What created God?

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God created humans and before that creation and before that the cosmos, and before that time, space, and matter. What created God? If God has existed an infinite amount of time in the pasts and an infinite amount of time in the future, how is it that God came to be?
 
God never came to be. He simply is. And there wasn’t an infinite amount of time in the past. Time is part of creation.

Theists don’t claim that everything must have a cause.
 
So if time is not infinite, but God exists outside of time, at what point in the history of the existence of God did God decide to start creating things? For all we know God lived in a void of nothingness for millions of years before deciding to create things
 
Dolphin said:
So if time is not infinite, but God exists outside of time, at what point in the history of the existence of God did God decide to start creating things? For all we know God lived in a void of nothingness for millions of years before deciding to create things
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You say God exists outside of time, but then put God in time by saying he potentially existed millions of years before creating.

There was no temporal moment before the universe. God did not exist for any duration of time before the universe. He just is, irrespective of any dimension of time. He never came to be. God was not doing nothing at one point and then decided to create. His will is eternal.
 
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That’s an illogical question, that’s like presupposing that a child had to create its parents, because a child exists. Were I you, I would look up what Saint Augustine said about that very question
 
adamhovey1988 said:
That’s an illogical question, that’s like presupposing that a child had to create its parents, because a child exists. Were I you, I would look up what Saint Augustine said about that very question
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http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/110111.htm

Chapter 10 onwards.

Though unfortunately the translations in fair use are a bit obtuse in their old English, and we in our 21st century prefer briefer texts. This is also a meditation and not a philosophical treatise.

But still, beautiful.
 
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Dolphin said:
What created God? If God has existed an infinite amount of time in the pasts and an infinite amount of time in the future, how is it that God came to be?
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More than 2,000 years ago, that argument was refuted by Aristotle. If you use cause and effect, then God MUST be infinite. Since Aristotle considered that unlikely, he showed that you have to abandon cause-and-effect and postulate a great “uncaused cause.”
 
GOD was not created, If someone or something created HIM, HE would cease to BE GOD.
By Philosophical definition to be GOD, GOD cannot have a cause. HE is the cause for all things.
 
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The material universe has physical boundaries. The spiritual world does not, including the boundaries of time. That is what it means to be “spiritual.” It is this spiritual world is eternal wher God “exists.” That is why we cannot understand the concept of “eternity past,” because our minds are limited to the finite universe. There must be one “cause” that is eternal, and it cannot exist in the physical realm with the boundaries of time. That “Cause” is God, specifically the God of Christianity and the Scriptures.
 
Dolphin said:
For all we know God lived in a void of nothingness for millions of years before deciding to create things
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We don’t know when God first created anything. Our Universe/Reality might not have been the first He created and I don’t assume that He’s stopped creating other things that are beyond our understanding.
 
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When we say God is “outside” time and space, we must be careful not to think of time and space as a box that God is outside of. That image alone is contradictory with the proposition, for the image imagines God as spatially existing outside of our space with his own version of time.

Time and space are themselves created by God and do not condition his existence the way they condition us to being at certain spaces at certain times. We are dimensionally defined by time and space. God is not. I think it more accurate to think of God as dimensionless than as higher dimensional, insofar as time and spatial dimensions don’t condition his existence in any way. When I say God is “dimensionless,” that is not really a positive description, but a negative one. Such things don’t apply to or condition God in his divinity.
 
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Yes this. Exactly this. We ARE here so we must have been caused by some thing. And it is illogical to believe an infinite amount of caused causes regression so the only logical, but at the time quite confoundable, is an uncaused cause. God.
 
Dolphin said:
God created humans and before that creation and before that the cosmos, and before that time, space, and matter. What created God? If God has existed an infinite amount of time in the pasts and an infinite amount of time in the future, how is it that God came to be?
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In order to be created, there has to be a point where God hasn’t existed before then. Since God is existence itself, He could not be created. To top that off, if God were created, there would have to be a being greater than God, and if that were the case, God would not be God. Remember that God exists outside of time itself. So it’s hard to really think of pasts and futures when it comes to a being outside of time. It is confusing, and a mystery. Maybe our human minds were not made to comprehend it, at least not on Earth.
 
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God exists in eternity. Eternity is not a lot of time. Eternity is not any time. The concepts of “before” and “after” do not apply to God.
 
Dougbro1 said:
To top that off, if God were created, there would have to be a being greater than God, and if that were the case, God would not be God. Remember that God exists outside of time itself. So it’s hard to really think of pasts and futures when it comes to a being outside of time.
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The thing is that once you step outside of time it’s impossible to say that this thing created that thing, because neither one of them could’ve preceded the other.

Then you have to ask yourself how you can even differentiate between things. Can I say for example, that this thing is red, and this other thing is blue. But how did you distinguish between “this thing” and “the other thing” in the first place, such that you can refer to one as being red, and the other as being blue. Or do they simply constitute one thing with the attributes of both red and blue. But not just red and blue, but all colors. So the thing becomes essentially color itself.

Do that for everything, and you have God.
 
adamhovey1988 said:
That’s an illogical question, that’s like presupposing that a child had to create its parents, because a child exists. Were I you, I would look up what Saint Augustine said about that very question
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Yes! St Augustine has a good discussion about time in the Confessions.
 
To understand we would have to be God. I cannot imagine God before time. I do have a story that I believe. God decided to give His Son a gift - brothers and sisters. To do that He had to go through the 6 days of creation. He was not going to make slaves that had to obey but rather creatures with free will. On the first day, let there be light, was when the angels were created. All at once billions of angels so that each human would have one! They had to pass a test. God let them know He was going to create creatures with bodies and souls. Lower forms than angels but eventually His Son would take on human flesh. His mother would be made Queen of heaven and all the angels would bow down to his son. About one third of the angels revolted they could not accept than man would be higher than the angels!
It took billions of years for the plan to unfold. If you look carefully you can see God’s genius throughout creation!
Oh one last thing. God did not creat all humans at one time. He allows man to participate in creation and bring forth new humans! Awesome!
 
lelinator said:
The thing is that once you step outside of time it’s impossible to say that this thing created that thing, because neither one of them could’ve preceded the other.
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Nonsense. If the existence of one thing is wholly derived or dependent on something else, and the other exists independently in an underived way, that’s all you need to know.
Then you have to ask yourself how you can even differentiate between things. Can I say for example, that this thing is red, and this other thing is blue. But how did you distinguish between “this thing” and “the other thing” in the first place, such that you can refer to one as being red, and the other as being blue. Or do they simply constitute one thing with the attributes of both red and blue. But not just red and blue, but all colors. So the thing becomes essentially color itself.
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Perhaps you can expand on the question, because I fail to see an actual issue. God is not red or blue, for one. And your question seems to presuppose an observer who himself is dependent on time to make a distinction but then still tries to place this observer who is dependent on time in a timeless framework.

If two things are not identical, they are distinct.
 
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Wesrock said:
You say God exists outside of time, but then put God in time by saying he potentially existed millions of years before creating.
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This!

Here’s the point, and it bends my brain to think about it:

there’s no “now”, or “then”, or “later” to eternity. In a way, the creation of the universe always was, since that creation was caused outside of temporality.

Inside of the universe, though, we can look at other things inside and categorize them by the point in time at which they occurred. Outside of that context, though, we can’t ask “when?”.
 
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