-> God ?

Slydice

Who created god?

[EDIT] - After Bards first post

Your own definition of GOD will do,,, Whether you believe in him or not.

[End of 1st Edit]

Bard

Originally posted by Slydice
Who created god?

How does one, such as myself, who doesn't believe in God, answer such a question?

... IMHO, nobody created the 'entity' God, as that entity doesn't exist... who created the idea of 'Him' is a wholly different matter. Jesus (of the Christ clan) and his stoned disciples, ... possibly.

neuro-praxis

According to logical philosophy, it is possible for a completely novel happening to occur in time. If you get my drift.

Slydice

no, i don't?

b20uvkft6m5xwg

"The lord is my shepard"

Its as simple as that:)

Lord=God in this context

JustHalf

Originally posted by neuro-praxis
According to logical philosophy, it is possible for a completely novel happening to occur in time. If you get my drift.

Only if I'm allowed to sing badly.

Paul, how the hell did you get to be a moderator?

Chubby

Errrm, man. God only exists in our imagination.

BoneCollector

If so... has anyone informed the pope of this fact!?:cool:
although the bible would dispute this..

or maybe GOD is a metaphore to be applied to the creation of existance! and all things that create physical universe.

Typedef

But exactly.

Exponents of a superbeing that originated the universe troll on usually with indignant looks on their face and say, "if there is no god then where did the universe come from?", then follows the defening silence when you are meant to realise they are right.
Oh course if the existance of space/time/matter/energy had to have originated from an entity then it stands to reason does it not to ask where did that entity originate from? Is the universe in existance(whataver that is) because the laws of quantum mechanics (or the feeble grasp we have of the laws) suggest that there was a miniscule but quantifable chance that a particle of what we call reality might have appeared in this (universe) before the laws that govern it were really formed, and somehow that particle gave rise to all this undulating topography we call life? Weird.
Or is the universe merely a corridor, a point from an infinite amount of other points that undulate twist turn meet each other, and diverge again(or not at all) in a maddening lexically diverse vicissitude of possibilities?

Zap!
If from any given point in time there are an infinite amount of possibilites played out in ever increasing (time lines) for want of a better word, then does it not stand to reason that in one of these realities a god may exist - an omnipotent entity that has the unlikely but ever increasing possibility of being the originator of the maddening myriad of lexical universes, though perhaps arising from one of them by a random convergence of possibilities, thus having a definite start but also being the creator of existance?
Zap!

Not really a profound question if you think about it.

BoneCollector

Or more profoundly...
define Conscience
perseption of being self aware.
can this be quantified or is this GOD!?
"I THINK THEREFORE I AM!?"
You could apply this to computers..
image if one day you start having intelegent coversations with your computer?
is you computer selfaware? if you ask it
it may answer YES!!
Does this mean it is?
is has it simply given you the illusion of being selfaware?
do you realy exisit or do you complex brain simply produce stimuleye to give you the illusion of selfawareness?

Manach

Quick answer to original question, is God being outside space/time and thus has no begining or end.

As for what God is doing right now, I expect still dancing on Nietzche's grave.

Bonecollector's I think is refering to Danniel Denet's theory on consciencness, where the self has multiple sites of awareness making up a whole.

Supercell

Hmm are agnostics(which i count myself as one) cowards?
Are we logical people, not sheep that are to scared to believe one thing or another?

I do a bad thing , i feel bad..maybe its that overall belief that bad or good has meaning..but then again nature is cruel..i dunno..agnostic in habit, probably athiest in belief.

Blitzkrieger

Originally posted by Slydice
Who created god?

I did. Last Tuesday. After I put up the shelves for me ma. The sneaky f£cker then created all you lot and fooled you into thinking I didn't............Really.................No, really.








Didn't we just do this thread (or something like it) just a few days ago?

DadaKopf

"I THINK THEREFORE I AM!?"
You could apply this to computers..
image if one day you start having intelegent coversations with your computer?
is you computer selfaware? if you ask it
it may answer YES!!
Does this mean it is?
is has it simply given you the illusion of being selfaware?
do you realy exisit or do you complex brain simply produce stimuleye to give you the illusion of selfawareness?

All great questions and all with great objections. If you're really interested in this stuff I suggest you check out the following websites:

Mind-Brain Identity Theory: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-identity/
John Searle's Chinese Room experiment: http://www.uniroma3.it/kant/field/chinesebiblio.html
Online Papers on Consciousness: http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/online.html#concept
Mind-Brain Resources: http://mind.phil.vt.edu/www/mind.html#OLJ

All those sites refer to philosophy of mind. Somebody mentioned Dennett - interesting thinker and extremely influential in the realm of cognitive philosophy/science. He was influenced greatly by a fella called Gilbert Ryle who pretty much ripped apart the whole Mind-Body dualism of Descartes. From then on, he paved the way for people like Wittgenstein and Quine on one hand and Dennett, Dummet and Searle on the other.

You've all probably heard of the Turing Test - basically if a computer fools you into thinking it's another person in a blind, say, conversation on IRC, then it's intelligent. Alternatively, you have John Searle's "Chinese Room" thought experiment which refutes the possibility of 'Strong A.I.' because, even if it could think just like a human mind, it's still not exactly the same. I'm not fully up on the whole argument myself.

Hope that sets some of you thinking.

Xterminator

There is a train of thought that I know. (Not nessicarily mine)

The reason we are here on earth, is so we can strive towards perfection. those worthy will go to live with god, and eventually become gods themselves.

Thus it would seem that god was perhaps a being not in our existance, but another, who proved his worth, and became a god themselves.

So those who prove their worth, here on earth may then go on to become creators themselves.

(Well its an answer)

X

Excelsior

Did none of you read Manach's brilliant reply?
Or do you just ignore it because it makes a little too much sense?

Manach- I heard you and think that as usual, you hit it right on the head.

Giblet

I figured it all out,
Jesus will be the only man ever to time-travel,
and he will go back in time and preform "miracles" which are just little tricks performed with technology from his time.
God is like Al or Ziggy from Quantum leap!

bonkey

Originally posted by Manach
Quick answer to original question, is God being outside space/time and thus has no begining or end.

Unfortunately, in the absence of time, you prevent the situation where god could have created the universe.

If you are in a timless environment, then time does not exist. The absence of time is effectively to imply that there is never any change in state, or no state to change.

In that case, nothing "outside time" could ever effect a state-change which *creates* something.

Conversely, if there is some analogy to state-change "outside" our dimensional reality, then there is an analogy to time....which brings us right back to the same problem...is this "time-equivalent" also finite in one or both directions (as our timeline appears to be, having a start, and probably an end). If so, then god has not bee always there. If it is infinite, then where did god come from.

So, unfortunately, I have to disagree with Excelsior and say you havent hit the nail on the head, and have given a "non-answer", unless we glibly say "our laws do not apply outside the universe" which is still as much a non-answer as any of the standard religious ones.

jc

Excelsior

Originally posted by bonkey


Unfortunately, in the absence of time, you prevent the situation where god could have created the universe.
jc

It appears to me that you come down to saying, I don't believe in God because I don't believe God could do that, and that is why I don't believe in God.

Originally posted by bonkey

So, unfortunately, I have to disagree with Excelsior and say you havent hit the nail on the head, and have given a "non-answer", unless we glibly say "our laws do not apply outside the universe" which is still as much a non-answer as any of the standard religious ones.

jc

I thought that the idea that God made the universe meant that God made the laws of the universe and as such would have no need to pay heed to "our laws".

While you are of course entirely able to hold your opinion, you give me as much of a non-answer as any of the standard "logical" ones.


(Inverted commas around logic is to denote the non-exclusivity of logic to believers, as opposed to some weak and shallow dig at your world-view.)

In my opinion, Manach has given a very fine answer. Maybe more people than Bonkey can challenge it?

bonkey

Originally posted by Excelsior

It appears to me that you come down to saying, I don't believe in God because I don't believe God could do that, and that is why I don't believe in God.

Not quite...but close. I dont believe that a god can exist within the realms of what we know of as reality. I dont believe that anything outside the realms of what we know as reality can affect our reality, and therefore if agod exists "out there", then it is irrelevant and meaningless within the context of our reality.

I thought that the idea that God made the universe meant that God made the laws of the universe and as such would have no need to pay heed to "our laws".

So, what you're saying is that the "laws" of our universe are really only guidelines.

See - this is the problem...

Manach explains the possibility of gods' existence using terms which are scientific in nature...allowing god to be outside space/time, and therefore without beginning or end.

You cannot, in my opinion, take a stance like that, which is partially based on current scientific models (space-time), and then ignore the rest of the scientific model which says that space-time is a closed environment, and also says that the absence of time would remove the absence of state-change, which would therefore make the creation of the universe from "outside" impossible.

In other words....either take scientific theory, or ignore it....you cant pick and choose the bits of it which let you explain your theory.

While you are of course entirely able to hold your opinion, you give me as much of a non-answer as any of the standard "logical" ones.

Actually, my non-answer is because I believe it is a non-question. Asking where god comes from pre-supposed the existence of god. To show where he comes from, you must believe he exists, and then effectively explain that existence.

Personally, I believe god is an evolutionary delusion. it is widely held that early man worshipped the sun, fire, lightning, and other natural "phenomena". Over time, as these things became more common-place and/or more "explainable", the old god have made way for the new.

We have now evolved to a situation where most religions have discounted a multi-theistic approach, and have settled on the idea of one ruling god.

For me, this is a organisational refinement - you preach a religion of ONE god, and all believers of that religion follow one set of teachings. Better control. How many civilisations have gone from having priests to priest-kings to god-kings. Quite a number. hell, even Catholicism has "the infallible voice of God on Earth" in the shape of the pope. Infallible? Are you kidding me???

Religion serves a purpose. It helps teach people "valuable" lessons such as morals - it structures society to a large extent. It gives people comfort that there is something aftger death, which alleviates loss and which helps offset the dear of dying.

More importantly, from my perspective, it gives someone control over you. Modernisation has reduced this level of control in some religions, but bear in mind that the unacceptable behaviour of the Taliban today is no more extreme than many other religions were only a few hundred years ago.

The concept of "non-organised religion" is a relatively new one.....people who want to keep a belief, but who do not subscribe to any of the existing religions. You want your belief without the weight of someone who can tell you what to do. Of course, it has to be a personal thing for each individual who follows that route, because, hey, if more than one person was involved, there would be some formality and/or organisation.

So where did God come from? It came from fear and superstition, coupled with someone having the ability to leverage this to give them a position of power.

Thats my answer.

jc