Who Was The Creator?

[naomi24]

The God of Abraham is just one among many.

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

Other ideas welcome.

[scooping]

Consider, if you will, a world without suffering.
Could the little girl step off the pavement in front of the speeding car. No. That would be suffering.
Could the motorist hit the little girl? No, that would be suffering.
So how can that be prevented in an ideal world. Only by people being automatons, so that these events cannot occur.
Could a mother miss her dead child. No, that would be suffering. So how can you love a child and not miss them?
Your father dies - can you miss him? No, that would be suffering. But if you love someone you must surely miss them. That is the essence of the Christian/Catholic phrase that 'suffering is a gift from God'. It's an awful phrase but, understood, it means that we have free will (another misunderstood phrase). It means we are not robots.
In what kind of existence can love exist without pain? If I love I must have pain, should the person I love be damaged or die.

[jomifl]

Ah well, god is responsible for all the good stuff and irresponsible humans by virtue of god's gift to them of free will are responsible for all the bad stuff. (current dogma).Unless of course you read the old testament which gives the lie to that and it is now too late to edit it..again. 'Tis all a bit fanciful anyway.

[Old_Geezer]

If maths did not exist neither could anything else because it is by following through what the maths we see what, whatever the maths mirrors, is able to achieve. The rules/laws needs to exist first, whatever they are. Otherwise no explanation of time, space, anything.

Thus one still has a need for something to create that which we use as evidence of what occurs afterwards as a result.

[jomifl]

OG, Like Khandro, your horse has wheels and your cart has legs. Maths was invented to explain what already existed.

[jim360]

I don't see that at all. In the first place, Maths is capable of describing very easily things that do not exist, so it very blatantly has an existence utterly independent of the Universe, or at least of this particular Universe. In the second place, things happen that no amount of mathematical ability is capable of explaining perfectly. So you have two problems really: Maths is too extensive for the Universe, and the real Universe is too hard for maths.

The implication is surely clear: neither one needs the other in order to exist. And so that also means that you cannot argue that Maths proves the existence of a creator.

[Khandro]

jomifl; //Maths is a language invented by man to describe natural relationships.//
To some extent, yes; (1+1 = 2 ) but there are patterns within the universe which exist independently of human observation, like projective, non-Euclidean geometry .

[jomifl]

Thank god non-euclidian geometry existed before the universe existed otherwise we would never have discovered maths :o)

[solvitquick]

scooping, dare I say your postulate partly but far from wholly answers itself.
(a) We are unaware of a world without suffering and that is the nature of the human condition: born with conciousness, sensation, and its ally sensitivity. It is also a criticism of a devine creator. Why when we are fatally injured or dying should we be condemned to suffer agony in many cases? Rhetoric, no answer needed.
(b) Your examples exclude babies born with a life of pain ahead of them or even after the mother's pain she gives birth to a still still-born child - that's not free-will.
(c) A robotic "life" is inflicted on many through brain-damage and is not necessarily the result of free-will.
(d) I and many would regard a robotic existence as not being "life" at all. We already construct apparently "thinking" robots but do not consider them a living organisms.
More generally, highly organised matter may have conciousness (theory of universal conciousness), we are too primitive to know.
For your info, scooping, I believe in the legalisation of euthanasia with safeguards and am an atheist.
Great to meet you,
SIQ.

[Khandro]

jomifl; I didn't say "before" [the universe] I said "within" - though "before" may well apply.
SIQ; // I and many would regard a robotic existence as not being "life" at all.//. By what criterion are you able to judge what is a 'robotic existence', and consequently, 'life' ?

[jomifl]

Khandro, I know what you said but logically the rules of non -euclidean would have to exist before the universe existed otherwise how could it follow them. The alternative is that non-euclidean geometry and maths came later once humans had enough intellect to try to describe things. Those early blue green algae didn't wait for man to 'invent' photosynthesis.

[solvitquick]

Dear Khandro,
I define a human ROBOTIC existence as: (a) having no free concious
decision-making nor the ability make another do so for you.
I admit this excludes other life-forms like bacteria onwards but not necessarily complex multicellular organisms like cockroaches so I have to include (b) "and/or the lack of the abilty to self-replicate independently of other organisms thro' the absence of pre-programmed DNA". This latter excludes viruses which are not living but just robots which cannot survive without using other cellular life-forms.
LIFE then becomes the antithesis of such robotics i.e. opposite to (a) above or (b) above. Ideally life is the opposite of (a+b).
Hope that makes some sense as I'm multitasking at the moment: dealing with AB and watching Benfica versus Juventus.
Kindest Regards,
SIQ.

[scooping]

solvitkquick: the mysteries of the universe are, at best, intractable. But not as incomprehensible as your opening sentence.
jomifl: if non-Euclidian geometry existed before the universe that, I can only suppose, means Euclidian geometry existed outside time and space, before the 'creation' of the universe. Oh, forgot, no-one created the universe...

[jomifl]

Perhaps it just crystallised out what appears to us to be nothing, just as a snowflake does.

[jim360]

What does it mean for a mathematical concept to exist? I don't think it means the same as something more physical existing, by a long stretch. The concepts are very abstract indeed. With a bit of care, you can in principle construct an entire Universe using mathematics, but that Universe has no reality beyond the scribbles on a piece of paper or on a blackboard. So to talk of, say, non-Euclidean geometry -- or even Euclidean geometry for that matter -- as existing "before" the Universe doesn't seem to make any sense. At least, not in a physical way, although it would perhaps be equally wrong to say that Euclidean geometry only started existing once Euclid wrote it down.

I don't know if it even makes sense to ask the question about whether Maths existed before the Universe did. There's no evidence that there was even a before. And there's this confusing though running through my head that maths has an existence independent of the Universe (because it describes things that are inherently non-real), but also depends on a Universe and creatures within it existing to discover/ invent the Maths. I don't know about anyone else reading this, but I've certainly managed to confuse myself.

The only thing I'm "certain" of is that Maths, in and of itself, has no bearing on the existence of a Creator.

[naomi24]

Ahem …. if I may intrude for a moment, the question is ‘Who Dunnit?’, not ‘What did it do?’. However, since few appear willing to address the original issue – too awkward I expect - please feel free to carry on chaps.

[Khandro]

jim; It would be advisable to stick to this universe, after all, 'before' is only a red-herring thrown in by jomifl to cause confusion :-) There are undoubtedly patterns within our universe which exist outside of our constructions, which to my imagination point to an 'intelligent' design, (this I'm sure you will refute), but how else can you account for the periodic table for example?

[jim360]

It's one of the triumphs of modern physics that something as well-organised as the Periodic Table can be almost precisely described and explained through natural laws. Indeed so far wherever we have found complexity we have also found that it emerges from relatively simple natural laws.

Of course you can probably never prove that these laws themselves weren't written by someone, but after a while it becomes clear that it's an unnecessary level of abstraction. Again we get into the "Who created the Creator?" argument -- but it's a good one after all. If something so complex as the Universe "needs" something to create it, why does not that something need an even more complex being, and so on? At some point, even if you imagine an intelligent creator, the argument that complex patterns imply intelligence breaks down. If the Creator needs no creation himself, why can't that apply to the Universe as a whole?

[solvitquick]

Dear Naomi24 and ALL,
Naomi, your patience is unfathomable or at least you burn on a much longer fuse than me.
I feel obliged to answer the challenges put to me to date but thereafter I will only comment or respond to those questions/comments which relate to the initial question posed.
I appeal to all to do the same as the "creator"-question has plenty of legs in it yet, if not hijacked. Jim has tried to stop the rot via a separate site but to no real avail.
Sorry Naomi, but you well-know how these "threads" unwind and become a hopeless tangle.
SIQ.

[Khandro]

jim; // the Periodic Table can be almost precisely described and explained through natural laws//
With respect; this is a quite meaningless non sequitur and 'explains' nothing at all, because the 'natural laws' are part of the underlying pattern of the 'design' of which we speak.

[naomi24]

^^ He has a point.