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Religous question, been trying to figure this out
Big Sky Redneck
Member Posts: 19,752 ✭✭✭
Ok, now I'm not a die hard bible person even though I have read it and even went to bible school as a child. Most religous folk who take it seriously will say that everything here on earth and even the other planets and so on and so on was all created by God. Nothing exists without his approval or creation. He is the man so to speak. So if nothing in this world can exist without him I just gotta know one thing, who made God?
Now this question is not meant to stir up trouble, I'm not trying to be a smarta$$, I really want to know, who made God? Where does God come from? Last year I made a post about who I feel God is and I was told by a few members that I made a good post, but I hear arguments from some that my theory is wrong about God not being a mystical person who exists in a form that we will never see but as a feeling inside of us. They say that we are made in his image, if so then I am wrong and there really is a God who really exists as either a soul or life form, if this is true then who made him?
Now this question is not meant to stir up trouble, I'm not trying to be a smarta$$, I really want to know, who made God? Where does God come from? Last year I made a post about who I feel God is and I was told by a few members that I made a good post, but I hear arguments from some that my theory is wrong about God not being a mystical person who exists in a form that we will never see but as a feeling inside of us. They say that we are made in his image, if so then I am wrong and there really is a God who really exists as either a soul or life form, if this is true then who made him?
Comments
I, myself, am an athiest, but I have asked that question many times that if god truly did exist, then who or what made him, it, or whatever. There is no true, definative answer from any camp, be it the non-believers like myself or the religous (pick any religion that belives in god or a god(s), so who knows?
I guess we'll never know until we're dead. If there is no afterlife then we'll know he dosen't exist, if there is an afterlife then we'll know he probably does exist and our questions will probably be answered then. But I'm in no rush to find out. But if there is an afterlife I'll probably be cast into hell for declaring myself a non-believer but sh*t happens.
...who made God?
Depends what you mean by the question.
If you are asking, If God created everything, then who created Him?, you would have to subscribe to some notion of spontaneous generation (i.e., the idea that something can come from nothing), as well as the notion that the will to exist can exist before the thought of willing existence. Worse, such will would have to have existed even before the being who had the thought to will itself existed. This is logically and scientifically impossible, of course, and I doubt you will get the answers on this board. However, beware of an answer like You cannot comprehend how this could happen; you are not God, because it answers everything, and therefore nothing.
If you are asking, Who created God? as the one supreme, omniscient being He is purported to be, the next question would have to be, Which one? There have been and still are many gods worshipped. However, the telling, common thread among all of them is that they are all worshipped by sentient beings with the same wonderful gift--language; for if there was no language, there would not have been anything to record stuff like And God created man in His own image. And so the next question to ask might be, Who told this guy that God created man in His own image? God? And did this God speak Hebrew or Arabic or Farsi or Chinese? Did God really look human, or was this only a figure of speech? Or was the whole story made up? Is man the only other being in the universe that looks like God? Do beings on other planets look human and therefore also look like God, or are we the only beings among all the billions of stars with a billion billion planets each that even exist to look like Him? Again, I doubt you will get the answer on this board.
A more frutiful question might be: Why do people ask the question? And in answering that, perhaps you can get closer to the answer you're looking for.
I'll try to keep this story short. Math class, 5th grade, discussing three dimensional shapes and volume. Teacher told us about a sci-fi story that took place in a two dimensional world, where one strange visitor constantly changed. Went from small point to small circle to large circle and back intermittently. Turns out the stranger was a sphere, passing throught their dimension. No matter how hard it tried, it could not explain the concept to the two-dimensional shapes.
It's called a suitable frame of reference. Everyone and everything we know has a beginning and an end. Energy doesn't, but we tend to view points of conversion as a beginning/ending. In short, we can't wrap our minds around the concept that something may have no beginning or end.
This isn't a variation of DWS's "You cannot comprehend how this could happen; you are not God". A better summation is that we may not know because we are human.
Got a new gun for my ex-wife.....pretty good trade, huh?
Makdaddy03
Consider the masses opiated.
Scrappy Doo sleeps with the fishes.
Is the universe an accident? What's the difference between life and death? Just where is that fine line? Why?
"Why" is both the question and the answer. We all have the free will to deny, but it serves no purpose so far as I can tell. We also have the capacity to marvel and accept something so much bigger than we can imagine. I accept. In this there is purpose.
To question the beginning or end of whatever "it" is would presume that we humans somehow had all the answers. We don't! I have no idea whether we really face the judgement of the bible, or whether this is a passing phase of existence for all of us, or whether this life is really the beginning and the end.
What I do know is that it would be sad for those who don't believe in something greater if this was the beginning and end for them. And for those of us who believe... We'll loose nothing if we're wrong, and what might be gained if we're right?
So I choose life over certain death. I choose to believe based on what my senses tell me. I choose to believe based my limited power of reason. I choose to believe because it's the only logical choice that I can make.
I don't preach, I don't stand on a pulpit and swear that my way is the only way, I don't condemn those who don't hold similar beliefs. I only say that my belief is based on personal experiences and that it grows stronger as life throws more trials in my path.
For all of us walking this earthly path... I wish you well.
Nord
It's an article of faith. The Bible clearly states that God has always been. It's hard for us to comprehend because everything else we know of has had a begining and most have an end.
(kj Ps 90:2) "....from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God."
God did not have a begining which is hard to get a mental grip on. If, tho', you come to believe the teachings of the Bible you understand, if all the other things it says are true, so is this.
(kj Rom. 1:20)"...being understood by the things made, even his eternal power and Godhead."
"...prove to yourselves the good and acceptable and perfect will of God. (Rom 12:2)
"Faith is the assured expectation of things hoped for, the evident demonstration of 'REALITIES' though not beheld." (Heb. 11:1)
"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (kj Heb. 11:1)
When you wrestle a 'gator, there ain't no good end!!
"Molon Labe!" Spartan General-King Leonidas
"Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, not liberty to purchase power."
Benjamin Franklin, 1785
nord.....Nice post. I enjoyed reading it.
81st FA BN WWII...Thanks Dad
U!S!A! ALL THE WAY!!
I know little about other faiths but I do know that The Ten Commandments and Doing Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You are the basic foundations for living a good and rightous life. Our conscience knows this - we're born with this knowledge. You know instinctively when you are doing the right or wrong thing - we don't need anyone on a pulpit to tell us that.
We are free to ignore our conscience or abide by it - either way - I believe we all face the consequences of our actions during our life time -I don't accept the concept of heaven or hell.
So to answer your question again - I simply don't know the answer
John
Member NRA,GOA,DVA,LEAA & American Legion
For All The Fallen Heroes And All The Forgotten Victims
(Christopher Hyde)
George Carlin once asked his teacher in Cathechism, "if God were all powerful, could He make a rock so big that even He couldn't pick it up?"
The answer is yes.
There is no way to "prove" His existence to mere mortals; the effect of studying the question alters the observation of the question's truth.
There is a passage that says in effect, the fool denies the existence of God, yet he is forgiven for his folly. (by God)
It truly is an article of faith. If one is faithful to the tenets of their religion and makes an attempt to live their lives in Godliness; the unselfish, compassionate, "right way of thinking toward fellow man" proves the existence of a higher order of life than that on this mortal coil-maybe God is truly within each of us from the start: it's the way we interpret what we feel is the right thing to do that makes the difference in our lives.
If you know it all; you must have been listening.WEAR EAR PROTECTION!
quote:There is a passage that says in effect, the fool denies the existence of God, yet he is forgiven for his folly. (by God)
is that each fundamentalist uses it at one time or another to claim that HIS VERSION of God cares for you even if you don't believe in him. If that "article of faith" had real merit, Allah would love us all in spite of our rejection of him, too.
I simply say our minds aren't clever enough to understand many things, and it is not surprising to me that the nature of this vast universe is one of them. Not only our capacity for logic, but our capacity for imagination is woefully inadquate to such tasks as "understanding the nature of God." Was God made, like you build a car? No, our minds are too small to handle anything more than the relatively simple problems we wrestle with daily, and our progress on everything from medical cures to space exploration crawls along at a snail's pace. Nobody has yet figured out how to make a perpetual motion machine -- a relatively simple thing compared to figuring out who God is. It's the stuff of science fiction. It's Mr. Dingle, the Strong. We'll have to get a LOT smarter over the eons, but in the meantime let's not substitute too much pablum from your favorite fundamentalist organization, either. No offense meant by that.
Life NRA Member
T. Jefferson: "[When doing Constitutional interpretation], let us [go] back to the time when [it] was adopted. [Rather than] invent a meaning [let us] conform to the probable one in which it was passed."
And for those of us who believe... We'll loose nothing if we're wrong, and what might be gained if we're right?
Isn't this the reasoning of the court in The Emperor's New Clothes? And the question still before us is, "Is that raiment really there?".
Here is where I'm confused, did the human race create God once it evolved into a speaking/thinking race or did we not evolve but infact are we created by a supreme being who existed before we did?
You see I'm not questioning the existance of God, I'm questioning who came first. Kinda like the chicken or the egg question. I have come to believe that God lives in each person and God is who YOU want him to be, that without people, God would not exist. But you see I could be wrong, this is what I'm trying to understand. Are we created in his image, or is he created in our image?
I'm questioning who came first.
...without people, God would not exist.
Haven't you answered your own question?
It's hard to understand that some things don't have a beginning or an end, they just "are".
Kernal Wilson
VRAP
Commanding
Jesus: Don't leave earth without him
Show me where I'm wrong or right. My head is spinning here, maybe this question cannot be answered, maybe it can. But if it can be answered it has to be asked first.[:D]
Measure twice, cut once.
Empty the clip!
DWS, after that quote followed another, quote:But you see I could be wrong, this is what I'm trying to understand.
Again, what question are you asking? Obviously, the universe existed billions of years before man. So are you asking who or what created the universe and man, or who or what created who or what that created the universe and man? If the former, you can believe either science or religion, both of which are speculative and not subject to verification (and therefore will not satisfy you); if the latter, both will again fail you because the question presupposes agency before existence, which is at once logically impossible and the basis of the belief in a supreme being.
quote:who or what created who or what that created the universe and man?
quote:the question presupposes agency before existence
No, the question presupposes genesis, which may in fact NOT have occurred. Whatever 'God' is to each of us, whoever 'created all this', may well have NOT had a beginning, and we can't grasp that. Are you dodging?
Got a new gun for my ex-wife.....pretty good trade, huh?
As I wrote in my previous post - I believe in God, Surpreme Being or whatever name one choses. Not what was written by individuals who had no more knowledge than we do now - no matter what inspiration they may claim to have had.
We'll all know the answer to the question one day - so don't be impatient to find out.
John
Member NRA,GOA,DVA,LEAA & American Legion
For All The Fallen Heroes And All The Forgotten Victims
(Christopher Hyde)
claim to have had.
We'll all know the answer to the question one day - so don't be impatient to find out.
capecod: I think 7mmNut's question is whether we will, not when.
John
Member NRA,GOA,DVA,LEAA & American Legion
For All The Fallen Heroes And All The Forgotten Victims
(Christopher Hyde)
"Genesis: the coming into being of something; the origin."
You wrote about the question:
quote:This supposes agency (thought and will) before existence (the all of this).
That statement supposes that there is a 'before existence'. I'm saying that may not be the case, hence our difficulty with the question.
Got a new gun for my ex-wife.....pretty good trade, huh?
"If we did know the answer - could we deal with it?"
One thing's for sure: There would be more than enough embarrassment and smugness to go around.
Best!!
Rugster
Toujours Pret
That statement supposes that there is a 'before existence'. I'm saying that may not be the case, hence our difficulty with the question.
Even if there was no before existence (which I think only has linguisitic sense but no meaning), one thing we do know: There were billions of years and billions of things before man showed up. So the question becomes, are we a fluke or part of some grand plan on the part of an obviously very patient being?
The difficulty for me with your argument is the simultaneous (rather than antecedent) conditions of cause and effect. Of course you can claim such a state of affairs, but how do you describe the phenomenon of an apple falling from a tree before trees and gravity exist? I mean, I know what you're saying, just like I know what a unicorn is, but from that I would not expect anyone to argue that unicorns exist, or (since you say there is no before existence) that the idea of a unicorn has always existed.
How is anything created in this three dimensional time? It is not created,it simply is and will always be.We as two dimensional beings have a begining,a middle and an end and are prone to attempts of forcing the universe to conform to our predetermined views.Space and time are interwoven and as space expands in all directions so too does time.It is a form of energy that cannot be created or destroyed.
Perhaps the Judeo- Christian heaven and all the other religions' paradise is simply the lifting of a veil enabling a glimpse of eternity.Perhaps God is time itself,eternal and everlasting,everywhere and in all things.
Stop thinking of time as a ruler and start thinking of it as more of a rolled up tape measure.That's simplistic, but closer to reality.
Big Daddy[escapee from the tank]Jr.
How is anything created in this three dimensional time? It is not created,it simply is and will always be.
Merely affirming or restating the same argument does not demonstrate it or otherwise make it true. How is your claim about three-dimensional time any more palpable than my saying that God is a Timex or that space is plaid?
quote:
We put time in a straight line to make sense of our version of reality, but time is not two dimensional. It is three dimensional.
Space and time are three-dimensional only in mathematical notation; do not think it exists off the blackboard. And if you similarly apply the same notational method to matter, then a planet or a man or a Buick is four-dimensional--so lah-dee-dah for all us transient tangibles.
Love them Beavers
SUPPORT THE I.N.S. , THE COUNTRY THEY SAVE COULD BE YOUR OWN
Scrappy Doo sleeps with the fishes.
I don't think humans are quite adequately equipped to try to wrap our heads around concepts like this.
Ironic, given we were the ones who came up with them in the first place.
If Helen Keller falls in the forest and nobody hears her, does she make a noise?
Love them Beavers
SUPPORT THE I.N.S. , THE COUNTRY THEY SAVE COULD BE YOUR OWN
God is who YOU want him to be, that without people, God would not exist.
There you had it, don't make it any harder than it is.
Problem that bothers me is, What is outside the universe? If the universe is expanding, what is it expanding into? Is there no existance outside the universe, is there a void, or are there other universes?
DWS- I'm talking about the realities in particular, not the theories.
kingjoey: What realities? As with a unicorn, is coming up with a concept or theory for something make that something real?
It does have meaning, besides having explained it I feel you are smart enough to understand what I am saying. For me the question becomes are you purposely being obtuse?
I don't want to sound snotty, because I really don't mean it that way, but you are restating my position as something it is not. I specifically said "may be" and "opinion" to offer ideas; I never said 'there is a GOD and this is how it works'. Additionally, you are using the analogy of a mythical beast seemingly in an attempt to make my idea appear ridiculous.
Just so you don't think that I am being argumentative for the heck of it (I do like to argue), or have a personal beef (I don't), here are a couple of things you said that I agree with:
quote:So the question becomes, are we a fluke or part of some grand plan on the part of an obviously very patient being?
quote:quote:
Originally posted by capecod
"If we did know the answer - could we deal with it?"
One thing's for sure: There would be more than enough embarrassment and smugness to go around.
Got a new gun for my ex-wife.....pretty good trade, huh?
Great discussion.
"It is important, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments into one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism.."
-George Washington