Where Did God Come From?

by	Eric Lyons, M.Min.

Where did God come from? Most everyone knows the Christian’s response to this question: “God is eternal. He did not ‘come from’ anywhere.” Although atheists may think that this answer is unscientific and merely an attempt to avoid the question, in truth, observation and reason declare otherwise.

The question “Where did God come from?” (or “What caused God?”) assumes that God had a cause. However, by definition, an eternal spirit (“the everlasting God”) cannot logically have a cause. Asking about God’s cause (or origin) is as incoherent as asking “Why matter is eternal?” Matter is not eternal. Matter is no more an eternal essence without a cause than God is a physical being with a cause. Asking “where did God come from?” is like asking “when did eternity start?” By definition, eternity never began. Eternity, by definition, is without beginning and end. By definition, so is God.

Consider that in nature, matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed. Scientists refer to this observed fact as the First Law of Thermodynamics. Evolutionists allege that the Universe began with the explosion of a ball of matter 13 to 14 billion years ago, yet they never have provided a reasonable explanation for the cause of the “original” ball of matter. Evolutionist David Shiga made an attempt a few years ago in an issue of New Scientist magazine in his cover story, “The Beginning: What Triggered the Big Bang.” Interestingly, in the last line of the article, Shiga admitted: “[T]he quest to understand the origin of the universe seems destined to continue until we can answer a deeper question: why is there anything at all instead of nothing?”¹ The fact is, a logical, naturalistic explanation for the origin of the “original” ball of matter that supposedly led to the Universe does not exist. It cannot exist so long as the First Law of Thermodynamics is true (that matter and energy cannot create themselves).

Since the physical Universe exists, and yet it could not have created itself, then the Universe is either eternal, or else some thing or some One outside of the Universe must have created it. Relatively few scientists propose that the Universe is eternal. In fact, there would be no point in attempting to explain the “beginning” of the Universe (with a Big Bang, for example) if scientists believed it has always existed. What’s more, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that matter and energy become less usable over time, has led scientists to conclude that the Universe has not always existed; that is, it is not eternal.²

So why don’t the laws of thermodynamics or the law of causality³ apply to God? Because these scientific laws, like all scientific laws, apply to what we find and study in nature. Again, by definition, God is not natural and thus logically is not subject to the laws of nature.

In short, if matter is not eternal, and it cannot create itself, then the only logical conclusion is that some thing or some One outside of nature (i.e., supernatural) caused the material Universe and everything in it. Christians call this Someone, “the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 40:28).

Endnotes

¹ David Shiga (2007), “The Universe Before Ours,” New Scientist, 194[2601]:33, April 28.

² For additional information on the Laws of Thermodynamics, see Jeff Miller (2013), “Evolution and the Laws of Science: The Laws of Thermodynamics,” http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?article=2786. 

³ This law states that “every material effect must have an adequate antecedent or simultaneous cause.” For more information, see Jeff Miller (2011), Evolution and the Laws of Science: The Law of Causality,” http://www.apologeticspress.org/apcontent.aspx?category=9&article=3716.

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Copyright © 2019 Apologetics Press, Inc. All rights reserved.

Founders

Team player

BEE-ing a Team Player

by	Kyle Butt, M.Div.

The queen bee is the large bee in the middle.

Worker Bees

Drones and a New Queen Bee

When every person on a team does his job so that the team accomplishes its goal, we call that teamwork. Teams are made up of different players, positions, and jobs. Each job is important. Did you know there is a very special “team” in nature? A beehive happens to be one of the best examples in the world of teamwork.

Several different kinds of bees live in a hive.

The Queen Bee

She lays all the eggs for a hive. In fact, a hive cannot function without a queen and much of the work done in the hive is done to keep the queen healthy and happy.

Worker Bees

These bees take care of the eggs and help them hatch into bee larvae. They then feed the larvae and help them grow. Different worker bees clean up the area close to the queen where she lays her eggs. Worker bees have other jobs as well. As they get older, they begin to forage for food. They also guard the hive, ready to sting any attackers (like a hungry bear trying to take their honey).

Drones

These male bees mate with the queen so that she can continue to lay eggs.

A New Queen

Most of the worker bees in a hive are females that cannot lay eggs. But sometimes a hive needs a new queen. When this happens, a special baby bee is chosen and fed a diet of “royal jelly.” This royal jelly somehow helps the tiny bee to grow into a queen that can lay eggs.

The Dream Team

Bees know their jobs and do them perfectly. Because of this, thousands of bees in a hive can live, make honey, and work in a very organized way. Like bees, we can also work together in the Christian “hive” known as the Church. The apostle Paul said that the Church is one body that is made up of many different members who have different jobs (1 Corinthians 12:12-31). Some men preach, others are elders, some ladies teach children’s Bible classes, and other members visit the sick and take food to the hungry. Not all Christians do the same jobs, but each job is important and helps the Church to operate in a productive, organized way, just like a beehive.

Grace

Sin

How Long Were Adam and Eve in the Garden Before Sinning?

by	Jeff Miller, Ph.D.

If one wishes to harmonize an old Earth and/or theistic evolution with the Bible, among many other obstacles,¹ he must find a place in the text in which to squeeze 4.5 billion years of alleged Earth history and nearly 14 billion years of Universe history. The language of Genesis one does not allow the necessary time prior to or during Creation week.² Is it possible to find time after the Creation week—prior to Adam and Eve’s eviction from the Garden of Eden—as some have suggested?³ Does the Bible allow such an infusion of time in Genesis 3? Can we even know?

The argument is that millions of years could have elapsed in the Garden prior to the first sin, during which evolution and deep time occurred. Ages, presumably, were not being counted until the first sin. Several problems immediately surface upon considering such an assumption.

1. Genesis 1:14-15 indicates that the purpose of the stars as created during the Creation week was “to give light on the Earth,” “to divide the day from the night,” and to allow the only creatures who do so to reckon “signs and seasons…days and years.” Clearly, time, and specifically years, were being counted from the beginning. “So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years; and he died” (Genesis 5:5). However many years Adam and Eve were in the Garden, we know it was not more than 930.
2. How likely is it that humans would be able to resist temptation for one year, much less 930 years, much less 4,500,000,000 years? After all, Satan was already present “from the beginning” (John 8:44) trying to manipulate Adam and Eve to disobey God, and unlike today, even doing so in a direct, visible way—making verbal arguments to tempt Adam and Eve.
3. Genesis 3 recounts the first sin and the eviction of Adam and Eve from Paradise. God subsequently placed cherubim and a flaming sword in the path of any who would attempt to re-enter the Garden and eat from the Tree. The text proceeds to relate the events that followed their eviction. “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain…. Then she bore again, this time his brother Abel” (4:1-2). Abel, of course, was ultimately murdered by Cain some time later. The implication by those seeking to squeeze in time after Creation, then, is that Adam and Eve were in the Garden for millions of years prior to even conceiving Cain and Abel. Jesus, however, stated that the blood of Abel was shed at the “foundation of the world”—not millions or billions of years later. Note that the evolutionary model argues that humans (the genus homo) arrived on the scene two to three million years ago—at least 13,798,000,000 years after the Universe began, and at the very end of recorded time, not at the foundation of the world.
4. Further, Genesis 5:3 indicates that Adam was 130 when Seth, who was born after Cain and Abel, was born. Adam and Eve could not have, therefore, been in the Garden for even 130 years.
5. Jesus called the devil “a murderer from the beginning,” the “father” of lies (John 8:44)—a clear allusion to his actions in the Garden which led to the death of Adam, Eve, and every human since. Adam and Eve’s “murder” was considered by Jesus to be at the “beginning,” not the end, of geologic time.
6. It is also the case that Adam and Eve had been commanded by God to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the Earth” (Genesis 1:28). Upon marrying, Moses recounts God’s command for husband and wife: “a man shall…be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (2:24). If Adam and Eve had refused to do so, they would have been disobeying God and, therefore, sinning. Recall that humanity’s reluctance to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the Earth” after the Flood (9:1) resulted in God’s actions at Babel (11:1ff.). We can, therefore, assume that Adam and Eve were obeying God, since their first sins were tied to eating from the forbidden Tree (3:6ff.), not from disobeying God’s command regarding procreation. Since Adam and Eve did not conceive a child until after their eviction from the Garden, it stands to reason that they were not even in the Garden long enough to do so.
7. Consider also that the desire to insert time into the biblical text is generally the result of an attempt to reconcile the Bible with contemporary geology (the geologic column) and paleontology (the fossil record). The fossil record, however, reveals that humans do not “evolve” until the late Cenozoic era—again, at the very top of the fossil record and geologic column. The 3.8 billion years of necessary time to reconcile the evolutionary timeframe of the fossil record with Scripture, therefore, must be injected before humans are even on the scene, not after Adam and Eve are in the Garden. In other words, even if Adam and Eve were in the Garden for millions of years, the biblical model would still not harmonize with the contemporary model.

Bottom line: the Bible does not allow for deep time to be injected into Adam and Eve’s tenure in the Garden of Eden. Immense time at that point in history would not help the Bible fit the evolutionary paradigm anyway, and there is no need for time to be injected. The biblical timeframe fits the physical evidence well, as long as erroneous assumptions are not used to interpret that evidence.

Endnotes

¹ Jeff Miller (2018), “Science vs. the Big Bang & Evolution: A Concise Look,” Apologetics Press, http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?article=5599.

² Justin Rogers (2015), “Is the Gap Theory Linguistically Viable?” Reason & Revelation, 35[12]:134-141, http://apologeticspress.org/apPubPage.aspx?pub=1&issue=1208#; Justin Rogers (2015), “Does the Hebrew Word Yom Endorse an Old Earth?” Reason & Revelation, 35[9]:98-100, http://apologeticspress.org/apPubPage.aspx?pub=1&issue=1202.

³ John N. Clayton (1980), “Is the Age of the Earth Related to a ‘Literal Interpretation’ of Genesis?” Does God Exist? 7[1]:3-8, January.

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