Who Created God?

[glenstein 0]

Just like verse 1 Corinthians 15:27, when it is said, "God created everything," it is clear that "everything" does not include God Himself. Unfortunately, it is only clear to believers. Since we ourselves have been created, we cannot fathom how something could have always existed.

 

Using doctrine to debate is a bit of a tightrope, but it looks reasonable enough here. I would have to disagree with part of your statement though. We have been created, but that doesn't mean we are so overwhelmingly helplessly subjective that we have to believe everything is like us, that it was created also. We don't think that of abstract thoughts like numbers, I don't believe we even think of atoms that way.

 

It's more specific to certain kinds of identifiable objects like mountains, cars, cats, tomatoes, rivers. We need to believe there is a reasonable explanation for them being "created" and explain it via natural processes and the like. We need to explain things that way because it is reasonable, because we were "created" just the same by logical, predictable processes and everything that surrounds seems to also have been. It's just an obvious, self-evident question.

 

As far as the universal fabric they are all a part of, the atoms/quarks etc., I don't think anyone really is looking for how they were created, at least not in the same way. A distinction should be made between the need for a commoner to explain the everyday materials objects and life forms they constantly encounter, and the need to explain the furthest reaching scientific mysteries, or other abstract things where the question doesn't apply. The will for the former is because the answer is there, obvious, ought to be right in front of us. With the latter we are abundantly capable of leaving the answer unsolved if it suits us or if we understand that it is impractical to ask for it.

 

With one we know an explanation should be right in front of us, with the other, people are smart enough to think about it different. Just the same, I don't think anyone really "needs" to explain God just because they were created and everything around them was created. I think people are smarter than that. To your credit, you yourself are clearly able to avoid making this mistake.

 

Also, it's patronizing to say it can only be "clear" to believers (and not to others) how something has always existed when the only difference is not of understanding, but in that they believe. What is so much more clear or enlightened about that? Where is the clarity, that renders non-believers confused fools? Is it that everything is solved, figured out? No stress of further unanswered questions?

[truefusion 3]

[1]Using doctrine to debate is a bit of a tightrope, but it looks reasonable enough here. I would have to disagree with part of your statement though. We have been created, but that doesn't mean we are so overwhelmingly helplessly subjective that we have to believe everything is like us, that it was created also. We don't think that of abstract thoughts like numbers, I don't believe we even think of atoms that way.

 

[2]It's more specific to certain kinds of identifiable objects like mountains, cars, cats, tomatoes, rivers. We need to believe there is a reasonable explanation for them being "created" and explain it via natural processes and the like. We need to explain things that way because it is reasonable, because we were "created" just the same by logical, predictable processes and everything that surrounds seems to also have been. It's just an obvious, self-evident question.

 

[. . .]

 

[3]With one we know an explanation should be right in front of us, with the other, people are smart enough to think about it different. Just the same, I don't think anyone really "needs" to explain God just because they were created and everything around them was created. I think people are smarter than that. To your credit, you yourself are clearly able to avoid making this mistake.

 

[4]Also, it's patronizing to say it can only be "clear" to believers (and not to others) how something has always existed when the only difference is not of understanding, but in that they believe. What is so much more clear or enlightened about that? Where is the clarity, that renders non-believers confused fools? Is it that everything is solved, figured out? No stress of further unanswered questions?

 

[1]Science can only study what is visible/detectable/etc, obviously. It has been proven that this dimension of time had a beginning. Since we're bound to this dimension of time, everything within it must have had a beginning, also. Everything outside our dimension of time doesn't necessarily have to have had a beginning.

 

[2]If one can see a pattern in design, how can one say there is no designer behind it? Is randomness logical? If there is no randomness, then there must be a Designer, or else there would be no way to pick up these "natural" laws.

 

[3]You're right, there's no need to try and explain God. However, many a-time you will find people asking questions about Him, so trying to explain God can't be helped.

 

[4]Perhaps you misunderstood what i meant by "it is only clear to the believers." I meant that when they say "everything," it does not include God--this is what is clear to us. Not that it is clear that something has always existed. Do you understand what i mean, now?

[glenstein 0]

[1]Science can only study what is visible/detectable/etc, obviously. It has been proven that this dimension of time had a beginning. Since we're bound to this dimension of time, everything within it must have had a beginning, also. Everything outside our dimension of time doesn't necessarily have to have had a beginning.

Well said, and I disagree with none of this. But why this statement:

Since we ourselves have been created, we cannot fathom how something could have always existed.

Cannot fathom? My point was that I think people can indeed "fathom", in some sense of the word, an object standing outside of time (God). What exactly is it about our being created, that makes it impossible to fathom a creator? Why does one make the other impossible? I suspect the answer has much to do with what you meant by that word. Do you mean "fathom" as in some materialized itemization, some scientific observation?

 

[2]If one can see a pattern in design, how can one say there is no designer behind it? Is randomness logical? If there is no randomness, then there must be a Designer, or else there would be no way to pick up these "natural" laws.

I was worried this side note might get incorporated. I was just further elaborating on the kind of "fathomable" things people can comprehend and why such immediate material comprehension is different from "fathoming" a God and that most people make that distinction. Pretty much related to the first point. I honestly had no intention of going into that watchmaker debate (i.e. everything implies a designer) when I mentioned this. Different subject.

 

[4]Perhaps you misunderstood what i meant by "it is only clear to the believers." I meant that when they say "everything," it does not include God--this is what is clear to us. Not that it is clear that something has always existed. Do you understand what i mean, now?

That distinction is not my hang-up, I'm afraid, as my point addresses the same issue whether its about something always existing or whether its about God being different from the "everything" he created. Why should it necessarily be any less clear to atheists? It sounds patronizing or at best, beside the point. Maybe some atheists are mistaken about this, maybe some aren't. Maybe some believers are also. Clear suggests enlightened, informed, knowledgeable and this is what your believers have but the atheists don't.

 

All in good will,

g

Edited January 23, 2007 by glenstein (see edit history)

[morosophos 0]

On account of the great controversy surrounding all issues pertaining to religion, on account of vast digression of subject, on account of the same explanations (repeated many times over) not satiating the demand of the original question, and on account of the designated Christian fanatic having spoken, there must be a different approach to the issue.

 

Religion and science are fundementally disparate. Not in the sense that religious doctrine and scientific law cannot be compatible (for they can be, if you let them), but in the realm of subject. The two disciplines have differing opinions on what is true. As for science, empirical data and proven rational fact are true. Religion pursues an ethereal truth; what can feasibly explain the purpose and meaning of the universe is true.

 

Science is an explicit discipline, its nature is very evidential. That is to say, science justifies its truth with evidence, and that evidence is easily seen and understood by the senses. By compiling vast catalogues of evidence, science begins to construct theories on the relation between all the evidence, which then becomes theory, and theory into law. At that time, theories and models can explain what is true, giving birth to even more theories and laws. Science, at its heart, expands upon what is perceived directly by the senses. Therefore, science cannot ever deny nor confirm the existence of God, unless there is perceiveable evidence. Any proof for or against God is not scientific, but philosophical.

 

By contrast, religion is philosophy?or more specifically?metaphysics. Philosophy does not gather empirical evidence to be strung together into models, theories, and laws. Philosophy rather constructs worldviews, whose origins are not evidential nor even need to be perceiveable. These worldviews are the foundations for other things that one often finds in religion as well: morality, a liturgy, and a sense of purpose. No one sees science giving moral instruction, for that is not the place of science, just as no one sees the Dalai Lama processing proudly from his hut with the AIDS vaccine. Theology and metaphysics govern the highly-flexible laws of religion, which seeks unpretentiously to discover the meaning of life.

 

If one were to suppose completely hypothetically (as one must, since there is at least one here who would disagree that there ever was in fact such a time) that there was a time that the universe existed with life therein yet without human presence, then there would still be perceivable evidence that science would have otherwise used in its workings. Tangible objects exist with or without someone there to see it. However, this is not the case with theology and metaphysics. Because philosophy is not tangible, but the brainchild of humanity, philosophy exists only insofar as there are people. But if there is no person alive to contemplate theology and metaphysics, then there exists neither theology nor metaphysics. God for monotheists is the summation of theology; He is the metaphysics. Conceptually then, God appears at the beginning of human contemplation, and likewise He will perish upon the boundary of human perception.

 

To be fair, if one is going to theologize, one must theologize within the same theology. In the case of determining God's source, one must work within the rules and limits of monotheism. Monotheism holds that God is the culmination of metaphysics, that spirituality is necessarily relationality with God. God Himself then effectively becomes metaphysics in its essence. Recall that metaphysics is only the object of contemplation, and the problem is uncovered: how can one contemplate that which is, by the postulates of monotheism, outside cogitation? At that point one begins to look for the origin of not only his own, but all humanity's psyche. This of course cannot be found, since one can only think what there is available to be thought upon, that whose existence coincides with that of the tool (the psyche) that comes to analyze it, and no more.

 

If anyone denies the origin of God altogether, then that one is not working within the monotheistic boundaries, which prohibit a definite answer, though the very purpose of monotheism is to affirmatively propose a single deity. Denying God is accepting another philosophy, such as mine, which holds the universe itself as infinite rather than a deity. Concrete responses to the question of God's origin can only be reached through extra-monotheistic philosophies.

[DjLuki 0]

How was Earth created? How were animals created? Which came first, human species or animals? there is really no answer to your question as nobody ever saw/met him... we have no facts to prove it..but we know there is one, as we have our prophets.

[Zues 0]

In my opinion not only is there no answer to this question but the question itself has no validity.For example, take two separate spheres of energy. Since energy makes space, we now have two totally exclusive spheres of space, and since interaction of space makes time, each sphere has it's own time. Now presuming the balls of space-time have no connection, how can we try to ask will the two spheres are at the same point on the time-line when their time has nothing at all to do with each matter and would have no difference where in the time line they were for the answer. On top of that, connect the two spheres with a tunnel, then cut the tunnel, and reconnect it. Since there was no interaction after separating the spheres, you could technically reconnect before you attached the first tunnel.So therefore I think the question of who created god has no merit since it has no physical connection with us mortals, or our time.

[red flag 0]

I've always pondered that question as well. Who really did create him? That's one of the reasons why I kind of don't believe in god. It's strange. What's even more interesting is who created the universe or how was it created? and whatever created that, who did that? and so and so forth. Strange.