An Infinite God

A common argument raised by atheists to disprove the possibility of the existence of God – and in this case I am primarily referring to the Christian God - can be summed by asking ‘who created God’ and results in what is known as the infinite regression problem. This problem is that for a God to exist it too must have been created by a God and in turn that God also had to be created by another God, and so on. The solution to this common argument proposed by believers is that God is effectively infinite and has simply always existed.

Okay so as it stands it looks like the believers have had the last word on this line of argument but there is an inherent flaw with their response of an infinite God and this is in simplest terms that if God is infinite then so could anything else including the universe itself. In other words by allowing God the privilege of being something that needs no creator to exist then there is no logical reason as to why the universe itself requires a creator, thus eliminating the very purpose of God’s existence in the first place. This of course does not mean that God does not exist but rather if God does exist there is no reason to believe that God created anything in the universe since by this line of argument anything can exist without a creator.

There, however, is another problem with the infinite God response and this problem in my opinion effectively invalidates this response completely. Basically if God has always existed then it means no matter how far back in time we go, God will have already existed for an infinite amount of time and we can always go back further. Yet life on Earth has only existed for a finite amount of time, which would mean that God remained inactive in terms of interest in Earth for an infinite amount of time beforehand. Or to put in another way if God has an infinite past then life on Earth has existed for an infinitesimal percentage of God’s lifespan; a portion that is in fact immeasurable. This for me means that if we are to accept the view of God as infinite, we also have to accept that life on Earth has existed for God for an infinitesimal proportion of God’s life.
So by suggesting that God is infinite we have not only eradicated the need for God to be a creator but also God’s interest in Earth must have played a very insignificant part of God’s existence, which does not exactly fit in with life on Earth being God’s goal – God has already spent an infinite amount of time not creating life on Earth or to put it another way has waited forever to create life on Earth. Clearly these are big holes in this proposal but all these statements also implicitly infer a paradox, which I will call the paradox of having an infinite past.

The paradox of having an infinite past is that to reach any finite point in your past you must have lived through an infinite amount of time to reach that point but how is it possible to have lived through an infinite amount of time? This problem is further complicated if this thing with an infinite past is a conscious creature that is aware of the passage of time much like ourselves, as this means that being must have an infinite memory of its past, which clearly cannot be stored in any system whether organic or otherwise.

It’s like saying that this creature has already existed forever but such a statement is illogical since forever can never have taken place, though this has to be the case with a being with an infinite past and this essentially is the paradox.

I suspect the following encompass how any believer will try to respond to this argument:
1. We never claim God is infinite; it’s just that God was not created. Of course by this statement you have effectively provided the same answer to God’s existence that the Big Bang theory is so often criticized for – that it simply popped into existence.

2. God does not experience time like we do. This may well be true but even if that is the case this does still not resolve the paradox – you are still trying to claim that a being has already existed forever – and also this begs the questions: how exactly do you think God does experience time and how could anyone possibly even know this? This response to me is more likely saying well for God to have always existed then God cannot experience time as we do.

3. Just because we cannot imagine something always having existed doesn’t mean it is not possible. This is very true but that’s not the point being made here. What I am saying is that there exists an inherent paradox with this concept, which can only be resolved by giving that being a beginning even if that beginning is approaching the number of atoms in the universe in years

To sum up the solution of God being infinite, which believers seem to use with explicit gall as if it is water tight, actually upon a logical inspection is very leaky indeed. If we were to accept God as infinite then we eliminate the need for God to be the creator, which in itself weakens the need for God to exist, but by suggesting any being has an infinite past opens up a whole can of worms – God must have waited forever to create life on Earth, how does any being have an infinite memory and more importantly creates the paradox of having already existed forever. In my opinion all this adds up to the solution of an infinite God as being invalid and God must have had a beginning, which means the problem of infinite regression still has no valid resolution and seriously weakens the probability of God’s existence.

Heaven

As I am currently a little short on time I would like to start with a brief discussion of a subject I find particularly sensitive and that is Heaven, which I hope will be a good starter for a friendly, heated debate.

From all warps of life, religious or otherwise, the concept of heaven persists despite being one of the weakest concepts spawned from religion. Personally I think the main reason it persists is that natural human need to believe that death is not the end and our loves ones somehow live on in another place, watching over us. I don't believe that it has persisted due to the weight of its concept as upon even a very basic examination large cracks are exposed.

For starters try to answer this fairly straight-forward question what is heaven? I suspect most people will envisage a place free of human suffering where you and everyone you have ever loved live in perferct bliss without worry or fear. This, however, is flawed as not only does sufferring help us recognise happiness but also imagine feeling happy forever? Surely in such a scenario after a while feeling happy will become the norm and we will then aim for feeling more happy. The problem here is that no matter how happy you are, you can always imagine being happier and this must be still true in heaven if we are to assume in heaven we remain esstentially human. This will ultimately lead us to wanting more from heaven, which is another way of saying we will be unhappy. In other words no matter how happy we are in heaven, after time we will require more happiness and this continual need from improvment will eventually result in unhappiness.

Okay given this maybe heaven is a place that just keeps given and your needs / wants are continually being satisfied. This view of heaven though is still flawed since we all have different desires and for them to be satisified means that heaven has to not only be all things to all people, which suggests it is not an actual physical place, but also the desires of some people are what others would class as unacceptable. I guess the answer to this is that such people would go to hell but surely having the desire to do something is different from actually carrying it out and it is very common for people to suppress their real desires - these people should still go to heaven but what about these desires? Are they still suppressed in heaven? Surely this would ultimately lead to that person feeling unhappy.

Worse still our desires change over time and our existence in heaven is meant to be infinite so what if at some point in the future we have an unacceptable desire, what happens then? And who decides what is acceptable or not? Again I predict that some people would suggest in heaven our only desires are spiritual and we will devote our days to praising our God. Not only does this sound like a very boring existence to me but this would mean for most of us that in heaven we will not exist as ourselves.

Another major problem I have with heaven is that if I had to watch the ones I love suffer at my lost, powerless to help or be with them, I would feel miserable. Imagine dying just before your child is born and you have to watch them grow up from heaven? How can this be a happy existence? The only way of resolving this is that in heaven we lose that part of us and exist in a completely different way to how we exist on earth, but this means we are no longer ourselves and we might as well be wholly dead for all intents and purposes. In other words it would not be our loved ones watching over us but rather the spiritual essence of them, and they no longer behave or live like humans.

Given all this if such a place existed I would rather be dead - or we may as well consider ourselves dead since we would no longer exist as who we are now in heaven. All this and I haven't really touched upon the physical side of heaven - are we physical beings in heaven?, is there gravity in heaven? and where does heaven exist? Clearly I do not believe in heaven - I am actually an atheist so do not believe in God either but heaven and God are really two separate concepts - but what do you think? I will post more of my thoughts on heaven shortly and to be honest I rushed this a little so may write some edits in the future. I just wanted this to be a starting point and hopefully I have raised some interesting questions for you to answer.

I will also respond to any feedback I get. So come on join in and flick the switch!