Origin of God?

[Bubba_Joe]

I've been wondering about this since the time i almost got converted by my friends (i study in a christian school), this question was the one thing that stopped me that day.

"God created everything, all life and matter and space had to be created by someone, right?"

"But, who created that someone?"

Christian members of the forum, please share you views

[Marcus Scaurus]

So, you're asked who 'created' God?

My family is Christian, so am I (officially). But to be honest, I don't believe in it anymore. There is just too much evidence against creatonism and God.

Studying history, I noticed that atheism rarely existed before the 19th and 20th century in the USA and Europe. We are the first civilisation without a ruling elite, like the Roman patricians and medieval dukes/barons. These rulers used religion to keep their might and title. A king was seen as a person send by God himself, so revolting against a king was seen as a revolt against God himself. Also, many people were afraid that God would punish them if they didn't obey the orders of the ruling elite, while the 'elite' did everything God had forbidden.

Nowadays, we live in a society in which almost everybody can become president: sure, you have to have charisma, talent and a bit of luck, but it's not very hard for a intelligent person to get status and respect. An intelligent young plebeian (I am talking about the poor ones, not the ones like Pompeius) had almost no chance of becoming a senator or equestrian. Nowadays, working hard and being intelligent is more important than money and being member of the elite (of course you have Bush, but most US presidents were much better than him).

What I'm trying to say is that religion (and God) is created by the rulers to keep the people silent.

[Torment]

Moved.

[Ricgard]

Well, it depends on what you mean by origin. Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others believe that they have always been there, omnipotent, yet powerless, but religion has its roots from over 30,000 years ago when such hunter and gatherer societies as Cro-Magnons began asking questions about earth, heaven, life, and death. All but the latter have been studied, so it only leaves death, which some believe will lead you to your afterlife, and decide what your eternal lifestyle should be according to your 60 or 70 years of life on earth. The point is that people invented gods to believe that gods created tham, and not do extensive studies on it.

[imb39]

Religion was created to control people. Pure and simple. It explained things that were beyond our comprehension - science is rolling back that and providing an alternative, more coherant rationale to how things come about.

So who created God? Someone who wanted power...

[Guderian]

I think god was created to explain things that were unexplainable at the time like Ricgard and imb39 have already said. Humans had the ability to reason, and because of this ability the conclusion early humans came to was that there must be something that created everything around them. Of course they did not have the evidence we had today, so they just assumed it was some other creature that was all powerfull.

Religion itself grew and expanded from this.

[Ricgard]

I don't think that this is about power. It is about ignorance, as people wanted to believe what they considered was best to believe, and what made them calmest, Carl Sagan describes that in his book Cosmos, comparing to Caveman analogies of their possible beliefs about the sky. Since than no one believed that everything is eternal and believed that an end of the world will come sooner or later(mostly sooner).

[Sidus Preclarum]

I've been wondering about this since the time i almost got converted by my friends (i study in a christian school), this question was the one thing that stopped me that day.

"God created everything, all life and matter and space had to be created by someone, right?"

"But, who created that someone?"

Nobody, God is the first cause, uncreated, eternal.
Not that this is a rational concept, but the whole point of God is to transcend reason, and of faith to be irrational...

[Erik]

This is the major flaw in creationism: it doesn't solve the question about how the universe is created, it only makes it more difficult to awnser because the universe now includes a omnipotent being.

So to awnser the original qustion: I don't think anybody can give an awnser on who created God.
God is the substitution for all unknown awnsers.

[Sidus Preclarum]

This is the major flaw in creationism: it doesn't solve the question about how the universe is created, it only makes it more difficult to awnser because the universe now includes a omnipotent being.

More accurately, it rejects the problem of the first cause *outside* the universe, on a being about which *nothing* can be known. Both clever and utterly unsatisfying at the same time...

God is the substitution for all unknown awnsers.

Indeed.
Hence the lure of ID as a substitution to the not-entirely-solved-yet evolution : the ever temptation to replace "we don't know for sure of now, and we might be wrong, but sure are working on it" by "This is god's will/intervention in the world". The death of Science.

[Ummon]

It is also indeed funny, that a first cause is logically necessary, if you think about it. From a merely physical point of view, the problem can be avoided, but never truly eliminated. When it comes to what lays outside time though the term cause may be inadequate. Item, is more like it. God is the first item, and the last. Alpha, Omega. He lies infact, outside time (too).

[Farnan]

To the Original Poster:
God is, was, and will always be. God doesn't need to be created, because he was always there. People say that we use the argument "who created the matter that made up the Big Bang?" as our main attack, yet we don't say where God came from. The difference is that we don't claim not to be a faith.

To Red Baron:
Yes sometimes religion was used to keep people down, but it has also been used to give freedom. Three of the most most totalitarian nations were atheistic: Pol Pot's Cambodia, Mao Ze Dung's China, and Stalin's Soviet Union, and Hitler was an atheist also. Judge Era Israel, a very theist nation, was also relatively free. Sp your generalization is incorrect.

[Major König]

To answer the topic, im going to be logical and not let my views influence me right now. The first cause would be people 'need' to believe in something. There is always a supreme in society, and people neede that, needed something to live for and something to strive for in life. The second cause is an actual appearance or show show of power by something higher than us humans. Perhaps Adam and Eve were the first real humans, and they passed down of what they knew about God to their children, creating a cycle. Perhaps the first humans were approached by him.

And where God comes from. Most religions point to something like 'he/she was always there'. There is a beggining of everything, and perhaps God was there when time came around. That is all I cn say.

[Marcus Scaurus]

To Red Baron:
Yes sometimes religion was used to keep people down, but it has also been used to give freedom. Three of the most most totalitarian nations were atheistic: Pol Pot's Cambodia, Mao Ze Dung's China, and Stalin's Soviet Union, and Hitler was an atheist also. Judge Era Israel, a very theist nation, was also relatively free. Sp your generalization is incorrect.

You are right, but if you take all totalitarian states since the stone age, you will see that only a few are/were atheist state. Hitler was a novo homo, he had been a (pretty bad) artist who slept on the streets of Vienna and a corporal in WWI. The lack of any ruling elite made it possible to become leader of Germany: there were plenty of barons (like me ) and Prussians, but they couldn't control their country after the first world war.

I think the three states you mentoined (Cambodia, China and SU) would've been religious if atheism wasn't around in the 19th century. But in fact, communism/marxism is a religion too: the supporters believe in something that's highly unlikeable, nearly impossible.

[Guderian]

. But in fact, communism/marxism is a religion too: the supporters believe in something that's highly unlikeable, nearly impossible.

No its not, it's just philosophy. It is not impossible or even unlikely, and it did not create it's leaders or thier personalities. Marxism is based on reality, examining social problems and how to solve them, it does not come close to religion, because it does not try to answer the question of god. It does not advocate blind faith, both Marx and others socialist like Maximilian Webber all studied society, social precedent and economics and drew thier conclusions from there, so it does not require blind faith. But I think we already have enough threads on this so Iam going to leave it at that.

[Siblesz]

A better question to ask is: "what is God?" God might just be the cycle between creation and destruction. There is no beggining. The begging starts in the end, and the end in the beggining. The creation starts at the destruction, therefore the destruction is the creation. No creator. Eternity in a cycle.

[CrackerMonkey]

Yes sometimes religion was used to keep people down, but it has also been used to give freedom. Three of the most most totalitarian nations were atheistic: Pol Pot's Cambodia, Mao Ze Dung's China, and Stalin's Soviet Union, and Hitler was an atheist also. Judge Era Israel, a very theist nation, was also relatively free. Sp your generalization is incorrect.

About Hitler:
I would like to point out that he did in fact use religion as a means of controlling people although he did not believe in God himself.

About the other stuff:
Although you are indeed correct about all the atheistic, totalitarian nations, you must remember that there's more subtle ways to control a population, like religion for example. Just look at the crusades and jihad.

[Ecclesiastes]

I've been wondering about this since the time i almost got converted by my friends (i study in a christian school), this question was the one thing that stopped me that day.

"God created everything, all life and matter and space had to be created by someone, right?"

"But, who created that someone?"

Christian members of the forum, please share you views

I'm brought up as a christian but haven't really decided yet. Therefore I also think about these things a lot. I have even asked this to family members but they had no answers. That is because you will not know the answer to this question in this lifetime because it is not written. I am rather troubled at the idea of God just being there as most people say .

[CrackerMonkey]

"God didn't create man. Man created God."
Nuff said.

[Farnan]

About Hitler:
I would like to point out that he did in fact use religion as a means of controlling people although he did not believe in God himself.

About the other stuff:
Although you are indeed correct about all the atheistic, totalitarian nations, you must remember that there's more subtle ways to control a population, like religion for example. Just look at the crusades and jihad.

He used his a self-cult and occultism to create the SA and SS. But from what I know, he didn't use Christianity (the primary religion of Germany) in order to control the people. I doubt he used Christianity to the extreme since he believed in a twisted version of Nietzsche.

Don't forget, besides oppression religion set free. The US was built by people who believed God gave man inalienable rights, also religion was used as a reason to free slaves and begin worker's rights (in America at least). Also the first shelters for the poor were made by Christian groups.

Edit: Germany had a ruling class, the Junkers, who opposed Hitler and were pro-monarchy.