How does god have no creator?

[MrWhy]

If God had any origin, in anything (such as a Creator), God would not be God. God is wholly unoriginated, uncreated, without any source.​

How do you know that? It’s a very profound idea, and would seem to require a great deal of verification.

 

[Contarini]

everyone seems to say god is not complex but how on earth do people know that? Becuase that is the churches idea of god? there is no real way to know how complex god it.

The classical arguments for the existence of God imply God’s simplicity. A simple God is the only God for whose existence I can see strong evidence. Or more precisely, a complex God would not be God at all by my definition, but would simply be a very wise, powerful being–a “god” if you wish. Whether such a being, in the absence of “God” in the classical sense, would be worthy of worship would be a question worth exploring if I didn’t believe in God as traditionally defined!

Okay so something that is simple can exist without an origin but something complex cannot exist without an origin?

Essentially, yes. If something is complex, then the union of its parts itself requires some rationale. (Words like “cause” and “origin” in classic Christian thought mean something like “reason” or even “purpose.”)

I’m okay with the idea that the universe needs a creator, but then what about the creator, how does something come from nothing. And then why can’t these same principles that apply to god apply to the universe?

You’re just restating the original objection, which shows that you still don’t understand the traditional Christian concept of creation. God is the source of being–He is the ultimate being that provides a form and pattern for all other being, which imitates Him imperfectly (that’s why He is simple and creatures are complex, just as a multi-sided polygon can asymptotically approach circularity but can never get there). It’s not an argument about temporal causation primarily–Christians believe as a matter of faith that the universe is not eternal, and the “big bang” theory fits that notion, but as I said earlier Aquinas (in contrast to some other traditional Christian thinkers) didn’t think that this could be proven rationally.

And how can god be stagnant?

No one said that He is stagnant.

He changed himself into the form of jesus, that is a change.

No, it’s not. Admittedly this is paradoxical and difficult, but traditional Christian theology does not teach that God’s nature changed in the Incarnation. In fact that was condemned as heresy by the early Church.

He changes when he became the burning bush.

God didn’t become a burning bush. God manifested Himself as a burning bush.

God is unchangeable because He is pure act, not because He is “stagnant.”

The problem here is that you are criticizing traditional theism without even beginning to understand its philosophical presuppositions. This is not your fault. Most Christian apologists today aren’t working from these principles either–which in my opinion is their loss.

Edwin

 

[Riley259]

Why is it so simple to understand that god, a bieng so complex, intelligent, immense and powerful has always been.

Why can this same logic not apply to the universe?

God is existence itself and possesses the fullness of existence all at once…the same cannot be said about the universe which is comprised of just matter. God transcends the universe.

 

[Sarpedon]

There’s something else we should keep in mind when discussing the origin or first cause question.

We may not have the capacity to truly understand time. Other (Lower?) animals have limitations on time knowledge. We are better, but still may be short.

This demonstrates the fundamental flaw of atheism. If God does not exist, we have no assurance that we can accurately interpret reality, and thus the creator question.

 

[MrWhy]

This demonstrates the fundamental flaw of atheism.

This is not a flaw unless you have a high need for answers to those ultimate questions. If it’s unsettling to not know the source or foundation of certain things, then you may need a god.

If God does not exist, we have no assurance that we can accurately interpret reality, and thus the creator question.

Interpretations on important matters need to be validated. Any idea or theory should be considered provisional. It may be recognized as the best available until it is superseded by a better one, or is found false by new facts. Doubt, skepticism, and questioning is how knowledge advances.

 

[Abbadon]

Okay I’m going to stay away from arguments about god and go back to the main base the universe…

if you really think about it and break the universe down to its smallest part, strings? or is it quasars? either way i’m sure you can break it down even more but at some point there will be something really really small, and really really simple.

Therefore no matter how complex the universe may seem to be it is at its core simple… Just as i guess god would be…

 

[Sarpedon]

This is not a flaw unless you have a high need for answers to those ultimate questions. If it’s unsettling to not know the source or foundation of certain things, then you may need a god.

My personal pysch has nothing to do with my point. How do you propose to “know the source or foundation of certain things”, regardless of whether it is unsettling or not?

Interpretations on important matters need to be validated. Any idea or theory should be considered provisional. It may be recognized as the best available until it is superseded by a better one, or is found false by new facts. Doubt, skepticism, and questioning is how knowledge advances.

Of course. Which of the following do you think is “the best available”?

1. An intelligence created our minds to be able to accurately interpret reality, or “what is”
2. Matter randomly assembled in a particular fashion that just happened to be able to accurately interpret reality, or what is.

Personally, I think no. 1 is the most reasonable explanation.

 

[Hubriss]

Okay I’m going to stay away from arguments about god and go back to the main base the universe…

if you really think about it and break the universe down to its smallest part, strings? or is it quasars? either way i’m sure you can break it down even more but at some point there will be something really really small, and really really simple.

Therefore no matter how complex the universe may seem to be it is at its core simple… Just as i guess god would be…

Right but that doesn’t fit with the Christian concept of God. Christians usually mix up their God with a deism god when they attempt to find proofs and reasoning for the nature of their God’s existence. The Christian God is infinitely complex because it is all knowing, all powerful, present everywhere, and infinitely good. This being must be infinitely complex. This should be apparent to us as we have this discussion. No one can know the true nature of god, if it has intentions or if it can think at all. If it is all powerful, if it watches our minds in our sleep. That should be proof enough that this Christian God should be vastly complex. If it were very simple, we should be able to understand it easily, but we can’t even know of its existence.

The Christian God being an infinitely complex god is what contradicts our reasoning. As we have been studying the evolution of the universe we see that complicated entities don’t just pop up in a short time. It took BILLIONS of years of evolution for the most complicated thing we know of, human society, to emerge. All multicellular organisms, for example, are more complicated than any sun. A single fly is far more complex than our solar system’s sun. The processes sustaining our Sun deal with the most basic nuclear reactions, while animals have various systems and specialized cells that must all work together to enable them to live, grow, and reproduce. Human society, for example, is even more complex than any one of us individuals becuase it is effected by billions of us already complex beings interracting with each other.

 

[Hubriss]

Of course. Which of the following do you think is “the best available”?

1. An intelligence created our minds to be able to accurately interpret reality, or “what is”
2. Matter randomly assembled in a particular fashion that just happened to be able to accurately interpret reality, or what is.

Personally, I think no. 1 is the most reasonable explanation.

1. Infinitely complex beings simply existing contradict all logic.
2. Evolution of the Universe is not random.

We know the universe has evolved, producing us in the process. We know nothing about God.

 

[Sarpedon]

1. Infinitely complex beings simply existing contradict all logic.
2. Evolution of the Universe is not random.

We know the universe has evolved, producing us in the process. We know nothing about God.

1. I never said that this intelligence was infinitely complex. I never even said it was the Christian concept of God.
2. True, but it has no direction without an intelligence. In other words, there is no reason to assume that the process would actually get to the point of producing a mind capable of accurately interpreting reality, or that it has reached this state in us.

Define “know”

 

[MrWhy]

My personal pysch has nothing to do with my point. How do you propose to “know the source or foundation of certain things”, regardless of whether it is unsettling or not?

I did not make my point clear. I do not propose that anyone knows the source or foundation, just that not knowing is not a flaw.

Of course. Which of the following do you think is “the best available”?

1. An intelligence created our minds to be able to accurately interpret reality, or “what is”

1. Matter randomly assembled in a particular fashion that just happened to be able to accurately interpret reality, or what is.

Personally, I think no. 1 is the most reasonable explanation.

Neither is an accurate statement. #2 especially. It is not a definition that any biologist would agree with. I’ll make another version of your two choice question.

#1 An intelligence created the universe and us in a manner that puts us in perpetual conflict over the definition (or existence) of itself. This intelligence has never been seen, heard, physically touched, scientifically tested, or been physically manifest in any way, but we are to assume it exists.

#2 Life has managed to evolve into many complex low-intelligence species inspite of violent conditions that included mass extinctions. This evolution of many species occurs via simple dumb processes that creates many variations. Some variations enhance survival and continue to the next generation. Some variations have a negative impact on reproduction and do not survive well. Variations may be random, but selection is not.

Which species creation force or process is the most complex and requires the highest level of assumption. I suggest that an unseen intelligent creator entity is much more complex than a dumb uncaring selection process.

 

[Sarpedon]

I did not make my point clear. I do not propose that anyone knows the source or foundation, just that not knowing is not a flaw.

How so? Most of Euclidian geometry is based on the assumption that parallel lines never intersect. What happens to all of the mathematical proofs if they intersect? After all, the fact that they don’t intersect is not proven, rather assumed.

Neither is an accurate statement. #2 especially. It is not a definition that any biologist would agree with. I’ll make another version of your two choice question.

#1 An intelligence created the universe and us in a manner that puts us in perpetual conflict over the definition (or existence) of itself. This intelligence has never been seen, heard, physically touched, scientifically tested, or been physically manifest in any way, but we are to assume it exists.

#2 Life has managed to evolve into many complex low-intelligence species inspite of violent conditions that included mass extinctions. This evolution of many species occurs via simple dumb processes that creates many variations. Some variations enhance survival and continue to the next generation. Some variations have a negative impact on reproduction and do not survive well. Variations may be random, but selection is not.

Which species creation force or process is the most complex and requires the highest level of assumption. I suggest that an unseen intelligent creator entity is much more complex than a dumb uncaring selection process.

1. I’m not attempting to demonstrate any properties of this intelligence at all, just that it exists. Even if your properties of this intelligence are true, they do not argue against its existence.
2. Instead of random, I should have put undirected. Natural selection chooses the individuals with the best traits, which then pass on their genes. I have never heard of “being able to interpret reality correctly” or “come to conclusions about the nature of reality through philosophy” as being beneficial to reproduction, and thus something that would be selected. The most successful animals in the history of evolution seem to have done fine without it.

Complexity and level of assumption are not directly linked. If you found a watch on the beach, it would take a greater level of assumption to believe that it was assembled by undirected physical processess than by a human creator (a more complex process). (Just for the record, I do not believe that ID is a scientific theory, but rather a fairly obvious conclusion.)

Basically, my question is this:

What assurance have we that our minds can interpret reality correctly? If our minds are just biochemicals, how do we know that these biochemicals can accurately philosophize about reality?

BTW this is all my personal conjecture, I’m not sure what the church teaches.

 

[Hubriss]

1. I never said that this intelligence was infinitely complex. I never even said it was the Christian concept of God.
2. True, but it has no direction without an intelligence. In other words, there is no reason to assume that the process would actually get to the point of producing a mind capable of accurately interpreting reality, or that it has reached this state in us.

Define “know”

1. Does this intelligence have “free will?”
2. Even if there was an intelligent creator of the universe, it may not be directing it at all. With how big the universe is, and how we know that in us there are minds capable of accurately interpreting reality, statistically intelligent life has popped up elsewhere in the universe too, not just on Earth. We know that being able to accurately interpret reality is not only an ability manifested in ourselves, but other animals as well. We know we can accurately interpret reality, because if we couldn’t, there would be no way in which we could productively react with it. We would not be able to react to real danger, we would not even be able to know if danger was real. You wouldn’t be able to eat your hamberger because your sight and touch would not be giving you real information. But we can know that fire can cause us harm, we know that we can die by a speeding bullet. We can know this because we’ve seen this in other beings. We’ve seen others affected by the very same physics that affect us. We know that death is real because we can see other things die. Natural selection would be a process that early on weeded out those living things which could not interpret their surroundings accurately from those who could.

Your question of defining knowledge is a good one. For all practical uses like I’ve been using it in my previous paragraph, I would define knowledge as, “A belief for which the evidence confirms beyond all reasonable doubt.” Just my practical definition. Then there’s absolute knowledge which… I’m not sure exists.

 

[Sarpedon]

1. Does this intelligence have “free will?”
2. Even if there was an intelligent creator of the universe, it may not be directing it at all. With how big the universe is, and how we know that in us there are minds capable of accurately interpreting reality, statistically intelligent life has popped up elsewhere in the universe too, not just on Earth. We know that being able to accurately interpret reality is not only an ability manifested in ourselves, but other animals as well. We know we can accurately interpret reality, because if we couldn’t, there would be no way in which we could productively react with it. We would not be able to react to real danger, we would not even be able to know if danger was real. You wouldn’t be able to eat your hamberger because your sight and touch would not be giving you real information. But we can know that fire can cause us harm, we know that we can die by a speeding bullet. We can know this because we’ve seen this in other beings. We’ve seen others affected by the very same physics that affect us. We know that death is real because we can see other things die. Natural selection would be a process that early on weeded out those living things which could not interpret their surroundings accurately from those who could.

Your question of defining knowledge is a good one. For all practical uses like I’ve been using it in my previous paragraph, I would define knowledge as, “A belief for which the evidence confirms beyond all reasonable doubt.” Just my practical definition. Then there’s absolute knowledge which… I’m not sure exists.

1. I’m not sure, in regards to my argument. I think either way would suffice.
2. All the examples you provide come from what we experience through our senses. How do we know that are senses accurrately percieve what is?

I know that the Church teaches realism, that our senses do accurately interpret reality. I’m not sure if she teaches that this realism can be proved or if we have to accept it on faith.

I like your definition of knowledge. Can you elaborate on the absolute knowledge part?

 

[w_stewart]

God is the First Cause. Being the First Cause, it is necessarily UNCAUSED. If it CAUSED, then it is not the First Cause.

 

[Hubriss]

1. I’m not sure, in regards to my argument. I think either way would suffice.
2. All the examples you provide come from what we experience through our senses. How do we know that are senses accurrately percieve what is?

I know that the Church teaches realism, that our senses do accurately interpret reality. I’m not sure if she teaches that this realism can be proved or if we have to accept it on faith.

I like your definition of knowledge. Can you elaborate on the absolute knowledge part?

I think that the free will part of the ultimate intelligence is somewhat important. There is a big difference between a god who is defined as merely the forces of nature like gravity, electromagnetism, strong force, weak force, then whatever quantum forces there are, and then a god who directs reality with a distinct purpose or will based on preferences. This God with free will will likely also have to be limited so there are things to choose between, instead of being infinite in every way. I would think determining whether or not the first cause has free will goes a long way in more precisely defining its nature.

1. Well… the point I tried to get across was (or one of them was), that if we couldn’t accurately perceive what is, then we would not be able to survive in the world. Our free will, or choice of actions based on possible effects, very largely depends on the information being (name removed by moderator)ut into our brain is accurate. Otherwise it would be impossible to function in the world we live in. Also I believe we can follow the reasoning of Descartes’s “I think, therefore, I am.”

My definition for knowledge defines it on certainty to the limit of unreasonable doubt. It is based on very high probability of certainty, yet that means that there is still room for a small percentage of uncertainty. (Certainty and uncertainty are statistical terms that are of course not always calculable in every life situation, but that’s where reason comes in.) Absolute knowledge would entail absolute certainty.

With Descartes’s reasoning we may be 100% certain that we exist, but then outside of ourselves, many philosophers haven’t been so sure. Hume for example was one who denied almost all knowledge. But views like that aren’t practical. Descarte believed that the only way we can get to some Absolute Truths was through mathematics which can be viewed somewhat as a pure language. That’s why I believe that knowledge and certainty should be defined to degree statistical terms, and then use reason in terms of practicality to determine what we can take for granted as fact, truth, or knowledge. I for one think Science accomodates this very well because much of the evidence collected by the scientific process is empirical data, wich is then converted into statistics if the situation is appropriate.

As for realism being proved, we ourselves observe that our senses serve us very well. Through experience and practice we can train our brain to interpret (name removed by moderator)ut correctly up to a very high certainty point.

But that’s just my take on knowledge.

 

[Sarpedon]

If our senses are correct, there seems to be only two possibilities as to how they came to be correct:

1. Intelligence created them that way
2. They came to be so ultimately by chance

I see no reason to believe that no. 2 is correct, because says that a single state was picked by chance out of huge numbers of other equally likely possibilities. For example, we could interpret some aspects of reality correctly, but not others. When you consider how many aspects of reality there are the number of combinations become enourmous. If I believe in no. 2, then I must assume that this one state out of huge numbers of equally likely states is true. I see no basis for this assumption, since nothing increases the likelihood of this one state being the truth.

No. 1 though provides a reason for this one state out of huge numbers of equally likely states to be selected-the intelligence wanted to.

 

[Hubriss]

If our senses are correct, there seems to be only two possibilities as to how they came to be correct:

1. Intelligence created them that way
2. They came to be so ultimately by chance

I see no reason to believe that no. 2 is correct, because says that a single state was picked by chance out of huge numbers of other equally likely possibilities. For example, we could interpret some aspects of reality correctly, but not others. When you consider how many aspects of reality there are the number of combinations become enourmous. If I believe in no. 2, then I must assume that this one state out of huge numbers of equally likely states is true. I see no basis for this assumption, since nothing increases the likelihood of this one state being the truth.

No. 1 though provides a reason for this one state out of huge numbers of equally likely states to be selected-the intelligence wanted to.

So what you’re really talking about, if you don’t notice it, is Intelligent Design. I’m not sure what you mean by aspects of reality and possible states. Are you talking about the laws of the universe? If so then you’re talking about the fine-tuned argument for intelligent design. I don’t know much about fine tuning, but we’ve been talking about the ability to interpret reality which I believe can and has come about by natural processes.

You’re under the impression that evolution by natural selection is random, which is not the case. Mutations in DNA for the most part seem random becuase they come about through mistakes while copying the huge molecules. Those mutations are read by RNA and cause the final traits of the organism being built to be different than before, or evolve. These mutations can be benefitial, harmful, or have no effect at all on the organism. Oftentimes for a trait to change, it takes several mutations. But when there has been enough mutations to develope biological changes, the new organism is tested against its environment. This is where the process of evolution becomes totally selective, and not random at all.

Earliest fossils of life are dated back to almost 3.5 billion years old. About 530 million years ago, the fossil record shows a large proliferation of the existence of complex multicellular organisms. This age was dubbed the Cambrian explosion. Since then these millions of multicellular organisms had millions of years to evolve into greater complexity. We have fossils of many very different animals than we have today which we know have gone extinct for various reasons. All organisms who had lived in the past hundred thousand years or so while man has been around had ancestors whose DNA made them very successful in their environment, while thousand times more organisms have been outcompeted with since the cambrian era and have gone extinct. It’s estimated 99% of all the species who ever lived have produced dead end evolutionary lines.

So, interpreting reality. Obviously those organisms who had been able to interpret reality better than the others had one advantage over them. It is believed that just before or during the beginning of the Cambrian era, the very first primitive eye had devoloped. It of course was not very complicated, but the race between predators and prey to develope better eyes was on. Those who were better able to interpret reality, survived.

Nowadays there are different eyes which do not function the same way. Different animals can focus better, can see various wavelengths of light (We humans can only see the “visible” spectrum of light, but other animals can see x-rays like certain birds and insects like bees). Also us humans don’t have the best possible version of the eye. We have a distinct blind spot which other eyes don’t have.

The eye used to be a great topic for intelligent design and creationism proponents because no one thought that such a complex organ could have evolved becuase it depended on such an intricate assemblage of parts that it had to all be formed at once. But we have detailed explanations of how the eye has developed.

A little info from our good friend Wiki:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_the_eye

 

[Sarpedon]

So what you’re really talking about, if you don’t notice it, is Intelligent Design. I’m not sure what you mean by aspects of reality and possible states. Are you talking about the laws of the universe? If so then you’re talking about the fine-tuned argument for intelligent design. I don’t know much about fine tuning, but we’ve been talking about the ability to interpret reality which I believe can and has come about by natural processes.

Not exactly, because ID assumes that we can interpret reality while my argument questions the basis for that first assumption. The line of reasoning behind both is similar, though.

The states I’m talking about are

1. We correctly interpret reality
2. We correctly interpret reality except for our concept of time
3. We correctly interpret reality except for our concept of dimensions
4. We correctly interpret reality except for our concept of texture
5. Etc. (you can insert any aspect of reality here)
6. We do not accurately interpret reality.

If God does not exist, what is your line of reasoning behind believing any one of these? Each of these is equally possible.

You’re under the impression that evolution by natural selection is random, which is not the case.

Evolution is not connected to my argument. Throughout your example you base your statements on what you have observed in reality. How do you know that your observations reflect reality? If your mind is just an assembly of atoms without intelligent guidance, why would you assume that that this cluster of matter would be able to come to accurate conclusions about the cosmos and reality?

 

[Hubriss]

Not exactly, because ID assumes that we can interpret reality while my argument questions the basis for that first assumption. The line of reasoning behind both is similar, though.

The states I’m talking about are

1. We correctly interpret reality
2. We correctly interpret reality except for our concept of time
3. We correctly interpret reality except for our concept of dimensions
4. We correctly interpret reality except for our concept of texture
5. Etc. (you can insert any aspect of reality here)
6. We do not accurately interpret reality.

If God does not exist, what is your line of reasoning behind believing any one of these? Each of these is equally possible.

Evolution is not connected to my argument. Throughout your example you base your statements on what you have observed in reality. How do you know that your observations reflect reality? If your mind is just an assembly of atoms without intelligent guidance, why would you assume that that this cluster of matter would be able to come to accurate conclusions about the cosmos and reality?

Well, like I said in two of my posts ago. We have a very good means of interpreting reality, and that is through mathematics. We know what we are actually interacting with because we can mathematically measure it. Back to vision, we can measure the wavelength and frequency of light. We know that what we see is only a very tiny portion of the electromagnetic spectrum 380nm-700nm, while the entire spectrum ranges from .1 nanometer wavelength to more than 1000 meter wavelengths.

When you talk about how we don’t correctly interpret time and dimensions, we’ve found that out through mathematics. At the Quantum level, we cannot observe what is going on. But we know about such things as quarks and leptons that are even smaller than protons and electrons becuase we can prove that they are there mathematically.

We know that the amount of reality that we can interpret correctly is limited because we have evolved to only be able to interpret what is needed to survive.

But you’re really asking what is intelligence, and what is consciousness. That’s still a question we are asking ourselves today. We don’t know how the brain is connected to produce a thinking being. But we don’t assume that we can interpret reality correctly. Like I said before, we have witnessed that our interpretations have served us well up to the point where they become limited. Beyond that, we have mathematics, which has also proved itself to be very reliable when we can confirm with other methods. So we feel reasonably confident that mathematics can be used to acurately determine that which we cannot see (the quantum level, the past of the universe, and the future).

But yes, we have come to points called singularities where so far we have not been able to get past yet. And at these points we have confirmed that how we as biological creatures interpret reality is not complete as there actually may be as many as 11 dimensions, two of which may be time.

But there have been interpretations of reality that religion has heavily depended on. For example 2 or 3 of Thomas Aquinas’s Five Proofs for the existence of God heavily depend on the reality of Cause and Effect. But the seemingly well established notion of Cause and Effect may not hold true for all cases. There has been an experiment called the Double Slit Experiment which has boggled everyone. The implications of the experiment almost practically turn our world upsidedown.

Info on the experiment here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_slit_experiment

Here is a video from a movie that explains the experiment very clearly:
youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc

Here’s what Stephen Hawkings is saying about it:
okgrouputer.blogspot.com/2006…-hawkings.html