My mind's in a knot... (Re: Who/what created God?)

I think this very issue surfaced in a post last year(I cannot locate it). Someone posed the question "...if God exists, where did God come from?" As usual, it went around for a while as a cat and mouse game. Someone eventually replied, "Well, where did the laws that made the Big Bang possible come from?"Both of these questions originate from an assumption formed from inductive inferences that are based on our experiential interaction with the world. This assumption is that all causes must also be an effect of something ontologically prior. This inference is inductive, not deductive. One cannot use it to prove anything about the reality of fundamentals.In short, there is nothing deductive that states the form of laws that give rise to the causality we observe must themselves be causal effects of something ontologically prior. Eventually, one will reach a point where something will exist in and of itself. Whether that something is the 'material' world as we know and define it, the laws that give rise to this material world, or a God that gave rise to both, in order to avoid an infinite causal regress, something must exist in and of itself. It must exist as a fundamental and primary cause for everything causal that proceeds from it, without itself being an effect of something ontologically prior.The only other way out of an infinite regress is to speculate an existence without temporal beginning or end. Current theory implies this is likely not the case. Something has to be ontologically fundamental and not prior to something else. One could certainly ask why is there a need to add another level of complexity by invoking God as an extra cause when 'nature' itself can be that final causal stop in the food chain.The thiest is simply starting with the premise that God exists. We already know nature exists so we do not have to use it as a premise -it is an observation.For someone who holds to theism, I would not be trying to establish the Bible as a means of proving the existence of God. I would appeal to the argument above then try to explain why that extra level of causation would be neccesary when the nature of things themselves would suffice as a fundamental cause.In short, there is no deductive certainty that requires all causes to be effects of something ontologically prior.

The question 'Who created God?' then boils down to 'why is it necessary for there to be a God?' It can be argued consistently and rationally that nature can be assigned the status of an ontological self-sufficient causal generator, not an effect. What is responsible for this causal generator then becomes a meaningless question. As in an axiomatic system, axioms are statements that generate the proofs, they are not things being generated. They require no proof.The problem for the Theist using this line of reasoning to establish God as Ontologically fundamental is that they assign God numerous anthropomorphic attributes -- intelligence, emotion, will, reason etc. These things are all parts of the causal machine we are subject to here in the temporal world. If God possess such properties he is also subject to casual mechanisms - thought and reasoning proceeds in an orderly and timely manner etc. One can then state God is not fundamental and ask from what ontologically prior causal generator gave rise to these mechanisms?To avoid this quagmire, one can certainly dump all of those anthropomorphic properties we assign go God. We then end up with something akin to this concept of nature - a causal generator and nothing more. What rational reason is there then for assuming the existence of a rather redundant extra step in the food chain?This certainly is not a proof or argument that a God does not or cannot exist. I am thoroughly Agnostic. But as noted above, it may help more than hurt the popular theist position and that is probably why it is seldom used. Perhaps a rational argument can be presented by theists that offers a way around the problem, but unfortunately, as the OP states, many are too preoccupied with using circular attempts at answering the questions.Using scriptural texts as self-validating(e.g. God exists because the Bible says so and the Bible is true because it's the word of God) certainly can be a faith-based initiative, but in this forum or in public discourse it's kind of like showing up to a gun fight with a knife.