Where did God come from?

Posted under Uncategorized on October 4th, 2009 by with one response 

Where did God come from?

Yes, where did God come from? I’d like to see him try and answer this one, you say. Well, sit back and enjoy.

If you’ve read through some of the other pages on this site you will have noticed that there is often a concept you have to understand before you can understand the answer to the question. This page carries on that tradition.

This time the concept is the mutability (changeability) of time and even the notion that time is not an absolute entity. Yes, there was a time when there was no time.

Now before you think I’ve gone mad – these are not my ideas. However, I do understand them and, for what it’s worth, agree with them. Einstein published his theories of relativity in the early twentieth century. In short, Einstein postulated that there was a realtionship between how a body experienced time, its mass and its velocity. A body traveling at the speed of light would have an infinite mass and time would cease to exist for it. The faster a body travels up to the speed of light the greater its mass will be and the slower time will pass for it. As far as is humanly possible with our technology, Einstein has been proved right.

Now go one step further. Cosmotologists (astro-physicists) have come up with the notion of the Big Bang. Another term for the Big Bang would be The Creation Moment. The ultimate In the Beginning. See Genesis 1:1, the most famous and most dramatic opening of any book ever written. Here it is:

Revised Standard Version
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

So simple, so short and so full of power. I’m sure many writers have bemoaned that fact that this line has already been taken.

Right at this moment time was born. There was no before this moment, because there was no time. According to Stephen Hawking in "A Brief History of Time" St Augustine was asked what God did before He created the universe. St Augustine replied that time was a property of the universe God created, so there was no before He created the universe. Clever fellow, this St Augustine, especially if taking into account that he lived 1500 years ago. In his life-time he was intellectually where many still have not ventured today. Stephen Hawking has no problems with time being a property of the universe. Here is a link to an extremely interesting page supporting what was said above. You can read much more on the subject on these pages. You will also find links to other pages.

After studying the subject for a while you will see that the concept of time as explained above is accepted in most serious and reputable scientific circles. I know of one atheist (not a scientist) who flatly refuses to believe it, despite the evidence. His objection to religion is based, among others, on the postulation that God must have been created and whoever created God must have been created etc. etc… He calls it an infinite regression of creators.

Let’s go even further; let’s postulate that some entity or entities can exist outside of time. This is really a logical conclusion following the concept that time is a property of the universe. Whoever created the universe therefore created time and must be outside of time. The following may be an explanation of that fact to primitive people thousands of years ago:

II Peter 3:8 (Revised Standard Version)
But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

Now for the answer to the question: as long as time has existed, God has been there. Humans cannot conceive of anything outside of time. We can conceptually step up to the limit of no time, but beyond that we cannot go. I have no idea what things were like when there was no time, if such a state is fathomable at all. The question where did God come from? unquestionably has an answer beyond God has always been there, which is true. We are not at a level where that answer will enlighten us at all. Take the example of a ten year old asking, Daddy, why does the earth go around the sun at the distance it does? This child’s father now comes up with the mathematical equation which involves velocities, masses and distances which is the true answer to the question. Unfortunately, his ten year old son is not enlightened by this answer at all. The father could have said it has to do with the mass of the Earth, the sun and the speed with which the Earth travels around the sun. This would have enlightened the boy equally little. At least we know the father had an idea of the true answer. Beyond the start of time nobody on Earth has an idea of what conditions were like. At that time, God was there. That is as far as we can go.

Can you conceive time always existing?

This is just as hard, as I will show.

Any event or entity exists in a space-time context. Take a football match, for example.

The match is played in a sporting stadium – its space context. Time starts for the match when the referee blows the starting whistle – its time context. Time will end for this match when the final whistle blows.

Now we move one layer outward, to the stadium. Its time context started when it was officially opened. It will end when the stadium is decommissioned, bombed, destroyed, whatever. The stadium’s space context is its geographical location, say a town or city. If the town or city has changed names the stadium can have several time-space contexts, it started its life in CityX, continued it in CityY, etc. One context flows into another.

Similarly, time also started for the city at a certain point in the time-context of its enveloping context-entity. So we can always move outward until we get to the universe. As the universe is also a context (to whatever is inside it in both time and space), it too, must have a start time. As there is no enveloping context-entity the universe could not have started at a certain point in the time-context of the enveloping context-entity. Or is the universe different from everything inside it? Is it not only universal (spatial attribute) but also eternal (time attribute)? Quantum theory has shown that everything does not neccessarily dance to the same tune (obey the same laws). And here we get stuck. Here we are forced to agree with the title of the raggae hit of the sixties, There are more questions than answers.

Whatever you decide upon, ultimately it is just as difficult to conceive of infinite, immutable time as finite, mutable time. And the consensus of opinion is for mutable time.

On this day...

Leave a Comment

www.PurposeDriven.ca // Personal Ministry of Steve Kellar
Request a FREE ESV Bible