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As you see above ukrkoz. All you will get from the theists on this is 'special pleading' and 'We just can't comprehend 'God', he is a fathomless enigma.' Of course, in the next breath they will be telling you that, although their god is an enigma that is beyond our comprehension, a timeless mystery that can't be understood... they are all having a 'personal relationship' with him.
God is beyond man's complete comprehension, but that does not mean we can't have personal relationship with Him. We can't understand how He has always existed.
You have an even more serious problem, which most non-believers chose to ignore.---how did matter, energy and live come into existence? Either it has always existed or it had a Creator. Christians have chosen one explanation, you have chosen another. Can you prove your choice? We can't either. You accept what you believe the same way we do---by faith alone.
IMO it is more logical to believe a creation that works perfectly all the time, needs not only a Creator, but an intelligent Designer.
It should be noted that Genesis 1 does not teach Creatio Ex Nihilo - "Creation out of Nothing".
Yes it does. Col 1:16 says ALL things were created by God;
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It is not the absolute beginning, if we follow the text. There was pre-existing matter before the separative and creative acts in Genesis (water and darkness). So you would have to extend your questions beyond the Genesis Account.
Water and darkness come after the heavens and the earth were created. Water was part of the earth God created. That is what Gen 1:2 tells us.
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A better translation yields:
At the beginning of God's creating of the heavens and the earth,
when the earth was wild and waste,
darkness over the face of Ocean,
rushing-spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters -
God said: Let there be light! And there was light.
(Genesis 1:1-3 SB Fox)
That is not a better translation; that is not what the Hebrew says. That is your translation to fit your theology.
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Most translators and scholars now recognize the first several verses as one introductory sentence, like other ancient Near Eastern Creation accounts of the time. No longer is "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" considered a single clause implying one large creative act, with the details coming after the fact.
Most translators do not accept that and no conservatives ones do. Name on who does accept that.
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So there is at least watery chaos and darkness present before the God of Genesis begins to separate and create - and he does more separating than creating, technically. It is with these raw materials that the God of Genesis begins to bring order out of chaos.
When God created the earth, it included water.
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Also consider Genesis 1:26 which demonstrates that there are other divine beings present at this time:
God said:
Let us make humankind, in our image, according to our likeness!
(Genesis 1:26)
God is not alone. I won't go into the linguistic details here since it's been done in another thread, but it points to other divine beings that probably aren't angels, but gods.
You Are right they are not angels and they are not human beings; they are Jesus and the Holy Spirit
Riiight, like when Jacob demanded proof of God's protection before he agreed to worship him - in contrast to Abraham:
And Yaakov [Jacob] vowed a vow, saying:
If God will be with me
and will watch over me on this way that I go
and will give me food to eat and a garment to wear,
and if I come back in peace to my father's house -
YHWH shall be God to me,
(Genesis 28:20 SB Fox)
Good ol' faithful Jacob. How dare he demand things of God? The nerve!
Faith does not mean our God-given ability to reason should be thrown in the trash, simply because we can't reach a definitive answer. You know the saying? Have an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out. If there's one thing I've noticed about my Jehovah's Witness friends, it's that if something is too difficult to work out, they give up. This probably comes from their overwhelming education level being High School diploma or less, no doubt.
Yeah, but what does that really mean? There obviously was a time that the earth did not exist, so how does your answer really address the OP?
He's outside our understanding of how things work. Simple as that. He answers everybody's prayers at the same time (try listening to ten people talking at once some time) and he's omnipresent. So to ask "what did God do before the creation" is like asking "how can he see what's going on in Tokyo while seeing what's going on here.
'God is outside of time, space, and matter' is their stock answer when they get stumped on a question about the attributes of their deity that they cannot answer. However, at any other time, they will tell you that they are having a 'personal relationship' with this deity...that exists outside of the 'time, space, and matter' that they themselves exist within. Go figure...if you can!
The Hindu and Muslim religions specifically state as cores of their (equally religious as Christians') that their religions are "God reaching out to man." Religions are false human constructions, just like all denominations of Christianity and Christian/Muslim/Hindu congregational spiritualisms.
And you evidence is???
Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. Blaise Pascal
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
Normally, question is asked - who created god then? Or similar.
I am asking a different question.
WHERE was god BEFORE creation?
Clearly, from the above quote, god was.
God was before creation.
Hence, god, to exist, had to be in some sort of "space".
As ANYTHING that exists, even in a most miraculous form, has to exist IN something.
Something that exists in NOTHING does not exist.
Hence, there must have been some sort of space, appropriate for god, in its characteristics allowing god to exist IN it. A "godly" space, semantics really, but still - space.
Hence, that space was pre-god and god existed in it.
Or, from presumption of gods eternity and having no origin, then that space also has to be eternal and have no origin.
But then, there was two - space AND god in that space.
Men despise religion. They hate it and are afraid it may be true. Blaise Pascal
"Religion belongs to a very early stage of human development ... and its rapid decay in the world since the Reformation is evidence of genuine progress” --Mencken.
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