodate his own origins, and fire his creation with a clockwork mechanism - like entropy, perhaps...
But Dawkins is an idiot. Good biologist, good writer... bad atheist. He's on a crusade to spread the word, for crying out loud - ain't that the kind of stuff, makes people claim that atheism is a religion? I mean, I actually kind of like the guy; but get him in a conversation with a theist, and whatever he is trying to say is lost in the effort to say it; and was is heard is only his arrogance.
Who created god? I did. That means, I was born screaming and looking to get fed just like any other animal. Part of my sustenance was an education in the English language, where god clearly exists. It is a concept to be considered, shared, accepted, or denied. Along the way, there has been far more considerations than mere semantics. There is nuance, innuendo, collusion, and unspoken agreement; but if "god does not exist," then neither do I. Who created Dawkins? Nature, that selects?
The best that science can do is state that the early quark-gluon plasma was opaque to radiation. Which simplfies to - we do not know, and we may never know. But to take causality as gospel is to make another religion. Sure, we can measure it in a lab, we can say - second law, we can write it up in the textbooks and teach it to our children. Sure, that's what science is good for, but there is no good reason that the scientific method cannot be applied to the subjective laboratory of the mind. And how many times have you looked at yourself in the mirror, and said, why did I just do that?
Who creates the creator? How do we breathe vaccuum? How do I sail the seas of Beltegeuse? Just because words can form a question, that is no guarantee that logic can provide an answer - and in a very real sense - all of us, together, are creating god. What kind of universe did you create today?
MW0082
Jesus 4 Profit.... =)~
I have too also thought this. It's the old chiken or the egg conundrum. I would ahve to say "if" there were a god/gods, they would have to come from somewhere, so where did the god/gods come from?
my personal belief is religion and gods talk started to explain the things we could not answer. Humans are curious by nature,. we explore and ask a lot of questions. So it's easy to see how people thought of gods as controlling everything around them, fore they could not have had the knowledge or technology to know otherwise. As time went on, people believe more and more, and many people took advantage of this and more and more religions started to pop up. With different ideas of how you should live your life. Now religion is propaganda, pure and simple. If there is a god, no one living or lived as ever known what it's true purpose and being is...
my personal belief is religion and gods talk started to explain the things we could not answer. Humans are curious by nature,. we explore and ask a lot of questions. So it's easy to see how people thought of gods as controlling everything around them, fore they could not have had the knowledge or technology to know otherwise. As time went on, people believe more and more, and many people took advantage of this and more and more religions started to pop up. With different ideas of how you should live your life. Now religion is propaganda, pure and simple. If there is a god, no one living or lived as ever known what it's true purpose and being is...
tomato1236
Ninja Master
Huh. I always thought it was your mom. I can't prove it, but I just believe.