What does "God needs to have a beginning" mean?

[wynn]

The claim is sometimes made

"Everything has to have a beginning, therefore, also God needs to have a beginning."

What exactly might be meant by that claim?

What exactly might a particular maker of that claim mean by it?


Some possible answers I can think of - I'll formulate them as questions that introduce big topics:

How does one who currently does not believe in God, come to believe in God? What does it mean to "believe in God"?
Who or what is God?
In what relation are we to God?
Which religion is the right one?


So by stating "Everything has to have a beginning, therefore, also God needs to have a beginning."
a person might very well mean
"Everything has to have a beginning, therefore, my faith in God also needs to have a beginning."
or
"Everything has to have a beginning, therefore, my love for God also needs to have a beginning."



Please discuss.

 

[Yazata]

The claim is sometimes made

"Everything has to have a beginning, therefore, also God needs to have a beginning."

What exactly might be meant by that claim?

It's usually a response to the 'first-cause' argument.

Proponents of that argument start out with the premise that everything that exists has to have a cause (or beginning or whatever). But that leads to an infinite regress. There's usually a hidden premise introduced at that point about there being something unacceptable about infinite regresses. So the conclusion is supposed to be that an initial uncaused-cause must necessarily exist. And yet another unstated premise identifies that initial uncaused-cause with the 'God'-character of religious mythology.

Asking 'What caused God?' or announcing that God has to have had a beginning, is essentially just pointing out the contradiction between the conclusion and the initial premise. If everything that exists has to have had a cause, then assuming that God exists, then God needs to have had a cause as well. If everything doesn't require a cause, then we don't seem to need that first-cause after all.

What exactly might a particular maker of that claim mean by it?

I say things like that in response to cosmological theistic arguments in general. Oftentimes it's the design-argument.

Theists love the word "abiogenesis". They triumphantly proclaim biochemistry's current inability to explain all aspects of the initial appearance of life. Then the theists make a huge leap and imply that inability to fully explain something is somehow evidence in favor of their own theism.

At that point, I often ask them what explains the existence of the omnipotent deity that represents their account of everything that science is as yet unable to explain. And the theists start sputtering as if they've never heard that kind of question before and say that God is beyond human comprehension or something.

Which might be a perfectly valid theological point. But the thing is, it doesn't come close to being an explanation either.

Even granting their own principles, the theists are even more in the dark about origins than the biochemists. The biochemists can propose all kinds of hypothetical chemical pathways and test them in the lab. The theists can only appeal to totally inexplicable miracles originating from an even more mysterious hypothetical transcendent object. Which they just assume corresponds to the mythological God-figure of their own particular religion, of course.

So the short answer to your question is that some variant on "God needs to have a beginning" ('cause', 'explanation' etc.) is a sentence that's usually stated in the context of the cosmological theistic arguments.

 

[SciWriter]

The basis of All could not have a beginning, or there would have been something before or outside it, at least as a time when it wasn't there, thus the basis has to be eternal, and infinite, as well, to cover everything.

Things don't qualify for this, as they couldn't have a particular definition without any place or time for that deciding of the defining.

This leaves nothing.

 

[SciWriter]

Any assemblage, even an electron, would be later, not a beginning as in forever there, either, and even more so later for the greater complexities.

 

[gmilam]

I usually state it as:

IF everything has to have a beginning;
THEN god must have a beginning;
ENDIF;

Personally, I don't accept the first clause as a given.

IF there is an uncaused cause;
THEN that could be the universe;
ENDIF;

No need to invoke a middleman. Occam's razor.

 

[spidergoat]

There is no evidence that the big bang is the actual beginning of everything. It might be the beginning of the universe as we know it, but it could be an endless cycle of expansion and contraction.

 

[SciWriter]

The other "out" is if the forever stuff is the only way it could be, such as some minimal 'points' out of which all stable things possible, like about two, the electron and the proton, due to the only ways points can be packed as stable.

This is, of course, very nebulous, and there is no saying what points are, but a guy on YouTube named 'tverse' has some ideas about it.

And of course the multiverse ideas.

There is still nothing to make anything out of, though.

 

[NMSquirrel]

then there is the issue of a timeless God (exist outside time)

hell just the idea of time not existing, most ppl have a tough time getting their heads around..

science posit a condition that time does not exist (center of a black hole, and before big bang)

 

[SciWriter]

There's still a time after and before time was invented. It might have even taken time to invent time. There is also the idea of a Godless basis.

 

[Rav]

then there is the issue of a timeless God (exist outside time)

The idea of a timeless god is problematic so far as it relates to the conception of a creator god since in the realm of timelessness, there can be no delay between the existence of the creator and the existence of the creation. In other words, you end up with a universe that has simply always existed. God could not come first, because first implies second, and second implies later.

 

[C C]

The claim is sometimes made "Everything has to have a beginning, therefore, also God needs to have a beginning." What exactly might be meant by that claim? . . .

It means that God would be subordinate to causation, time, and possibly other concepts. In such a scheme. Or suggested outline for one.

 

[Big Chiller]

The idea of a timeless god is problematic so far as it relates to the conception of a creator god since in the realm of timelessness, there can be no delay between the existence of the creator and the existence of the creation. In other words, you end up with a universe that has simply always existed. God could not come first, because first implies second, and second implies later.

Can you be more coherent please.

 

[Rav]

Can you be more coherent please.

Upon reflection the only sentence that I can imagine someone not being able to understand is the last one, so I'll rephrase it for you. If God came first, then it follows that the universe came later. But in a timeless realm, 'later' is nonsensical.

 

[Big Chiller]

Then what if the atemporal "realm" itself is God so the universe simply cannot share this attribute of being atemporal with God. By the way God coming first that is assuming you mean literally, makes it seem as if God is already in time.

 

[siledre]

one can say god began when man began.

 

[Rav]

Then what if the atemporal "realm" itself is God

That's a given, for the sake of this discussion anyway.

so the universe simply cannot share this attribute of being atemporal with God.

That doesn't matter. The point is that if God is atemporal then the universe could never have not existed, otherwise the implication is that God sat around just being his awesome omnipotent self for a while and then decided to create the universe, which is nonsensical.

 

[Big Chiller]

That doesn't matter. The point is that if God is atemporal then the universe could never have not existed, otherwise the implication is that God sat around just being his awesome omnipotent self for a while and then decided to create the universe, which is nonsensical.

God's action of creating the universe is atemporal because God is atemporal so God didn't literally wait around and then create the universe which excuses the universe from always existing atemporally according to your assertion.

 

[Rav]

God's action of creating the universe is atemporal because God is atemporal so God didn't literally wait around and then create the universe which excuses the universe from always existing atemporally according to your assertion.

I'm not saying that an atemporal God results in an atemporal universe, I am saying that an atemporal God results in an eternal universe.

 

[Arioch]

The "god needs a beginning" thing arose as a counter to the cosmological argument for the existence of a creator. What it does is highlight the special pleading fallacy inherent in the argument as the solution is exempted from the logical template which forms the premise. It also exists to make theists pissy, which it's excellent at.

 

[spidergoat]

then there is the issue of a timeless God (exist outside time)

hell just the idea of time not existing, most ppl have a tough time getting their heads around..

science posit a condition that time does not exist (center of a black hole, and before big bang)

Time is required for existence, that's what science says. It also cannot determine what happened in the early stages in the big bang- the first few milliseconds and before. So it doesn't say that there was a time in which time did not exist.