Christians say that god has no beginning or end?

Question

how can that be?
everything has a beginning. if it exsists then it must have a beginning. at some point god had to have had a start.
he could not have just always been there.

Answer 1

Ironic isn't it that they like to use circular logic and arguments on infinite irreducibility to disprove the Big Bang .

Yet they flat out reject that exact same logic when applied their own way of "thinking".

I hate to call what the religious folks do "thinking" because it is essentially the opposite of thinking isn't it?

Answer 2

That is because God is outside of time and space and is not counted among the plurality of phenomena that comprise the physical reality in which we live, this reality is caracterized by three dimensions that limit the essence of any given thing. God is not caused but self existing in the sense that his existence is not contingent upon anything else just as the many phenomena in our physical reality do, where for something to come to be must be caused or brought about by something else that is already in act and not in potency, this is the aristotelic notion of motion (passing from potency into actuality) which as I just said is caused. Aristotle identifies four causes, the first cause, formal cause, the efficient cause and the ultimate cause. Basically something is or comes to be by the agency of four causes: That which maks that thing, that by which a thing is made, that byw which a thing is maintained in being and that for which a thing is or is made. All our ohysical reality can be accounted for this causes to come.
God on the other hand is the first unmoved mover, and he necesarily has to be since if there was no first cause then we would have a regresion into infinity of all the chained causes and this can not be, since then nothing would ever come to be: If you go back infinitely in first causes then there would be no middle cause and no ultimate cause either, therefore it is necessary to posit the existence of an unmoved mover that is not cuasewd or contingent on anything and that is te first cuase of all the cascade of causes that operate in the universe. This is just the first argument for the five proofs of the existence of God given by St ThomasAquinas, developing from aristotelic concepts (Aristotle Himself without Christianity as a help arrived at the conclusion of the unmoved mover before any christian thinker).
So answering your question wether how can it be that God has no beginning or end, I answer that this is possible because only that which is located and limited has beginning or end, and this is only that which its existence is contingent upon something else. God on the other hand is eternal and necessary, trascendent of the physical reality which we can only perceive by our limited sensorial mode. In the same way that an architect is not a wall of the house he made, and you can't tell when the idea that brought about a house begins or ends, God has no beginning or end because is not located anywhere and has no extension. And because of this independence of locality is available to everybody everywhere and any time: this is what philosophers call the immanence and transcendence of God (Is a thought real or unreal? where does a thought start or ends? is the same with God, analogically speaking).
So as you can see, we can't project our own limitations into the unlimited whcih we are not prepared, or endowed to harness, some might say that the exsistence of God is mere wishful thinking and that we need to invent or create within ourselves the existence of such a being, but -leaving the prooof aside for now- we can't deny that if we stick to logic then we would have to concede that the wish for an ideal something to exist does not by itself rule out the possibility of its existence in actu. Just because a man imagines an ideal wife that he would love, that just by itself doesn't mean that such a wife by neccesity does not exist, since this same man could find a woman and get to love her deply and marry her. Is the same. Anyway i disgress and I apologize. Strictly answering your question, I recomend you the philosophy of Aristotle and of St thomas Aquinas, if you read it with honesty and with an open mind I think you will obtain a lot of insight about this mater.
There is a book that is now in the shelves that speaks very simply and franjly about this issues without being preachy, is called The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis S Collins, if you read it in intellectual honesty you will be answered I promise you.
Greetings to you and the best of wishes.

Answer 3

Well, He said that he was always, even from before the beginning.

The problem that I think that many people have with that concept is this: We are born, and have only lived in time. What else can we know? Our mindset allows no other possibility, neirther can we grasp it. Our minds were also born in time, and raiosed in time, so what else could there be?

The concept of there being something out of time, and before there was any time is a tremendous undertaking. I can't do it, but somehow I can believe that such a thing existed.

Everyone just has to make up their own mind on that!

Answer 4

Not true.

A circle has no beginning and no end. A mobius strip has no beginning and no end. A point has no beginning, no end and no possibility of physical existence.

Stephen Hawking uses this "idea" that since his mathematical model of the beginning of the universe shows that the universe does not begin in a "point", which cannot possibly exist except as a concept, God must not exist. No point of creation, no God.

You are making similar and opposite argument, since an absolute beginning must exist and there is no absolute beginning for God, God must not exist.

Hawking's argues that since there is no absolute beginning then there can be no God.

You argue there has to be an absolute beginning and Hawking's argues that there is no absolute beginning. Both arguments with the same results.

Let us leave aside this argument in ridiculousness for a moment.

The concept of a point exists even though a point cannot physically exist and since we can conceive of it we can understand the existence of a point, even though we cannot ever see one physically. The point becomes a necessity and points do exist, even though it is not possible for a point to exist.

We create "icons" for points. We stab pencils into paper, chalk into chalk boards and push pins into maps. These "points" have width, depth and thickness and are therefore not "real" points, but, they are points.

Points exist, even though it is physically impossible for a point to exist.

Answer 5

Reluctantly, I don't have a problem with the idea of a deity existing 'outside time' or having 'always existed'. These things represent the fallacy called Special Pleading, but when you're talking about a pure fantasy like a god, any characteristic is valid and any limit is arbitrary.

@Foxtrot: matter, time and space started at the Big Bang, dude.

CD

Answer 6

The identify Alpha and Omega would not mean he has a commencing up and an end, yet that he's the commencing up and the top. All issues got here into being because of fact of him and all issues will come to an end because of fact of him besides. God Bless! +?+

Answer 7

Look at it like this.

God made time (time did not 'appear' until after the big bang. It actually arrives in packets, so even from a secular view there was once a time without time . . . . . I think I just blew my own mind). He exists outside time and so is not constrained by it.

Think of the Flatlanders, two dimensional shapes in a two dimensional world. You are a being of three dimensions so you can exist outside the 2-D world. Time is a dimension just like length and bredth. God happens to be outside of it.

So having made time, and living outside of it, yes, God could always have been there. It's not something that is easy to grasp and wrap your brain aroung though.

Answer 8

You are asking a question that is a logical conundrum.
God calls himself the self-existent One (I am that I am).
There are no words for the God of the Bible that indicate beginning or end--only of the Creation is there beginning and end (and even then a new beginning). Some things you cannot get at by logic and this is one of them.

Maggie

Answer 9

Which came first the chicken or the egg?Because this universe had a beginning, doesn't mean it has to end.time is linear. we are on that straight line headed to whatever destination is is in front of us. We can't off physically) except through death. God is not subject to this linear time because he created time to govern the cosmos he created,He is before the beginning of all that is. and the buck stops there because he created it.

Answer 10

Read Genesis! He says, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End". God is God so why would He have needed to be made up out of nowhere?!? Don't question the Works of God nor His existence. It is not us Christians who say that, it is GOD Himself who tells us in Genesis. Take care!

Answer 11

It is hard for us to understand. We live the life of a human on Earth. As far as the Earth is concerned, everything had a beginning and end. God is outside all of time and all of space. He has always been, and He always will be.