If God created the universe, then who created God?

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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.

The best analogy I can think of for the universe and time (ie. thermodynamic relaxation) is a book - a book has characters, a world, changing, evolving, if its by a good writer you don't have too much in the way of deus ex machina, but at the same time a person can read that book - they don't have to go sequentially, they can look at page 566 and then go to 123, because they simply aren't held to the chronology of the pages or the characters within in which are of course bound to the book itself. Being bound to matter and made of matter works something like being characters in a novel.

That said the reality of our universe from beginning to end could - like a book - exist in a particular time and space outside as something similar to what we may think of as an information bearing physical object in our world - whether you want to think of a book, whether you want to think of one of Hero of Alexandria's mechanical plays or Anthony Hopkin's marble tracks in Fracture, everything works on very strict probabilistic guidelines though - enough to say that free will does not exist whatsoever.

I think this is why atheists and theists will be banging out the issue for a long time. On some topics its clear - one side is more educated or intellectually on with things while the other would have to be more ignorant or just plain stupid, you have other issues where two very intelligent people could look at the facts and come to contrary conclusions that are both equally valid - most of what we usually debate in here (or at least seems like it can get people's blood up and keep a debate going on for pages) is the later, no matter what kind of jeering or name-calling either side wants to throw the other.

If we are to say that 'something' created the universe that's fine, I'll define my own opinion a bit more by saying that if we invoke a multiverse we're really just building a bigger universe (which is one of those arguments where ruveyn's saying about placing the earth on a stack of turles holds quite true - multiverse just adds more turtles). I think what will be far more interesting is our future research of dark matter and dark energy; where they came from, if only positive matter resulted from the big bang rather than dark or antimatter, I think cosmological arguments at that point at least will start gaining a lot more back-lighting in one direction or another. I don't think any result will every truly quench or destroy theism or people's concept of 'spirituality' as its an order of salience that's too individual to the holder and where the only arguments for or against its existence seem to fail when you try and make it reach out and grab science or make science reach out and grab it.

Hi everyone. I'm temporarily back from my melt-down. Woo-hoo! Anyhow, I love this quote from Sand so if it's okay I'm going to use it for my own reasoning....

Let's focus on observable phenomena. As far as we know everything that exists has a preceding cause (as stated by the OP). If we extend this knowledge to unobservable phenomena (as Sand suggested) it would follow that the universe has a cause which also has a cause and so on for an infinite regressive time. I'm just following logic here, no beliefs. However both infinity and god as a creator cannot be observed, and the boundaries of what science can observe are constantly moving. This makes the following explanations all somewhat unreliable.

1) Science. Pretty much nothing else exists beyond what science can establish from direct observation. We have observed throughout history that science is continually making new discoveries - so it would follow that more discoveries will continue to be made in the future.

2) God as creator. According to current observation there is nothing that exists without a cause. Just because an exception to this rule (eg. an unoriginated God) has not been observed doesn't necessitate its non-existence. Even though this explanation doesn't follow logically - as mentioned in the first explanation - science is continually making new discoveries, so perhaps the universal law of cause and effect is not so universal afterall.

3) Infinite regression. According to current observation there is nothing that exists without a cause. So it would follow that there is no such thing as an unoriginated beginning (or even an unoriginated creator). Just because infinity cannot be observed doesn't necessarily mean it is impossible. Afterall - it is actually the most logical explanation based on current observation.

In any given time it is known that science is limited as to what it can observe, and therefore what it can explain. So the question I pose is this: would you follow something that doesn't know; or something that can't be observed AND breaks the rules of logic; or something that can't be observed BUT follows the rules of logic as far as we know?

Then I would consider the methods we rely on in our quest for answers.
Those who rely on science are content to die knowing that future generations will know more than they do.
Those who rely on God are content to die knowing that all answers will be provided at the time of death.
Those who rely on an infinite regression are NOT content to die without answers, and will instead use particular meditation techniques for an expansion of their consciousness which supposedly brings with it the realisation of the nature of existence during their lifetime (eg. buddhists).
In all 3 scenarios a degree of faith is required.

Sure put em all together but you can't really hide a watermelon in a basket of apples, oranges and a couple of pears.

I sure could.

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Last edited by b9 on 18 Jan 2010, 6:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.