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The Beginning of God

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The Beginning of God

BicPen
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Posted 05/07/05 - 01:45 PM: Subject: THE BEGINNING OF GOD	#1
Us humans imagine every thing to have a beginning and an end, we cannot imagine how something can come to existence without a beginning…it only makes sense. It has therefore been asked who the creator of God was? And who was His creator, and so forth….But we have to come to the conclusion that: AT SOME POINT SOMETHING MUST HAVE COME FROM NOTHING. I have a theory which challenges that statement and explores how it could be possible for God to have Always existed, and would like to test its validity in this forum. The answer is actually nicely summed up in Genesis where it’s stated that, for God, one moment is like a lifetime, and a lifetime as a moment. For us to understand God and his Superior existence we have to think outside of time. God could have existed for always as He is not “trapped” in time. Outside of time there is neither Beginning nor End, it simply doesn’t exist.(There is no time to create in, no time to live in, no time die in. Everything outside of time just exists)This is how we can explain how God has neither beginning nor end. For a Being living outside of time, it is a given that He is omnipresent.(there is no TIME for Him to travel in, from one spot to another, He is not limited to being here or there at a specific TIME, He can be anywhere/everywhere at anytime/every time). For a Being living outside of time, it is a given that he is omniscient (think of your lifetime drawn on a timeline, every event viewable from beginning to end at one glance. Outside of TIME every event that has occurred and will occur can be seen at a glance, as there is no NOW, there is know TIME to experience in, everything is true at once. All knowledge of everything that is true in time is thus known). For a Being living outside of time, it is a given that he is omnipotent.( he is not bound to time to accomplish certain deeds or acts, if He wants something to be true it can just be implemented into time at any stage as he please. We as humans are trapped in this reality of time, and have difficulty understanding existence outside of time, as there would be no TIME to understand in…But isn’t that exactly what happens when we die, our body’s which is bound to TIME, passing on, and we are set free. Living immoral lives (in heaven) would only be possible outside of time, imagine how scary it would be having to live forever, still trapped in time, being aware of every moment passing…cycles of moments, never coming to pass. All comments and thoughts will be appreciated
It’s not our world that’s imperfect, but rather your definition of perfect. -Johan van Vuren-

Nads
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Posted 05/07/05 - 11:37 PM:	#2
I agree with your question, something that has came to me often ' who created god? ' and you answered this in your post, I assume you are a Christian as you reference Genesis, this is the answer to your question the authors of the bible created the Christian god and other holy books created other gods. The universe is in a cycle of never ending existence with no boundaries, why does it have to be more complicated than that? We exist through chance there is no need for divine interaction, we just are. The fact that depression is on the increase is that we are animals living in an unnatural habitat that our minds cannot or have not evolved enough to cope with it. The world is changing so rapidly that this problem can only get worse. With regard to Jesus, was he not a good man who did not like the injust way that Jews were the only ones with the right to heaven? if so how does this differ with the twisted truth of his teachings in that only by practicing Christians can go to Heaven? If god exists (which I clearly belive he does not, just like peter pan in my opinion does not exist) and is so selfish that we must follow his every wish and be punished for eternity to go against it. Everything about god does resemble humanity and that is because every god is created in the minds of humans. Why are people told they are insane if they believe in Alien abductions or have illusinations yet billions of people are seen as being sane because there are billions of them that believe in these well constructed fairytales we call religions. Whatever your mind perceives is reality, when your mind is no more then nothing exists anymore. Satan and ourselves face punishment because we are free thinkers and do not wish to be slaves to god's ideals - he sounds to me that he is like the most evil dictator that humanity has ever had the misfortue to endure, puts Stalin, Hitler, Hussain in the shade.

BicPen
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Posted 05/08/05 - 07:16 AM:	#3
Nads you've raised some valid points there. First of all I come from a Christian home, I know the teachings, but I don't label myself as a Christian, there is allot of things that discusses me about Christianity, some of the things you pointed out here. (I.e. only Christians can go to heaven) As for the bible, I refer to often because of the truths I find in it, The Bible may be perverted by Christianity and other religions, but I do find some of the text shockingly accurate. The universe is in a cycle of never ending existence with no boundaries, why does it have to be more complicated than that? Cycle of never ending existence...not complicated, that statement contradicts itself, as I can't even begin to imagine the complex nature of a never ending, never bingeing universe. . Satan and ourselves face punishment because we are free thinkers and do not wish to be slaves to god's ideals You may not believe me when I say this, but you can only be free in the name of God, only he will set you free, you will only find peace when you trust him with your heart and soul. He doesn't ask of you to make any sacrifices, but when you find salvation in his love, you will dedicate your life to him out of your own will, and only then will you be free of the material world.
It’s not our world that’s imperfect, but rather your definition of perfect. -Johan van Vuren-

nerfed
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Posted 05/08/05 - 10:38 AM:	#4
Bicpen wrote: For a Being living outside of time, it is a given that he is omnipotent.( he is not bound to time to accomplish certain deeds or acts, if He wants something to be true it can just be implemented into time at any stage as he please. Time isn't a two way street, it's like a ruler. You measure things by time, you cannot go "backward" through it. So once an instant has passed for us then it is gone. God is not working in the past as you are reading this, because the past has already happened. We can only perceive and experience in the present. So God only presents Himself to us in the present, or "now", of our existence. That is why He names Himself "I Am". Not "I Was", or "I Will Be". Nads wrote: the authors of the bible created the Christian god and other holy books created other gods. How do you know this? That is an awful big assertion and claim that no God exists. Nads wrote: The universe is in a cycle of never ending existence with no boundaries, why does it have to be more complicated than that? Zeno of Elea, an ancient philosopher has a paradox sort of like that. If you have an infinite amount of time, how did we ever get to May 8th, 2005? Because between the any two points in your temporally infinte universe there would be an infinite amount of time. So it would take an infinite amount of time to go from 12:01 pm to 12:02 pm. This begs the question of, how do we even perceive time and change at all? They shouldn’t exist if the universe is temporally infinite. Or, to give the argument the benefit of the doubt, lets assume that the universe is in fact unending. Where would the energy come from to keep it going? The workable energy present in the universe had to have come from somewhere, so where would it have come from if the universe is the only absolute? The universe’s workable energy is on the decline, and the entropy of the universe is increasing,. So if the universe is truely temporally infinite then wouldn't we be in a state of zero usable energy by now? 1) To go from one instant in time to the next would take an infinite amount of time. 2) Workable energy decreases with every instant of time. 3) It would have taken an infinite amount of time to get to our present. 4) There should be practically zero workable energy by now. If you start with the premise that everything tends towards disorder, and we are still tending toward it. Then there must have been a time in the distant past where everything was perfectly ordered. So that makes the argument of an infinitely old, or beginning-less, universe a moot point. The universe’s workable energy is a limiting factor on the age of the universe. Nads wrote: We exist through chance there is no need for divine interaction, we just are. The fact that depression is on the increase is that we are animals living in an unnatural habitat that our minds cannot or have not evolved enough to cope with it. The world is changing so rapidly that this problem can only get worse. If we came by chance, then there is no purpose to the universe. So why are you even trying to argue purpose, if purpose itself does not even exist. Which means you and I have no intrinsic worth as human beings, we are of no more importance than the chair we sit on, or the air we breathe. If depression is on the rise it is due to the fact that the existential post-modern society we live in has given us no reason to not be depressed. Why bother if things like happiness or human value if they themselves are purposeless? If you say that humanity came by chance, that is our heritage. You can only know where you are going if you know where you come from, correct? So if we came by chance with no purpose, then we will end up in a purposeless world. You can thank the existentialist philosophers that have now enabled us to stand side by side with the psychopaths and cocaine addicts in the chorus of, "There is no meaning to life. What is life anyway? Why even bother?" You can attribute much of the depravity of this world to the phrase "we just are." Nads wrote: With regard to Jesus, was he not a good man who did not like the injust way that Jews were the only ones with the right to heaven? That does not accurately reflect the person of Jesus. He came to save the Jews, and all of humanity, because they were not going to heaven. Nads wrote: if so how does this differ with the twisted truth of his teachings in that only by practicing Christians can go to Heaven? It has nothing to do with practicing Christians. God does not care about religion, God cares about the relationship between "Person A" and Himself. Jesus is the way to God. Jesus saved us from the strangle hold of legalistic religions and their traditions. Nads wrote: If god exists (which I clearly belive he does not, just like peter pan in my opinion does not exist) and is so selfish that we must follow his every wish and be punished for eternity to go against it. If God is perfect, all loving, and all just why would you not want to do what He says? If anything, that only shows the selfishness of the human heart, that we have the audacity to look down our noses at God and say, "I want to do it my way, not yours." His "wishes" are for our good, everyone looks at the 10 commandments and God’s laws as chains. When infact they more like a huge fence that prevents us from harming ourselves. How many "good" things come out of murder or theft or rape? Not any. He protects us with His wishes, but because we are so arrogant and stubborn, we refuse to listen and do things our way and well… just take a look around you at the fallen state humanity is in. Nads wrote: Satan and ourselves face punishment because we are free thinkers and do not wish to be slaves to god's ideals - he sounds to me that he is like the most evil dictator that humanity has ever had the misfortue to endure, puts Stalin, Hitler, Hussain in the shade. God encourages free-thinking, what He hates is sin. Satan was not a "free thinker" when he thought that he, a finite creation, could be equal with the in-finite Creator. That is called arrogance and sin, not free-thinking. Edited by nerfed on 05/08/05 - 10:45 AM
"Only Jedi deal in absolutes." - Senator Palpatine, The Emperor

Nads
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Posted 05/08/05 - 06:36 PM:	#5
In my opinion the universe is undergoing an infinite number of cycles not that it has existed as it is for an eternity. Regardless of if I am wrong or not it doesn’t really matter. I do know though if you put this imaginary, completely made up, human creation of god into the equation anywhere it still doesn’t deny or change the fact that the universe has always existed and is infinitely large, in fact it doesn’t help at all, as it just asks the question who created god as this post first suggested. If humanity approached everything they didn’t understand by just making an assumption that could never be questioned again we would never have progressed technically to where we are. The point is that creating god doesn’t do anything in explaining the start of the universe he is just born out of the minds of imaginative people thousands of years ago and the fact that religion does not allow you to question anything of god is direct evidence that he does not exist. If we are referring to Christianity all you need to think about is that the Vatican wouldn’t accept the sun as the centre of our solar system, obviously wrong. With reference to the Ten Commandments then the people (not god) who created them recognized these bad traits of humans, I mean has human behavior actually changed or more to the point developed since these times, probably not. Fair enough we may be more technologically advanced but we need to rely on a political structure that is based purely on human greed, i.e. capitalism. I really don’t think we are more worthy of anything else on this world all we have unfortunately is the ability to think we are. How can you be so convinced by obvious propaganda that this god actually exists? I find it a real struggle to understand how so many people can be sucked into a fairytale, really you may as well believe that peter pan exists and when we die we go to Neverland and if we are good people we spend our eternity as care free kids but if we are bad then we spend it with the worries brought about by adulthood, needless to say who god and the devil are.

nerfed
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Posted 05/09/05 - 07:59 AM:	#6
Nads wrote: In my opinion the universe is undergoing an infinite number of cycles not that it has existed as it is for an eternity. Obsiously you did not read what I wrote about, but I'll reiterate it for you. The universe cannot be infinite in age because we would be unable to even get to the present without traversing an infinite amount of instances in time. So, the temporal gap between 1:00 pm and 2:00 pm is the same as 1000 AD and 2000 AD because both would have an infinite amount of time between the two. Because we experience time and change, time must be finite. And with time being finite, so must the universe's age. Nads wrote: I do know though if you put this imaginary, completely made up, human creation of god into the equation anywhere it still doesn’t deny or change the fact that the universe has always existed and is infinitely large, It cannot be infinitely large, because the universe is finite by nature. How could something composed of finite particles and energy be infinite? It may be expanding infinitely, but the universe itself is not infinite. Nads wrote: in fact it doesn’t help at all, as it just asks the question who created god as this post first suggested. If God is not limited by time then how can God ever have had a beginning? Words like "beginning" and "ending" are associated with things limited by time, i.e. the finite creation. Nads wrote: If humanity approached everything they didn’t understand by just making an assumption that could never be questioned again we would never have progressed technically to where we are. People question God all the time. Just like people question Evolutionary theory, and the Big Bang Cosmology theory. The fact of the matter is that everyone can question, it is whether they are willing to be objective in their questioning and accept the answers they find. Statements like, "Regardless of if I am wrong or not it doesn’t really matter." Only show that you really aren't interested in the objective truth, and are only interested in your own agenda of placing God in neat little box, to put on a shelf somewhere. Nads wrote: The point is that creating god doesn’t do anything in explaining the start of the universe he is just born out of the minds of imaginative people thousands of years ago and the fact that religion does not allow you to question anything of god is direct evidence that he does not exist. God is the only theory capable of explaining the beginning of the universe. The most popular theory, the Big Bang, cannot answer it. To debunk it in one sentence you could logically say, "Something cannot come from nothing." That is the huge hole that is sinking the Big Bang Cosmology arguement. Nads wrote: If we are referring to Christianity all you need to think about is that the Vatican wouldn’t accept the sun as the centre of our solar system, obviously wrong. You are confusing Roman Catholicism with Biblical Christianity, the two are very different. Nads wrote: With reference to the Ten Commandments then the people (not god) who created them recognized these bad traits of humans, How would they know what "bad traits" were? The shade black is only black because we have, an absolute, white to compare it to. To put a spin on Einstein, cold is only cold because we have an absolute, heat, to compare it to. Dark is only dark because we have an absolute, light, to compare it to. Evil is only evil because we have an absolute, God, to compare it to. Nads wrote: I mean has human behavior actually changed or more to the point developed since these times, probably not. No, because sin is still the inherent feature in ever human being. What Jesus has done is drastically change the tendency to sin, into the tendency not to sin - in those that have accepted His help. Nads wrote: Fair enough we may be more technologically advanced but we need to rely on a political structure that is based purely on human greed, i.e. capitalism. Why? Nads wrote: I really don’t think we are more worthy of anything else on this world all we have unfortunately is the ability to think we are. Then why bother living at all, if we are of no more importance than sand, then what is the point? Nads wrote: How can you be so convinced by obvious propaganda that this god actually exists? I find it a real struggle to understand how so many people can be sucked into a fairytale, really you may as well believe that peter pan exists and when we die we go to Neverland and if we are good people we spend our eternity as care free kids but if we are bad then we spend it with the worries brought about by adulthood, needless to say who god and the devil are. You just have to take an objective look at the evidence morality, absolutes, non-physical things, irriducably complex systems, and causation provides to understand that there is a God. But people are not interested in the truth, they are interested in themselves, and will do anything to keep themselves on top.
"Only Jedi deal in absolutes." - Senator Palpatine, The Emperor

Namaru
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Posted 05/09/05 - 03:29 PM:	#7
Well, As a man who dosnt beleive there is one 'god' who created everything, il just give you my point of view of the beginning. I think that in the very beginning, when there was nothing, There was suddenly something. Not a being of any sort, but an intention. A universal intention that still exsists today. That intention is to survive. That is it. Thus, because of this strong intention, beings were brought into exsistance. These beings had no mass. Because mass had not been created yet. As far as im concerned, these beings werent even in this dimention. I beleive these beings created this dimention we live in now. These beings of course, are our spirits. What we truly are if you take away these masses of meat of wich we control. ...I could go on forever like this, but you get the point.

BicPen
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Posted 05/10/05 - 11:06 AM:	#8
Nads wrote: How can you be so convinced by obvious propaganda that this god actually exists? I find it a real struggle to understand how so many people can be sucked into a fairytale, really you may as well believe that peter pan exists and when we die we go to Neverland and if we are good people we spend our eternity as care free kids but if we are bad then we spend it with the worries brought about by adulthood, needless to say who god and the devil are. 'We all possess the idea of a perfect entity, and that inherent in that idea is the fact that this perfect entity must exist.Because a perfect entity wouldn't be perfect if it didn't exist' -DESCRATES-
It’s not our world that’s imperfect, but rather your definition of perfect. -Johan van Vuren-

BicPen
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Posted 05/10/05 - 11:14 AM:	#9
Namaru wrote: Well, As a man who dosnt beleive there is one 'god' who created everything, il just give you my point of view of the beginning. I think that in the very beginning, when there was nothing, There was suddenly something. Not a being of any sort, but an intention. A universal intention that still exsists today. That intention is to survive. That is it. Thus, because of this strong intention, beings were brought into exsistance. These beings had no mass. Because mass had not been created yet. As far as im concerned, these beings werent even in this dimention. I beleive these beings created this dimention we live in now. These beings of course, are our spirits. What we truly are if you take away these masses of meat of wich we control. ...I could go on forever like this, but you get the point. Dude I have some potentially upsetting news for you...You believe in God, you just don't know it yet!
It’s not our world that’s imperfect, but rather your definition of perfect. -Johan van Vuren-

Jagger
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Posted 05/17/05 - 07:14 PM:	#10
BicPen, I reached the same conclusion as you. The natural follow-on question is how does change occur in an eternity without time? Assuming any thought or intention is change. And if there is change, was there a first cause/intention to produce change? We are back to cause and effect even though we are outside of time and a material existence. What was the first cause/thought/intention of a being of eternal existence? How can there even be a first thought without an initial creation? I would lean towards an eternal now within a timeless existence. But how is change incorporated? Change implies cause and effect as well as first cause.

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