Age of the Universe in Jewish Commentaries

You are not making sense. The only kind of Christian is to be born again.

What are you saying is backwards?

Oh, so do you think God has a God or needs a God? Isaiah 44:6.

God is the uncaused Existence.

Yes. They need to be informed that to be an atheist one must deny God to be God. And as a Christian we know God.

 

Your post had it backward, as in being a Christian before being not a Christian, or ignoring the latter altogether. As a Christian I don’t presume God, I believe in God, believe in the God who knows me. I didn’t start with this as a presumption, I came to this, to him, as he drew me to himself.

So are you saying God isn’t necessary to himself? The point is merely that your statement is tautological: If something or someone could exist uncaused by God, then that something or someone would not need God to cause it. “If” does not establish possibility much less reality.

However, if that something or someone were God himself, then God remains regardless, needing only to be himself. We agree God did not create himself, rather he is the one and only self-existent one.

But it seems your posts still carry the confusion that existence itself can exist apart from something or, more to the point, someone existing. In what non-realm or non-mind would that be? Can existence dwell in the realm of nothingness? Having come across the closing quote, the semantics of all this will have to be left for uncertain philosophers to debate.

“Existence remains, then, itself a serious problem in philosophy of language, metaphysics, and logic and one connected to some of the deepest and most important problems in those areas.”
Existence (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

 

God is omniscient. James 2:19, "Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble."

How can you draw such a question from what I stated God to be? God being the uncaused REALITY, per Acts of the Apostles 17:28a.

 

Which is why I specifically said "believe in God" not merely "believe God is." There is a big difference. However, one can hardly believe in God if he does not believe God is.

"And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him." –Hebrews 11:6

But again, we don't disagree on these Christian basics, including God's omniscience. The issue centers on apologetics.

 

Perhaps because your argument seems to semantically separate God from his existence or existence itself from God, or else to equate existence with God or God with existence.

And then there's your own post's disingenuous omission of context with the non sequitur, "Oh, so do you think God has a God or needs a God?" One could take that to be a mocking misunderstanding of the nature of the Trinity, though surely you didn't mean it that way.

Again, we don't disagree on Christian basics. The issue centers on apologetics. Start wherever you will, but don't denigrate those who start with where people are and work from there.

 

I didn't catch at first the point of those two disconnected statements. They seem to indicate a misunderstanding of my own reference to being known by God. That reference is to the concept mentioned in such passages as these:

"But whoever loves God is known by God." –1 Corinthians 8:3

"But now that you know God—or rather are known by God…" –Galatians 4:9a

Here's a quick search list with many more: What Does the Bible Say About God Knows Me?

 

What comes first?

 

This is a problem of how we know what we know. How one recognizes truth.

 

There is the issue as how one is known to God. As there is the issue as to in what way one knows and is known.

 

It is how the observable universe is interperted moving away in all directions from the observers view. At the measured rate how long ago from the observers position would that to have been?

 

God or existence?

 

What if there was never a first cause?

 

And what if there is no first thing to begin to exist?

 

Again, what if there is no first caused anything?

 

Perhaps you meant to ask, "What if there were no first caused anything?" In that case, the answer is that then there wouldn’t be this discussion.

 

Not so. First, any cause is finite and temporal or it would not be a cause.
Also what is uncaused is Eternal.

 

Not even close, brother.

Yes, this is correct.