So, which do you think came first? God or the universe? Perhaps they are both the same or perhaps the question is invalid as time breaks down. Anyway, feel free to discuss what you think or believe.

The universe then when we finally arrived in the universe we thought up God.

The universe came first.......it is real.
God has not been proven to be any more than a character in a fictional book.

Nicely said Yip got to say the universe came first

We could ask what came first?


God or Imagination?


But it is my belief that the universe came before god and that god is our creation.

So basically this will eventually turn into another debate about wether or not God exists...

Whooo! I smell atheists! The putrid stench of long dead souls! I say that the question is invalid, because God has always been in existence. There, take it or leave it.

Pointless thread?

lol i aint an atheists just got different belives

Alot of confusion here. Monotheism is the key. It is not the physical or the spiritual, the seen or the unseen. But all are God and God is all. He is the creator and the providor.

The answer to your question is the chicken. Only athiests pick the egg.

I smell chicken...

Pointless post?

Overall it is interesting to see the change in points of views. I asked this question on another forum & most of the people responded that God/universe was actually one in the same. Take from that what you will.

Whoa...

Another interesting idea is that it could be neither & that time began with the big bang (assuming the big bang is what started the universe). Before the big bang, the idea of time was meaningless. What is really trippy is the idea the universe started as a vacuum fluctuation or even quantum tunneling. The idea that in the quantum world past events don't always influence future events. Somehow, someway that quantum event started the universe even before it existed. Actually, I'm pretty bad at summing up those ideas. One can read about them in the book Many Worlds in One by Alex Vilenkin. Overall he talks about how the universe "could" have originated.

Of course this question is meaningless. Whoever or whatever force created the Universe is forever outside of it. Everything in this Universe has a first cause and is thus created and bound by the laws of cause and effect. The creator or creators or the process does not have a first cause and therfore does not require a creator. You could say "God Is" or whatever fits best to your belief system.

My current belief is that God is actually the structure of existence itself. I also believe that universes have been created and destroyed, or rather intermingled or altered many times.

Well supposedly God created the universe and all things in it according to the Bible, but it doesn't explain who made the cosmos now does it?





Let's not let this degenerate into an atheists vs. believers debate. There is another thread in this forum for this.....

Im with swampgator on this 1

well a cell came first not a chicken or a egg so thats that....well its even more intricate...but any way.....if there is a god there maybe others...if theres a universe there will be others...if there are dimensional lapses and space there will be levels...and if there is consiouness there is a meaning...therefore i conclude a higher state of multi dimensional consiousness.. WAS/..not is..at work with the aspect and meaning of life. and i would probally suspect that, allowing something to just be..... gave meaning to life..which would be a constant thing and it would forever grow into a new layer and skin in which it to may create another or more multi higher state beings on a dimensional level...this could result in not the very begining of life but the start.which in turn would grow and grow and never end....but always changes...like cells..good or bad....but a balance ....a meaning....LIFE!

Humans create Gods but cells create humans.......
Here, here

You do not have to prove the existence of God to prove that the universe is created you merely have to prove that the universe began. Anything that has a beginning needs a first cause and requires a creator, whether that is God or not is up to you.

Yeah...........

Hmmm, I'll put forth another perspective on this intermingled with some prior views posted here...

We created God, nothing created the universe. Since there is a consensus among physicists that time & space is an inherent part of the universe ie. without it there would be no universe as we know it, we cannot ask the question of "where is the universe?" (there is no spacetime outside the universe for us to ever be able to 'place' it anywhere). Hence the universe is no-where, and since it is no-where it cannot exist as a whole. Within, existence as we know it (via spacetime) is all too possible and evident as we can place our solar system within the Milky Way and the Milky Way in relation to other galaxies BUT the scale stops when you consider the universe as a whole - that, IMO, cannot be placed.

Now, IF the universe as a whole does not exist, it does not require a creator. Furthermore, if one considers the universe as energy (in a simplistic way) and energy cannot be created or destroyed, the universe does not have a beginning or an end (creation/destruction) it has endless transformations (like energy changing form) with the Big Bang being the last of these transformations.

Just my pov/opinion on the matter...

So, God was created first AND last and was created by humanity.

Cheers

Neither. Time is only the rate of change within a closed matter system.

"There is no spoon, Neo..."

Well, for what it's worth, I agree with you. The Universe simply *is*. To go beyond this requires some type of faith/belief.

The human mind can not grasp "infinity" which both describes the Universe and God.

well everyone to there own....i can grasp a bigger concept to the universe's without the need for faith's and other religions...i use science.. and many things i av put my idea's to av now been amended to the conceptual design of its static status...im no official scientist but i am certaintly aware of current understanding of its structure.and all the other ingredients i.e. physics,material makeup and current laws ect. all wot we have as our current understandment is always deemed theoretical, even if proved as it is always being challenged with new concept,ideas, even structual design....these must always be taken into consideration on our still yet limited knowledge of it as a whole.

Hmm, I don't really believe infinity exists, except in abstract terms such as numbers. Anytime you run into infinity in equations you know you're on the wrong track or something isn't fully understood. This is just my opinion, but I very much believe the universe is just a finite place.

How could there ever be nothing ?

How could there ever be anything ?

WHAT THE HECK IS THIS PLACE !?!?!?!!

*pinches arm*

I guess it all depends on what your definition of "is" is.


But let's try a little experiment. It will take a different span of time for each of us. Now, all we have to do is wait until we die. Then we will find out.


I do know that before I was, He is.

Yes YA (sorry for shortening) that is IMO one of the greatest and ultimate riddles. I've been wrestling with "how can existence be?" for a very long time now and each and every time I hit the same wall as you so aptly put it "WHAT THE HECK IS THIS PLACE?". When one ponders the "nothing" and "anything" paradox for a long time, one either goes into 'melt-down' or just gives up. But, I'll let you in on a little secret, the nothing/anything can be accounted for using some profound mathematical proofs that have been around for some time - no one has connected the dots so-to-speak and related them to reality & physics, YET!

But, I'm still left with the ultimate question "what the heck is this place?"

Cheers

its a life createing machine that will continue to create concsouses.....even our futile demeena is quite something out of the ordinary/speacial if you could mentally grasp that...if you look at the universe as a whole it has quite an bio methodical process..

With every answer there is a new question.

From my minds perspective i simply cannot see how that would ever end... Or begin for that matter.

There may be a creator, and there may be a million creators who created that creator. Who knows? Not me... That's about the only thing i know with a 100% certainty. I don't know.
And now that i have realised that i don't know, the possibilities are endless and open for my mind to play around with.

Thats wot makes it so beautifall.diversity in the upmost abundance.

to wonder at the wonder/to attain the unattainable/to learn the hidden words of the spoken and unspoken/...diversity at its smallest point to its biggist and its stemidge of question and awnsers...to learn of the imaginable and unimaginable to .....learn...and aquire knowledge and wisdom..to find the balance of right and wrong and its underlining meanings and there place...in its own schematics...never to fully understand but to learn...

everything attains a meaning from a reason...wot is the purpose of a life creating universe,that creates everthing that is imagineable and unimagineable a diversity of diversitys...that creates a consiousness that has a reason that creates a meaning....a place..a belonging to somthing and a wonder to make meanings to give a term of realism to somthing...

how could you define and label a god to this when we cannot define our own faiths...old or new... maybe a god is the concept to all of everything...even wot we cannot see..we as humans love to worship somthing and that is our roots....but wot if the god is your own parents could you idealise them created our earth, our galaxy gave birth to our sun it goes on and on its somthing youll take forever to wonder about it all inspireing

God is Nature. Nature is God. Enough said.

It is, as my Dad was fond of saying, "the only game in town". Beyond that, ya got me.

It's priceless Lilly To consider pure scientific context and a light cone extending from here & now we cannot ever observe the theorised Big Bang. We can get exceedingly closer to this 'event' but just as we cannot ever attain the speed of light for massive (as opposed to massless) particles we cannot ever attain the observation of the Big Bang event. I do like speculating sometimes but when I do it has to be completely out of the scientific realm I hope I haven't lost face with you.

Yes, it is "the only game in town".

Cheers

Yes, exactly the conclusion I've come to.



Not likely! I do the same thing myself (don't we all?). Hey, I even hope that when we die these are the very things that will become clear to us...this is where I have faith.



Indeed it is, and a most interesting (albeit sometimes frustrating) game it is!

God and then His creations through whatever means He chose to make them happen.

There is no relative time for God, because nothing can be made apart from Him.

Time came before both.

I every once in a while have the following sequence of thought when considering my EXISTENCE

Universe ---> WHO created it ----> where was WHO when he did it THERE prior to the Universe ------> what is this THERE and when did it come to exist and WHY

When I get this thought process going I get a disturbing feeling that I am approaching a danger. Words DO NOT express clearly what I feel, but it is unpleasant.

GOD AND THE UNIVERSE ARE ONE, THE UNIVERSE AND THE UNIVERSE ARE ONE. ALL IS ETERNAL SO THERE WAS NEVER A BEGINNING AND THERE WILL NEVER BE AN END....WHATEVER HAS A BEGINNING HAS AN END.....THE UNIVERSE HAS ALWAYS BEEN HERE AND ALWAYS WILL. BOTH GOD AND THE UNIVERse AROSE, well didn't even arise together because for it arise means that there was a time it wasn;t here. TOGETHER BECAUSE THERE IS NO DISTINCTION. GOD(INFINITE CONSCIOUSNESS) IS ALL AND ALL IS GOD.


Deep in the human unconsciousness isa pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.------Muad 'Dib"

INFINTE LOVE IS THE ONLY TRUTH EVERYTHING ELSE IS ILLUSION.---David icke

It was this very question that helped cement my beliefs as an atheist. I reasoned that either god had existed for ever and had no beginning or god spontaneously came into existence. The only other option was that god had a god. But if the third option was true then the same problem arose, where did gods god come from.

I was told that something as complex as the universe could not exist without a creators intelligence behind it. I was also told that something even more complex than the universe had always existed. I t seemed logical to me that if a god didn;t need a god to create him then the universe didn't need a god to create it.

So my answer in short is that the universe came first. god didn't arrive until after mankind invented him.

"DAVID ICKE IS AN ILLUSION, EVERYTHING ELSE IS TRUTH - a sane universe would not have created David Icke" - Waspie_Dwarf.

Unless it is shown to me otherwise I don't believe God and the Universe (or multiverse if you prefer) are causally linked. God just is, the Universe just is. Neither were 'first'.

I agree with this as well. I also think that something regarding intelligent design that is overlooked by Christians is that just because a HUMAN can't understand how an eyeball could come into existance on its own, doesn't mean it couldn't.

You could take the simple experiment of making sugar crystals. If you took a child and told them you were going to make diamonds and that child understood a diamond to be very rare and valuable thing, they would see you making rock candy as almost magic. Or take an Ancient Egyptian who valued gold and use fake gold from the modern era. They would see it as magic.

The truth is the simplicity in the way the sugar crystals formed is reflected in the more complicated ways in which an embryo is formed. 2000 years ago this would be considered impossible.

I know someone will argue that "intelligent design" is reflected in the HUMAN intervention. But the human intervention is only our way of figuring out how to do it. Nature does it on its own without any human intervention. Without any "intelligent" intervention.

The simple truth is that we regard it as "intelligent" because it was/is beyond our capacity to replicate it. But to nature, its very very simple, predictable and happens all the time.

It is our own lack of capability that makes these things seem "intelligent" life is actually very very simple. We just haven't figured it out yet.

Hundred percent agree, what can we really say about universal being except "It is"?? I dont believe that the universe and god can be put into separate catagories.

In the 1800s a common question for fun was which came first, the chicken or the egg?
I doubt anyone decided that an inability to answer meant that either the egg or the chicken could not exist.

Again this quote i repeat constantly comes to mind.

Deep in the human unconsciousness is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.-----Muad "Dib"

Going by intuition is the same as going by faith. The more you trust your intuition the deeper your faith becomes. Good point about the chicken and the egg. Very good point. I think logic and the realm of the five senses can only take us so far.

The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.
----Albert Einstein

I agree that its invalid but for other reasons.

Its invalid because we do not know if God exists or if he does, we know nothing of his nature (ie there's a good chance God isn't a bearded white man sitting on a throne of clouds)

Likewise we know nothing of the nature of the universe. Is there one? More than one? Infinate? Did it start with a big bang, or was that the big crunch of a dying universe?

We objectivly know so little about either subjects (despite falseprophet's arrogant claims) that asking the question is about as pointless as asking which would win in a fight, Santa Claus or Spring Heel Jack?