mysticalsilence
12-15-2006, 11:40 PM
I was doing some research on Judaism and I Picked up these quotes on Jewish website.
I has serched the net before and I was the impression that A.E was a strong atheist this had profound effect on me previously. Because if one of the smartests people on earth did not beleive in god then logic and science must really lead away from God.
Yet these quotes seem to indicate otherwise.
"The scientists' religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection."
"Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble."
"I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details."
"The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books - a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects."
"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods."
" When the solution is simple, God is answering."
"God does not play dice with the universe."
"God is subtle but he is not malicious."
"A human being is a part of the whole, called by us Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest-a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty."
- Albert Einstein
"The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident, is zero."
- Ilya Prigogine (Chemist-Physicist)
Recipient of two Nobel Prizes in chemistry
I. Prigogine, N. Gregair, A. Babbyabtz, Physics Today 25, pp. 23-28
"The really amazing thing is not that life on Earth is balanced on a knife-edge, but that the entire universe is balanced on a knife-edge, and would be total chaos if any of the natural 'constants' were off even slightly. You see," Davies adds, "even if you dismiss man as a chance happening, the fact remains that the universe seems unreasonably suited to the existence of life -- almost contrived -- you might say a 'put-up job'."
- Dr. Paul Davies
(noted author and Professor of Theoretical Physics at Adelaide University)
"...how surprising it is that the laws of nature and the initial conditions of the universe should allow for the existence of beings who could observe it. Life as we know it would be impossible if any one of several physical quantities had slightly different values."
- Professor Steven Weinberg
(Nobel Laureate in High Energy Physics [a field of science that deals with the very early universe], writing in the journal "Scientific American".)
"This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."
- Isaac Newton
("General Scholium," in Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Isaac Newton. 1687)
16O has exactly the right nuclear energy level either to prevent all the carbon from turning into oxygen or to facilitate sufficient production of 16O for life. Fred Hoyle, who discovered these coincidences in 1953, concluded that "a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology."
- Hoyle, Fred. "The Universe: Past and Present Reflections," in Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 20. (1982), p.16
(for more of these coincidences click here)
"If you equate the probability of the birth of a bacteria cell to chance assembly of its atoms, eternity will not suffice to produce one... Faced with the enormous sum of lucky draws behind the success of the evolutionary game, one may legitimately wonder to what extent this success is actually written into the fabric of the universe."
- Christian de Duve. "A Guided Tour of the Living Cell" (Nobel laureate and organic chemist)
Probably the leading paleontologist alive today, Simon Conway Morris, the scientist who discovered the significance of the Cambrian explosion of animal life, writes in his seminal book, Life's Solutions, that he is "convinced" that nature's success in the lottery of life has "metaphysical implications."
"I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing."
- Alan Sandage (winner of the Crawford prize in astronomy)
Willford, J.N. March 12, 1991. Sizing up the Cosmos: An Astronomers Quest. New York Times, p. B9.
"As we look out into the universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together to our benefit, it almost seems as if the universe must in some sense have known that we were coming."
- Professor Freeman J. of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton
"...The capacity of DNA to store information vastly exceeds that of any other known system: it is so efficient that all the information needed to specify an organism as complex as man weighs less than a few thousand millionths of a gram. The information necessary to specify the design of all the species of organisms which have ever existed on the planet...could be held in a teaspoon and there would still be room left for all the information in every book ever written..."
- Dr. Michael Denton (Australian microbiologist)
"Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word 'miraculous' without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word."
- George Ellis (British astrophysicist)
Ellis, G.F.R. 1993. The Anthropic Principle: Laws and Environments. The Anthropic Principle, F. Bertola and U.Curi, ed. New York, Cambridge University Press, p. 30
"We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures.. .. If the Universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in."
- John O'Keefe (astronomer at NASA)
Heeren, F. 1995. Show Me God. Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 200.
"Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say 'supernatural') plan."
- Arno Penzias (Nobel prize in physics)
Margenau, H and R.A. Varghese, ed. 1992. Cosmos, Bios, and Theos. La Salle, IL, Open Court, p. 83.
"It is, for example, impossible for evolution to account for the fact than one single cell can carry more data than all the volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica put together."
"It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design."
- Anthony Flew
Professor of Philosophy, former atheist, author, and debater
"It has occurred to me lately -- I must confess with some shock at first to my scientific sensibilities -- that both questions [the origin of consciousness in humans and of life from non-living matter] might be brought into some degree of congruence. This is with the assumption that mind, rather than emerging as a late outgrowth in the evolution of life, has existed always as the matrix, the source and condition of physical reality -- that stuff of which physical reality is composed is mind-stuff. It is mind that has composed a physical universe that breeds life and so eventually evolves creatures that know and create: science-, art-, and technology-making animals. In them the universe begins to know itself."
- George Wald, (Noble laureate and professor of biology at Harvard University)
wrote this in an article entitled "Life and Mind in the Universe" which appeared in the peer-reviewed journal the
International Journal of Quantum Chemistry: Quantum Biology, symposium 11 (1984): 1-15.
"There is a wide measure of agreement which, on the physical side of science approaches almost unanimity, that the stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter. We are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail mind as the creator and governor of the realm of matter -- not of course our individual minds, but the mind in which the atoms out of which our individual minds have grown, exist as thoughts."
- Sir James Jeans
knighted mathematician, physicist and astronomer who helped develop our understanding of the evolution of stars, wrote this in his book The Mysterious Universe (Cambridge, 1931).
As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency—or, rather, Agency—must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?
- George Greenstein (American astronomer)
Greenstein, George. The Symbiotic, Universe: Life and Mind in the Cosmos. (New York: William Morrow, (1988), pp. 26-27
"What turns a mere piece of matter from being mere matter into an animated being? What gives certain special physical patterns in the universe the mysterious privilege of feeling sensations and having experiences?"
- D.R. Hofstadter
"When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics."
- Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics)
Tipler, F.J. 1994. The Physics Of Immortality. New York, Doubleday, Preface.
"When I went to the moon I was a pragmatic test pilot. But when I saw the planet Earth floating in the vastness of space the presence of divinity became almost palpable and I knew that life in the universe was not just an accident."
- Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14 Astronaut)
"A life-giving factor lies at the centre of the whole machinery and design of the world."
- John Wheeler (American physicist)
Wheeler, John A. "Foreword," in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle by John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler. (Oxford, U. K.: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. vii.
"Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing and delicately balanced to provide exactly the conditions required to support life. In the absence of an absurdly-improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan."
- Nobel Laureate Arno Penzias, co-discoverer of the radiation afterglow
(Quoted in Walter Bradley, "The 'Just-so' Universe: The Fine-Tuning of Constants and Conditions in the Cosmos," in William Dembski and James Kushiner, eds., Signs of Intelligence. 168)
"We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world. We give little thought to the machinery that generates the sunlight that makes life possible, to the gravity that glues us to an Earth that would otherwise send us spinning off into space, or to the atoms of which we are made and on whose stability we fundamentally depend. Except for children (who don't know enough not to ask the important questions), few of us spend much time wondering why nature is the way it is; where the cosmos came from, or whether it was always here; if time will one day flow backward and effects precede causes; or whether there are ultimate limits to what humans can know."
- Carl Sagan
(From an introduction to "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking)
"As long as you are occupied with the mathematical sciences and the technique of logic, you belong to those who walk around the palace in search of the gate... When you complete your study of the natural sciences and get a grasp of the metaphysics, you enter into the inner courtyard and are in the same house as [G-d the King]."
- Moses Maimonides
"This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the word of the Bible: In the beginning God created heaven and earth... [But] for the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; [and] as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."
- Robert Jastrow
(God and the Astronomers [New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1978], 116. Professor Jastrow was the founder of NASA’s Goddard Institute, now director of the Mount Wilson Institute and its observatory.)
"As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency - or, rather, Agency - must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?"
- George Greenstein (astronomer)
Greenstein, G. 1988. The Symbiotic Universe. New York: William Morrow, p.27.
"I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption ... For myself, as no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneous liberation from a certain political and economic system, and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom."
(REPORT, June 1966. "Confession of Professed Atheist," A. Huxley)
ReplyTrumble
12-16-2006, 01:59 PM
Just taking Einstein (although the same is true of many of the rest), you need to exercise some care in what he means by "God". It is not the Islamic, or even Jewish conception; it is not a
personal God.
Einstein himself said,
"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings."
I'll let you read up on
Spinoza yourself. He was a remarkable philosopher, and actually one of my 'favourites' not least because his ideas are about the closest you can find in the Western tradition to those of Eastern (especially Hindu and Taoist) belief. Einstein could not believe in a personal God as, having considered the incredible order and 'design' of the cosmos he was totally unable to reconcile it with the evil and suffering of human existence, should such a God exist. I view with which I have considerable sympathy.
That said, a great many scientists believe in God in assorted ways, no more or less than any other sector of the population. Likewise, many are atheists and a larger number agnostics. That includes particle physicists, cosmologists, and those studying neo-Darwinism.
mysticalsilence
12-16-2006, 08:13 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by
root
You must get amused easily because I dont see how only having one microbiologists negates the whole purpose of this thread. Infact my emphasis whas Albert E hence this thread not being named "microbiologists and god"
I was just trying to defend the fact that a huge number of scientists do believe in God contrary to popular belief and not microbiologist specifically.
Since you want a few other microbiologists that do believe here it is:
Scott Minnich, professor of microbiology and biochemistry at the University of Idaho
British microbiologist Richard Thornhill
Francis Collins -- head of the Human Genome Project (evangelical Christian)
Head of the Department of Microbiology at the university of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio Dr. Victor Tryon.
I could probably post a 100 but you would still fall off your chair!
Francis Collins by himself is a quite heavy addition hes leading a project that is helping us understand the human body. Yet the most progressive work relating to microbiology does not conflict with his belief!
ReplyPygoscelis
12-18-2006, 12:46 AM
Many scientists have believed and continue to believe in a personal God. Isaac Newton did too. Its a convenient way for them to expalin the unexplained once they reach the limit of their genius. Note that God is not mentioned in any of their theories until they reach the limit of their understanding.
I think its natural to want to explain the unexplained and when you can't, God-Did-It is an easy out.
ReplyAbdul Fattah
12-18-2006, 01:42 AM
format_quote Originally Posted by
Pygoscelis
Many scientists have believed and continue to believe in a personal God. Isaac Newton did too. Its a convenient way for them to expalin the unexplained once they reach the limit of their genius. Note that God is not mentioned in any of their theories until they reach the limit of their understanding.
I think its natural to want to explain the unexplained and when you can't, God-Did-It is an easy out.
I disagree with the image you portrait here. They are just two different levels. Science only occupies itself with the question "how do things happen". Scientists do not bring up God because they fail to show how, they bring it up because they realise that how is only half of the question, the second part of the question is why.
To give an example of that, let's examen gravity. Newton studied how bodies with mass attract one another. And by experiment he found out the ration in which mass influences that movement. But he didn't have the faintest idea why bodies with mass attract one another.
Einstein reevaluated gravity and found that bodies with mass follow on geodesic lines created by mass in space. Why mass created this geodesic lines, and why it follows it, he did not know.
String theory suggested there's a message particle (graviton) that bodies with mass send out, and that particle when hitting an other object with mass attracts it to it's sender. Why the particle does this, and why the objects would send this, is not mentioned.
See science by defenition consists out of theories that are based on empirical testing. So all science can do is tell us how things work. It evaluates what things do. And comes up with mathematical systems to describe those events.
Scientists don't believe in God simply because they fail to answer that question with the help of science, but rather, they believe in God because they recognize that behind this magnificent laws, that behind these events which translate into mathematical systems with such great elegance, that there has to be an agenda. The whole "
footsteps-in-the-sand-suggest-someone-passed-by-idea"
Or like Einstein suggested, the probability that this universe came to be as it is now existing by mere chance is similar to a print house exploding and all the letters on papers falling down on the street aligned to form the oxford encyclopedia.
ReplyPygoscelis
12-18-2006, 03:04 AM
I think we are making two separate, and not necesarily mutually exclusive points here.
People DO turn to God-Did-It when they can't explain something. This has gone on all throughout history. We no longer need to claim that the Gods shoot lightning bolts down from the heavens because we know how lightning works now.
When you don't understand something I think many have a tendancy to NEED to know the answer, and God makes an easy out.
That isn't to say that a god force isn't behind the overal "design" or "meaning" of existence (not that I think one is).
And speaking on "There must be a God because the universe is just so wonderful to have come to be without one" just again begs the question of first cause. If God made the universe, who made God.
If the universe is so complex it needs a creator, surely that creator is even MORE complex and thus needs a creator moreso, and on to infinity.
ReplyAbdul Fattah
12-18-2006, 04:41 AM
format_quote Originally Posted by
Pygoscelis
I think we are making two separate, and not necesarily mutually exclusive points here.
People DO turn to God-Did-It when they can't explain something. This has gone on all throughout history. We no longer need to claim that the Gods shoot lightning bolts down from the heavens because we know how lightning works now.
That seems rather narrow minded. Just because some people had a wrong Idea of how God interacts with his creation doesn't mean the whole idea is bad. That is an unjust generalization.
When you don't understand something I think many have a tendancy to NEED to know the answer, and God makes an easy out.
Again, I disagree, it's not because we do not understand, but the other way around. It is trough understanding that we are able to see God's signature in science.
And speaking on "There must be a God because the universe is just so wonderful to have come to be without one" just again begs the question of first cause. If God made the universe, who made God.
If the universe is so complex it needs a creator, surely that creator is even MORE complex and thus needs a creator moreso, and on to infinity.
I had a similar discussion with Trumble in the Buddhism tread a couple of days ago. The answer to this question is rather complex and difficult to explain. I failed to explain it to Trumble due to difficulties with semantics but I'll try again here either way. So here it goes:
The assumption that the same rules apply to the creator as to the creation is wrong. This assumption is the result of a misunderstanding of true "creation". You need to understand the depth of that word. If a painter paints a painting it isn't really creation. The painter did not create the painting out of thin air. Instead what he did was manipulate paint with a paintbrush in such a way that it bears similarities to an existing object (wheter that was existing in the world or in his imagenation). When a person fantasizes, he doesn't create a fantasy. Instead he combines different existing memories events from his past (an image he saw, a book he read, and so on...) to entertain his mind.
So why do I not consider these things creation? in the first example, the painting and the painter exist in the same dimension as peers. They are both bound by the same laws, for example: they both stand on the ground due to gravity.
God is not bound by the same laws as his creation, in fact the laws of the universe are a part of his creation. Even the space and time of the universe are his creation. Both the painting and the painter are within the same universe so they both age by the dimension of time at more or less the same rate. As the painter gets older so does the painting. God is not bound to the dimension of time, he created time, so as his creation goes trough that dimension and experiences time he stays eternal. And the question what did he do before he created the universe would be ridiculous since he is not bound to time and hence for him there is no "
before". It's only that we are so used to traveling through time passively that we have a hard time understanding that. (I know this isn't what you asked, but indulge me, I'm getting there). So the first part of my answer is in understanding that creator and creation do not follow the same rules.
Then the second example I gave, of the imagination comes a lil' bit closer to creation, because here we are talking about the creator being in a different plane and falling under different rules as it's creation. However I still don't consider this example to be true creation because it doesn't bring anything new. I don't believe mankind invented a single thing. I think this is a wrongful image we humans have. If you look at any invention, any single one, and examen it, you will find that in reality an invention is actually a discovery of potential. We just discover something that has been there since the beginning of time, and we discovered that we can use that phenomena for certain applications, but we do not create something new. We couldn't even create a single atom if the whole of humanity got together to try. And the same goes for our imagination. It is limited by what we know. We cannot go beyond that border. If people get the impression that they have crossed a border in their imagination then that is just because they thought the border was closer then it actually was. So for real creation, you need new stuff. And by new I don't only mean unprecedented, but also made out of new material. Out of thin air.
We don't know how the creator is like. Maybe he is more complex then his creation, maybe his elegance lies in his simple existence. We don't really know. But I would like to suggest you rethink dimensions. when we talk about dimension we humans commonly perceive them as being degrees of liberty. Something inside a point(0D) cannot do anything, something on a line(1D) can go back and forth. Something in a plain(2D) can travel the north-south-direction or the west-east direction or any combination of those two. Something in a room (3D) also has an additional up-down direction to move in. And then in 4D we have time to move trough. So we're inclined to think, the more dimensions, the more freedom. But what if dimensions are actually limitations of freedoms? An object can only move back and forth because it's bound to the "1D" whereas that same object might also move in different directions if it isn't bound to that dimension. I believe that perception to be more accurate. So then the rule would be, the lesser dimension the more freedom. So what do we know about God? We do know He's omnipotent and omniscient and omnipresent. That last one is important here, omnipresent might mean,
"not bound to any spatial dimensions" rather then
"being stretched out over the whole universe". Just as timeless actually meant
"not being bound to the dimension of time" rather then
"being stretched out over time eternally".
So lets get back to your question before we drift of to far. Maybe there's a similarity here with the time example I gave earlier. We find that the universe is of such that it must have been created, and you assume that the creator must have been created to, but why would the same apply to creator as to creation? Our logic tells us that this is the most likely assumption. But our logic is based on what we are used to, based (and biased) on our experiences, based on this universe, so why would it apply on something outside that universe. And if the creator was created wouldn't that have to have occurred before he created, but if he doesn't have a
before due to not being bound by time, then that doesn't make sense either. So I would conclude that your question:
"who created the creator" is based on false assumptions.
ReplyPygoscelis
12-18-2006, 05:16 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by
steve
That seems rather narrow minded. Just because some people had a wrong Idea of how God interacts with his creation doesn't mean the whole idea is bad. That is an unjust generalization.
And its also a strawman. I didn't say it means the whole idea is bad. I said that people purport to explain the unexplainable via assigning it to the God-Did-It category. And they have been doing this since the begining.
That doesn't mean that a God doesn't exist. Just that people will assign things to him/her/it/them and people will invent other Gods. It is a well known psychological phenomenon. People see order in chaos. People need answers and if they can not be found, people will invent them.
People need to know what they can't know and people need to feel a sense of control over their chaotic lives, so they decide to believe that they can pray to a personal God and that maybe that God will then make things alright, make things safe, and make things hapen as they'd like. Its why tribesmen did rain dances and its a huge part of why people pray today.
I had a similar discussion with Trumble in the Buddhism tread a couple of days ago. The answer to this question is rather complex and difficult to explain. I failed to explain it to Trumble due to difficulties with semantics but I'll try again here either way. So here it goes:
THe problem isn't semantics. I understood everything you wrote after this. The problem is that none of it seems to be substantiable or relevant to the question at hand.
Is God subject to time? You say no. You can't possibly know that. Maybe he is, maybe she isn't, maybe there is no them. This is all just an exercise in imagination. So long as we can invent Gods and assign whatever properties we like to them we are going to be spinning around in circles all day.
But none of that is relevant. None of it addressed the point of who created God. If you demand that somebody created this universe on this creation (for all we know there are infinite universes that are formed and reformed infinite times), then they must be somewhat sophisticated. And by the same logic I say they need a creator too.
If they don't need a creator, then maybe the universe doesn't either.
You are going to a lot of trouble to highlight the difference between creation from nothingness and creation by arrangement of existing matter. I don't see how this is relevant. Did this God create HIMSELF as well as the matter in this universe? If not then something, he, existed before, and the question remains of his origin.
At the end of your last post you seemed to be heading in the direction of "We don't know. We can't know". And with that I would agree.
Why is ignorance so hard for so many people to accept? Why do they create Gods of the Gaps?
ReplyAbdul Fattah
12-18-2006, 10:06 PM
format_quote Originally Posted by
Pygoscelis
People need to know what they can't know and people need to feel a sense of control over their chaotic lives, so they decide to believe that they can pray to a personal God and that maybe that God will then make things alright, make things safe, and make things hapen as they'd like. Its why tribesmen did rain dances and its a huge part of why people pray today.
How are you as an atheist able to know why people pray. I think you're the one who's fooling yourself into believing something, you don't unerstand why people would go at such lenght for something they believe in so you come up with some semi-psychological theory that sweeps the troubles under the carpet because our not willing to accept that perhaps they actually do hjave a good reason to pray besides what you suggest.
THe problem isn't semantics. I understood everything you wrote after this. The problem is that none of it seems to be substantiable or relevant to the question at hand.
your questions seem to suggest otherwise. the problem is not wheter you understand the words I'm using, but wheter you understand the idea I'm conveying trough those words. And since you say it isn't relevant, I'm inclined you did not get my point.
Is God subject to time? You say no. You can't possibly know that. Maybe he is, maybe she isn't, maybe there is no them. This is all just an exercise in imagination.
This is part of our believe Allah subhana wa ta'ala refers to himself in the qur'an with various names, some of those names are: The infinite, the one without beginning, the one without end.
But none of that is relevant. None of it addressed the point of who created God. If you demand that somebody created this universe on this creation.
I'm sorry you didn't get it, I won't repeat myself because that would be pointless, but if you really want to know how my arguments addressed this question I suggest you re-read it until it makes sense.
If they don't need a creator, then maybe the universe doesn't either.
Like I said you're wrongfully assuming that the same rules apply for creator as fro creation. But as you said we don't know what rules apply here. So the argument is pointless. However we do know something about this universe. So we can come to the conclusion that it is likely to have been created.
You are going to a lot of trouble to highlight the difference between creation from nothingness and creation by arrangement of existing matter. I don't see how this is relevant. Did this God create HIMSELF as well as the matter in this universe?
No, if you suggest he was created then he would have a beginning, and as I said, he has no beginning. The relevance of the difference between rearrangement and creation from thin air is that it helps one understand creation better, and as I said, I'm convinced your question is teh result of a lousy understanding of creation.
Why is ignorance so hard for so many people to accept? Why do they create Gods of the Gaps?
Ignorance is not that hard to accept, if you'll look up my posts you'll see that I say "I don't know" quite often. But you'r missing one point here. That is that we didn't create Gods in the Gaps, God revealed himself.
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