A commenter to one of my blog postings inspired me to address this question. And as I am so apt to do, I begin my answer with a series of questions:
Why does everything have to have a beginning? Why does everything have to have a cause? Why does everything have to be finite?
If we assume everything DOES have a cause, then we might assume God did have a beginning.
Lets say for the sake of argument that He was begat from another God. Where did THAT God come from and where is that God now? Did that God die?
Or lets say that God was produced by a cosmic process. Where did that process come from? Did it come from another process or another God? You can see that we can't escape the infinite.
Even if we try to say that in the beginning was nothing, we are establishing a belief in an eternal nothing that had no cause....
No matter how you answer the question, you end up with either an eternal God or an eternal process. When we are left with the eternal, we are left with something that has no cause.
Everything that we have ever observed or experienced in this world has a beginning. The computer that I am using to submit this post, the Internet and blog site that hosts it, the language that I am attempting to use to communicate with, the clothes that I am wearing, the trees in my front yard, my front yard, the earth itself.... EVERYTHING that we see in this world has a beginning.
But should we therefore assume that EVERYTHING that exists in the universe has a beginning? Is it illogical to believe that something could be eternal and NOT have a beginning?
Imagine you're a fish that has never seen land, nor any land-dweller. Based upon the world that you are experiencing, you could easily assume that the entire world is aquatic, and you'd be wrong.
Logic tells us that the eternal exists. The only question is whether or not that infinity is in the form of a process or a person....
Remember a persistent theme of this blog: "Continue to ask "Why?" until you are forced to ask "Who?"."
When God reveals Himself for the first time to Moses, Moses asks him His name. God simply responds, "I am that I am", literally translated as "I-shall-be that I-shall-be."
So back to the original question, "Where did God come from?" He didn't come.... He IS and always shall be..."
2 comments:
Hey Greg,
Well, I do appreciate your reply. And you're very right; I have no problem with paradox. In fact, conversations about God are sort of riddled in paradox.
I understand what you're trying to say about God as the, "causeless cause." And I totally agree that HE or SHE doesn't have to have a cause; I'm totally cool with that. Similarly, I read Stephen Hawkins book A Brief History of Time and came across an almost identical idea of our universe. Hawkins presents the idea that the universe , since it is expanding, is constantly expanding and collapsing into a singularity again. In essence, this theory of the universe is identical in that there seems to be no cause as this constant expanding-collapsing process seems to back into eternity.
I say bring this theory up because I believe the scientific worldview teaches me something about God. It teaches me that, at best, my theorizing of God is simply that, theorizing. My ideas are only theories and I don't know.
As of lately, I've been very bothered by the limits of logic while also being reciprocally humbled by them. In a sense, the limits of my logic justify my "faith". Therefore, I'll leave it at that for now.
If you're interested, take a look at this article about Ghandi and Jesus:
http://pomomuse.blogspot.com/2008/04/is-there-difference-between-ghandi-and.html
I would be interested in your thoughts.
Hi A.J.
The link about Ghandi was broken (http://pomomuse.blogspot.com/2008/04/is-there-difference-between) but I have studied him. He once said, "I love your Christianity, I don't like your Christian." meaning that he loved Christianity, but not the average person who claimed to follow Christ.
Ghandi also once said that he almost became a Christian. He was very much influenced by the Golden Rule and obviously followed it in his quiet, pacifist waged revolution against imperialism.
I agree with you on the limitations of logic. Reason necessitates faith because of its limitations. Reason is like a computer in that it is only as good as the information it can process. That information is limited.
That's where our faith comes into play.
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