What was before God? (or, Why did He wait so long?)

[Xamonas Chegwe]

Here's a question for the religious out there. I'd like to know how you explain the fact that your religion (and I'm not singling out any in particular) has a definite historical beginning?

Christianity is just under 2,000 years old; Islam about 600 years younger; Buddhism around 2,500; Judaism is no more than 3,500 years old. Hinduism is closer to 4,000. As far as I know, no older religion has survived to any degree; the gods of the ancient Greeks, Norsemen and Egyptians have been devolved into quaint myths and legends.

Given that the human race is essentially the same physically (and presumably mentally) as it was tens of thousands of years ago, why were there no monotheistic religions prior to 1,000BC? Why did God 'wait' to reveal his plan until fairly recent times? What was the fate of those 'souls' that perished before your religion existed? Or for that matter, those that lived and died in a country that it hadn't yet reached? Surely, if God is as you claim, He is perfect and all knowing; He can't have 'changed His mind', can He?

Of course, as an atheist myself, I would say that this is because religion is a human construct; that as humanity gained knowledge and experience, they invented gods that also grew to match that knowledge.

I would go further, but I'd be straying from the topic if I did. So I'll limit my questions to those I asked two paragraphs ago.

Any views?

[Christian]

The question is tricky because it sneaks in the false assumption that God came from somewhere and then asks where that might be. The answer is that the question does not even make sense. It is like asking, "What does blue smell like?" Blue is not in the category of things that have odor. In the same way, God is not in the category of things that are created, or come into existence, or are caused. God is uncaused and uncreated - He simply exists.

How do we know this? Well, we know that from nothing, nothing comes. So if there was ever a time when there was absolutely nothing in existence then nothing would have ever come to exist. But things do exist. Therefore, since there could never have been absolutely nothing, something had to have always been existing. That ever-existing thing is what we call God.

[Unspar]

Here's what most Christians or Jews would believe (though it might seem like a bit of a stretch for an atheist like yourself):

God created the world and universe and whatnot with everything in it and revealed himself to Adam and Eve in the very beginning. If you take that for true, God didn't wait for anything but has been part of the human experience since humans existed. He revealed Himself to Noah and Abraham as well, long before the Jewish religion took a foothold in the nation of Israel. God's been a part of His peoples' lives every step of the way, according to the Bible.

As far as why God "waited" to reveal Himself as Jesus Christ, that's a real toughy, and there's no good explanation because humans can't understand God's reasoning. This is a point where people believe in Jesus because of who He was and what He did, and that's pretty illogical considering the observable nature of the world. It's a leap of faith.

But to bring it more to a common ground, I'll try to answer your question in a secular way as well. The reason these religions didn't sprout until only a few thousand years ago would be because there was no written language until then. God could be rocking with Abraham for his whole life, but there was no way for Abraham to turn it into a major monotheistic religion because he couldn't very easily spread the word without it getting completely distorted. Written language allows for doctrine allows for religion.

[Xamonas Chegwe]

Christian,

You addressed the title of this thread, not the questions I asked in my opening post. If gos (and presumably Jesus) have always existed, why no christianity until 30AD (or there abouts)?

Unspar,

A better answer. But still you fall back on the old failsafe of "I don't know that, only god knows that." I'm afraid that that won't wash with us heathens. And, if god is as all-powerful as supposed, why was he limited to chatting with Abraham & Moses? Surely he could have spoken to people all over the world? And why did he tell them something different to what Jesus said less than 1,000 years later?

[Charles Darnay]

Here's the Jewish side to this argument... granted I don't believe much in all this myself, but I have often heard the stories. I look at religion through a writer's perspective - not a believer's.

Firstly, you're off with your dates. Abraham "lived" around 3000 - i think it was actually 2700BC - this was the start of a monotheistic religion. However, Abraham and his family later to come were simple nomadic people. they lived life by their beliefs without trying to spread them to others. Meanwhile, the Greeks and Egyptians were spreading their dieties around.

The Jewish belief is that Christianity was a branch of Judiism. 30 AD, Jesus Christ - a Jewish carpener - dies and a buch of people beleive he was then resurected. They then form this whole new faith aroud this man - and his teachings (which he may or may not have). Christiantiy however, remained inferior to the Roman polytheistic religion, until 300 AD (I believe) when Constantine became emperor. He was a believer of Christianity and he began the whole reform.

So that is why the monotheistic beliefs did not enter into the books until very late. As for where they originated.... where did Abraham get this idea. I don't know, no one knows, and you will never get an answer to that question. Maybe there wasn't an Abraham - maybe there wasn't a Jesus Christ as Christians depict him - religious may be manmade (as I believe), but is based upon faith, giving people hope. Those who beleive, turly believe in religion, need not answer your question, becuase they can satisfy themselves with the fate that they have faith in God, God has always been there and that is that.

[emily655321]

I think the key, as Unspar very astutely pointed out, is the lack of written language. Someone didn't just sit down and write the Torah and invent Judaism; it was likely passed down through generations as a collection of oral tales. When writing developed, they got written down, and that's the earliest evidence we have of Judaism. The tale of Moses and the Ten Commandments may very well have its roots in a primitive misunderstanding of the first written transcription of these tales.

"Hey, where's Moses?"
"Iunno. But he went up into the hills with a couple slabs of rock a while ago."
"What the heck for? Oh, wait, here he comes. Hey, there's stuff on the tablets now! Moses, what's that you got there?"
"The word of God."
"Ohhh..."
Later that day:
"Hey! I ran into Moses today, and he came down off the mountain, and he had these tablets, and God wrote on 'em!"
"Wow, cool!"

Anyway. The explanation I always heard growing up for Jesus' coming was that after a while people got God's rules all mixed up and started sinning too much again, the way they had when he flooded the Earth. But he already promised Noah he wouldn't kill everybody anymore, so this time he sent a messenger down instead, to set people right. I think the moral of this story is that killing everybody is way more efficient than talking. But then, I didn't pay much attention in CCD.

[jon1jt]

I REALLY REALLY LIKE THIS QUESTION XAMONAS! First, to CHRISTIAN: The question asked is about God's late emergence in the history of religion - Yahweh was first. Genesis places the Creation to be somewhere at around 10 or 14BC, and according to the available sources X listed, there IS no indication of God or any form of monotheistic practice before that time. I don't see a false assumption anywhere other than what we definitively know from the bible. You just dodged a very direct question. Even if X's assumption was that god came out of nothing. It came out of nothing anyway in judeo-christian text.

UNSPAR SAYS:
"God "waited" to reveal Himself as Jesus Christ..." I don't need to quote further, but his assumption is we are to believe Jesus is god incarnate, which is a whole other issue. There are tons of books on that one.

"This is a point where people believe in Jesus because of who He was and what He did, and that's pretty illogical considering the observable nature of the world. It's a leap of faith." We can all thank Kierkegaard for this "leap of faith" idea, which is a euphemism for "The Absurd." Because the leap of faith says just that: "Even though I know what I know to be absurd, I'm going to believe it anyway." Imagine if we applied this thinking to our daily lives?!

"Of course, as an atheist myself, I would say that this is because religion is a human construct; that as humanity gained knowledge and experience, they invented gods that also grew to match that knowledge."

You are the first one I've encountered who is a self-proclaimed atheist, like me!!!!!!!
Most people love to use the more accepted "spiritual" label. The answer which follows is very reasonable and in line with the history of ideas. Consider that in Ancient Indian philosophy, and later Greek, there emerged the notion of the "One" and the tripartite self, which is why later Christian Fathers (Aquinas) stole Platonism and esp. Aristotlian philosophy, Aristotle, who called the notion of "God" as "Prime Mover" or "Unmoved Mover." Very convenient, isn't it? Yet, there is never any mention of the pre-Socratics and the rest of polytheistic history.

I love the question that started this thread because it does exactly what I said in another thread, taking on Religion at its very foundation. And the question posed here shakes those foundations.

[jon1jt]

I'm A Heathen, Yes, Yes!!!

[Unspar]

To X, God says that He chose Abraham and Moses. He didn't chat up the rest of the world because He didn't want to, or maybe because there wasn't anyone in the rest of the world who would trust Him or listen to Him. That's my best guess, but it's all going to come down to that old "we can only know so much" idea.

To Jon, a leap of faith is not necessarily absurd. It's absurd if you know what you're leaping to doesn't exist. But if you suspect it exists, and you decide to give it a good college try, there's nothing absurd about that. The Theory of Relativity takes a leap of faith (Mass and time changing relative to speed? That's crazy!); Darwin's Theory of Evolution takes a leap of faith (If we evolved from something, what did we evolve from and where did that come from?). There's always going to be some tenet of our beliefs that we can't explain satisfactorily and must take a leap of faith.

As far as the Jesus thing, I was merely trying to explain what Christians believe in terms of God's choice of revelation to mankind. I'm not asking you to believe Jesus is God incarnate; I'm explaining that I do, and if you want to know where Christians come from, here it is.

[Whifflingpin]

"Given that the human race is essentially the same physically (and presumably mentally) as it was tens of thousands of years ago, why were there no monotheistic religions prior to 1,000BC?"

I agree that religious beliefs prior to the invention of writing can only be guessed at, so there may have been monotheists from the dawn of humanity.

Another plausible argument is that the shift to monotheism was associated with a social change from a matri-central society to a patriarchal society.

Neither of those views answers your questions from the point of view of any of the "Religions of the Book." From those you will have to be content with the old failsafe of "I don't know that, only god knows that." If you started from a theist position, that would be a sufficient answer. If you don't, no answer that actually involves God is likely to convince you.

"What was the fate of those 'souls' that perished before your religion existed? Or for that matter, those that lived and died in a country that it hadn't yet reached?" There is not much milage in speculating about the fate of souls, whether in this life or beyond. In the religion to which I feel closest, however, the purpose of mankind is to assist God in opposing evil. A person need not hold to a religion or even know about one to fulfil this purpose - all that is necessary is to have a sense of right and wrong. Having this sense, those who try to promote what is right are fulfilling God's purpose, and those who oppose what they know to be right are denying God's purpose. What this means, in terms of the fate of their souls, God alone knows.

This may not bring us much further forward. We do not all appear to have the same view of right and wrong, so you could ask the question, "Why has God not enabled us all to see the correct view (i.e. His view) of right and wrong?" One religious answer is that, within this universe, there is Evil as well as good, and confusion and dissension are products of evil. Your assumption (expressed in such phrases as "if god is as all-powerful as supposed") that any God must, within this universe, be omnipotent, is not necessarily valid. I am comfortable with a dualist viewpoint, not a monotheist viewpoint. I take licence to contribute to this thread from your original post which rather mixed a tolerance of polytheist religions with the monotheist assumptions behind some of the questions.

[Amra]

Muslim perspective...

Allah s.v.t has sent over 120 000 prophets to human beings over the existence of human race. Every nation that existed had a Prophet who was sent to them to reveal God's message. The message was always the same, but it was changed and corrupted over time by human beings. The last Prophet, Mohammed a.s, was sent to be the seal of prophethood; to confirm all other revelations and Prophets, and to correct what was changed by humans. There will be no other prophets until the Judgment Day. So, it is not correct to assume that God waited, or didn't reveal Himself to human beings before, because He has done so from the first human being that He created.

[Doctor Boogaloo]

So basically, everything I need to know is in the Koran. And you guys have been trying to tell us this for years! Man, we really have to get our fingers out.
And, let's see... God sent 120,000 prophets loose amongst the rabble... and he only told them tiny little bits of the 'truth'... and he saved all the cool stuff for Mohammed.
Okay.
I need a beer.

[The Unnamable]

Playing Puck the mischievous again, eh Xamonas? You know the answer – because God exists only as an idea. Not only that, but the idea is not a logical one, which is, in itself, turned into a virtue by the faithful. We cannot fathom the unfathomable wisdom of God, end of story. Such illogicality is allowed to run unchallenged because we must respect the views of others.
You say that God is “perfect and all-knowing”. If God is omniscient and omnipotent, then there can be no free will. If I have a choice of two shirts to put on, God knows which I will choose. If He does, then I can only choose the one He knows I will choose. This means I do not have free will. If He doesn’t know, then He isn’t omniscient and omnipotent, which means He can’t be God. No one has ever adequately explained this to me. I have been told that “God knows your free will” but this is typical of the evasions of the faithful. If I don’t have free will, then how can I be morally responsible for anything I do? I couldn’t do anything else.

[Evergreenleaf]

Maybe after Adam and Eve betrayed Him He got mad and decided not to talk to any people anymore, so they got their own weird ideas. After that He only talked to really, really good people, like Abraham, and so the religions began, when more and more good people spread what He was saying to them.

I actually have no idea. I'm an atheist too.

[Ryduce]

I don't understand why we have these discussions,because the answers to these questions are unattainable.As for me,I will continue to believe in God because it gives me comfort in my existence.I do not know God,nor will I ever,but I refuse to accept that life ends with death.I don't know if we have free will or if we are pre-destined by the plans of God,but I do know that we are beings ultimately created from nothing and we have a conscious choice to choose between right and wrong,and I will try to live as right as possible even if it is certain that God infinitely knows my every thought,choice or action.



And I know that many of you are intellectually superior to me,so please don't rip my brain to shreds.