Who Made God?

What's the difference between nonsense and an unevidenced belief? I also allow for other people to believe in nonsense and declare whatever they want as miraculous no matter how nonsensical it is. I don't see why allowing people to believe in nonsense somehow comes with the requirement that I have to believe in the same nonsense. Can you explain?

What would you think if the only way someone could support their argument was by inventing fantasies like the one above?When you see a magician levitate someone in mid air, do you think they are deities or do you look for the wires?

Virtual particles popping in and out of the vacuum is a common popularization. It's also incorrect, empty space is just empty. It's sort of a popularization that occurred at an unfortunate time. Early in quantum field theory's development it looked like it predicted particles popping in and out of the vacuum, and this hit old science magazines, but it actually doesn't. Maybe, but it's a subtle issue to grasp. I don't personally recall people supporting Hawking's instanton theory, but I may have missed the threads.If you mean that the Big Bang explains the origins of the universe or stuff like "Time began in the big bang", which aren't true, I'm not surprised people think this. Nearly every popular account says so. The two semesters I taught graduate cosmology the students actually couldn't believe that the Big Bang doesn't explain the origin of the universe, as all media and books say so again and again. I think this is a failing of the physics community, we are content to have programs explain half-formed notions from the 1940s instead of modern physics, which genuinely I think is clearer and easier to grasp.Edited by Son Goku, : *not surprised

I often sit right next to enough energy to destroy a city yet do not find it impressive. In fact I just drank all that energy and will now pour another glass of water.ICANT's fantasy of reality is almost as silly as his fantasy of Christianity or of the Bible.

OK I see your point.

My intital reaction was: First I was like.....then I was all like....and then remembered all the times I was wrong....and then I was like shhhhhiit.

ICANT, I have been pretty busy lately. My only time seems to be on the scripture issues (which is for the better, since the scientific stuff is over most of our heads), and I was in a hurry in my last post.I will try to respond quickly.I said:

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Yahweh actually can only really mean I AM or I WILL BE.

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NOT IN PAST (probably not though Hebrew is tricky with tenses as there are none in the Bible, mostly)

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You responded:

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I don't know where you come from with the I AM other than from the translation of the KJV or one of the other versions.

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You sure did not get it from the definition of , which is 1.to be, become, come to pass, exist, happen, fall out.

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You are right about Biblical Hebrew tenses. They don't exist period, there is no mostly to it.
Verbs are either perfect, completed action or imperfect, ongoing action.

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I suspect the font won't work, but your above post had the Hebrew HYH which essentially means he is or he was (the infinitive "to be" isn't the actual form that is shown in the lexicons, which always have the third person qal perfect masculine singular BUT THE DEFINITION ALWAYS GIVES THE INFINITIVE)The translation for ehyeh (or 'HYH) is totally related to the translation for YHWH. (Exodus 3:14 ehyeh asher ehyeh and Exodus 6:3 YHWH).Exodus 3:14 in the King James.

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And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you

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This is the first person use (by God!) of the IMPERFECT for HYH.Then the Exodus 6:3 YHWH use

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And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them

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This is the third person IMPERFECT which means HE IS or HE WILL BENow, what about the imperfect use of the perfect HYH?Here is what a very conservative scholar and leading Hebrew linguist has to say.

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The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries (Book 2)
Exodus 1-18
William H.C. Propp
Yale University Press (October 5, 1999)
p.204

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The imperfect of hyh always refers to the future.

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(And it is not a settled issue that Biblical Hebrew lacks straight out tenses.)See this Wikipedia linkI Am that I Am - WikipediaYou then quoted my comment about the Hebrew grammar showing that God was not eternal in THE PAST.

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Yahweh, according to Hebrew grammar, backs this cosmology up!

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You said:

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I don't know what you draw that conclusion from.
Could you give me the Hebrew text that supports your conclusion?

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The YHWH word (see above).NEXT ISSUENOW PAUL'S WORDS

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The meaning of 'soma' is: 1.the body both of men or animals.
So in the text body would be referring to the people who made up the church.

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'pleroma' means 1.that which is (has been) filled

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'arche' means: 1.beginning, origin

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So what is all that about and where did it come from?

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But, surely, you know that "Paul" (assuming that he wrote this book) uses technical terms.Pleroma means a collective soul ( the Gnostics used it to refer to eminations of the Demiurge).Scholars (like the one I quoted) used to think Gnosis existed in the first century and saw Paul responding to views that are documented in the later in the second century. Now it seems that he was responding to regular Christians.Pleroma means this according to ancient sources.

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the Lord and Maker of all (ton Holon) being both All (ta panta ) and One, ... for the Pleroma of all things is One and in One

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Go to GoogleTA PANTATON HOLONPLEROMASTOICHEIA(you made an issue of the word

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I don't care to discuss someone else's commentary but I would discuss your commentary.

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This commentary did not rule out Paul holding a collective soul type of belief.See the above quotes.My comments?Paul simply took the collective soul views that the Christians had and then made CHRIST the combined part of it all.You then said:

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σϋνίστήμι
This is the Greek word that is translated consist in Col. 1:17.
The word means: 1.to place together, to set in the same place,to bring or band together. I don't know where you got your translation from.
If you click the circle beside the peek button you can see how I made the Greek letters appear in the post instead of a mess. They will not copy and paste, neither will Hebrew. HTML code is required.

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I got the word PLEROMA from verse 19(here is part of my quote, from the evangelical commentary, which my words in place of the Greek font)

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The term body (SOMA) as used here is not an independent development of the analogy that Paul had used in I Corinthians, but a new approach to the whole concept of the church. In all probability the apostle takes over in a technical term of the Colossian "philosophy," as he certainly does with PLEROMA ("fullness") in the next verse. We cannot tell precisely how the Colossian Gnostics used SOMA in the framework of their cosmic theory; whatever it meant to them, Paul affirms that it is realized in the church. ....

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1:17

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And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.

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1:18

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And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.

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1:19

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For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell;

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1:19 is the collective soul part.And this PLEROMA is the same term used in 2:9, which is used to twist Paul into sayings that (also in 2:9-10) TES THEOTETOS ( "of the Godhead" or "of deity") somehow is a pro-Trinitarian verse.It is not pro Trinitarian!It is using the collective soul to connect God to (well?) the collective soul.Paul did not teach that the God YHWH (and the "Demiurge" was just a Christian use that took a Greek name for what was otherwise YHWH, though Plato's name for God would have been seen as evil by the same Gnostic Christians and infact the same God just like Theos was seen as YHWH) was evil.But later Gnostics and Marcion did.But Paul also has had his views twisted, and it is due to ignorance of the Greek words. Paul meant PLEROMA just as it was used then. There is no evidence he modified it, but he simply was making a point about Christ being the sum total of the whole, and a manifestation of the whole.

Thats human nature. Lets take the ocean. Many people do not find it impressive unltil it arrives in the form of a Tsunami and wipes out their house and family before their eyes. I CANT is impressed with God, even while likely denying that he made the God that he worships up. You laugh at his ideas and declare them simplistic, dogmatic, and as laughable to you as the God of Calvinism. All that he is trying to do is describe what he believes to be GOD (The reality) to others. You yourself introduced us to that term. Remember how you taught me the construct? Which is logical, but dont simply make fun of folk who dare to describe a God that they believe can be described. You can challenge their ideas by describing what you see as a bigger GOD than they describe, and then the argument resumes. Simply putting people down, asking them if they ever read the Bible, and laughing at their ideas does not help add anything to any conversation that we engage in here at EvC. Remember when you described GOD as you understood Him(Her It) I could make fun of you for saying that GOD is all, accusing you of pantheism.
or Yin and Yang. Both your GOD and I CANTS God can be supported Biblically. So why the jeering and condescending tones towards I CANT and his ideas?I CANT has a point in that we have been unable to observe the origins of the universe, thus why not invoke GOD rather than simply ENERGY? One is as likely as the other.

I think it's more like one is invoking GOD where the other is not invoking GOD.Invoking GOD
-has been tried before
-when tried before, has never come up with a verifiable answer
-when tried before, has usually been replaced with a not-invoking-GOD answer that is verifiable and offers additional knowledge to the situation
-has never been able to firmly and adequately answer any question about how anything works
-sure, could be right this one time... but is there any reason to think it would be?Not invoking GOD
-has been tried before
-when tried before, sometimes comes up with a verifiable answer that offers additional knowledge to the situation
-has an excellent track record for providing firm, adequate answers about how things actually work
-not guaranteed to be right, but if it does learn something, that something is guaranteed to be useful I don't see how.
I can understand how they are both possible answers to a situation where "I don't know" accurately described our knowledge.
However, "as likely as the other" seems to be woefully ignorant of each idea's track record.

Reminder: The topic is Who Made God? Really now. You need to try a bit harder to rediscover the inner kindness and rationale which I know that you have.Lets review I CANT and jars interactions in this thread and judge for ourselves the point attempting to be made. All I see so far is that I CANT is stating his belief. He made not be well schooled in science, nor am I, but his premise is basic: At a certain point in the distant past, right at the time of the Big Bang, no observation as to the cause of the event was possible to determine. Perhaps I CANTs only potential error is in declaring that Science never will figure it out. We don't know that.The exchange continues: Thus, I CANT is stating his belief. He disagrees with Hawking saying that God is not necessary to create the universe. Fair enough.
You have said similar things, jar. From How Do We Know God is Good?
See? You are capable of being empathetic towards others who believe differently than you do. You seem to lump Biblical Creationists into one vile category...they are different. I CANT is not Falwell, Bakker, Hinn, or Faith. From what I see, he helps those in his congregation. Just because he doesn't see God the way you do is no reason to ridicule him.

But no one speaking on the science and reality side has invoked simply energy. BUT, and it is a big BUT, there is evidence that energy exists, can be tested, quantified, identified and detected.There is no evidence of GOD.One is far more likely than the other since one can be tested, quantified, identified and detected with the other cannot be tested, quantified, identified or detected.I do not make fun of peoples beliefs but I do reserve the right to point out when their descriptions claim to be describing reality and are simply misrepresentations.The origin of the universe is also irrelevant to the question of Who Made God and changing the topic is a classic tactic to avoid addressing tough questions.

Hi Son, I have spent the last couple of days trying to find Professor Hawkings paper and lecture on the instanton that we have discussed in the past. None of the links work as he has changed his website and removed several articles including the one on the instanton. I have a copy of them on a hard drive somewhere but that will take a lot of time to find.Since he has discarded his earlier instanton claims I see no need in trying to find them. He put out a paper in 2016 Phantom of the Hartle-Hawking instanton: connecting inflation with dark energy.He has many more assumptions in this paper than he had in the previous 2 papers on the instanton. I have not studied it enough to conclude anything. I have not been able to comprehend where he might have for the origin of the instanton in this paper. I will study it in more detail when the time is available.But since he discarded his earlier views I will do the same. It doesn't do any good to beat a dead horse as Nator's avatar of old. In one of my threads you and cavediver was discussing Stephen Hawkings no boundary universe that came from the instanton. In his comments he said he skipped the BBT and went straight to the no boundary universe. If you don't remember that I will look it up when I get time. I have never advocated that the BBT explained the origins of the universe. I been told too many times that the BBT tries to explain what happened beginning at T=10^-43 s.My problem with that is that there are certain assumptions that must be accepted (believed happened) in order for the BBT to describe what happened after T=10^-43 s. Some facts would be great to base things on that assumptions.
Do you have any?The Bible gives me information that has been proven by observations today. The Bible predicted the earth was round, there was a period of uniform light in the universe, and the earth was placed in the heavens and her path was set.It made all those predictions over 2,400 year ago.God Bless,

Can someone explain why this belongs in Coffee House. Did someone sneak by having an OP vetted properly?

My fault. I moved it from Book Nook where it already existed as a topic. I was going to start a new one but for whatever reason back then I abused my power. Please forgive my error in judgment.

Agree. Should be in Faith and Belief, maybe?EvC Forum: Faith and Belief