If there's an ultimate explanation for the existence of the universe, the explanation has to stop somewhere. From a cosmological point of view, the properties of God are just the properties that any such terminus would have to have in order to be a terminus. Anything that comes from something else isn't God, so the question of where God comes from is moot.

> If there's an ultimate explanation for the existence of the universe, the explanation has to stop somewhere.

Not really. It could be that the universe has existed for an infinite amount of time, and the big bang was an event that occurs from time to time.

No matter what explanation you pick, something came from "nothingness" at some point, which suggests nothingness has some unusual properties.

>Not really. It could be that the universe has existed for an infinite amount of time, and the big bang was an event that occurs from time to time.

That is a scenario where there is no ultimate explanation.

Who could answer? If a being created time and space, we, constrained within that time and space, might not have the capacity to imagine what it's like exist outside of them, only that, as the creator, it is possible.

I've always found it hard to believe that any human being that ever lived would even begin to understand the intentions of such an entity. It would be like the ants that you've placed in an ant farm claiming to understand why they were placed in the ant farm in the first place and using that knowledge to control the other ants.

That is why most religions have a revelatory component. Hardly anyone thinks that you could figure out from first principles what God's intentions are. But he can tell you his intentions if he wants to.

I seriously doubt that you could explain your intentions to an ant (even if you wanted to, for some reason).

At the very least, if God gives us commands, we can understand the commands and obey them. I don't see how you could doubt that's possible (on the hypothesis that God does exist).

But using that as your basis to ignore the question is ignoring the can.

Religion tries to answer the questions on existence, meaning and morality (this is not meant to be defimitively comprehensive). An atheist who calls the religious person a fool for asking a question and finding an answer that still leaves some questions is himself the fool.

Asking the question is fine. Saying "God did it" is just a cop-out though. It's not a real answer. It's basically equivalent to saying "I don't know". Except it's worse, because it means you stop looking for the actual answer.

Ha. That second sentence is exactly what I said as a teenager; I've since found out how ignorant I was.

It's only equivalent to saying "I don't know" if you follow a line like Pascal's Wager, with any sort of faith or conviction you're saying you have established an answer.

The Big Bang is widely accepted yet is by normal definition impossible (you need time in order for something to change, the Big Bang requires a change before time existed). It's a cop out that allows people to curtail metaphysical enquiry at the bounds of known physics ...

People will challenge a theist "who created god" but don't challenge "who/what created the Big Bang". For some reason ex nihilo is fine for the Universe but preposterous for a creator? (The reason is usually a religious reliance on certain assumptions.)

>you stop looking for the actual answer. //

Your petitio principii is showing.

If I find "I get wet standing outside when it rains" I don't need to find a contradictory reason why I'm getting wetted by rain unless the original theory fails. Of course you stop looking and only consider then opposing answers if they present themselves.

When you wake in the morning do you enquire as to the nature of your reality afresh or do you assume it has the same realism as when you went to bed? (Until that realism is challenged?)

> People will challenge a theist "who created god" but don't challenge "who/what created the Big Bang". For some reason ex nihilo is fine for the Universe but preposterous for a creator?

The big bang and what (if anything) cause it does get challenged and is challenged by serious scientists too. The current answer is we have absolutely no idea.

On the other hand, it's rare to see religous people acknowledge that gods (there is no logical reason for a single god) require a creator at all, it's a thought terminating proposition.

>(there is no logical reason for a single god) //

Which sounds like you're suggesting there is a logical reason for multiple gods, can you expand on this point?

Assuming a god like figure can exist, why would you assume only one can exist? 10 or 50 or a billion sounds just as Logical as one. God knows our universe would make more sense if it was designed by committee.

Aside from that, given what we know about human evolution and how not unique we are, it stands to reason that a creator was subject to similar limitations.

The Big Bang is not the equivalent of "God did it". It's not a cop-out, it's a description of what our current understanding says happened. And yes, there's a lot we still don't know, and a lot we can never know. And that's ok! We don't just pretend that we have an explanation for everything (which is what "God did it" is), we say what we do know and what we don't, and then we try to reduce the amount we don't know.

You're declaring the Big Bang to be impossible due to what appears to be a simple semantic trick. But I don't believe you're even remotely qualified to determine whether the Big Bang is impossible or not, and the fact that it's widely accepted as a good explanation should be a big clue that maybe it's not so impossible.

> If I find "I get wet standing outside when it rains" I don't need to find a contradictory reason why I'm getting wetted by rain unless the original theory fails.

"God did it" is not a theory. It is the absence of a theory. It's what you say because you don't know the actual reason. For example, a thousand years ago, "God did it" was probably a well-accepted explanation for why it rains. But today we have a very detailed understanding of the physics involved and can explain rain without any supernatural explanation. You can't say that somehow in the last 1000 years, God stopped managing rain and physics started handling it instead. No, it was physics all along.

A big problem with "God did it" is it literally stops all progress. If you say "I don't know", you can go looking for the answer. If you have an actual hypothesis, you can test it, try to determine if it's true or not, and make progress towards finding the truth. But once you say "God did it" there's no where left to go, and you have no hope of ever finding out the real reason.

I've never seen any religious person who was seriously interested in the question of the origin of the universe stop at "God did it". It's unfair to imply that this is all that theologians have ever had to say on the topic.

I have not met the person saying it as a cop-out. In my experience they say God did it and tell us about him.

It's only a cop-out if they say it to avoid looking into reasons for the explanation. The religious people I know, myself included, have well established and agreed upon reasons.

Just because you disagree with their conclusions and reasons for them, it's ridiculous to call it a cop-out.