Does God have a cause?

MayCaesar

I do not see why anything should have a cause, for that matter. Causal connections are ultimately a product of human mind; we want to find such connections between various entities in order to make sense of the world, but the fundamental structure of the world does not necessarily have to be based on the cause-effect principle. As far as our experience goes, everything (or, at least, almost everything) seems to have a cause - but then our mind fundamentally works in such a way that we are not able to properly process anything that has no cause, so there is a certain observer's bias at play.

If we are to agree, however, that the cause-effect principle is universal, then I do not see why non-things would be exempt from it. How does one define "thing" anyway? Is electromagnetic field a thing? I a time period a thing? I electron's charge a thing? Is electron a thing? How is god fundamentally different from these entities?
I do not necessarily disagree with your argument; I am just pointing out that it might need some clarification.

John_C_87

A person might responded by simply saying we asking others to help hold a united state on an opinionated definition of God. A religion abstract of god is not the limit set to a principle of all GOD as single public state.

Does religion have a right to be free? Without cost, including human sacrifice, without charge as dictation of what must be paid to others.

TKDB

@대왕광개토

"Does God have a cause?"

The Religious and the non Religious both utilize God, through their own expressed viewpoints. 

RickeyD

@대왕광개토 ; God IS the "cause." There would be no "things" if God had not ordained their existence. God is Spirit (John 4:24) and His abode is the Spiritual Realm, an eternal realm that is more tangible, "real," infinitely more complex than the temporary realm of Time. God has no genesis, God is everlasting and He always was (Psalm 90:2). This concept is foreign to man cognitive abilities because man is constrained by Time in the flesh and has been deceived in naturalism into thinking that only those things which are subject to empiricism, the scientific method, are "real" or exist (Ecclesiastes 3:11 KJV). Simply because the human eye cannot perceive something or our other senses fail to acknowledge an entity or thing does not negate the existence of a ream much greater and superior to the Realm of Time. Jesus explains that His Kingdom is not of the Realm of Time...

Happy_Killbot

@RickeyD If there can be things from outside time that effect our world, then isn't it possible that our world could have came into existence by itself?

If everything needs a cause, then god needs a cause. If some things don't need a cause, then the universe probably created itself.

RickeyD

@Happy_Killbot ; Only things constrained by Time mandate a cause. God is not constrained by Time but He exists outside of Time, in Time, through Time; God is Spirit (John 4:24) and He is everlasting (Psalm 90:2). It is NOT possible that our existence came into being ex nihilo. The Universe has no mechanism to create; in order for creation to manifest there must be matter from which to build. Matter has a genesis and the laws of physics mandate this.

The Holy Spirit has told you that in response to Lucifer's coup de taut, God the Father commissioned God the Son, Jesus Christ-Yeshua (Gospel of John, Chapter 1; Colossians 1:15-18), to take elements from the Spiritual World and form those elements into matter that can be apprehended by life constrained within the Realm of Time. Many theologians preach creation ex nihilo but this is not Biblical or theological. Our creation finds its origin in elements found only in the unseen Spiritual World and this is why mankind, cognitively constrained by Time and a false perception of naturalism, will NEVER define origin of matter.

"He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end."  Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NASB)

Happy_Killbot

@RickeyD That doesn't answer the question.

At one point, time didn't exist, or perhaps more accurately the time it took for anything to take place was infinitesimal, because as Einstein concluded, time is relative and this is a proven fact.

The point is, how can we say (without evidence) that a god needs to exist for their to be a universe, when nothing created god?

The physics in the early stages of the universe were very different than today, so we still have not proven that the universe did not cause itself which is very possible and nullifies the causality problem, or that the universe didn't just always exist.

RickeyD

@Happy_Killbot ; Correct. Time is a recent creation for cause. God created Time and matter and constrained all things by the limitations of both. No one knows what our Universe was like in its genesis except the Creator, Jesus Christ-Yeshua. Commonsense and wisdom tells you that the Moon and the Sun did not create themselves but they have been placed there by design to bless and nourish the Earth which God created for His purposes and He will do away with both the Heavens and the Earth soon and institute a New Heaven and New Earth; paradise lost will be paradise restored (Revelation 21).

It is not possible that the Universe always existed, the 2nd-Law of Thermodynamics substantiates this conclusion. http://https//creation.com/universe-had-a-beginning

Following is a note from Harvard and NASA concerning the genesis of our Universe...

The ultimate mystery is inspiring new ideas and new experiments.

No one knows how the first space, time, and matter arose. And scientists are grappling with even deeper questions. If there was nothing to begin with, then where did the laws of nature come from? How did the universe "know" how to proceed? And why do the laws of nature produce a universe that is so hospitable to life? As difficult as these questions are, scientists are attempting to address them with bold new ideas - and new experiments to test those ideas.

Understanding how the universe began requires developing a better theory of how space, time, and matter are related. In physics, a theory is not a guess or a hypothesis. It is a mathematical model that lets us make predictions about how the world behaves. Einstein's theory of gravity, for example, accurately describes how matter responds to gravity in the large-scale world around us. And our best theory of the tiny sub-atomic realm, called quantum theory, makes very accurate predictions about the behavior of matter at tiny scales of distance. But these two theories are not complete and are not able to make accurate predictions about the very earliest moments when the universe was both extremely dense and extremely small.

Some of the best minds in physics are working on a new theory of space, time, and matter, called "string theory," that may help us better understand where the universe came from. String theory is based on new ideas that have not yet been tested. The theory assumes, for example, that the basic particles in nature are not point particles, but are shaped like strings. And the theory requires - and predicts - that space has more than the three dimensions in which we move. According to one version of the theory, the particles and forces that make up our world are confined to three dimensions we see - except for gravity, which can "leak" out into the extra dimensions.

String theory has led to some bizarre new scenarios for the origin of the universe. In one scenario, the Big Bang could have been triggered when our own universe collided with a "parallel universe" made of these extra dimensions. Scenarios like these are very speculative, because the string theory is still in development and remains untested, but they stimulate astronomers to look for new forms of evidence.  https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/seuforum/bb_whycare.htm

The Holy Spirit has clearly articulated origin and who - what - where - when - why and how and He has told you that you're "without excuse" if you deny our Creator and His work evidenced by Nature.

대왕광개토

I will try to make my points clearer because it seems that I made a very vague statement in this thread. 

Whenever there is a debate on creationism, religious people make an argument that God is the first cause. This argument is based on the principle that everything has its cause. However, the existence of a divine being that does not need a cause is incompatible with the cause and effect principle. In order to avoid the contradiction, theists argue that because God is not a thing, the cause and effect principle does not apply to him.(I have seen theists make such kind of arguments when confronted by the argument that God needs its cause.)
 
One may find it tempting to tell the theists that they should be able to accept the idea that the universe may not have a cause if they can fully accept the idea that there is a first cause(God). However, the theists will then simply reply that the universe is a thing while God is not, so the universe must have been created by God, an entity that is not a thing. Now, if the theists want to make their 'God is not a thing' argument valid, they would have to tell the difference between a thing and non-thing as clearly as possible. So far, I have only seen them make a distinction between a thing and non-thing by saying that one(a thing) is made by God and the other(a non-thing) is not. Is this distinction valid enough to make 'God is not a thing' argument valid?

대왕광개토

 @TKDB What does that have to do with this thread?

Plaffelvohfen

Of course God has a cause:  The Human mind...

RickeyD

@Plaffelvohfen ; What is the origin of the human mind for causation?

xlJ_dolphin_473

RickeyD said:

@대왕광개토 ; God IS the "cause." There would be no "things" if God had not ordained their existence. God is Spirit (John 4:24) and His abode is the Spiritual Realm, an eternal realm that is more tangible, "real," infinitely more complex than the temporary realm of Time. God has no genesis, God is everlasting and He always was (Psalm 90:2). This concept is foreign to man cognitive abilities because man is constrained by Time in the flesh and has been deceived in naturalism into thinking that only those things which are subject to empiricism, the scientific method, are "real" or exist (Ecclesiastes 3:11 KJV). Simply because the human eye cannot perceive something or our other senses fail to acknowledge an entity or thing does not negate the existence of a ream much greater and superior to the Realm of Time. Jesus explains that His Kingdom is not of the Realm of Time...

This seems even more implausible than the Big Bang theory. Fine, matter exploding into existence does not make a lot of sense from the layperson's view, but a God just suddenly appearing out of nowhere to turn on time and get things going is far more implausible.

xlJ_dolphin_473

RickeyD said:

@대왕광개토 ; God IS the "cause." There would be no "things" if God had not ordained their existence. God is Spirit (John 4:24) and His abode is the Spiritual Realm, an eternal realm that is more tangible, "real," infinitely more complex than the temporary realm of Time. God has no genesis, God is everlasting and He always was (Psalm 90:2). This concept is foreign to man cognitive abilities because man is constrained by Time in the flesh and has been deceived in naturalism into thinking that only those things which are subject to empiricism, the scientific method, are "real" or exist (Ecclesiastes 3:11 KJV). Simply because the human eye cannot perceive something or our other senses fail to acknowledge an entity or thing does not negate the existence of a ream much greater and superior to the Realm of Time. Jesus explains that His Kingdom is not of the Realm of Time...

This seems even more implausible than the Big Bang theory. Fine, matter exploding into existence does not make a lot of sense from the layperson's view, but a God just suddenly appearing out of nowhere to turn on time and get things going is far more implausible.