Bad Question? Worst Answer.

First, I don’t see anything err… satisfying with Rainwater Pipe’s argument (Is this an argument?) Just a bunch of words declaring what he thinks about his god, yet he was trying to say something here. 

It seems he does not like the question “If God created the Universe, who created God?” For Rainwater Pipe, it is incorrect. According to him, “That is a wrong question. The meaning of the word creature simply means created entities. The universe is created, therefore all animals and plants are a product of a creation too. They are all creatures.”

Uhhh… what the hell did I just read?

So, are we talking about the universe here Mr. Pipe?

Obviously, Pipe here is using the archaic definition of the word “creature.” So OK, a little trivia boys and girls! The word “creature” is a Middle English word from Old French from the late Latin word creatura, from the verb creare. Ok? So, “creature” means created – then what? It must be living and existing. Today, we define it as something connected with something sentient – so we say that a Unicorn is a mythical creature. According to the Oxford Dictionary of English, the word creature can also be a fictional or imaginary being.

So, is the universe a creature? Unless, you believed that the “universe” is a gigantic Celestial Dragon.

Ok, enough of the word plays. Let us focus on Rainwater Pipe’s “argument.”

According to Mr. Pipe if we ask, “Who created God?” it makes God a creature just like animals, plants and the universe (?) so, that makes God a creature himself - an equal. So asking who created God is illogical. 

I think I know where Rainwater Pipe is going with his argument.

God is eternal, without any beginning so therefore, he is uncreated. As Christian apologist Norman Giesler assumed, “He cannot not exist—so He had no beginning and no end. “ (When Skeptics Ask).  So the first thing that comes to my mind when I see this kind of statement is “Why God?”  Why is it that we always assume that when we talk about something “uncreated” it must have the attributes of Giesler’s or Rainwater Pipe’s deity?

Who Made God?

According to most Christian apologists, the reason why we can’t asked this question is simple (I guess Rainwater Pipe here should start reading apologetic books) – we must accept that when we are talking about God, it is automatically accepted (as a brute fact) that He doesn’t need any explanation. According to Dr. Paul Copan, since God is without any cause, by category He is different from a finite universe. Therefore, we cannot use the same explanation we use when we describe the universe (or anything that has a cause) to God. End of story.

But then I ask…

1.)    Why the “first cause” have the attributes of Copan’s (or Rainwater Pipe’s) god?

2.)     Why can’t there be a number of first causes, not just one?

3.)    I can also say that the universe doesn’t need an explanation, can’t I?

Christian apologists will say that that nothing can exist without a sufficient reason for its existence. We call this the Principle of Sufficient Reason. They say that everything needs an explanation - Each contingent thing is explained in terms of other contingent things, which leads to an infinite regression. That is why there must be something that is necessary to itself, which doesn’t have a cause. According to Thomas Aquinas, this “necessary being” is what we call God.  

Now, Aquinas did not give us a good reason why his God should be the “necessary being.” In addition, the argument is yes… logical, but again matters of logic and matters of fact are not decidable by logic alone. Necessary or contingent do not apply to things but only to statements, that is because logic is just word play. It might even be a truth of logic that every existing entity exists contingently and that there is a need for a “necessary being, which is god” but this was not been proven as a statement of fact.

The 2^nd law of Thermodynamics… again.

Ok, I don’t have any idea of what Rainwater Pipe was saying about the Theory of Relativity and the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics, but according to him:

a.)    The Theory of Relativity says that all matter came from energy and matter can be converted back into energy.

b.)    The 2^nd law of Thermodynamics says that once energy is used up, it can never be used again.

Just a head’s up.

Rainwater Pipe was talking about Einstein’s famous equation. However, E=Mc2 does not say, “Matter came from energy and matter can be converted back into energy.”  It says that that mass and energy are the same physical entity and can be changed into each other.

b.)    The 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics states that heat does not flow spontaneously from a colder region to a hotter region, or, equivalently, heat at a given temperature cannot be converted entirely into work or as a simpler explanation: Heat is always observed to flow from higher to lower temperatures.

Rainwater Pipe continues…

“The 2^nd law of Thermodynamics simply says, all matter and and energy is “limited and finite.”

Uhh… no it doesn’t say that. The 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics is just saying that the total entropy or disorder of a closed system must remain constant or increase with time.

And what about spirits?

According to Rainwater Pipe, since God is a “spirit” (non-material and non-physical), that makes him eternal.

What?

Does being a “spirit” make a being eternal? I think Rainwater Pipe should elaborate on this.  Looking at different definition of the word “spirit” I find nothing that suggest it is something eternal.  The word came from the Latin spiritus which means ‘breath, spirit,’ from spirare ‘breathe.’ And what? We breathe air (oxygen, nitrogen, etc.) which are mixture of different gasses – matter! And if matter is something that is “limited and finite,” so does spirit.

Nevertheless, for those into the paranormal, spirits are “nothing more than the stream of consciousness of a personality with which we are familiar in every human being.” (See: Arthur Ford)  Using this definition, I can say that spirits ceases to exist after the person dies.  However, Spirit medium Arthur Ford continues that after a person’s death, this “spirit” is transformed into something else. That makes spirit “immortal.” However, that also makes us all humans “immortal” since we’re all (as they believed) composed of body and spirit.  Furthermore, immortality does not necessary means eternal. To be eternal, one must not have a beginning or end, but spirit has a beginning – it was created.  If I will agree with Rainwater here that spirits are not created, then there will be more “uncreated beings” out there, other than his god.