If God created the world - who created God?

[LucyEllensmummy]

This must be a question that lots of people must think about. I am a lapsed catholic and not REALLY sure if i 100% believe in all this twaddle about God creating the world in seven days. Not when the evidence so solidly points towards Darwin and his theory of evolution. But then, when you look at how complex even the simplist organisms are, how complex a single protein is, even a strand of DNA is complex and that is supposed to be the "starting point" of a human being/fuit fly/mouse etc. All those chemicals just forming together to create life to me, defies the laws of physics. One of the laws of thermodynamics states that "The entropy of the universe (or any system for that matter) moves towards maximum disorder". I think that is also known as chaos theory. This basically means, that molecules, particles, etc will within a defined system will just drift etc until there is maximum chaos or disorder. I like to think of my DDs bedroom along those lines. Unless energy is applied to a system then no order will occur, no atomic, molecular bonds will be created, let alone come together to form an organism - and then to think of human life and my mind is spaghetti. There has to be energy input but, the second law of thermodynamics states "energy can neither be created or destroyed" meaning that energy can only be transfered from one form to another. Ie potential or stored energy, into kenetic (movement) energy into heat, noise etc. But where did the original energy come from.

Even if you believe that we are the result of some Big bang, which i don't, where did the "stuff" come from that created the conditions for a big bang and how can it all be a fecking coincidence anyway. It just can't be, there has to be a greater force - there has to be a God surely. But it goes back to the same - Who or what created God. What is the real evidence that there is some benevolent being subtly guiding our progress?

I want to believe in God, in fact it upsets me that i struggle with it. I want to raise my daughter as a catholic but what i tried to convey above, not very clearly plays on my mind. If i were God, would i make things so complicated? Its fallable, which i thought God wasn't meant to be. Cancer is a result of when our bodies fail to decipher our genetic code, ok this can be caused by external influence which you might argue is man made, but not always,sometimes, spontaneous mutations occur in the wrong bit of DNA, its not picked up by the cells proof reading machinery and bang, your fucked. Viruses - they are primitive forms of life, they hijack us to replicate themselves and we get sick, they are clearly an abberation - in all of the things that people argue against a god, Disease, war etc, the argument i have always heard is that we are given free choice and as a world we have made some pretty bad choices and reap what we sow so to speak, but viruses are too random for that HIV is not some punishment from god, any more than the flu is.

I know very little about religeon, but i imagine that those of you who make it your business to know, who have studied theology must have some thoughts on this, you must do??

I would really like to be able to reason this out - love to hear some thoughts on this, if i have made any sense AT ALL??

Thank you in advance
xx

I totally agree that faith and science are different things but often you find atheists rebutting faith on the grounds of science - not necessarily on here but on many of these discussions in the past.

I do think there is an element of faith involved in science. As Pruners says it is not a fixed thing - the cycle of hypothesis, antithesis, synthesis is on-going all the time. There is never an end to it and such there is a faith hoping what you believe to be true at the moment, comes close the reality iyswim. And sometimes it doesn't but it isn't the same faith

So science isn't weakened by a faith in God but conversely a faith in God is not weakened by science - there is no overlap in the Venn diagram.

Interesting discussion though - I hadn't thought of it like that before.

Actually I think that science and religion look at two different questions. Science looks at the 'how' we all came about but religion looks at the 'why'?

Sorry perhaps I should started that post with 'Oh Pruners, you are SO right'!

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I think there is an important distinction
between "science" as a body of knowledge and the scientific method.When the scientific method replaces an old hypothesis with a better model to fit the facts, it is
seen as a good thing,scientific knowledge is never in a static state.In practice though some things are so basically true that although knowledge about them is being expanded at the frontiers the basics are
taken as true.
The annoying thing is then when some religionists take these ambiguities and overturned hypotheses to challenge the scientific method as a legitimate means to explore the world.

Faith on the other hand(in the sense used about religion) is very black and white, you
either have it or you don't.

Do you think it is possible then, to apply scientific logic to faith? As in, do they HAVE to be different. I guess we will never be able to PROVE God, in fact isn't it frowned upon within religeous circles?

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God created the world in 7 days......HIS days.
They may last a billion years for all we know

ah these kind of conversations remind me of my yoof
pass the spliff, comrade

Also, what does an ant think of the world? I just think that we are a TINY link in the whole of existence. We might be in the middle of a tiny bubble in the midst of lots of bubbles in someone's bath.
That's messed up your head!

Yes, i would be very interest to read some of that pruners. Although WHEN - lol, thats why i come on mnet so i actually dont have to read stuff.

I did read a book once by sebastian faulks (The birdsong/charlotte gray man) called human traces. It sort of examined the history of mental health and also faith. One of the hypotheses that was put forward in this book was that the "voices" that some mentally ill people hear are remnants of voices that everyone heard in ancient times - that "normal" people are out of tune with those voices and that one could argue, those voices being the voice of God/concience etc - it was a work of fiction but i did recognise alot of the names of the scientists in it, losely based on fact or the authors opinions i think. I have a PhD in a neurobiology related subject so i can sort of appreciate where that is coming from. Yes, i guess you can definately explain away voices and sensations as coming from certain parts of the brain, absolutely, but electrochemical reaction they may be - it doesn't mean that they are simply that - they COULD be some sort of communion with God? OK, thats a massive leap of faith, but one i quite fancy in my fanciful moments

Ripeberry, im arrogant enough to think we are a tad more important than that - but i do know where you are coming from. My head is already messed up though

DaddyJ, i am high as a kite i am!!!

Shamens in the days before religion used all kinds of drugs to get their answers and they were taking stuff much stronger than spliffs! The only thing that would unite humanity and all religions is if we found or were visited by aliens.
Too much thinking now and its not even midday!

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Yes science is not a faith and quite different.

As for using science in debates about religion that depends. Science doesn't disprove god and doesn't attempt to. So if someone believes there is a great force out there which created the universe then science has no opinion. However if they go on to claim that this force created the world last tuesday then science can point out that the facts disprove that.

I don't think you can get far in applying scientific logic to the actual core of faith itself - apart from the neurochemistry approach which as far as I can see doesn't prove anything anyway, except that you can cause religious experience by stimulating the brain in certain ways. The fact that you can see a chemical/biological mechanism by which faith is experienced doesn't prove that it doesn't exist without the artificial stimulus.

But I think there's nothing wrong in applying logic to faith - to an extent that's something which theologians have always done.

The problem comes when the atheists demand proof of things like the effectiveness of prayer - you get into a whole grey area of what you mean by prayer, what counts as effective, what counts as proof, etc.

So it would be fairly easy to disprove a religious hypothesis which said "If you face North and recite the Lord's Prayer 10 times in succession (BCP version), then ask for a pound coin, it will always appear in front of you". But Christian prayer isn't like that, and many believers would say that a prayer for financial help had been "answered" when they got a cheque in the post next morning which they had not been expecting. Which certainly wouldn't count as scientific proof that God had intervened.

Lol - I don't think so Pruners - we had a different Dr Seuss story as part of our story time service this month. Obviously the Dr Seuss books are riddled with allegories if you look for them!

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God's mum created God.
Who else could organise the entire creation of Everything, throw in making the world in a week then stand aside to let her son take the credit?

I agree with the general point about trying to apply science to faith itself. However I think scientific logic can be applied to the effectiveness of prayer. Depending on the claims made for prayer by the people the scientists are talking to.

If it's the group that says prayer is often answered by 'a feeling that god cares about you even though the bad thing still happens' then there is nothing for science to examine.

Another group will say that 'of course god answers all prayers' and that is testable even if the scientists must allow a broad definition of proof. That has been done hasn't it.

Of course there is an effective way of testing prayer which gives proper results which can be plotted on a graph.

WARNING. I AM kidding ok?

Take LOADS of religious people (all faiths) up to 10,000ft and toss them out one at a time and count how many are rescued on the way down.

Now I will have god's mum after me too with a rolling pin!

At last i have my answer - It was absolutely Gods mum!!!

I think sometimes the benefit of prayer is purely psychological - it is a way of meditating with God as something to focus your mind on whilst finding time to step back from life and think about things. I would say that a lot of the perceived benefits of prayer are the result of interpretation.

However, I don't think this means that God doesn't exist because I have also heard testimony from people where the benefits of prayer are hard to attribute to any other source than God.

I struggle with the whole faith thing though. I believe there is a God but I have trouble with the whole trust and relationship with God side of it. Maybe that has made me a bit too sceptical about prayer although I do see the benefits of it.