Logic spaghetti: Who created God?

_{Denyse O'Leary

March 31, 2019

Atheism, Intelligent Design, Logic and Reason, Philosophy, theism}

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Oxford mathematician John Lennox takes on Richard Dawkins:

What are the most difficult questions to answer? Solid candidates are those which by virtue of how they are posed eliminate the only logical and correct answers.
Who created God is one such question that is invariably heard when two or more intelligent people begin talking about the most important issues in life.
Oxford mathematician John Lennox took up this perennial question during a 2011 interview with Daniel Lowenstein at UCLA during the “Christianity and the Tooth Fairy” conference hosted by the Veritas Forum.
“Who created God? If you ask that question, it shows immediately that you’ve categorized God as created,” Lennox said in beginning his response to Lowenstein’s query.Mark Tapscott, “Who Created God? Oxford’s John Lennox Responds To Richard Dawkins” at Hillfaith Blog

Oldie (2011) but goodie. Tapscott promises, “If this eight minute discussion doesn’t get your synapses snapping, nothing will.”

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See also: Jerry Coyne on how John Lennox embarrasses himself

and

John Lennox Vs Peter Atkins: Can Science Explain Everything?

Comments

ET, that which begins is clearly contingent. Such entities have a cause which must constitute a sufficient cluster of factors and must involve all necessary factors. A fire begins, it is contingent and caused. A sufficient cluster is captured by the fire tetrahedron model: heat, fuel, oxidiser, uninterfered with combustion chain reaction. Halon extinguishers interfere with the chain. On the other hand 2 + 3 = 5 is a necessary (and abstract) relationship. There is no possible world where it does not obtain, it never began to be and it cannot ever cease from being. Our discovery of the fact did not make it so, we only recognised it as so. KFkairosfocus_{April 3, 2019
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Brother Brian:
What I find strange is that one of the main arguments raised against a naturalistic cause of OOL is that you can’t have an uncaused cause (or that there must be a first cause).
I never heard that argument with respect to the OoL. I have heard it with respect to nature itself. Nature cannot create nature. And the saying is "That which had a beginning requires a cause." We cannot say if God had a beginning.ET_{April 3, 2019
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Either God has always existed or the universe has always existed and it's not the universe. For more, get a copy of "Who Made God?: And Answers to Over 100 Other Tough Questions of Faith" https://www.amazon.com/Who-Made-God-Answers-Questions-ebook/dp/B000SEJ7Q6/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=who+created+God&qid=1554301806&s=gateway&sr=8-1Battman_{April 3, 2019
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pretty simple, just as Moses described, infinite and supernatural, as pre-dated the physical universe, thus The One true designer/creator of time and space had to be super-natural and by definition eternal. reference the Moshe Emes series for understanding science.Pearlman_{April 2, 2019
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NL, infinite, WRT God, denotes that he is beyond any particular finite limit -- immeasurable or unfathomable is maybe a good rendering of the Athanasian Creed's "immensus." Ponder any finite, feasible limit on power or knowledge and God is beyond that. A useful definition is: the inherently good and wise creator, a necessary and maximally great being worthy of loyalty and of the reasonable, responsible service of doing the good that accords with our manifest morally governed nature. From this, we may build much of the understanding of God explored in philosophical and systematic theology. Of course, he cannot build a square circle but that is because such is an empty form of words, no such entity is possible of existence. Similarly, God's power is in balance with goodness, love, truth etc. So, it is impossible for God to lie as that is inconsistent with the fullness of his being including truth, goodness and love. KF PS: The infinite (better, transfinite) is a class of quantity with transfinitely many particular cases in a structured pattern captured by the surreals etc.kairosfocus_{April 2, 2019
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Someone missed their second grade math class. By analogy, Infinite is NOT a number, yet we do math with Infinite. Infinite is NOT one million, is NOT one billion, and is NOT what follows after two trillions one hundred twenty one. Is God Infinite then? NO! God is the creator of all, including Infinite. He is NOT JUST the "first mover", but THE "mover" of all - first, last and middle. http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-existence.htmNonlin.org_{April 1, 2019
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BB, please ponder a little on the logic of being. There are proposed beings that -- like square circles -- are impossible of being. There are those that are possible of being (e.g. a fire). Of the latter, some are contingent, dependent on external enabling causal factors (like a fire), others are necessary beings, which are present in any possible world as they are part of its framework. For example, try to think of a world where || + ||| --> ||||| is not so, or could cease from being so. God, is a serious candidate necessary being, and is understood as a necessary being in theistic thought [as in ponder I AM]. A flying spaghetti monster or the like is NOT a serious candidate, e.g. it is composite. Where, as non-being (the real nothing) can have no causal powers were there ever utter nothing, such would forever obtain. So, as a world now is, SOMETHING is a necessary, eternally existing, un-caused world-root being; the issue is of what nature. Especially in a world containing morally governed creatures -- us. Last but not least, a serious candidate NB would either be impossible of being (cf. square circle) or else is actual. Your grounds for imagining God as contingent are ________ and/or as impossible of being are ________ KFkairosfocus_{April 1, 2019
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ForFaces, was there an initial promissory, divine deposit that God was able to work upon and develop. If so, what was its nature, if not yet divine ? Or was it non-existent, but powerful, nevertheless, in its own non-existence ? If the latter, I can believe that nothing produced everything. I can believe that there are limits even to paradoxes, which, indeed, seem to increasingly proliferate within our knowledge of the physical world, Certainly, where 'nothing' and 'everything' is concerned. It descends to plain-oxymoron territory.Axel_{April 1, 2019
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What I find strange is that one of the main arguments raised against a naturalistic cause of OOL is that you can't have an uncaused cause (or that there must be a first cause). Yet these same people argue for a God but refuse to address the elephant in the room about how God arose out of nothing. Nobody can explain why God is exempt from the infinite regress without invoking pure unsupported speculation.Brother Brian_{April 1, 2019
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Actually, Lennox gets rid of one infinite regress and introduces another by saying that God is eternal. The answer to the question is that God created himself. This is what the Bible implies by calling God the "Ancient of Days" and insisting that there was a beginning. The problem can be solved by positing a yin-yang reality consisting of two complementary and opposite realms. The spiritual realm contains everything that can neither be destroyed nor created whereas the physical realm contains everything that can be destroyed and created. There are spiritual entities in the spiritual realm that can create physical entities in the physical realm. The point I am getting at is that God (Yahweh) created himself over eons of trial and error. It was a non-stochastic evolution. Yahweh was not the only God to have created himself but the book of Isaiah claims he was the first and therefore is Lord (Elohim) over all the other Elohim. In ancient Egyptian writings, some of their Gods claimed to have also gone through the long process of self-creation. Does this mean that I believe that the Gods have physical bodies? Yes. But they have incorruptible physical bodies. Of all the Gods, only humans have bodies made out of the dust of the earth, i.e., ordinary matter. And yes, we are Gods. So said Jesus and the Psalms.FourFaces_{March 31, 2019
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Right. Pure question-begging. But hey, when that is all you have, you have to go with it. Because, God forbid, you give up and accept reality.ET_{March 31, 2019
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