Creation - struggling

by wantstoleave 24 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  wantstoleave

  I am in the process of leaving, and those of you who have followed me will know I spoke to my family briefly the other day about my doubts, but not since. My dad has offered the occasional prayer for various things in the past week, as well as say he wants to study with my preschoolers. He has also added in the extra tidbits to do with Jehovah being the only true God etc. But he hasn't pushed his ideas onto me. Just done it in his own roundabout way.

  Last night I was staring at the night sky, all the stars and I couldn't help but think back to my lifelong question 'Who created Jehovah?'. While I do believe everything has been created, that question has plagued me for as long as I can remember. When I would ask my parents, they would just say 'Jehovah has always been there'. My brain obviously can't compute that, seeing as everything around us appears to have a beginning. Eg. babies are created. A plant grows from a seed etc.

  Has anyone else ever struggled with this thought? I don't know why I just can't accept that God has always been there. I believe in creation, but a God, I just don't know what to think anymore.
• 

  alanv

  Definately. In fact that was how the witnesses first got me interested by saying where do all those stars come from. It really is the big question, where did God come from. But if you think about it, other questions you could ask would be when did time begin or if you kept going straight up into space where does it end? I believe our minds simply can't comprehend those questions at the moment. Maybe in time they will be answered.
• 

  wantstoleave

  Yes Alan, my dad has always said that, in time we may get the answers (he thinks in the new system when Jehovah may reveal it to us etc). So I just put it out of my mind and kept going with the faith. But it really does bug me...lol.
• 

  Narkissos

  Infinite "time" and "space" are mental, analytical categories; cognitive "tools" rather than physical "objects" or "phenomena"; we can neither figure them out nor dispense with them. Which makes reflexive questions about them aporetic or nonsensical. There is no "before" or "after" time anymore than there is an "outside" of space. You may just get a... temporary break by crossing them, as in "outside of time" (aka the classical notion of eternity). Taoist and Buddhist paradoxes often point to the non-real character of mental categories: "a white stone" is both white and hard, but "white" and "hard" are only separate in your mind -- not in the stone.

  Iow, God (at least as "creator of everything") is the answer... to an impossible question. The very question which brings him in takes him away. A widely misunderstood Jewish joke maybe.
• 

  MissingLink

  What a load of bollocks!

  What you're doing there is "god of the gaps". If you don't understand something, then you just plug in "god" the same way people used to for things we understand now ("movement" of the sun, the wind, etc..). When someone tells you they have all the answers (usually the answer is their religion), that should set off alarm bells. For a more realistic world view you have to accept that there are things we just will not know in our lifetime, and do our best to find those answers, for real.
• 

  Alligator Wisdom

  The question you have is sort of like what I always had growing up.

  "Did Jehovah God create time?"

  If Jehovah God had always existed and time itself never has a beginning nor an end, does that mean Jehovah God IS time?

  Never got a straight logical answer for that one.

  Alligator Wisdom (aka Brother NOT Exerting Vigorously)
• 

  wantstoleave

  We humans measure alot of things in time. We go by time. Time is the essence of everything we do. So we like to know the beginning and end of things. Thus it seems a logical question about when time began, how did it begin, who began it.......it boggles the mind...lol. Obviously it's something we may never be able to answer, but is it enough of a roadblock to question ones belief system? Now my brain hurts... :P
• 

  Midget-Sasquatch

  Its a question a lot of people wonder about.

  But why does "Jehovah God" have to be that First Cause? Why can't the quantum foam or vacuum energy be that "ground" thats always been?

  As you pointed out, our experience is that complex things develop over time. So wouldn't it be easier to wrap one's head around a simple state as always having existed and from which, the universe at some point, unfolded?

  It may sound like a cop out to the God question you have, but as I understand it, there's some basis to the quantum foam idea. Just a possibility to consider.
• 

  OnTheWayOut

  Has anyone else ever struggled with this thought?

  Has anyone else ever struggled with this? HA, it's one of the oldest struggles.
  First are the deep questions, WHY ARE WE HERE?, WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIFE?, WHAT HAPPENS AFTER DEATH?
  
  As soon as those questions get attempts at answers, your struggle comes up. Notice:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down

  I find it easiest to say "I don't know what started with no creation." In my case, I don't automatically say that God started with no creation. But I also don't have to prove creationists wrong. While I am confident that science is always revealing more and more accurate information on "the beginning" I feel that some people will always reject it and insist that God did it. So I don't have to win them over.

  Some believers offer the cop-out answer you mentioned.
  From http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/who_created_god.html#0WiGRL8nGUN5:

  God has no need to have been created, since He exists either outside time (where cause and effect do not operate) or within multiple dimensions of time (such that there is no beginning of God's plane of time). Hence God is eternal, having never been created. Although it is possible that the universe itself is eternal, eliminating the need for its creation, observational evidence contradicts this hypothesis, since the universe began to exist a finite ~13.7 billion years ago. The only possible escape for the atheist is the invention of a kind of super universe, which can never be confirmed experimentally (hence it is metaphysical in nature, and not scientific).

  See, they say in short order (seemingly logical, but not) that atheists would need to invent a super universe against evidence, but they accept a super god against evidence.
• 

  Satanus

  Asking who made god is a thought exercise. Self inquiry meditation is an exercise that can let a person see all the way to 'god'. Then you just -----

  S