Rational Dreaming
Earlier this evening, as I was idly surfing the Internet, I came across the site GotQuestions.org, a fundamentalist Christian website that purports to provide “Bible-based” answers to questions about Christianity, God, and Jesus, etc.
Okay then, I thought, let’s see how well they answer one of the biggies:
Well, it’s really no surprise that their attempt to answer this question turns out to be pretty lame. Read on to see why.
A common argument from atheists and skeptics is that if all things need a cause, then God must also need a cause. The conclusion is that if God needed a cause, then God is not God (and if God is not God, then of course there is no God).
Yes, it is a common argument, because it is a good one. There is no particular reason why God should be automagically exempted from this inquiry, no matter what believers say.
This is a slightly more sophisticated form of the basic question “Who made God?” Everyone knows that something does not come from nothing. So, if God is a “something,” then He must have a cause, right?
Well, it’s a reframing of the same question, but it’s not really any more sophisticated. A more sophisticated form of the basic question is: assuming for the moment that there is a “first cause,” why does it have to be an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent supernatural being that demands to be worshiped? I go into this question in more detail later.
The question is tricky because it sneaks in the false assumption that God came from somewhere and then asks where that might be.
I believe the word “tricky” means “sly” here and not “difficult,” implying that there is some subterfuge involved in just asking the question as if it is posed deliberately to catch out unwary believers. Perhaps in some cases that’s true, but it in no way devalues the provalidity of the question.
The answer is that the question does not even make sense.
Ah, and here we go. A term that is often used here is “category mistake.” In other words, you are wrong to even ask the question.
It is like asking, “What does blue smell like?” Blue is not in the category of things that have a smell, so the question itself is flawed.
Well actually, some people are actually able to “smell blue”—people who suffer from a neurological condition called synesthesia. (Not particularly relevant to this discussion, but fascinating nonetheless!)
In the same way, God is not in the category of things that are created or caused. God is uncaused and uncreated—He simply exists.
Er, okay. That is a rather bald assertion. Let’s see how they back it up.
How do we know this? We know that from nothing, nothing comes.
Whoa, there. Not so fast. That nothing comes from nothing may be true in the macroscopic world—the world we have first hand experience of every day—but in the quantum world that is certainly not the case. All kinds of weird and entirely counter-intuitive things are known—proven—to happen, including the measurable existence of virtual particles—particles that really do come from nothing and exist in our Universe for a short while before vanishing again. Thus God is not the only possible non-caused entity in existence.
So, if there were ever a time when there was absolutely nothing in existence, then nothing would have ever come into existence.
Well, since time is an inherent property of the Universe, there was no specific time when there was absolutely nothing, since time came into existence at exactly the same time the rest of the Universe was born—at the moment of the Big Bang. Thus it is just as much a category mistake to ask what happened before the Big Bang, since there was no “before” before the Big Bang. Mind bending I know, but it all boils down to the simple fact that, as of today, we haven’t a clue how or why the Universe sprang into existence—not scientists and certainly not theologians. We can speculate endlessly, but none of us knows for sure—not even close.
But things do exist. Therefore, since there could never have been absolutely nothing, something had to have always been in existence.
Maybe, but we have no way of knowing if it’s true, even though it sounds logical. And if time itself has only been around since the Big Bang, then any statement that references a time before the Universe is rendered meaningless anyway—and another category mistake.
That ever-existing thing is what we call God. God is the uncaused Being that caused everything else to come into existence. God is the uncreated Creator who created the universe and everything in it.
And so we finish with a giant leap of faith, and one more bald assertion—that God is the uncreated creator of the Universe.
But here’s another problem. Why does it have to be God? Of all the things that could be eternal—uncaused and beyond time—a single omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being would seem to be one of the most unlikely culprits, especially one that demands to be worshiped for creating the Universe. Christian fundamentalists scoff when scientists speculate about a multiverse, or an infinite number of universes, or some other naturalistic theory of cosmological origins, but at least the scientists will freely admit that it’s just speculation and that we don’t really have a clue about how or why the Universe sprang into existence.
Even the argument that a complex Universe requires an even more complex creator (which must be the God of the Bible), doesn’t hold water. Even if intelligence was involved in the origin of the Universe, there is no reason to believe the creator is a being worthy of our worship and devotion. What if our Universe was the result of a hyper-dimensional being’s fifth-grade science project? Or perhaps even a unwanted side-effect of said project? Perhaps the creator of our Universe isn’t an eternal being. Perhaps our Universe’s creator was also created ex nihilo by another, even more superintelligent creator, and so on ad infinitum.
So, to bring this post to a conclusion before my brain explodes, I think it’s pretty clear that the any assertion that God, if God exists, must be eternal and an uncaused being is based on nothing more than flimsy and flawed logic. Contrary to the above assertions, we don’t even know that the Universe needed a creator, but even if we accept that it did, there is no justifiable reason to claim that the creator is either eternal or an uncaused being. That is just one of any number of scenarios bounded only by our imagination since we have no clue as to what exists beyond our Universe, or even if there is anything at all.
If you enjoyed this article, please consider sharing it!
3 Responses to Who Created God? Where did God Come From?
Leave a Reply
Poll
Loading ...
I notice one answer that you haven’t explained away: Everything that has a beginning has a cause. If God created the universe, then God created time. He is therefore outside of time, and has no beginning. Therefore, God doesn’t need a cause. It can be concluded from the first two laws of thermodynamics that the universe had a beginning, and so something had to create it! And the universe can’t have created itself, as that would require it to exist before it came into existence.
Come on there is no answer to this question ……both science and all religions give the same explanation about the universe in different ways
science can explain every thing after bigbang and religions can explain everything after god…so basically both dont know the begining ..even in 2010 we are still searching in dark for a question which has no ANSWER..so infact there is no point in dividing based on religions…we dont know the begining and ending we only know about present whatever religion we follow whatever scientific theories we study ..infact that also not true…..there is no present we have only future and past in the scale of time.. …looks weird but thatzz trueeeee
WHO CREATED GOD?
Earlier it was impossible for us to give any satisfactory answer to this question. But modern science, rather we should say that Einstein, has made it an easy task for us. And Stephen Hawking has provided us with the clue necessary for solving this riddle. Actually scientists in their infinite wisdom have already kept the ground well-prepared for us believers so that one day we can give a most plausible and logically sound answer to this age-old question. Let us first see how Hawking has helped us by providing the necessary clue. In his book “A Brief History of Time” (Chapter: The origin and fate of the universe) he informs us that there are 1080 particles in the region of the observable universe. Then he raised the question regarding the origin of these particles, and gave the answer himself. According to quantum theory particles can be created out of energy in the form of particle/antiparticle pairs. But there the question does not stop. Another question props up regarding the origin of that energy. But when it is said that total energy of the universe is exactly zero, then all is said and done. So this is the clue: if we can somehow arrive at zero, then no further question will be raised, and there will be no infinite regression. What I intend to do here is something similar to that. I want to show that our God is a bunch of several zeroes, and that therefore no further question need be raised about His origin. And here comes Einstein with his special theory of relativity for giving us the necessary empirical support to our project.
God is a Being. Therefore God will have existence as well as essence. So I will have to show that both from the point of view of existence as well as from the point of view of essence God is zero. It is almost a common saying that God is spaceless, timeless, changeless, immortal, and all-pervading. Here we are getting three zeroes; space is zero, time is zero, change is zero. But how to prove that if there is a God, then that God will be spaceless, timeless, and changeless? From special theory of relativity we come to know that for light both distance and time become unreal. For light even an infinite distance is infinitely contracted to zero. The volume of an infinite universe full of light only will be simply zero due to this property of light. A universe with zero volume is a spaceless universe. Again at the speed of light time totally stops. So a universe full of light only is a spaceless, timeless universe. But these are the properties of light only! How do we come to know that God is also having the same properties of light so that God can also be spaceless, timeless? Scientists have shown that if there is a God, then that God can only be light, and nothing else, and that therefore He will have all the properties of light. Here is the proof.
Scientists have shown that total energy of the universe is always zero. If total energy is zero, then total mass will also be zero due to energy-mass equivalence. Now if there is a God, then scientists have calculated the total energy and mass of the universe by taking that God into consideration. In other words, if there is a God, then this total energy-mass calculation by the scientists is God-inclusive, not God-exclusive. This is due to two reasons. First of all, even if there is a God, they are not aware of the fact that there is a God. Secondly, they do not believe that there is a God. So, if there is a God, then they have not been able to keep that God aside before making this calculation, because they do not know that there is a God. They cannot say that they have kept Him aside and then made this calculation, because by saying so they will admit that there is a God. They cannot say that the behind-the-picture God has always remained behind the picture, and that He has in no way come into the picture when they have made this calculation, because by saying so they will again admit that there is a God. At most they can say that there is no God. But we are not going to accept that statement as the final verdict on God-issue, because we are disputing that statement. So the matter of the fact is this: if God is really there, then total mass and total energy of the universe including that God are both zero. Therefore mass and energy of God will also be zero. God is without any mass, without any energy. And Einstein has already shown that anything having zero rest-mass will have the speed of light. In other words, it will be some sort of light. So, if God is there, then God will also be light, and therefore He will be spaceless, timeless. So from the point of view of existence God is zero, because he is spaceless, timeless, without any mass, without any energy.
Now we will have to show that from the point of view of essence also God is zero. If there is only one being in the universe, and if there is no second being other than that being, then that being cannot have any such property as love, hate, cruelty, compassion, benevolence, etc. Let us say that God is cruel. Now to whom can He be cruel if there is no other being other than God Himself? So, if God is cruel, then is He cruel to Himself? Therefore if we say that God is all-loving, merciful, benevolent, etc., then we are also admitting that God is not alone, that there is another being co-eternal with God to whom He can show His love, benevolence, goodness, mercy, compassion, etc. If we say that God is all-loving, then we are also saying that this “all” is co-eternal with God. Thus we are admitting that God has not created the universe at all, and that therefore we need not have to revere Him, for the simple reason that He is not our creator!
It is usually said that God is good. But Bertrand Russell has shown that God cannot be good for the simple reason that if God is good, then there is a standard of goodness which is independent of God’s will. (Book: A History of Western Philosophy, Ch: Plato’s Utopia). Therefore, if God is the ultimate Being, then that God cannot be good. But neither can He be evil. God is beyond good and evil. Like Hindu’s Brahma, a real God can only be nirguna, nirupadhik; without any name, without any quality. From the point of view of essence also, a real God is a zero. Mystics usually say that their God is a no-thing. This is the real God, not the God of the scriptures.
So, why should there be any need of creation here, if God is existentially, as well as essentially, zero?
But if there is someone who is intelligent and clever enough, then he will not stop raising question here. He will point out to another infinite regression. If God is light, then He will no doubt be spaceless, timeless, etc. Therefore one infinite regression is thus stopped. But what about the second regression? How, and from whom, does light get its own peculiar properties by means of which we have successfully stopped the first regression? So, here is another infinite regression. But we need not have to worry much about this regression, because this problem has already been solved. A whole thing, by virtue of its being the whole thing, will have all the properties of spacelessness, timelessness, changelessness, deathlessness. It need not have to depend on any other external source for getting these properties. Thus no further infinite regression will be there.