The Depressing Creator

By DragonGrim · Jan 19, 2010 · ·
  1. A person must create a creator in order to escape sinking into depression. It gives mankind hope to think that someone is watching over them. This is an argument I’ve heard many times.

    Personally, the Creator actually depresses me to a certain extent. It would be sweet if there weren’t such a thing. But as I pointed out in my blog The Philosophy of God – http://www.writingforums.org/blog.php?bt=7239 – infinity makes existence impossible.

    Thinking of the universe without a first cause, an unmovable mover, one can expect that energy and matter are in constant turbulence. It will never cease to change and rearrange, and with infinity guaranteeing that all probabilities shall be fulfilled, I would get to live countless lives. I shall be a king, a beggar, whatever.

    Anyhow, it always makes me pause when I hear someone say that a creator is wishful thinking. Reality is usually not all that glorious – not nearly as glorious as unconstrained infinity.

Comments

  1. HorusEye
    To continue our previous discussion... :)

    I'm sorry if I seem blunt, but you don't have me convinced. Convinced in your conviction, I mean. If you had said you believed in God because you were brought up to do so and you "felt his presence", or simply on emotional faith alone, then I'd accept that more easily. But you're a former atheist with an adherence to logic and reason, now concluding that there must be a creator based solely on extremely abstract logical deduction, not culture or faith -- that is a huge leap to make on very fragile ground. It doesn't even sound like you're very satisfied with that conclusion, yourself.

    One interesting theory on creation of the universe(s) I heard recently is that something can come from nothing if you split a zero into a one and a minus one. Matter and anti-matter. Combined, they don't exist, while seperated they do. It's just a theory like so much else, and I wouldn't take it for more than that, but it reminded me that there's so many scientific possibilities yet to be explored. This theory is no less logical than that of a divine entity creating everything -- and in the case of such entity, what created him? It totally defies human logic and as an answer it only brings more questions to the table.

    Believing in a creator with a master plan is a (very human) way of making sense of nonsense. A way of making things simple and structured. A way to stop worrying about the great mysteries of this universe and find some kind of comfort in that. But only on an emotional level. On a logical, scientific level, it raises millions of new, unsolvable questions.
  2. DragonGrim
    It doesn’t bother me that it raising more questions. I don’t think life would be worth living if we knew everything.

    I do pay attention to theories that pop up once in awhile when something new is discovered, such as antimatter, or multiple dimensions (as Stephen Hawking decried was the answer to many questions) But none of these scientific discoveries change what we know logically about our world.

    I am convinced that something with a mind created time and space. How that is possible is unknown to me, but when all other possibilities are rules out, the one that remains is true.

    What created the creator is a question that does not pass through my mind lightly. But existence came from non-existence, which means something without energy or matter created these two things. And also created time which is a paradox. Only a thought can create a paradox, since it cannot exist in any other way. It is always a contrivance of the mind.

    Faith can never give me a conviction I could hold to. Though I do believe people who do not work a problem out have faith in the things that others already have. I am for to contrary to do that myself.
  3. HorusEye
    "but when all other possibilities are rules out, the one that remains is true."

    When do you know that all other possibilities are ruled out? Are you the 18th century patent officer that says that all inventions have now been made? There could be a dozen or a million yet undiscovered possibilities.

    "Only a thought can create a paradox"

    True, and so it's only a paradox to us, in our thoughts. On an objective level incomprehensible to humans, these paradoxes would not be such, but make perfect "sense", since it's outside of our minds. Perhaps we just don't have the mental capability of seeing the "sense" in it. Like the dog doing algebra. It's a lost case.

    Assuming that nature must obey our limited mental capabilities, either by being non-paradoxial or by being made by a god, is somewhat arrogant in a sense, as you rule out the possibility that nature is too complex for our minds to grasp. That aside, if you accept the idea of a creator you also accept the idea of unsolvable paradoxes (because the creator would be one such), which then opens the door back up to arguing that nature defies human logic.

    What I'm saying here is that in the end, belief in a god boils down to personal faith. No logical argument can support him which could not also be used against him.

    And that's why I started out by saying that I'd more easily accept belief in a creator based on an argument of pure faith -- i.e. wanting to believe.
  4. DragonGrim
    It sounds like a copout to say we are simply not intelligent enough to make deduction about existence. Time is either infinite or it is not. It cannot be infinite and it cannot come from nothing. No measure of intelligence can solve the problem without exploring the possibility of an unknown intelligence.

    Perhaps your preconception of what a god is has made it seem impossible to contemplate. It has no bearing on evolution or geology. A first cause that was brought to be on purpose is not a bearded man.
  5. HorusEye
    No, what I basically said is that sticking a creator into the equation doesn't make it equal X. It doesn't dissolve the paradoxes, but only brings more. Logically and scientifically it's absurd.

    Also, I didn't claim that we're too unintelligent to discover the method to the madness, I just said that it's not something you can rule out and therefore a creator would never be the last possible solution. My point there being that you cannot know when you're left with the last possible solution at all -- so "but when all other possibilities are rules out, the one that remains is true." makes no sense.

    As for infinity, well, we really have no clue whether time is infinite. Maybe one day all the +1s and -1s of all existence melt back together and result in a big, perfect zero. Time included. Show's over. All that was was just a small hickup in the non-space of nothingness.

    Using logic as argument for an intelligent creator is to me like saying "The sky is blue, therefore Yoda must exist."
  6. DragonGrim
    Yoda does exist.

    I’m going to follow your line of thought. If the universe came to be, and then it will cease to be, an outside force, outside of space and time, caused it. It doesn’t even matter if there is such thing as negative time. There is still an event. I’ll just call it the Aura. In order to break the chain of infinity, this Aura does not have a cause. It simply began this universe and perhaps countless others. Then the universes return to zero.

    Until now, I’ve assumed it to be an inanimate object. But without a cause, it must make the action itself. Even if it is not able to think as a person does, it must have some kind of intelligence. And that intelligence I would call God.

    I would need a lot of faith to believe otherwise
  7. HorusEye
    Then I'll follow your line of thought as well ;)

    If an outside force must be necessary to set wheels in motion (why it would have to be intelligent makes no sense to me), then an even-outer-side force is needed to create that force in the first place. God could not exist unless something prior created him -- according to your logics, that is.

    Now, imagine that time is not a line, but a circle. The end of the circle created the beginning, and continues to do so forever. The time when the universe came to be happened right after it ceased to exist (this will make perfect sense if you're on acid).
  8. DragonGrim
    Luckily I am on acid, but still circular time does not solve the conundrum of infinity. I could not be here typing this if time were circular, for other probabilities would have to have been played out before hand, such as me banging my head into a wall in the last phase of the universe. Infinite regression would grantee that I would never get to this point.

    Time must be limited, and therefore it came from a place without time. Anything in that place would not have been created. If something there created our universe, it would have had to make the choice itself. A thing without a cause, and therefore with no chain of influences, must act itself. Take our planet. It can make land by spewing up lava. It is a creator, but only because of the causes that came before it, which gave it the energy and dynamics to create. A thing without a cause would not have that luxury.
  9. HorusEye
    "If something there created our universe, it would have had to make the choice itself. A thing without a cause, and therefore with no chain of influences, must act itself."

    Who says that choices are outside of causality? Even if "someone" made a "choice" to create the universe, that choice had a cause and so you only extend the paradox one more link down the chain. No matter how you twist and turn it, no matter if you believe in true infinity or not, true causality or not, then a divine creator will not solve the paradoxes that come from those beliefs. I'm not trying to convert you or anything -- I'm just saying that religious belief can only rely on the personal desire to believe -- no logical arguments can really support it. Human history is full of such attempts and they've been shot down one by one by science.

    If there is a metaphysical world then it is by definition outside of our senses, logic and understanding of reality, so applying material world reasoning to it is kinda futile.
  10. DragonGrim
    Well, at least you’re sounding like an agnostic;) I was there for a while.

    Science has never shot down religious belief. All religions seem to have one thing in common, and that’s intelligence behind the scenes of reality. Science is only the art of observation. It can answer superficial whys. It cannot even tell you why my shirt is red. It may have a few un-testable theories about the light and atom relationship, but nothing tangible. Even if science advanced for a billion years, and there is no first cause (or as we call God), then there are an infinite number of whys and therefore science can never really understand anything.
  11. HorusEye
    No, I was clearly referring to logical and "proof-based" argumentation for religion, when saying that science has disproven such attempts. Examples are easy: The sun is not Ra. It's a star similar to other stars. In fact it's smaller in size than most stars out there. Lightning is not the product of Thors hammer. The earth is not flat with Paradise on the eastern edge or hell below. All these past beliefs are result of a mix of total ingorance and imagination. Say that god must exist because of this or that natural or abstract phenomena, and you risk being the one they laugh at in centuries from now - once people know better.
  12. DragonGrim
    Your intent is only clear to you because you have a certain view of religions. You see early religions as a way for ancient people to explain the world around them.

    But I do not. I think most of the personification was for the purpose of teacher through allegory. Most stories have morals to them. The sun and lightning are just symbols of power to bestow upon their characters.

    There is no proof either way. It just depends on your point of view.
  13. HorusEye
    Bit it was a way to explain the world. It was more than just allegories, especially in ancient religions. People were absolutely terrified that the wrath of the gods should fall down upon them and people didn't question the morality in human sacrifices or laws passed down by priests. Clerics stared into the sun until they went blind, so that the wisdom of Ra would come to them...not something you do if you simply consider the whole thing a collection of useful allegories. Their gods were real to them and life was just a prelude for death. How could Ra not be real when he was there in the sky above, for everyone to see, plain as day (duh). No human logic could explain how something so bright, warm and life-nurturing could hover above our heads, vanish at one end of the world and reappear at the other. The only logical conclusion to draw was that it was god. Coming to conclusions this way sounds a bit similar to the immovable mover concept, created by a medieval (and religious) philosopher, who just couldn't think of any other possible explanation. I mean, they had ruled out all other explanations, so the one they were left with must be true -- that the sun is god.
  14. HorusEye
    I'd like to get back to the initial subject and my point, though.

    I don't think I can say it any clearer than this...

    Since there's no impirical evidence that unquestionably supports the universe being contingent, dependent on external force to exist, all you inarguably are left with is abstract speculation. Once you support one theory with absolute conviction, you have entered the realm of faith. Therefore, the belief in a god can only be faith-based.

    From a scientific perspective, confusing "desire to believe", or "plausible possibility" with the concept of "absolute truth" is unacceptable.
  15. DragonGrim
    Many, many scientists have stared into the sun until they went blind. Why? For the same reason ancient man did. The sun is an important thing to study. Still, most people have always seen it as fire.

    All science is, is philosophy coupled with experimentation. Experimentation is completely incapable of dealing with infinity. The scientific perspective is a perspective that will always be blind to such large questions.

    Should mankind seek answers to questions that cannot be reproduced in a lab? Absolutely. Will we ever come to an absolute truth? No. And I never have claimed to. I simply propagate an argument that splits the myriad of possibilities into two groups. One is a universe created via thought. The other is a universe created without thought. I can only show that the latter does not work logically.
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