patrick.net

What was God doing before he started creating ?

Planning.

Where was God, if there was nothing before he started creating ?

In the midst of the great nothingness.

According to the physicists etc. there was nothing so how did God come out of nothing ?

According to the theologians God has always existed. It doesn’t matter what the “physicists etc.” say really. Oh by the way, how do the physicists explain the emergence of all matter in the universe from nothing?

richwicks says

There was no King David, no civilization records his existence,

Tel Dan Steele - argument from Enemy Arameans, who bragged about defeating Hebrews of the "House of David"
https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-artifacts/the-tel-dan-inscription-the-first-historical-evidence-of-the-king-david-bible-story/

richwicks says

Ever wonder why the Germans went through such great pains to get rid of the bodies by using scarce resources to cremate the bodies to dust, but kept all the shoes you see in every holocaust museum?

For use by the next bunch of slaves. Nazi mythology had Jews as filthy untermenschen, the Slavs also. The Jews, being smaller and considered more verminous than Slavs, were to be liquidated first. Generalplan Ost details the gradual reduction of the Slavic population following the defeat of the USSR or it's reduction east of the Urals. This included plans to incentivize Aryan Germans to settle Ukraine by offering them Slavic Household Slaves, then a fake front "Retirement Homes" in case the German Family grew attached to them in their old age, where they would be done in like the Horse from Animal Farm, so resources weren't wasted on Slavic Slaves past their labor utility.

The ovens have already been discussed: By 1944 the Nazis had little manpower or resources or infrastructure to keep digging mass graves in an ever-growing radius around camps, so incinerating them reduced the amount of mass to bury.

Undoctored says

Oh by the way, how do the physicists explain the emergence of all matter in the universe from nothing?

There's increasing evidence there was no "big bang" and that the first hypothesis of an eternal universe is correct - or maybe it's something else.

You end up with the same problem though asking how the universe started - how did god start?

At our present, best, understanding - evolution has very good evidence it happened, and if it didn't, it's extremely surprising that evolutionary models work so well in computer "environments" - and it works EXTREMELY well to the point that computers in evolutionary algorithms can make designs and solutions that no human being could come up with in a lifetime.

Now how did life start? Anybody that says they know I think is lying. Nobody knows. We just have some grasp on how life changes and adapts to its environment. We KNOW it does this, but I doubt we understand entirely how it does, but we know it does. We can directly observe it.

The builders of the ovens was specialty engineering firm JA Topf & Sohne, by the way. In 1942 they applied for a patent for a mass cremation machine.

AmericanKulak says

Tel Dan Steele - argument from Enemy Arameans, who bragged about defeating Hebrews of the "House of David"
https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-artifacts/the-tel-dan-inscription-the-first-historical-evidence-of-the-king-david-bible-story/

It's a 9th century inscription. King David was before Christ.

AmericanKulak says

For use by the next bunch of slaves. Nazi mythology had Jews as filthy untermenschen, the Slavs also.

No. I've seen these shoes. They are utterly unusable. I don't know where they are from, but I can tell you that you'd be better off wearing rags on your feet than them.

AmericanKulak says

The ovens have already been discussed: By 1944 the Nazis had little manpower or resources or infrastructure to keep digging mass graves in an ever-growing radius around camps, so incinerating them reduced the amount of mass to bury.

The Nazis had to invent a method of converting coal to diesel with steam to power their war machine, because they were cut off from petroleum. They didn't have excess energy to burn corpses to ashes.

I hate arguing this, because whoever I'm talking to has to go through a lot of cognitive dissonance which I KNOW is extremely uncomfortable. The Germans were not worried about covering up war crimes (of which both sides were guilty), they were concerned about winning the war. Idi Amin just dumped bodies into the rivers. He didn't give a shit about being caught, and the Nazi regime didn't care about that either. Either they won, or they lost. If they lost, they knew they were fucked, regardless, and the Allies were in the same exact position.

richwicks says

It's a 9th century inscription. King David was before Christ.

Yes, it's a 9th Century BC inscription. David is estimated to have lived around the 11-10th Century BC

richwicks says

I hate arguing this, because whoever I'm talking to has to go through a lot of cognitive dissonance which I KNOW is extremely uncomfortable. The Germans would not be more worried about covering up war crimes (of which both sides were guilty), they were concerned about winning the war. Idi Amin just dumped bodies into the rivers. He didn't give a shit about being caught, and the Nazi regime didn't care about that either. Either they won, or they lost. If they lost, they knew they were fucked, regardless, and the Allies were in the same exact position.

The Germans were interested in reducing the need for thousands of people, dump trucks, etc. to create mass graves when they needed every last piece of machinery and man for the Front. The first big CC camp, Buchenwald, that at first had mostly political enemies of the 3rd Reich used the Weimar City Crematorium, but at one point 90% of the bodies being burned there came from the camp, the city managers were aggravated, so the SS began ordering crematoria. This allowed them to spare having to drag 100s, later 1000s of ~150lb bodies onto trucks for burial elsewhere at the point the Nazis were having to use old women to man (pardon the pun) Flak Guns.

Another reason is that the Nazis were engaged in the systemic murder of retarded and mentally ill persons, and burning them at municipal crematoriums might raise questions among the Populace, who were NOT told that retarded kids were being executed by the Reich in the name of Racial Purification.

richwicks says

He is not mentioned at all in Roman history at the time and Jewish history

Actually, he was mentioned by Flavius Josephus, a Jew who became a Roman citizen, around AD 94:

About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared.

More evidence that the Nazis were interested in ramping up the Holocaust precisely because they thought they might lose the War, is the ordering of Hungarian Jews - also used them as labor, but by Hungary - to Nazi Camps, over the objections of Admiral Horthy, the dictator of Hungary at the time.

In fact, a big reason for the Nazi Invasion of Hungary in 1944 was Horthy's refusal to deport his Jews.
https://momentmag.com/horthy-jews-budapest/

It's also interesting that Hungary, far less resourced than the 3rd Reich in 1944, had no lack of food to keep Hungarian Jews fed as they labored, which is a point of evidence against the "But starvation was effecting everybody so of course in the camps, they were low priority" excuse offered by Denialists/

AmericanKulak says

richwicks says

It's a 9th century inscription. King David was before Christ.

Yes, it's a 9th Century BC inscription. David is estimated to have lived around the 11-10th Century BC

Alright, my mistake, but a single inscription by Israelis doesn't do much to convince me.

Many Dead Sea Scrolls have been demonstrated to be forgeries, and perhaps all of them are. There's no recording of King David outside of Israeli "scholars", and I know that they lie even in the modern day. Dead Sea Scrolls are one example but they are numerous.

Nobody by the Jews record an "Israel". The Jewish people in Palestine are very likely to have ALWAYS been a minority and there was never a historical Israel. Israel is more likely to be a group of people, not a nation, like the Roma - the Gypsies.

There's a single piece of evidence, which could easily be a forgery, found by a nation, that has been built on lie, after lie. Without additional evidence, with only a SINGLE piece of evidence, I'm going to discount this since I know the recent history of what is now Israel, and I know how many lies were fabricated to bring it into creation.

@richwicks

1. Godwin’s law is unfortunately true as you have amply illustrated.

2. The theory of evolution is a joke. Complex functional structures can never arise from random mutation of genetic codes + survival of the fittest no matter how long the time frame.

AmericanKulak says

The Germans were interested in reducing the need for thousands of people, dump trucks, etc. to create mass graves when they needed every last piece of machinery and man for the Front. The first big CC camp, Buchenwald, that at first had mostly political enemies of the 3rd Reich used the Weimar City Crematorium, but at one point 90% of the bodies being burned there came from the camp, the city managers were aggravated, so the SS began ordering crematoria. This allowed them to spare having to drag 100s, later 1000s of ~150lb bodies onto trucks for burial elsewhere at the point the Nazis were having to use old women to man (pardon the pun) Flak Guns.

Where are the mass graves that were being used prior to this next solution?

What would be the point of dragging a bunch of people to a camp, just to kill them? Why not just feed carbon monoxide into the train cars as they drove them to the "extermination camps"? Why did the "extermination camps" have dormitories and kitchens? Why would Zyklon-B be repurposed to exterminate people? Why not just remove oxygen from the atmosphere and feed that in? That's easy, and CHEAP to do, why go through the trouble of using a cyanide poison that was designed initially as a pesticide by Fritz Haber (a true genius BTW - a Jewish scientist that created ammonium nitrate, which the modern world depends on)?

Again, I HATE talking about this, because I'm up against 70 years of propaganda. This is one of those "Big Lies" Joseph Goebbels was talking about. There's plenty of them.

richwicks says

Alright, my mistake, but a single inscription by Israelis doesn't do much to convince me.

It wasn't made by Israelis - it's made by Arameans, another group that lived around modern day Damascus, boasting of their victory over the Israelites, specifically Jehoram son of Ahab, of the line of the House of David. These individuals are mentioned in 2 Kings.

So it's an argument for existence from an enemy.

richwicks says

Why not just feed carbon monoxide into the train cars as they drove them to the "extermination camps"?

They did that! In fact, the first people killed in that way I believe (from memory) were Polish civilians in 1939.

The judgement as to whether somebody was fit for labor or too sick for it was done in the camps, not by the capturing authorities. Also, people became ill and unfit in the camps.

richwicks says

Why did the "extermination camps" have dormitories and kitchens?

Because they are labor camps. They also had a large staff. The death camps for the most part are sub sections or satellite camps of the main labor camps.

richwicks says

Why would Zyklon-B be repurposed to exterminate people?

Already in abundance because of the need to constantly de-infect all the lice and bugs in the camps from the overcrowding. Zyklon B was a common pest control tool already in Germany.

richwicks says

Again, I HATE talking about this, because I'm up against 70 years of propaganda. This is one of those "Big Lies" Joseph Goebbels was talking about. There's plenty of them.

For me, the calculus is simple. We have 1000s upon 1000s of pages of logistics regarding the camps. We have train routing schedules. We have policy sheets and orders down to the most mundane shit for the camps. We have tens of thousands of testimonies from survivors, camp guards, liberators, eyewitnesses, etc.

Taking that into consideration, and the fact that all Socialism leads to mass murder, I'll need extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims.

Undoctored says

The theory of evolution is a joke. Complex functional structures can never arise from random mutation of genetic codes + survival of the fittest no matter how long the time frame.

The computer chip you're using right now is a result of analogues to genetic mutations and survival of the fittest. It was routed by simulated annealing. Nobody routes chips by hand today, and haven't since the 1980s. The layout is done entirely through genetic algorithms. It's millions of transistors.

It's not just routed once, it's routed thousands of times, over and over again, approaching a local minima. It converges, and when it does, it's "good enough", it doesn't improve appreciably, and any further generations in "children" are only negligibly useful.

You'd be shocked how often evolutionary algorithms are used and how well they work. Nobody programmed the Tesla cars to do automatic navigation, those are evolutionary algorithms. Engineers don't understand the solution, they just test the fuck out of it to see it works 99.99% of the time, but there's that 0.01% When they run into some new input, it's entirely unpredictable and you end up with a car crash and possibly a dead occupant.

richwicks says

The computer chip you're using right now is a result of analogues to genetic mutations and survival of the fittest. It was routed by simulated annealing. Nobody routes chips by hand today, and haven't since the 1980s. The layout is done entirely through genetic algorithms. It's millions of transistors.

Right. But in 4-5 Billion years, no semiconductor spontaneously arose on this massive rock with a wide range of chemical and physical activity.

In response to AmericanKulak

I may respond tomorrow. It's 19:38, I'm used to going to bed very early now, I'm going to bed.

My point is there were no "death camps", they were simply slave labor camps. What happened at the end of the war is that the Allies cut off supply lines to them because these slave labor camps were making goods for the war - destroying their supply abilities killed the war effort for the Germans. That's why there were terribly starved inmates, the Allies cut off supply lines intentionally. This created a dual problem, not only did the Germans have the inability to produce goods, they have a bunch of starving inmates they had to deal with.

There were no good sides in that war, there never are.

War is an evil thing maybe the most evil thing - state sanctioned murder, propaganda covers that up. Propaganda makes it black and white instead of what it really is - black and black.

DD214 says

1. What was God doing before he started creating ?

2. Where was God, if there was nothing before he started creating ?

3. According to the physicists etc. there was nothing so how did God come out of nothing ?

I stand by my original answer in post 2.

But to elaborate:

1. God existed before time, He created time. But perhaps He was contemplating how to make women appealing to men, so he invented boobs, right @CisTits?

2. The same place He is now. Everywhere.

3. According to the God who created the physicists and physics, “Before Abraham Was I Am”

(John 8:58)

“Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.”

The phrase “I am” in John 8:58 comes from two Greek words “egō” and “eimi.” The Strong’s Definitions are:

“egō : “I” (only expressed when emphatic): – I, me.”
“eimi: I exist (used only when emphatic): – am, have been, X it is I, was.” Jesus/God simply states, I am. By I am he means just what he says, no beginning, no end, He just exists. And everything else we know, was made by Him.

The question that should concern everyone who doesn’t know God, is will I spend eternity with God, or will I be eternally separated from God? Separation from God is a living hell. But it does not have to be that way, even though most will choose the later. The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.

AmericanKulak says

richwicks says

The computer chip you're using right now is a result of analogues to genetic mutations and survival of the fittest. It was routed by simulated annealing. Nobody routes chips by hand today, and haven't since the 1980s. The layout is done entirely through genetic algorithms. It's millions of transistors.

Right. But in 4-5 Billion years, no semiconductor spontaneously arose on this massive rock with a wide range of chemical and physical activity.

Maybe in 4-5 billion years, some intelligent machine might be wondering how life began for it?

You're doing an argument from ignorance. You don't know therefore - god. I'm just saying I don't know therefore, I don't know but I don't make an assumption that it's been explained by some primitive society that thought the Earth was flat. I just don't know.

I DO know, however, evolutionary systems work and they are well tested, not only in computer algorithms but in biological systems in the lab, and it's been observed in nature. It's not horribly difficult to draw a conclusion from that. Evolution doesn't explain abiogenesis. Abiogenesis is an entirely different area for study from evolution although they would inevitably converge if a good hypothesis or theory could be made.

richwicks says

there were no "death camps", they were simply slave labor camps

I don't know enough to say for sure about camps in the east, like Poland, but from living in Munich I know that Dachau was not a death camp in the sense that large numbers were not murdered outright there.

I do have a Polish Catholic relative who was an official in his town and sent to Dachau by the Germans. He became very ill in the camp and was released a few days before he died, so that they would not have to count his death in the camp.

Dachau was torn down after the war, but because so many people wanted to see it, they reconstructed some barracks there. From visiting twice, I know that a lot of people seem disappointed when they find out that Dachau was not a place where people were deliberately killed, only a place where political prisoners were kept in such harsh conditions that many of them died.

richwicks says

You're doing an argument for ignorance. You don't know therefore - god. I'm just saying I don't know therefore, I don't know but I don't make an assumption that it's been explained by some primitive society that thought the Earth was flat. I just don't know.

I'm saying if there's a code, there's probably a coder. That's the experience so far.

I understand abiogenesis vs. evolution. The problem is that neo-spontaneous generation from warm wet soups (or warm wet vents) is being pushed as the default when there is no evidence whatsoever for it.

Undoctored says

Complex functional structures can never arise from random mutation of genetic codes + survival of the fittest no matter how long the time frame.

I don't see why not.

You can use mutation and selection to end up with quite complex structures in computer simulations, and you can clearly select for different traits in domestic animals.

Patrick says

Undoctored says

Complex functional structures can never arise from random mutation of genetic codes + survival of the fittest no matter how long the time frame.

I don't see why not.

You can use mutation and selection to end up with quite complex structures in computer simulations, and you can clearly select for different traits in domestic animals.

If life can arise spontaneously from non life, it should be even easier to reanimate the dead, like Frankenstein or The Trible revived by Khan Noonien Singh‘s blood in the new Star Trek. But alas, that, like modern origin myths promoted by “science” falsely so called, is all science fiction. Humans have become so “smart” that they have convinced themselves their Creator doesn’t exist which means of course they are not accountable to Him. How convenient!

PeopleUnited says

If life can arise spontaneously from non life, it should be even easier to reanimate the dead

That doesn't seem to follow. Maybe life can arise from non-life, but the dead are rapidly decaying from the moment of death.

Life is like a bubble. When the bubble is popped, it's gone. It can't be unpopped.

Conversations with God - Book 1 by Neal Donald Walsch is a book that would give you (in my opinion) a good articulated response better than word salad.

Patrick says

Life is like a bubble. When the bubble is popped, it's gone. It can't be unpopped.

From that perspective life is pretty fragile, and takes the perfect conditions to even happen. You know perfection is one of God’s characteristics.

And the same God that created life, created the decay of the dead to recycle the body. But, then again, decay is a consequence of sin. Prior to sin the world God created was free from death and decay. What we know as the natural world is not natural at all, it is a byproduct of the corruption of sin.

But back to my point a freshly dead body has all the ingredients needed for life. So why would it not be a simple thing to reanimate the dead? You may well live to see the day that the dead rise. Not like the walking dead but more like the mouse in the Green Mile. Think it can’t happen? It already has, and Revelation says it will again. Both the 2 witnesses and the antichrist will rise from death.

richwicks says

You end up with the same problem though asking how the universe started - how did god start?

This.

Fact is not a single person can prove Jesus existed as a person or there's a god at all. Many/most have been fooled into thinking covid is dangerous. 160 years ago we had spears on the ends of muskets to stab people with. These were the people that gave us our history.

Again, feel free to believe, but if I'm being blunt, don't be obtuse. The evidence is blatantly clear in the last fucking 20 years that humans aren't tracking their shit/history properly. Somehow 2k years ago they got it right? My mind is still boggled why this is still a conversation. Have your religion, but just understand like anything humans do, it's to extract money from you. In some cases to fuck your children. Maybe I'm a pessimist, but this is the reality I've witnessed my whole life being someone raised Catholic. It's a fucking con. They also have more money than the biggest corps on the planet if you factor in real estate.

Catholics and Jews could sell their assets (the churches) and give every follower $500k tomorrow. That's not hyperbolic. They own some of the most treasured real estate on the planet in the perfect locations. Religion is a business. It's okay to admit it.

richwicks says

The computer chip you're using right now is a result of analogues to genetic mutations and survival of the fittest.

Analogues, schmanalogues. All computer chips are the result of intelligent design, regardless of whether Monte Carlo methods are employed in the design process.

Undoctored says

intelligent design

What is intelligent design?

A: Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific set of beliefs based on the notion that life on earth is so complex that it cannot be explained by the scientific theory of evolution and therefore must have been designed by a supernatural entity.

https://www.aclu.org/other/frequently-asked-questions-about-intelligent-design#:~:text=Q%3A%20What%20is%20intelligent%20design,designed%20by%20a%20supernatural%20entity.

PeopleUnited says

But back to my point a freshly dead body has all the ingredients needed for life. So why would it not be a simple thing to reanimate the dead?

Is Death Real? New Experiments Raise Important Questions On What It Means To Die

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a42216404/is-death-revesible/

ElYorsh says

Conversations with God - Book 1 by Neal Donald Walsch is a book that would give you (in my opinion) a good articulated response better than word salad.

I will have a look - tired of word salads

PeopleUnited says

The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.

First Question: For those who lived were before Christ what is their fate ?

Second Question: If "God" as you state existed before "time", than what are we to make of either ?

Third Question: The dead shall rise again - now if someone has been cremated, the ashes scattered - the Catholic Church talks in terms of the "Spiritual" Body.

Which are you talking about ? Physical or Spiritual and if the soul departs the body upon death, why is there a need to recreate it ?

https://www.tulipcremation.com/articles/tulip-expert-guides/cremation/catholic-cremation-beliefs.html

DD214,

Questions for you:

1. Does the Universe, at some point 'end?' If it does, isn't there something on the other side?

2. Scientifically, can matter be created out of nothing?

3. The third of the ten commandments reads: “Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.”
- Exodus 20:7 Do YOU ever use the name of Jesus Christ in vain? If you do, why is that? Could it be that you know in your heart who he really is?

I've known Jews, Muslims, professed atheists, etc. use the name of Jesus Christ in vain. Why do you think that is?

Why do people, who have been exposed to the truth in Christ, really reject Him? Here's what the Bible says about such people:

"For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.

He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

AND THIS IS THE CONDEMNATION, THAT LIGHT IS COME INTO THE WORLD, AND MEN LOVED DARKNESS RATHER THAN LIGHT, BECAUSE THEIR DEEDS WERE EVIL."

FOR EVERY ONE THAT DOETH EVIL HATETH LIGHT, NEITHER COMETH TO THE LIGHT, LEST HIS DEEDS SHOULD BE REPROVED.

But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God." - Gospel of John 3:17-21

In other words, people do not reject Jesus Christ for philosophical or scientific reasons. They reject Him because they refuse to allow Him to be Lord of Lords and King of Kings over their life. They prefer their rebellion and find ways in order to justify, to themselves, their rejection of Him.

Long time ago watched a show in KQED, sounds like fictitious character "Jesus" was a sequel of "Julius Caesar" to control the population. From the political point of view most of the general population are dumb and stupid often need to control them with "god" a proved effective drug.

DD214 says

Undoctored says

intelligent design

What is intelligent design?

[quoting ACLU (?!) ]

“… pseudoscientific set of beliefs …”

I said computer chips are made by intelligent design. You doubt this?

Let’s face it, the universe and how it was created is a mystery. If there is an answer our minds are possibly incapable of understanding it.

However this world and its inhabitants came to be, the complexity, variety, and interdependence of life is too great to be explained by descent with purposeless modification over generations and generations from a common primitive ancestor.

DD214 says

What was God doing before he started creating ?

Where was God, if there was nothing before he started creating ?

According to the physicists etc. there was nothing so how did God come out of nothing ?

Whatever He wants, He's God.

Who said there was nothing? And how would any physicist know since they weren't there?

Either God is all powerful, capable of anything, or He's not God. God has no limitations when it comes to space or time. These are His constructs, but He does not have to subject Himself to them in any way.

DD214 says

No - it is not absurd. Thinking the universe, humans etc. were created in 6 days as we know them (24 hours) is absurd.

How do you know what length of time a "day" represented? And again, if God can't create the world in six days, He's not God.

DD214 says

but is that the case.

Of course not. The same as you attempting to limit Him to human standards for what He can do. If you want to know who God is, read the book He made for you.
href="/post/1378027?start=1#comment-1909077">WookieMan says

There's not a single iota of evidence to state otherwise.

The walls of Jerusalem fell outward. There's your iota. Lots more if you do your research.

WookieMan says

richwicks says

You end up with the same problem though asking how the universe started - how did god start?

This.

If God has a beginning, He's not God.

DD214 says

First Question: For those who lived were before Christ what is their fate ?

Jesus tells a parable of a rich man who upon dying goes to hell, and a poor man who goes to Heaven. Jesus sacrifice is the even that restored the broken relationship, before His death, even during His life, this had not been accomplished yet. In the Old Testament it says Abraham believed, and it was accounted to him as righteousness. Again, is God constrained by time, or does Jesus sacrifice reach from the first man to the last in it's power to redeem?

DD214 says

Which are you talking about ? Physical or Spiritual and if the soul departs the body upon death, why is there a need to recreate it ?

To what purpose do they rise? I believe the context is judgement. In that case why would it be anything other than the soul, which is eternal.

RayAmerica says

The third of the ten commandments reads

The Bible clearly states the commandments where not created to save man, but to point out his need for salvation. If your salvation hinges on what you do, you are going to hell, we all are. It is only through grace by the free gift of salvation through Jesus Christ that anyone can be saved.

@DD214

Is any physicist’s account of how the world came to be not a word salad? If not, please provide one such account and explain why it is not a word salad in contrast to “Thousands of years ago, there was a void. Then, God, who has always existed, called the world into being where there once was only that void.”