What was God doing before creation and why did he wait an eternity to create the Universe.

I brought up this exact scenario to my dad when I was a little kid.

"Dad, why did God wait forever to create everything?"
"What? What do you mean?"
"Well, if he has always existed, even before the universe and everything else, what was he doing in all of that time before?"
"Hm. I guess that's something we'll have to ask God when we go to heaven, son."

reply to post by OrphenFire


You say you are an atheist. I want to offer a viewpoint for you to consider (I'm not trying to convert anyone, only help them understand ways of thinking).

There is no one god you have to believe in. Should you choose to believe there is some form of conscious power that rules over, or is capable of controlling, this world, it doesn't have to be the Christian god, or any existing form of god already being venerated. Just because someone has an idea of a god, doesn't mean they are right.

You can choose to believe in a higher power that is nothing like anyone understands or chooses to see. Every atheist, when I talk to them, talks about this god or that one that is already worshipped by man. I say to them, "That isn't the only god that can exist. Just because they thought of it before you, doesn't mean you can't see it in your own way." Because that's what true spirituality is, a personal journey that forms a private bond with the cosmos and the ether. One person's workout may not suit the next man, but both workout routines have the same overall benefits. If we went around saying, "No, you have to work your triceps, not your abdomen," we wouldn't get very far, would we?

And remember, just because you don't understand how such a power would function, doesn't mean it isn't real. It just means you don't understand it yet. And really, how can any human being understand such an entity or form? It is generally agreed that the human mind is finite. Anyone you ask will tell you their god is infinite. To take a thousandth of that understanding is still to have infinite understanding, so anyone who pretends to "understand" any form of god is fooling themselves.

That's why all of our godly ideals are skewed. We can't understand, but we try, and so we come up with a 5 year old's version of a Van Gogh or Da Vinci. It's much less beautiful and makes even less sense, but that's because we lack the finesse, the understanding, and the deeper sight.

Do you see what I'm saying?

Its funny that one perceives time in a human way. "Years" and "Days" so and so forth, "time" as humans see it, is nothing more than a measure of time divided by our trip around our sun.

Then, more hilarious to personify "God" into human terms like he would get bored or something just sitting around for eternity so he created humans to entertain him or something.

I would like to think of myself as a deep thinker, but I will always admit that even someone who tries to perceive all possibilities, cannot understand "God" because of my dimensional restrictions.

Religion and the bible is nothing more than a crayoned version of how the Universe works.

reply to post by Panic2k11



It was late..... I meant to say.... If we die..."rejecting him" then there's hell to pay. That's what I meant

Originally posted by OrphenFire
I brought up this exact scenario to my dad when I was a little kid.

"Dad, why did God wait forever to create everything?"
"What? What do you mean?"
"Well, if he has always existed, even before the universe and everything else, what was he doing in all of that time before?"
"Hm. I guess that's something we'll have to ask God when we go to heaven, son."

Being that the method of our advance intimately involves killing and suffering I find it difficult to entertain any sort of idea about god that isn't depressing. Maybe there's no god precisely because the method of our existence is so heartless and indifferent. Any sort of empathetic creator being would have long since killed its experiment in response to its remorse and shame. But perhaps it couldn't kill the experiment without crossing a moral boundary? Or maybe the creator is dead. Contrastingly, there's a possibility that the creator being has so mastered the mechanics of living things that we're little more than code or numbers and therefore forgettable. We're so simple and predictable to the creator being that it has no emotions or sympathies for us. Have you ever played a video game and killed a creature? It wasn't a real creature, right? It had no soul. It had no emotions. It was just a piece of code. This is what we're to the creator. A script. A number. A snippet of code.

Step outside and look at nature with your blinders off. It's a cloud of death and suffering and short moments of greed and refuge. All around us in nature is this cloud. It envelopes us inside and out.

To live is to be an accomplice to the murder and depravity.

To love is to recognize that we all share this common experience. But love, on its own, does not make us pure. Nature, divine or not, is still an impure thing and even love is its own creation. We have examined love in the brain with scanners and evolutionary theory has also examined it. Love is not separate of nature, it's a part of it. So I see nothing about love that's supernatural.

Currently, I think the highest expression of love is to die voluntarily. To not participate. To live is to condone all of this senseless killing. We all are part of it. To live is to kill. It just happens.

After all, evil in reverse is live. To live is evil? A hidden message? Too obvious?

At least, that's how I see it now. I can't be 100% because of my limited awareness. I also realize that I've never known pureness. Ethics is replete with grayness. The whole universe is impure. For all I know, I'm in a simulation and chose to enter into it. Or perhaps I'm placed here and if I leave someone I love will be killed. In any case, I cannot make any firm conclusions. All I can do is speculate stupidly and blindly. Ultimately, that appears to be what all of this amounts to.

Perhaps I've just watched one too many spiders trap a mayfly. Or have contemplated too much how the act of eating takes the life from something else to feed oneself. Or how our awareness is too narrow and self/race/species-centered. We cannot make perfect moral choices with our limited awareness. We will always make mistakes. And we know this. Yet we choose to live anyway.

Originally posted by jude11
I just can't understand why approx. 3/4 of new members post these 'thought provoking' religious threads lately.

Why are you doing this? Is there nowhere else for you to lurk? Do you believe you will make converts out of realistic thinkers?

Thanks but please explain your agenda.

Peace

What I can't understand is what people like you are doing in this subforum, clicking on links that tell them exactly what the thread is about, and then, if all that wasn't enough yet, even bother with replying to said thread.

Do you honestly have nothing better to do the entire day???





OT:
This is the kind of question that I don't bother too much with, nobody knows the answer, so why break your head over it... I guess we'll find out eventually, or maybe we won't, there is no shortcut to the answer, if there even is one to begin with.

Originally posted by DCLXVI
This is a thought experiment, that you are a theist or atheist is irrelevant.



Our premise is that God created the Universe starting with the Big Bang and then followed cosmological evolution that eventually lead to biological evolution and to humans.

God being eternal WAS for an eternity before the creation of the Universe. This means that at the moment of Creation he had BEEN for an eternity. Why wait an eternity? what was he doing?

I like to think he was fantasizing about the creation to come, thinking of every single detail, of the emplacement of every quark,boson,hadron to follow the initial singularity. Building up enough power to initiate creation perhaps?

I hope i will get many reply related to the thought experiment and not so much about the premise of the experiment. If you just cannot pretend that a God created our Universe for the sake of this thread do not bother replying.

Can't wait to read the replies.

Every time i try to imagine God before creation, this is all i see.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/wy50289844.jpg[/atsimg]

The image you probably should be seeing is a absolute black image.

There is no time in the image you see. It is stationary, it is not changing. So there is no time passing. So a eternity hasn't actually passed by at all. To us it seams like a eternity since God created our existence.

i've always been under the impression that god exists outside of time, the 4th demension.. i'm no scientist nor am i a church scholar or whatever, but an eternity is just a term to given to give us an idea of immensity , in a way we can understand i guess, but god would have existed outside of time, therefore having no beginning or no end. i feel like we have such a hard time understanding be we only live in a 3 dimensional world

reply to post by ThisIsNotReality


Has anyone here ever read Patrick Rothfuss's "The Wise Man's Fear"? Absolutely incredible author, even endorsed by Orson Scott Card himself, the Gordon Ramsay of writing.

Here's an excerpt from the book, which I think will answer ThisIsNotReality's question:

I shrugged and started to lay out my bed. “So he made up stories that seemed like puzzles and asked me if I understood what they meant.” I smiled a little wistfully. “I remember thinking about that boy with the screw in his belly button for days and days, trying to find the sense in it.”

Marten frowned. “That’s a cruel trick to play on a boy.”

The comment surprised me. “What do you mean?”

“Tricking you just to get a little peace and quiet. It’s a shabby thing to do.”

I was taken aback. “It wasn’t done in meanness. I enjoyed it. It gave me something to think about.”

“But it was pointless. Impossible.”

“Not pointless.” I protested. “It’s the questions we can’t answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he’ll look for his own answers.”

I spread my blanket on the ground and folded over the threadbare tinker’s cloak to wrap myself in. “That way, when he finds the answers, they’ll be precious to him. The harder the question, the harder we hunt. The harder we hunt, the more we learn. An impossible question . . .”

That's why I ask myself these questions. Even if you don't find an absolute answer, you can find a way to cope with the unanswerable nature, and even find a way to make peace with it. Even better than that, it shows you HOW to find an answer, so that when there actually is an answer, you'll know how to start finding it. That's why Christians disappoint me...their unwillingness to critically examine anything regarding the mysteries of the world, and accept a catch-all answer that doesn't hold water, is a detriment as they begin to think less and less about the world and the universe. That's detrimental to the mind. It cripples the ability to find answers, especially hard ones, when you need them the most.

And that's what I'm looking for when I participate in these discussions. Either a way to believe the world will be okay in the next few thousand years; or, if not, a way to believe that I can change that.

I want to die knowing the world is happy and will stay that way for a good while. That's all I want.

time is definitely circular far as i can tell

everything in existence spins, spirals and rotates- earth on its axis, around the sun, spiral galaxy's, electrons spin, ext.

when one would be to imagine the universe as the whole totality of everything it could never begin or end

the universe we usually picture (the one we are in) could be one of a multiverse with separately occurring big bangs

ones that are also guided by some higher laws forces and properties like gravity, EM,
maybe some sort of torque-ing spiral effect
and said properties laws and forces guide over the totality of the universe
with varying degrees of effect by different forces and laws over infinite space
infinite possibilities could be created, infinite universes, fractal-holographically different from one another
and the universe as its totality (infinitely, fractally, holographically)
is guided in loops, spins and spirals, causing big bangs now and then

but its no different than what goes on in the bedroom if you catch my drift, a little creation

just as many stars will supernova, create black wholes and new galaxy's within and around them perhaps

got a little off topic i think but there is a lot to learn about creation, the universe and eternity, always a fun topic

i suggest searching into sacred geometry and Nassim Harramin

A couple years ago Steven Hawking already said there is no need for a God to create the universe. The universe could have created itself. I don't feel like finding the video right now but it's on YouTube. Find it yourself.

First off, i dont believe in god, but i like philosophy.
If the creation is started with the big bang,
Then i would say before that he was occupied with some serious math.
Calculating, and drawing the groundwork wich makes it all work. All physical laws and such. Also he must have done some serious study on wich elements to use for it all to work.
Like a painter, the painting aint no work at all, its the grounding that is the real work.
Here's a kiss from Sweden

reply to post by DCLXVI

"what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence"
Wittgenstein

how can you make sense talking about things from a time (time being one of them) when supposedly nothing existed except God?

Originally posted by bottleslingguy
reply to post by DCLXVI

 

"what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence"
Wittgenstein

how can you make sense talking about things from a time (time being one of them) when supposedly nothing existed except God?

I don't want to make sense, i want to push the limit of my imagination.

A guy that made a lot of sense once said this by the way :

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

I will let you guess who it was.

Originally posted by DCLXVI

Originally posted by bottleslingguy
reply to post by DCLXVI

 

"what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence"
Wittgenstein

how can you make sense talking about things from a time (time being one of them) when supposedly nothing existed except God?

I don't want to make sense, i want to push the limit of my imagination.

A guy that made a lot of sense once said this by the way :

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

I will let you guess who it was.

was that Einstein?

my point with the Wittgenstein quote is how can you talk about things before there were any things? how can you think of things there are no words for? give me an example of something there are no words for

granted intuition is one thing but in order to share the ideas you have to put it into words, don't you?

Originally posted by bottleslingguy

Originally posted by DCLXVI

Originally posted by bottleslingguy
reply to post by DCLXVI

 

"what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence"
Wittgenstein

how can you make sense talking about things from a time (time being one of them) when supposedly nothing existed except God?

I don't want to make sense, i want to push the limit of my imagination.

A guy that made a lot of sense once said this by the way :

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

I will let you guess who it was.

was that Einstein?

my point with the Wittgenstein quote is how can you talk about things before there were any things? how can you think of things there are no words for? give me an example of something there are no words for

An animal with 18 heads that swims in clouds of sulfuric Acid.

Who is to say what God has done. He created the heavens and the earth but that does in no way mean that is all that exist or has existed,

We comprehend what our limited minds and history can imagine or explorer. If we are but a grain at the bottom of the Atlantic who is to say we know anything of God other than what he believes we can comprehend.

Scientist can claim there is no God yet they can not comprehend eternity before or after our existance. There can be no beginning because there was none and no end other that this moment of ours that will end on a small planet, a grain of sand.

Click here for more information.

reply to post by aardvark888


That's no more arrogant than assuming that you know the first thing about any god, especially when "God" is generally acknowledged to be an infinite being.

What's a trillionth of infinity? Yep, still infinity. And you say you can even begin to grasp this? Or pretend to, rather? Arrogance, indeed.