Who Made God?

That's a flawed analogy. An activity doesn't have to "get you anywhere" to be worthwhile.

Who made God? Christian theology says God has always existed, so no one made God.

quote:

---

Who made God? Christian theology says God has always existed, so no one made God.

---

Then how did God come about?Some background details would be nice.(Without any details outlining the process that came just before what we know as "the beginning", the "always existed" line will ONLY mean that God existed a good ways before man and our local Universe)(scripture makes it very clear that "the beginning" is only relative to whatever - limited - reference point is being discussed)Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.

I would think that you would have an opinion on this question since you always like googling a wide variety of religious texts and commentaries regarding non-Western Christian origins and beliefs.Here is my 2 cent answer: (not from google, note)Some believe that God originated in the imagination of humans.Others believe that God has always existed and imagined/created us long before we were evolved enough to scratch our butt.Evidence shows that humans began to write about gods and deities as soon as they were able to write.Some believe though cannot objectively prove that God desired to communicate to us through the writings we ourselves made.Evidently, either God encourages us to philosophize and question His character ....
orGod was entirely made up by humans.

False dichotomy. There could be a God who was not made up by humans and who has no desire whatsoever to communicate with us. That possibility and the possibility of no God at all are more evident than your gregarious God.

In which case Tangles advice to just go fishing is the most logical. Oh, and bring spare change for the homeless at the park.

That attitude you just expressed is like what I've been hearing from creationists for decades (at least the very few willing to begin to engage in a discussion): "I have this set of highly detailed specific beliefs (eg, young earth, Noah's Flood, specific sequences of historical events) that absolutely must be literally true. If even one of those beliefs is wrong, then they are all wrong and I should just completely give up." Seriously, they would emphatically and vehemently insist that that was the way it was and the only way it could possibly be.Since many tend to view these things in terms of a spiritual war, let's use that as an analogy. One of the primary duties in the military is training -- close to that is maintaining military readiness, a principal component of which is being current on your training. You plan for dealing with many different possible threat scenarios and you train to meet those threats. If any of those scenarios do not actually happen, was all your training a complete waste of time? Or didn't the benefits inherent in engaging in that training make that training worthwhile?Part of military thinking is Operational Risk Management (ORM). As you are about to engage in an evolution, you analyze what could possibly go wrong, how likely that would be, how to handle that kind of emergency, and what you need to do and put into place to be able to handle those possible emergencies. For example, at a unit softball game you ensure that you have enough liquids to keep everybody properly hydrated, first aid gear and somebody who knows how to use it (eg, have a corpsman present), the means to call for EMTs (almost trivial now with mobiles) which would include knowing what number to call and how to tell them where you are located, etc. If no emergency arises, were all your precautions nothing but a waste and so you shouldn't bother with any of that the next time? Of course not!Same thing in private life when you drive your car to somewhere. When I was stationed in North Dakota, we were all required to keep a winter survival kit in our car. If our car never dove into a ditch, was that kit and training useless? Of course not! BTW, ditch-diving is a popular sport in ND; the fewer of your car's wheels that end up on the ground, the higher your score.The primary benefit of training is not in the end result, but rather in the training itself.The benefit of working with spiritual questions is not confirming what you had started out believing in the first place (far from it!), but rather in how it leads you to grow spiritually. The goal is not to find answers, but rather in asking the right questions and then trying to work towards answers even though you can never actually find those answers.To question is the answer.

quote:

---

I would think that you would have an opinion on this question since you always like googling a wide variety of religious texts and commentaries regarding non-Western Christian origins and beliefs.

​

Here is my 2 cent answer: (not from google, note)

​

Some believe that God originated in the imagination of humans.

​

Others believe that God has always existed and imagined/created us long before we were evolved enough to scratch our butt.

​

Evidence shows that humans began to write about gods and deities as soon as they were able to write.

​

Some believe though cannot objectively prove that God desired to communicate to us through the writings we ourselves made.

​

Evidently, either God encourages us to philosophize and question His character ....
or
God was entirely made up by humans.

---

But early humans tended to think that the "Universe" was all there was, I suppose.(Not that people understood the planets and sun correctly).The issue of multiple universes is very tough to wrap our minds around even today.The problem with the - now understood - multiple universe reality is that the very word "universe" means everything.But the issue is this:Creationists have no physical theory on how or where God came from. And saying "God is spiritual" doesn't solve the problem. You would need to apply physics to spiritual origins. It is all hypothetical. And a Spiritual Physics type of philosophical argument is a requirement for people with theological beliefs. One must know what to believe in for a "belief" to have long-term vitality.

Is'nt that true even today? I suppose that we can hypothetically imagine multiverses, but in a practical sense they are not any better understood than our own galaxy. Did you watch the Bill Nye video I posted a while back?
So my question is Whose "imagination" created Whom?

Not at all. I don't agree with the all or nothing theory of belief. I'm all for imagining God the way that we can justify. After all, critics say that humans imagined him anyway...from the beginning of recorded thought. Personally, I do not believe that to be true.

Justifying God as-an-existing-entity-in-reality:
-Hasn't been able to be done, ever
-Most likely cannot be done
-Universe seems to work/act as it would if God does not existJustifying God as-a-Spiritual-Tool:
-very high gains here for some (eg - entry level motivation for things like charities, community spirit, morality, mental health...)
-very high negatives for others (eg - if you already have motivation for same things, it's easy to not see "the point" in God and then easy to assume there's no point for anyone)That's my summary, anyway

Its quite clear from scripture that humans have always sought to justify themselves rather than God. They simply use God as their answer as to why they justify themselves.In war, may God be with us. (yet not supposedly with them. )In morality, one must act a certain way or behave a certain way because of "God".
The book itself is presented as Gods word. Never is it suggested that some wish to justify all of us the way they justify themselves.

There could also be a God who exists in communion with us who is undetectable. The function of such a God would be (from our standpoint) as a conscience and highest noble character...the things we "should" do rather than the things we instinctually do.One aspect of the whole multiverse theory is expressed in the video the guy made to Bill Nye. TRANSCRIPT:

quote:

---

Austin: My name is Austin Bogner and I have a question about the multiverse. So if there does exist an infinite amount of universes, then mathematically there’s a 100 percent chance that there exists at least one universe out there in the multiverse that cannot support the idea of any other universe existing except for that one particular universe. And my question is: doesn’t this create a paradox in the multi-universe idea?

​

Bill Nye: Austin, you are asking a fabulous question about multiverses. The answer for me is: clearly I don’t know. This is to say, is it just a question of definition, that there is one universe and within it are subverses or multiverses? Or is it actually: everything that we know and see and can detect is nominally replicated at some other dimension or some other space beyond space that we are only able to imagine?

​

And the only reason we think that they might exist, these multiverses beyond space time, is because there’s no reason to exclude them. Like there’s no reason they couldn’t exist.

​

These are wonderful questions. I’ve seen many talks on this. I’ve gone to symposia about this. And I don’t know the answer.

​

However, we have the Spitzer space telescope. We have Hubble space telescope. We’re going to have James Webb space telescope. And these instruments along with ground-based telescopes are peering farther and farther into the past, looking at light that came from the Big Bang and the unknowable time, the Planck time, getting back that far.

​

And so what came before that? Is that even a meaningful question? Is it just our perception and the nature of our perception of time that limits our ability to understand what might be beyond our universe or not?

​

These are wonderful questions, but here’s what I’ll say: When you get a chance support space exploration, because learning more about the cosmos tells us more about ourselves and tells us more about where we all might have come from”And then ultimately, “Are we alone in all this?”, in the cosmos or in this universe or beyond. Whoa. That’s a great question man.

---

Now what struck me about this question are several things. First, once the math is introduced and the human brain can conceptualize something, it becomes more "real" than any God. Thus by virtue of the idea of infinity, any possibility can be hypothetically explained.(perhaps not justified, but only mathematically)I would add that my belief sees God over all possible multiverses rather than simply one. Which only complicates the questions. ringo will tell me that I have no idea of knowing whether my belief is a product solely of my imagination or whether the probability of such a God actually exists.

Sounds like one more thing scripture happens to be wrong about.
There's a lot of good stuff in scripture.
There's also a lot of incorrect things. This just happens to be one of the incorrect things.Perhaps some humans have always sought to justify themselves rather than God?
Sure.But any significant number?
No, I don't think so.I think that anyone you're thinking about who would "justify themselves rather than God" simply doesn't care about God.
That doesn't mean they're "justifying themself..." it just means they are not justifying God.
It's not an either/or thing.It's not like you "justify God" or you "justify yourself."
What if you "justify love?" or "justify all humans?" or "justify any intelligence?" or "justify any life at all?" or "justify anything that exists?"
None of those would be "justifying themselves." But they aren't "justifying God" either.I suppose the next question is - what do you actually mean when you say "justifying?"
Keep as the highest authority? - That's what I was assuming, or something along those lines.I think it would be much better if anyone trying to "use God as their answer as to why they justify themselves" in this sense would stop and try to "justify love" or any of the other examples I gave. Might make for a much less selfish population. In Christian morality - yes.
In "morality" - no. God is not necessarily a part of morality. There are much better systems of morality available than those found in scriptures. You'll really have to explain what you mean by "justify" for this to make sense to me.

I mean like how fundamentalists think. They will say that the bedrock of their faith is belief. (Faith said that a lot. She would believe before anything else.) The book is used, as is God, to justify the belief. And the belief is used to justify God. Perhaps this explains the mutation that humans who profess to be believers have that makes them often behave worse than unbelievers.I would claim that to justify love is, in fact, justifying God. But I won't argue from a religious perspective. Keep the thoughts coming! I used your quote in a reply to RAZD.Edited by Phat, : No reason given.