Who Created God? Where Did the Universe Come From?

I was asked by a Christian theologian to comment on "Who Created God?" OR "Where Did the Universe Come From?"

See what you think:

1. God exists in our thought world because he (and others) were created by prescientific superstitious peoples who didn't have a clue about the universe, how it works, or how it all might have originated.

2. The options are that something popped into existence out of nothing, or that something has always existed. Both options seem irrational, but one is correct and the other is false.

3. The best answer is to acknowledge we don't know, yet. This is a good answer barring sufficient objective evidence. It's the answer that should have been given a multiple number of times throughout history, up until the point when science solved a difficulty. We can only go as far as the evidence allows. Admitting ignorance is better than pontificating with certainty.

4. There is no reason to substitute one mystery to solve another. Magical thinking that invokes a God is substituting one mystery to solve another one. It's mysterious why we exist, yes. Believing in a mysterious God doesn't answer why he exists, especially a trinitarian God who always co-existed, who never disagreed within the Godhead, who were perfectly happy needing nothing but created this world anyway, knowing it would introduce horrendous suffering into creation and the need to send one of his personalities to die a horrendous death for our sins, and eventually send sentient creatures to Hell for the unforgiveable sin of not believing in Jesus because the whole story makes no sense.

For more see my response to Don McIntosh’s "Second Strategy". LINK.

Reasonable people admit there is no objective evidence for God based on the miracles alleged in the texts of the Bible. It mainly contains 2nd handed uncorroborated testimony (or worse), such as we find when it comes to Mary's testimony of her virgin birthed incarnate God. LINK.

It makes our heads spin to think modern people believe in such a mysterious God rather than a reasoned approach, based on the requirement for objective evidence.

5. Evolution was a very difficult thing to prove. But it has been proven. Even believers agree mico-evolution has taken place. But if there is micro-evolution, then there is macro-evolution. All that's missing is time. Reject young earth creationism and the time needed is there. Gone is a sin in the garden of Eden and the need for redemption. In any case, the Biblical texts of creation are no evidence at all as to what happened. In fact, it's self referentially incoherent to believe in a creator who didn't know anything about the universe! LINK.

6. The ultimate beginnings of the universe seem to be much harder to solve than evolution. We can start with an equilibrium of positive and negative energy, which is as close to nothingness as we can get. Such an initial state is utterly unstable, as physicist Victor Stenger argued. "Since nothing is as simple as it gets, we cannot expect it to be very stable.” Given the laws of nature, “the probability for there being something rather than nothing can actually be calculated; it is over 60 percent.” As such, “only by the constant action of an agent outside the universe, such as God, could a state of nothingness be maintained. The fact that we have something is just what we would expect if there is no God." [God: The Failed Hypothesis (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2008) pp. 132–33. See also Stenger’s, The Comprehensible Cosmos: Where Do the Laws of Physics Come From? (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006), supplement H.]

7. It's also possible that the explosive power of the big bang (or earlier big bangs, or multiple numbers of them) may have destroyed all of the evidence. It could literally be lost in space.