Anonymous has Questions about God

Someone named Anonymous left a comment with some questions on my post titled: Stephen Hawking's Spontaneous Creation. Here are the questions and my simple answers:
  • Who created god?
    God revealed Himself to Moses simply as "I Am that I Am".
    God has always existed. God is eternal. God has no beginning.
    God has no end.

  • What are the constituents of god?
    God is spirit. He is the invisible entity that created and maintains all that is visible.

  • How is god calculated? What is his mass? luminosity? size?
    God is incalculable because humans do not possess the intellect to measure God. Humanity cannot even accurately determine the weight of Saturn because it does not have a scale large enough to weigh it. Small wonder that humans cannot understand God.

  • Why did god create the universe 13.72 billion years ago and wait to tell some desert people in some insignificant planet to tell the story?
    God has been revealing himself to humanity from the beginning of existence. A person has to be blind to the beauty of a sunset or the wonder of a baby being born to willingly ignore the existence of God. From the beginning of humanity there has been an awareness of God.
Anonymous ends their comment with the following observation:
If god created the world and religion then he surely made it to retard human progress. The idea of god sounds ridiculous enough by itself.
The fundamentalism and narrowness of atheism never ceases to amaze me. Folks like Anonymous embrace a black and white interpretation of the universe and do not leave any room for the colors of life. The idea of God may seem ridiculous to some but I find the idea of God to be compelling. The existence of God and His injunctive to love others as I love myself challenges me to my very core. I cannot imagine an existence without God.

I think that my answers need some help. Please share an answer or two for Anonymous.

16 comments:

  1. Just a couple of thoughts -

    Who created God? - If you answered that, the question would then become "Who created that creator?" There cannot be an infinite regress of uncaused causes. In fact, that is what Hawking seems to be admitting with his theory of Spontaneous Creation. The idea of God is a far less ridiculous answer to "Who/what started it all?"

    Anon's reference earth as an "insignificant planet" is indicative of his underlying presuppositions. Earth is only insignificant if you have already discounted the concept of God. God created the entire universe for His glory and pleasure. That means there is no part of it that is insignificant. When and how He chooses to reveal Himself is part of His redemptive story.

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  2. i think its cool that you've taken the time to share information and take thse questions seriously.

    on a quick glance, if you substituted god with love, many of the questions and answers still make sense... wonder what that says...

    i write that because it wan't until i really understood what unconditional love was, that i personally could see that god was behind all of the goodness, beauty and joy in this world.

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  3. I would have to agree with Anon that religion retards human progress. God didn't create that.

    However, I am having trouble trying to see the logic behind how God creating the world, and man in it, would retard progress.

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  4. I just had to add this excellent comment from Facebook by my friend Lisa:

    " I like this - a lot!! I also liked Ed's comment about replacing the word "god" with "love." Think about this as a question: "How is LOVE calculated? What is it's mass? luminosity? size?" Can't answer that, either, can you, Stephen? Does that mean it doesn't exist? I wonder if Dr. Hawking has ever experienced love? And how he would explain it."

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  5. Well you are claiming that something(in your case a God) can exist without a cause, then why can't that be the singularity itself? Imho it is far more intellectually honest to say that we don't know how it all began than to assume a complex supernatural entity 'did it', when we simply have insufficient evidence for that claim. Also causality implies temporal precedence, our current understanding of the universe is that space-time itself began at the big bang. To posit something happened 'before' the big bang is absurd.
    I don't want to go into details of your post Bob but your last statement: "The idea of God may seem ridiculous to some but I find the idea of God to be compelling. The existence of God and His injunctive to love others as I love myself challenges me to my very core. I cannot imagine an existence without God." Is an argument from incredulity. How you feel about something has no bearing on the truth. Reality may not be comforting but that doesn't mean its not true.

    [Btw I am not anonymous :P In case anyone was wondering]

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  6. @Happy - Thanks for dropping by and for commenting. Here are my responses:

    + Agree completely that no one really "knows" how things began. Faith in the idea of "God" or "No God" is used to determine which theory makes more sense. Either way it is an issue of faith. I personally find faith in God to be a more reasonable and less narrow a faith.

    + I agree with you that "something happened 'before' the big bang is absurd". Yet it is my belief that God exists outside of time and space. So I guess I accept that absurdity.. many things about God seems absurd from a human perspective.

    + And I so agree with you that "Reality may not be comforting but that doesn't mean its not true". Of course reality includes things that are not seen like love, hate, joy, sadness.. and, IMO, God.

    Thanks again for commenting.

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  7. + Agree completely that no one really "knows" how things began. Faith in the idea of "God" or "No God" is used to determine which theory makes more sense. Either way it is an issue of faith. I personally find faith in God to be a more reasonable and less narrow a faith.

    I would argue that faith plays no part in determining which theory makes sense, only empirical evidence does. I can believe(or theorize) whatever I want but only empirical evidence can determine whether my beliefs(theories) align with observed reality. Imo a belief in God, at least at the moment is unjustified, because of insufficient empirical evidence. I am not claiming with certainty that God doesn't exist, but I am assuming a default position that this claim is unlikely until someone presents strong empirical evidence for it.

    + I agree with you that "something happened 'before' the big bang is absurd". Yet it is my belief that God exists outside of time and space. So I guess I accept that absurdity.. many things about God seems absurd from a human perspective.

    If you accept some claims irrespective of whether they have sufficient evidence, then what criteria do you have of accepting/rejecting other claims? Why don't you accept the claims of Muslims or Hindus?

    + And I so agree with you that "Reality may not be comforting but that doesn't mean its not true". Of course reality includes things that are not seen like love, hate, joy, sadness.. and, IMO, God.

    Are you claiming that we have absolutely no scientific understanding of human emotions like love? That is simply not true. In some cases we have even been able to simulate some of these experiences, for e.g. exposing the temporal lobes of our brain to weak magnetic fields has been known to produce a 'spiritual' experience. Just because we don't see something doesn't mean we can't have a scientific understanding of it. We have a pretty good theory of Gravity don't we?

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  8. @Happy - Thanks for continuing the dialog. I am not a scientist or a theologian but I will give you my perspectives on your comments.

    + Empirical evidence is an interesting idea when it comes to the earth's beginnings as there is no evidential record of creation. And, while you may not accept it, I find the healing of my first wife's eyesight (she was legally blind for 3 years) in church to be a fairly empirical event in my life. Other miraculous events that people experience and witness also provide a bit of empirical evidence of God on the earth. Guess it depends on your perspective.

    + About "If you accept some claims irrespective of whether they have sufficient evidence, then what criteria do you have of accepting/rejecting other claims?" - Does the evidence you refer to only include the physical or does spiritual evidence also count? Do you include evidences of people who exhibit hope in hopeless situations? How about evidences of people who love their enemies? What about forgiveness when it is not earned or asked for? Is that an evidence of the existence of God in a person's life.

    + Am I correct in reading that you see love, hate, joy, and sadness as simply emotion reactions coming from chemical reactions in our brains? Do you feel that everything can be explained by something physical? What about hope? What about courage? How about unconditional or sacrificial love? Are these simply chemical reactions in our brain? Are we purely physical beings or are we, at our core, something more?

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  9. Bob, great dialogue! I am glad your wife is doing well.

    Other miraculous events that people experience and witness also provide a bit of empirical evidence of God on the earth. Guess it depends on your perspective.
    Personal experience is not empirical evidence its anecdotal. The human mind is quite capable of producing powerful experiences which may have no correlation to reality. Can you define an experiment that someone can perform to verify miraculous healings? Can this experiment be repeated with predictable results? Does this theory make any predictions in reality? Many miraculous claims(including healings) have been tested and so far there is no concrete evidence of anything supernatural. Also if you associate placebo effects with God then why leave out nocebo effects? I've seen healthy normal God fearing people suddenly succumb to dreadful things like cancer.

    Does the evidence you refer to only include the physical or does spiritual evidence also count? Do you include evidences of people who exhibit hope in hopeless situations? How about evidences of people who love their enemies? What about forgiveness when it is not earned or asked for? Is that an evidence of the existence of God in a person's life.
    Can you define 'spiritual'? I have heard so many definitions of this term that I do not understand it at all. Human morality is a complex thing which depends on many factors ranging from genetics and neurobiology to sociology and economics. I'd like to recommend a book "The Moral Landscape - Sam Harris", it provides a pretty good overview of our current scientific understanding of human morality. Even if there were no explanation, we can not logically go from "human beings have morals" to "a supernatural God must have given us those morals".

    + Am I correct in reading that you see love, hate, joy, and sadness as simply emotion reactions coming from chemical reactions in our brains? Do you feel that everything can be explained by something physical? What about hope? What about courage? How about unconditional or sacrificial love? Are these simply chemical reactions in our brain? Are we purely physical beings or are we, at our core, something more?
    I don't know if everything can be explained by something physical but so far all our investigations of reality have not indicated an influence of anything non-physical(by which i mean outside nature).I don't think physical explanations of things such as love, lessen the human experience in any way. I still feel love and compassion the same way I felt before I had any explanation, but the knowledge and the joy of discovery makes me appreciate the complexity that surrounds us even more.

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  10. @Happy - Enjoyed reading your responses. Here are a few thoughts.

    + Miracles and the Miraculous - I think that you and I will simply have to agree to disagree here. While you dismiss things like this I simply cannot because they are a part of my experience.

    + Spirituality - I agree with you that it is a complex, overused and misunderstood term. In my thinking it is simply that invisible part of the human experience that is unexplainable. Like many others I have experienced Déjà vu - I do understand that some discount it as an anomaly of memory but I consider that take to be anecdotal at best. Bottom line I think that humans possess something (call it a soul or spirit) that animals do not. IMO it is what separates us from us from the rest of nature.

    + About "all our investigations of reality have not indicated an influence of anything non-physical". Not sure that I am understanding what you are saying here but I think that one would have to have a black and white view of existence to make such a statement. For me I find much hope, peace and joy in the idea that there is so much more to our lives than atoms.

    You began by mentioning my wife being better - as I didn't put context to my previous comment I wanted you to know that her healing from blindness was in 1975 and she stayed healed until she passed away from heart and kidney failure in 1994.

    About that - I did not know the Lord when my wife Ellen was blind those three years in my early 20s and my life was dark and hopeless. Since giving my life to the Lord in 1976 my life has been filled with hope.. when my wife died I had hope.. though my (current) wife Ann is disabled I awake to hope each day.

    I think that hope is the hallmark of a healthy spiritual life. And I think that real hope can only exist when a person acknowledges a reality that transcends physical existence.

    Didn't mean to get preachy there at the end. Hope you are well today.

    All the best, Bob

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  11. Bob, I am doing pretty good. Thanks for asking. Interesting thoughts, here is what I think.

    I think that you and I will simply have to agree to disagree here. While you dismiss things like this I simply cannot because they are a part of my experience.
    I am not dismissing this on a whim but because of lack of evidence. Once someone presents a verifiable, repeatable experiment for the miraculous I'd be happy to change my mind. So yes we agree to disagree :)

    Spirituality: In my thinking it is simply that invisible part of the human experience that is unexplainable.
    If it is simply the sum total of unexplained phenomenon related to human experience why not simply call it 'unknown phenomenon'? What additional information does the word 'spiritual' bring? Also I don't see how you can assert that something is fundamentally 'unexplainable', sure things might not be explainable at the moment but who is to say that one day we wont discover explanations for them. Is your idea of 'spirituality' falsifiable based on discovery of such explanations?

    Bottom line I think that humans possess something (call it a soul or spirit) that animals do not.
    This again tells me nothing about the words soul or spirit.

    I think that hope is the hallmark of a healthy spiritual life. And I think that real hope can only exist when a person acknowledges a reality that transcends physical existence.
    I understand that belief in the supernatural may be comforting. Imagining an after-life may bring hope. But the question still remains whether all this is simply wishful thinking? Should one simply believe in things that are comforting or should one face the evidence? I guess that's matter of perspective. Sometimes hoping for something beyond this life maybe a good thing. But sometimes time spent in hoping for something beyond this life is time lost in fully appreciating this life. Personally I don't think you need to believe in a supernatural entity to find meaning, purpose and joy in life.

    I hope I am not coming across as too abrasive. Thats certainly not my intent. Am just really interested in these questions.

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  12. @Happy - Thanks again for continuing our conversation.

    + I think that, by definition, the miraculous is not a repeatable event. In a sense it is something that science cannot explain. And I think that there is much in the universe that science, especially medical science, cannot understand or explain. Here's wishing that they one day will.

    + I am comfortable with the 'unknown phenomenon' classification as long as we understand that much of it will never be explained. Science is pretty limited - I'd prefer that they formulate cures for illnesses and diseases than work on 'unknown phenomenon'. I mean really - most of us thought that cures would be found for cancer, diabetes, HIV, MS, ALS and almost all major diseases by now. It just reminds me about how limited science and scientists really are. But then again, 'unknown phenomenon' can mean things other than spiritual phenomenon. :)

    + Agree with you that one does not "need to believe in a supernatural entity to find meaning, purpose and joy in life". I was speaking purely from my experience and the experiences of many that I know who have had to deal with the loss of a loved one and other difficult situations.

    I am not sure that I am really answering any of your questions. I enjoy the debate but think that you have probably exhausted my fount of knowledge on these subjects.

    You and I seem to approach life from different perspectives. I would be interested in hearing more of your story. It would be good to know what energizes you to face the difficulties of life and how you have overcome adversity.

    Have a great weekend!

    Bob

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  13. I know this is all the way back from 2010 but as you have comment moderation on, I think you will see my replies, late as they might be:

    For one, I really enjoyed your feedback with @Happy and only wish this person was still online to say so. S/he brings up good points ...especially address your incredulity argument as she puts it. I think you also raise some good answers, like the very nature of miraculous implies it is cannot 9nor ever could be) defined by science.

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  14. Bob, I hope you are game for me to add to this discussion here from my own perspectives, be that as it may. You actually ask for help though on replying to Happy but i would rather answer you as you are here and that person (female?) is no longer online apparently.

    Firstly, let me say that I was impressed that you did not quote bible passages galore as that means nothing to a an atheist just as quoting the Bagavad Gita would to you, say!

    Rather that piecemeal every quote in your dialogue with @Happy, I will just quote and respond to your initial replies:
    ----------------
    Happy: Who created god?
    Your reply: God revealed Himself to Moses simply as "I Am that I Am". God has always existed. God is eternal. God has no beginning. God has no end.
    My thoughts: so your answer then to the creation angle is "God was/is not created." the other stuff, whilst seemingly backing up your point, did not actually answer the question outright.

    Happy: What are the constituents of god?
    You: God is spirit. He is the invisible entity that created and maintains all that is visible.
    My thoughts: Again, that does not answer the question, especially the "maintains all that is visible" part as that is to do with action not a noun. Wouldn't that be better answered by actually addressing what parts form God, what are literally the constituents? for a Christian that woudl be the The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Or better yet, "God is Love" therefore made of love, which in your faith is made up then of the three persons of love.

    Happy: How is god calculated? What is his mass? luminosity? size?
    You: God is incalculable because humans do not possess the intellect to measure God. Humanity cannot even accurately determine the weight of Saturn because it does not have a scale large enough to weigh it. Small wonder that humans cannot understand God.
    My thoughts: I like your reply here but why even address "intellect" for measuring God. If God is spirit then one must measure God with spirit, or heart if you will, if not believing in the spiritual. So, again, love.

    Part 2 next....

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  15. Part 2:
    Happy: Why did god create the universe 13.72 billion years ago and wait to tell some desert people in some insignificant planet to tell the story?
    You: God has been revealing himself to humanity from the beginning of existence. A person has to be blind to the beauty of a sunset or the wonder of a baby being born to willingly ignore the existence of God. From the beginning of humanity there has been an awareness of God.
    My thoughts: None of your answers here actually addresses Happy's question about why chose some desert people, etc? Not sure how I woudl answer that myself. I guess one could say because maybe God chose to use the lowly to clearly show his working to humble the wise? [Seems to me every answer comes back to the idea of love as being the centre of it all.]

    Happy: If god created the world and religion then he surely made it to retard human progress. The idea of god sounds ridiculous enough by itself.
    Your response: The fundamentalism and narrowness of atheism never ceases to amaze me. Folks like Anonymous embrace a black and white interpretation of the universe and do not leave any room for the colors of life. The idea of God may seem ridiculous to some but I find the idea of God to be compelling. The existence of God and His injunctive to love others as I love myself challenges me to my very core. I cannot imagine an existence without God.
    My thoughts: I like what you say here overall. I guess I would add that the idea of randomness or nothingness or inanimate non-life somehow birthing life seems equally as rediculous but again, using words "rediculous" are merely opinions, also not grounded in anything empirical.

    While it may certainly be true that atheism can get very narrow minded when dismissing things not understood or measurable, if you will, I have to say that a lot of your opinions of that camp hold equally true for Christians, sorry to say! "The fundamentalism and narrowness" of apprent "bible believers" never ceases to amaze me too. They also "embrace a black and white interpretation of the universe and do not leave any room" for nuance as I will put it! If it's not in the Bible, it is not so apparently. Then again, even if it is in the Bible (apparently) that means so little as there are multitude of INTERPRETATIONS all claiming their is the most "scriptural". The variety of interpretation considering how equally convinced each camp is that their is straight from the bible "only" is practically laughable if it was not so tragic really. The next time I hear someone say, I like so and so bc they preach straight from the bible, I think I'll scream silently inside!

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  16. Happy: Why did god create the universe 13.72 billion years ago and wait to tell some desert people in some insignificant planet to tell the story?
    You: God has been revealing himself to humanity from the beginning of existence. A person has to be blind to the beauty of a sunset or the wonder of a baby being born to willingly ignore the existence of God. From the beginning of humanity there has been an awareness of God.
    My thoughts: None of your answers here actually addresses Happy's question about why chose some desert people, etc? Not sure how I woudl answer that myself. I guess one could say because maybe God chose to use the lowly to clearly show his working to humble the wise? [Seems to me every answer comes back to the idea of love as being the centre of it all.]

    Happy: If god created the world and religion then he surely made it to retard human progress. The idea of god sounds ridiculous enough by itself.
    Your response: The fundamentalism and narrowness of atheism never ceases to amaze me. Folks like Anonymous embrace a black and white interpretation of the universe and do not leave any room for the colors of life. The idea of God may seem ridiculous to some but I find the idea of God to be compelling. The existence of God and His injunctive to love others as I love myself challenges me to my very core. I cannot imagine an existence without God.
    My thoughts: I like what you say here overall. I guess I would add that the idea of randomness or nothingness or inanimate non-life somehow birthing life seems equally as rediculous but again, using words "rediculous" are merely opinions, also not grounded in anything empirical.

    While it may certainly be true that atheism can get very narrow minded when dismissing things not understood or measurable, if you will, I have to say that a lot of your opinions of that camp hold equally true for Christians, sorry to say! "The fundamentalism and narrowness" of apprent "bible believers" never ceases to amaze me too. They also "embrace a black and white interpretation of the universe and do not leave any room" for nuance as I will put it! If it's not in the Bible, it is not so apparently. Then again, even if it is in the Bible (apparently) that means so little as there are multitude of INTERPRETATIONS all claiming their is the most "scriptural". The variety of interpretation considering how equally convinced each camp is that their is straight from the bible "only" is practically laughable if it was not so tragic really. The next time I hear someone say, I like so and so bc they preach straight from the bible, I think I'll scream silently inside!

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