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Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

Go back far enough and everything boils down to "something from nothing" or "something was always there". Both options violate everything in cause-and-effect.

We either don't exist - demonstrably false - or the universe's start doesn't necessarily abide by cause-and-effect as we humans understand it.

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Couldn't God have created everything from nothing? God is philosophically understood to be a self sufficient being. He is also understood to be all powerful, thus capable of creating something from nothing.

Seems a justified and tidy resolution to the supposed problem you refer to.

You are just adding another layer of abstraction. Something created God or God has existed forever.

If the universe existed forever, you don't need to create a God to create the universe.

There is a difference though. From what we know of the big bang, there is a starting point of the universe. The universe being started from nothing violates physical laws. A spiritual entity wouldn't be bound by the same physical logistics. Even if someone argues that it is "unlikely" for God to exist, it is still atleast a logical possibility.

> From what we know of the big bang

There's a lot we know we don't know of the Big Bang.

> The universe being started from nothing violates physical laws.

So does a God. Something has to be violating physical laws as we currently understand them (and we hardly know everything yet...), so adding God doesn't really get you anywhere.

No, it's a third option because God is outside of time. So, since the term "always" is tensed, it doesn't apply.

Why can God exist outside of time, but not a natural process?

"Process" is time bound by definition. There are also other characteristics of God's causality that natural processes cannot have. For instance, free will is the ability to create something from nothing, and natural processes cannot do this.

That would be a case of "something was always there."

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