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Comment by uticus | Hacker News Reader

Not the place for apologetics on either side, but I've never grasped how the idea that we weren't created can be logically persuasive.

Emotionally persuasive, maybe.

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Belief in being created requires belief in some being (your creator, or their creator, etc...), _not_ being created - the prime mover. Unless you believe in an infinite regress of creators I guess.

Doesn't the same infinite regress exist in physics? I know they argue that it's meaningless to ask what came "before" when the universe and time didn't exist, but the idea it all just started out of nothing or has always been seems to me as unsatisfactory as "God did it".

Absolutely. If you say something came before the universe, then you need a new word to describe that, and what was previous called the universe is no longer (by definition/need for a term to encapsulate all). Personally I don't believe physics is yet equipped to answer such questions, nor can it be until we understand time (and so probably quantum gravity, due to relativity).

But you can’t use the word ‘before’ since time didn’t exist.

These are concepts that probably humans can’t grok because we are so wedded to time.

God as a the Ground of Being in the words of the Christian Existentialists. God is not separate from creation, God as Verb, God as transcendent and so on. The completion of the chain of ordinals. There is a lot of theology on how you don’t need a chain of creators. “Begotten not made.” While we humans are clearly not transcendent or immanent, most people don’t try to nail down what they believe as God into a little piece of reality, but as something more pervasive. Loving all everywhere and subtly encouraging all beings into doing their best at each moment.

By definition we were ‘created’. The argument is over whether it was meaningless random creation (atheism) or whether there is meaning beyond the veil (theism).

Infinite regress of creators sounds the most compelling to me. Wouldn't God also wonder why he exists?

I'm a very (small "o") orthodox Christian and consequently I don't think that God wonders why He exists, but I do think that is a very insightful question!

So would argue that God is ‘to be’ and therefore would not wonder.

Infinite regression of creators: Mormonism

No argument on either side is particularly logically persuasive, so the best we can strive for is plausible.

Something akin to "Dust Theory" from Permutation City is a semi-plausible theory of non-creation (although, as it's fiction and must at least pretend to entertain a plot, some happenings in the book are much more far-fetched).

Edit: although on second thought maybe the book's actually more of a theory of creation, and we're the insects. I don't know.

Permutation City's dust theory was the first idea that made me think: oh maybe something like that. It ties in with the whole "why isn't there just nothing" - total nothingness is a state as well. Probable, coherent states "exist" (maybe).

I think a better question than "who made us" is "where are we?"

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