[lbo-talk] Neo-Lamarckianism???? Come on!

[C. G. Estabrook]

That's true if the creator is thought of as an existent within the universe, a 
demiurge.  But that is a position that classic Christian theism rejected. 
(Aquinas e.g. held that the universe could be eternal.)  And that is the sort of 
god Hume was rejecting in his critique of the cosmological argument.

But the Christian notion of creation is that it is not a matter of making 
something or causing it to be of the familiar sort.  As people have pointed out 
in this thread, there really is something odd about asking why everything exists.

And Hawking, perhaps surprisingly, endorses that question when he writes,
"You still have the question: why does the universe bother to exist? If
you like, you can define God to be the answer to that question."  --CGE

Jim Farmelant wrote:
> ...
> In his book, *A Brief History of Time*, Hawking
> wrote that if   "the universe is really self-contained, 
> having no boundary or edge, it would have no beginning 
> nor end, would simply be. What place then for a creator?" (p. 157).
> ...