How do you suppose that an intelligent entity could exist fully formed from nothing?

Question

People sometimes find it difficult to believe that even the lowliest microbe could exist without a creator, but at the same time they unquestioningly accept that an intelligent entity capable of designing and creating an entire universe can just exist fully formed, uncreated, with no origin of any sort. How do they reconcile this breath-taking internal contradiction? If it takes an intelligent creator to make a microbe, why doesn't it need an intelligent creator to make an intelligent creator? Or, to put it another way, if you are comfortable with the idea that something completely amazing like an intelligent entity capable of designing and creating entire universes can just exist without being created, then why do you believe that anything at all needs to be created? Surely an uncreated universe would be easier to accept than an uncreated creator of universes... wouldn't it?

Thomas J: Then 'obviously' the creator must have a creator, and that creator must have a creator, and so on forever and ever. No, that argument just doesn't work. You have to accept that *something* can exist without being created, and that might as well be the universe, as inventing an uncreated god as the 'middle man'.

SpreeBee: I figured it out a long time ago. Just trying to help other people to the same understanding now...

billthedude_...: Agreed, it makes your head spin, but maybe the answer is to re-examine the very nature of existence. If existence is a matter of probability rather than cause and effect (as seems to be the case with fundamental particles in the 'quantum vacuum'), then there is no longer any conundrum to be resolved. If we accept that things can happen uncaused, as QM seems to indicate, then all the other problems go away.

Just a thought...

Answer 1

Exactly - inherent contradiction in the Intelligent Design theory. However, I used to think about this when I was a kid and would take God out of the equation and would still be left with this baffling and panic-inducing conundrum: something is without cause and always existed. When I tried to get my mind around even a trite little process or whatever -- a process that gives rise to universes, etc. -- always existing, my mind couldn't get around it. Even the cosmology of a beginningless and endless cycle where universes start, expand, collapse, go away and repeat doesn't answer the mystery of something always existing. Friends of mine who think this solves the problem have realized they didn't think about the implications until I talked with them at length. So ... no matter what ...I'm left with something causeless and when i REALLY think about the implications in terms of my existence, my head explodes. It's the great mystery ...

Answer 2

this is the type of thing that if you think about too long your head will explode

okay the universe (and lets just call everything that there is everywhere including other potential universes and dimensions and whatever else there might be... MAN the universe is INSANE)...anyhow the universe either came from something... or has always been. or some other thing that no one has thought of.

you know... the short answer, and really the only answer... is that God is beyond our understanding. you bring up a very good question. but theists and atheists are equaly confused when it comes to this issue. do you want to know the answer? well you better get some faith so that you can ask God one day.

Answer 3

Wow, that's a loaded question.

I have some for you: Why would a being with the powers you describe be limited to our Natural Laws? Is it possible that such a being could exist for eternity; without beginning or end in a dimension (for lack of a better term) imperceivable from our viewpoint?

If you find such possibilities so hard to believe, then answer this one: have you ever told a child something that you knew he or she would not or could not understand, and yet that you knew was a fact of life?

The fact is, God's eternality is still a mystery that he has not felt the need to disclose, or we just have a hard time accepting. The reason for this doesn't matter much to me, because I believe based on much more compelling anecdotal evidence.

I hope you continue to search for the truth.

Answer 4

I've asked this question a few times in the past few days. It's not a loaded question at all - it's one that deserves an answer.

You can't try to take down another person's argument (as ID does) without being able to defend your replacement argument. 'God just exists!' is a fine proposal for people who believe on faith alone. I don't agree with it, but I respect it. But if you're going to start babbling on about 'irreducibvle complexity' and trying to justify the removal of decent science from the classroom, then you can't just back out at the last minute. If 'irreducible complexity' and 'watchmaker gibberish' can condemn evolution, then they equally condemn ID because whatever can apply to the universe _must_ apply to its creator also.

Here are two questions I recently asked and just resolved about an hour ago. None of the answers provide any insight whatsoever:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AkY0rec_E_dW5CKfwa3x4jXsy6IX?qid=20060726122755AAbJaHS

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AuTuy0eCOi48OvHcyhoPtBnsy6IX?qid=20060726125300AAi6k8d

Answer 5

At one point there had to be no existence before earth and god and our solar systems, or maybe it has always been there and we just dont have the capability to understand this. No matter what none of us have a clue where we came from, or how the universe started, or if there is really a god, we are all just lost insignificant beings in a vast universe searching for some kind of meaning.

Answer 6

Obviously things are created or this all would not be,We are still trying to get passed the Basics of universal intelligence , and we aren't smart enough to handle Where God came from, Who are we to Question were and How God was formed we can't even Make ONE human being besides Jesus Christ which was God in the flesh, that was Sin free,how weak is that....People are to Dumb to know where God came from,or the true people that do know are smart enough to know that the common man doesn't need to know these things....

Answer 7

it is not any longer no longer conceivable. yet together that does no longer mean it is totally likely. you recognize how the creationists bypass on about how even a unmarried cellular bobbing up from easy molecules ought to take a centillion years or something? in words of arguing adversarial to abiogenesis, they have it incorrect, even if an identical argument can nonetheless artwork compared theory you're featuring. it is merely easy basic experience that that is a techniques, a techniques a lot less likely for something complicated to face up spontaneously than for something easy to face up spontaneously and then be accountable for the variety of complicated issues, and notably a lot each and every thing all of us study about the concept of computation and intelligence backs this up. the first intelligence (assuming there develop right into a first one) virtually really arose as an emergent sources of a somewhat easy equipment. it really is to assert, even if the creationists are properly about existence on the earth, they're virtually really incorrect about existence commonly.

Answer 8

Lol...it's called faith man, belief in something that you can't support...yet. But tell me something, if you question how God came about... how do you believe the primoidal hydrogen came abou that created the first protostar which eventually led to a big band that caused the creation of the universe. If you think you have an answer that you can support better than modern scientists who still have no idea how the primoidal hydrogen came about...email me @
[e-mail]
and tell me what you think.

Answer 9

this is deep. lets say for the sake of agreement that we all evolved from what? lets think about this no human can reproduce life without the wisdom that the good LORD give us all. we do not think or move without God letting us do so. so there is a higher being and that is God. yes it is hard to think that there is a God, but we all know whether we believe or not that their is a God. there is a God, people please believe that God is real and he is coming back to judge and rule

Answer 10

This question can serve as a tool, to arrest the thought process, and allow a person to feel...

Unfortunately, it also serves as a monkee trap...