Matter created God.
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Who made God?
- Thread starter Pegg
- Start date
work in progress
Well-Known Member
The only way around the question "who made God?" is place God out of any context that can be examined and away from further scrutiny -- so the laws of our physical universe just don't apply to God. And the believers who use God for a quick explanation for mysteries of the Universe and our existence, fail to answer the really crucial question: how does a supernatural, immaterial force interact with a physical universe without being constrained by the conditions of time and space that we and everything in this universe are bound by?
If matter created God, then matter would be the Creator.
Scriptures simply state that God always existed. [Psalm 90v2]
Therefore, according to Scripture, that makes God the Creator.
Creator of the invisible world and Creator of the material/physical world.
A
angellous_evangellous
Guest
According to Revelation [4v11] Jehovah [YHWH] our God,....because you created all things, and because of your will they existed and were created.
Genesis [2v3] ....because on it God has been resting from all his work that God has created for the purpose of making.
So, according to Scripture God [YHWH] is the Creator.
Didn't Mawtin Loother create Lutherans ?
They created each other. Always easier when you have help.
They created each other. Always easier when you have help.
Photonic
Ad astra!
They created each other. Always easier when you have help.
That would be interesting, as God would then become a testable quantity!
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Thank you for bringing the ^above^ to my attention.
Yes, Revelation would be according to: Christian Scripture
Genesis of course would be according to: Hebrew Scripture.
ManTimeForgot
Temporally Challenged
By being in every way transcendent including being logically transcendent. This is accomplished via being wholly indeterminate logically. Contradiction? Doesn't apply. Tautology? Doesn't apply either. Any quality you can think of and those you can't: don't apply.
Why even bother with something so arcane that it can't even be discussed properly?
Because that is the only way in which Reality itself could have been created. IF reality is created, then something must de facto exist outside/beyond Reality. This is of course meaningless to us, but that by itself doesn't mean that it is not possibly true.
We have zero evidence about the state of Reality's creation or lack thereof. Is Reality Eternal? Was it created? We can't actually answer either question. And yet that is precisely what someone is asking us to do every time they ask "Who made "God?"
The question of who made "God" only looks like it is sensical when referring to creation versus emergence. If a being is merely powerful (not the most) and subject to the laws of this universe, then it might be pertinent to refer to them as a god (little g), but in no way does this enter into the realm of "God" (big G). If a being is the most powerful being in existence while still subject to the laws of Reality, then it might do to refer to it as "God." And in this case you might wonder about the genesis of "God." But since this being has nothing to do with the genesis of Reality it is largely a moot question.
If "God" is in fact synonymous with Reality: I.E. you have a self-aware infinite whole (Unity), then you might wonder about origin or lack thereof, but the question is beyond our scope. We actually have not yet invented the language needed to properly describe the mechanism by which "God" would be created in this instance, since it pretty much defies the need for creation and why would we have any experience with comparing infinite wholes and self-aware realities to anything else?
If "God" is in fact consummate Perfection, then the question doesn't even apply. It is illogical to ask anything about "God." Anything attempting to be attributed to "God" has the same value as saying "God" is asg;lhkwer3t4o9 (actually probably less value since the gibberish I used has symbols we recognize).
MTF
work in progress
Well-Known Member
This would follow the common line that is found in many if not all forms of mysticism -- that enlightenment, or the fundamental understanding of everything is not part of our cortex-level reasoning and rationalizing process. In many traditions, such as Zen - there is no capacity to describe the experience of enlightenment in words to others, or describe the nature of the universe and being part of everything.
I've had simple experiences where I felt the feeling of knowing and the loss of boundaries and separation during meditation; and I know it feels real, but I still see a problem in trying to discern real mystical knowledge from simple self-delusion. In more recent years, I came across a book by a neurologist named Robert Burton: The Certainty Epidemic, wherein Burton demonstrates conclusively that even in simple, everyday life, people think they know things that they have no real cognitive proof of. In other words, we can have a feeling of knowing, without actually learning something; and that would make me a little suspicious of the divine mystical experience. I can't say that it isn't a real insight into nature, and that's not why we have it, but I am also reminded that many aspects of the mystical experience, such as the feeling of connectedness with everything around us, is correlated with a sharp decline in activity in the Parietal Lobes of the Cortex - and one of the functions of this region of the brain is to create our cognitive sense of boundaries, and tell us where our bodies leave off and the rest of the world begins.
If reality means everything that exists, there is no proof that it had to be created, either by something within or outside of the Universe. This is a question that physicists still ask today: why is there something rather than nothing? But, the same physicists point out that this is a problem for us largely because of our built in expectations that our world works by simple rules of cause and effect....which of course do not work at the fundamental level of particles...and which is why Quantum Mechanics seems impossible...if it didn't make testable predictions that most of our modern electronics are based on. And, as counter-intuitive as it sounds, there are a number of physicists who have written on the subject to show that the Universe does not have to be created or have a point of creation as we understand it. Here is a basic presentation dealing with the most common questions on the origins of the universe.
But, before we can jump ahead and start asking questions about God, we have to answer whether the universe requires the existence of a creator in the first place. The presentations from modern physics indicate that God is not necessary for a universe to exist.
ManTimeForgot
Temporally Challenged
That is kind of the point. If all of reality is one and the same with "the universe" (Something I HIGHLY doubt), and it is eternal and infinite in extent (internally consistent and as defined as is possible to be), then a creator is wholly unnecessary.
But if Time itself is real, and reality had a beginning, then you need something which exceeds Reality itself. Ergo you need something which transcends being real.
My point is that since we have zero knowledge we can't actually preclude any options. You can say I have "great confidence" that this is true, and that's fine for personal opinions, but that has nothing to do with rational discourse because it is based on nothing.
MTF
IsmailaGodHasHeard
Well-Known Member
God was not made or created. He is eternal and self existant.
Looncall
Well-Known Member
How do you verify that this statement is true?
work in progress
Well-Known Member
[/quote]
I don't know what something transcending reality actually would be, but time is only real in the context of being part of our universe. Before our universe existed, there was no time...in the sense of the space-time dimension we experience. And it is possible for an eternal, infinite universe to be consistent with an expanding universe model...even a universe that has a beginning and end on a larger multiverse framework as presented in all of the multiverse theories.
Anyway, back when Stephen Hawking wrote "A Brief History Of Time", he presented a challenging concept of the Universe called the No Boundary Proposal , in which our universe had no beginning or end, and was consistent with the Big Bang Model of an expanding universe....and this is where complex math begins and human intuitions end when trying to contemplate the physical nature of matter and the Universe! A lot of philosophers and theologians (William Lane Craig in particular) went off and running with a literal understanding that the Big Bang meant the beginning of the universe expanding into the deep void of space...and that since there was a beginning, something must have existed prior, and someone must have caused our universe to suddenly begin....and I wonder who that could be!
That link to a brief Encyclopedia of Science explanation of the No Boundary Proposal shows why we can't assume the Big Bang means the beginning of time in a way that we would understand it to be. It contains further links to the creation of a vertical time axis (Imaginary Time) and the math used to demonstrate its application. All I need to know is the brief explanation similar to the one physicists use to describe a four dimensional space-time model:
But this point would not be a singularity, like the Big Bang. Instead, it would be an ordinary point of spacetime, like the North Pole is an ordinary point on the Earth. According to the no boundary proposal, the universe would have expanded in a smooth way from a single point. As it expanded, it would have borrowed energy from the gravitational field, to create matter.
So, we can't think of the beginning as a beginning in time...or at least not on the horizontal axis of time that we use to map the displacements in space-time that we experience. It's similar to trying to rationalize how particles can have both particle and wave properties; how "virtual" particles can pop in and out of existence from the space-time fabric; or how particle events cannot be determined by our intuitive rules of cause and effect -- they have a set of probabilities for each possible change, and there's no predetermining of which pathway is chosen.
Long story short, trying to impose our intuitions that have been designed for living in what physicists call "the world of middle dimensions" provide no method for understanding the actual laws of physics that govern forces and matter, and making claims about the existence of God or supernatural forces.
And I agree that we are trying to find the most likely explanations, and that means leaving doors open as long as so much is up in the air and unknown. A neurologist I've heard in interviews recently -- David Eagleman, has a new book out on neuroscience which is getting some attention because of the implications it should have to our notions of free will and individual agency, which is not well received by conservative religious critics or believers in retributive justice theories. But Eagleman is getting flack from fundamentalist atheists such as the self-appointed grand inquistor for New Atheism - Jerry Coyne, because of some articles and talks he's given to support a moderate approach to belief claims he calls Possibilianism. I don't know if I'd call myself a Possibilian, but I agree with the points he makes in the 20 min. video.
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