Opus 2025-085: The Why Game

We never get tired of playing the Why Game when it comes to important questions in life.  I’ve been listening to the Joe Rogan program (2008) as he talks to Stephen Mayer, and one of the questions that Joe asked was where did God come from?  It is not an original question.  You run into it all the time.  The idea is that it is impossible to consider a God who is eternally existent.  He must’ve come from somewhere.  Who created God?  I’m sure you’re familiar with this mystery of thought.

The almost laughable logic of this is that the same people who asked this question, and are incredulous that we could believe in eternal God who was not created have a parallel problem.   For a long period of time, possibly centuries, they have believed that there is a universe that has existed forever and was not created.  It would seem to me that if you can believe an eternally existent material universe, which means not created, why can’t you believe the same thing about God?  Why is it irrational to believe it about God but not about the cosmos?

“Why?” can be a very good place to start a conversation or even go to deeper levels.  Of course that depends totally on whether you want to start a conversation or go to deeper levels.  When your teenager wants to stay up late to play his video games until dawn and you tell him to go to bed, he will ask why.  When you tell him he hast to get up early in the morning to go to school, he will ask why.  He knows the answer to both situations.  He is just trying to play the Why Game.

If someone tries it on you, it might be the best thing just to confront them with the nonsense of their question and be out front.  Find out if they really want to talk about it.  If they don’t go to the baseball scores.  Get on with life.  There is only so much you can do.  And also, of course, the other side of that is true, don’t be one of those people.

It’s funny how many swords have two edges.

homo unius libri