The automatic quote left out most of the post, and it's hard to reconstruct it. Rose42 was discussing God, religion, imagination, etc. with another poster.

In this post, I won't try to claim whether you know or don't know a thing. I just say: There are some things that _I_ don't know. One of them is what God is. Another is how the universe got started. I'm a good guesser though. Sometimes guessing feels about as good as knowing, if you do it right.

Science has models for reality. We (people) (including those who are scientists) don't understand _all_ about reality, but we can think up simple models that work pretty well to understand reality.

(The models are sometimes called "theories".)

The flat earth theory worked alright for a long time. Then the round earth theory worked even better. To clarify, I explain that in the round earth theory, the earth is so large that any small part of its surface works the same way as in the flat earth theory.

In another post, I've already put forth my guesses about how the universe got started. Now I want to also put forth my guesses about what God is.

In what I write, don't put too much meaning in whether I spell it as "God", or "god", or even "gods".

For me, there are at least two or three kinds of God:

There's the personal God. I'll probably never know how much of the personal God is just part of the human mind, and how much of the personal God exists independently of the human mind. I did have an experience, once, in which I felt the existence of God, and concluded that God does exist independently of the human mind. And I told myself to never forget it. I am unwilling to, and maybe incapable of, understanding more about that. Most of my ideas about God are just good guessing.

Someone, maybe you, said or indicated that humans are naturally bad. I disagree. And this is related to what sort of being we think God is.

One of the other kinds of God is the nature god. This (I say) is the god that would be involved, if a god created the universe. I don't believe "God created the universe" in the traditional sense. However, I do feel that "God and nature are the same thing" is a workable theory. For everything that happens, you can either say "God did it" or "nature did it" and it amounts to the same thing.

The other kind of god that occurs to me is the abstract god. This is a kind of supreme being, or supreme beingness. For example, wh**ever we imagine as the highest good, we believe that is a characteristic of the most supreme beingness, also called God.

It's possible to suppose that the personal God, the nature god, and the abstract god are all one and the same god. However, I don't think it's useful to think that way.

The personal God is a kind of friend. The nature god is a way of thinking about the universe (also called the natural world). The abstract god is a way of naming, or thinking about, what we feel is the highest good or the most important things.

Uh, something that exists... and therefore has a cause. Isn't that your premise#1?

This is the flaw in creationism that NONE of you folks have EVER had an answer for. If God is something then what caused Him to exist. Go ahead give me your best answer.

One *could* say that God has always existed and was therefore never "caused". But you kind of screwed that up with your first premise.

BTW, I didn't say anything earlier because I didn't want to distract from the point I was making but big bang theory doesn't actually suggest the universe came from nothing. It suggests that the big bang is actually a very small and extremely dense bit of matter *that has always been there* exploding into an expanding universe. A complementary idea is that the universe will eventually start to contract and wind up imploding into that tiny bit of matter before exploding again. Leaving us with and endless series of expansions and contractions.

It's all theory but the point I want to make here is that the old fall back on the idea that God has always existed, so no further explanation is needed, can just as easily apply to big bang theory.

So from this perspective, neither of these theories are any more legitimate than the other. But it's the creationists, not the scientists that insist otherwise.

Do I need to provide the long list of scientific research that has tested those premises and found them quite valid. I'm talking about scientists in all fields from microbiologists to geologists, astronomers and astrophysicists, cosmologists and philosophers of science and scientific theory.

It is simply not possible that matter and energy can come into existence without a transcendent cause.

And what about life itself? From a blade of grass to an intelligent being, how is it possible these could come from nothing? And, consciousness, the ability to reason and feel and to make decisions and choices, perchance to dream? Where could such gifts come from if not from a transcendent infinitely intelligent creator?

There is no law of science or nature that can explain good and evil, love or hatred. No such laws can explain the purpose or meaning of life. Without a transcendent creator, a law giver, we are then just time plus matter plus chance, chemistry and physics in motion, with no purpose or reason for our existence.

Meaning and purpose have to be defined by a transcendent cause. When a belief in God becomes difficult, the tendency is to turn away from Him, but to what? A naturalist will never find an answer nor can he even justify the question.

If there is evil, then you must assume there is good. If you assume good then you must assume moral law. If you assume moral law then you must assume a moral law giver. If there is no moral law giver, there is no moral law, if there is no moral law, there is no good, if there is no good, there is no evil and the question evaporates.

The question, who created God, or from whence did God come, has no basis upon which to even ask, it has no alternative explanation that can account for the idea that all that exists in the relative material universe came from nothing.

And what created God?
BTW, that isn't a new question - it's just a part of the same question that you can't seem to wrap your head around. If everything didn't come from nothing where DID it everything come from?

God is something and therefore part of everything... so, where did God come from?

NONE of you have EVER been able to answer that. You just shut your minds off when it gets to that point. Like that scene in Pleasantville where the main character asks the teacher in class... where does the road go after it leaves the town? And the whole class dropped their jaws because they never actually thought to ask that question.