If God created the universe, then who created God?

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I'm a bit strapped at the moment but if that message arrives I'll dig up the postage no question.

Cosmic/Comic origins topic

I have never understood the reason why Creationists need to justify their faith in a god creating the universe. I accept those like Iamnotaparakeet have faith in their ideas about the First cause, and to me, and to me, at least, faith needs no justification. It cannot be proven nor can it be justified through physical evidence.

Like many others here, overwhelmingly atheist/nontheist, I prefer harder evidence of a cause. Humans need the reassurance of a rational cause (I did not say real), and what I mean by rational, logically presented and satisfies the need for understanding.

Causes for any event are not so straightforward. For going on forty three years I have been studying the concept of genocides (mostly the Holocaust) and there are many theories and ideas, some overlapping, some controversial, and all must demonstrate soundness/rationality for these to be acceptable to scholars. And remember, their are still many revisionaries who deny it ever occurred. (I am waiting for someone to state that there is no cause to the origin of the universe because it never happened. There IS NO universe. It is all an illusion.) The only time there are problems is when the situation becomes political, and the lack of cause/event is used against those who believe it.

All cultures have their universe creation stories. It is a group thing and gives them a common beginning. Same with the comic origins posts. What makes western science's unique is that there must be some sort of rational evidence to back up the theories, and the group identity thing is not an issue.

From what I understand, He was always here.

Here, meaning in the Universe? If so, he couldn't have created it. If not, then where was He? And what created that?

That He was here before the universe was created. Supposedly we can't understand it because our mortal minds but we will when we go to heaven. It's what us Christian folks call "faith".

Do you not see the obvious contradiction in this sentence? How could He be here before here was created? That very obviously makes no sense.

God was always here. It's something us Christian-folk call "faith". I don't think we're supposed to understand.

See us non believers have a thing called science, because we believe we are supposed to search for a rational understanding of all things.

I know what faith is. It's something that, when extended to something that very obviously contradicts itself (the idea of something being located "here" before there was a "here" for it to be located in), is identical to gullibility. "He was here before there was a here" is undisputably a self-contradictory claim, there's no two ways about it. "I don't think we're supposed to understand" doesn't apply. I understand what you're saying, You are saying that a thing was in a place before that place existed, and that is completely impossible. It's not a matter of not being supposed to understand, it's a simple matter of very basic logic, which I am sure you are fully capable of understanding if you just take a moment to think about what it is that you are saying. You are saying that x (God) was a part of y ("here") before y ("here") existed. This is incapable of being true, no matter how mindbogglingly powerful x is supposed to be. Something can not be y and not y at the same time. y=y.

You cannot convince somebody that has as a basic principle that he or she is too stupid to understand and accepts that to deny all inquisitiveness.

Only if you operate from the premise that the universe is a closed system encompassing all that there is.

When you realize there is very likely something larger within which the universe is "contained" (for lack of a better term), you realize that something could exist outside and before the "universe" we know of came to be.

Quantm Physics is a theoretical science that has room for God. Isn't it possable that there are as many God's in alternate dimensions as their are solar systems. Are aternate dimensions so far fetched? Who are we to say being that we're simple 3D creatures? And is it not possible that in these alternate dimensions our beginning and ending rules may not apply?

If you look back, you will see that I brought up that possibility before, asking who would have created that, and PunkyKat seemed to either reject it, ignore it, or possibly imply that God created that too*, by "clarifying" that God was always "here" and we're not supposed to understand.

* X can't already have been in Z while creating Z to be in while creating Y, so if X created Y while being in Z, and X created Z, X must have been in yet another hypothetical "something larger" while creating Z, and now we've got ourselves a hypothetical infinite regression in which X is superfluous. Occam's razor says lose the X, as it's a hypothetical step that begs more explanation than it provides for anything.

We haven't even figured out cancer or aids or how to fill our energy needs cleanly. We cant even understand what right in front of us so how can we understand the concept of God?

I find it's quite easy to understand the concept of God simply by categorizing it along with other mythological figures such as Zeus, Santa Claus, and El Chupacabra.

Excellent, Thank you Sand, but unfortunately I doubt any of our rapid theists, deists, pagans etc will understand your point. Because for them the earth was without doubt created by a supernatural being. To quote Dawkins "religion is about turning untested beliefs into unshakeable truths through the power of institutions and the passage of time"

Last edited by DentArthurDent on 17 Jan 2010, 2:22 am, edited 1 time in total.