Excellent questions.
First, Coyoteman posted the 8 definitions he got for apologetics; they were fine, but he made an assumption that was incorrect. Philosophy and theology are sciences. That may irritate geologists, chemists, engineers, etcetera, but nonetheless, philosophers and theologists are fellow scientists. They use reason to make logical deductions, just as any scientist uses the evidence you have been discussing. They may not have laboratories with meters, chemicals and such, since they deal in ideas. If one denies that one can deduce truth by use of the mind, I’m afraid all of us are lost, as well as the geologists, chemists and engineers.
Who created the Creator? Nobody. That’s the result of following a cause and effect logic. Every effect (action) has a cause. If one follows causes back, one comes to the realization, there must be a “first cause,” which was not caused by anything else. That is exactly where this thread started, by the claim that “stuff” just appeared, as by magic, from some other dimension. If we’re dealing with some low level management type here, we haven’t got back to the “uncaused” Cause, and we need to keep going. We need not personally talk to the Cause to understand it, any more than we need to feel the bones of a dinosaur to understand what it is. Philosophy is not necessarily religious, but in any secular philosophy class in any college (maybe I shouldn’t make this statement nowadays, but when I was in college, it was so), one of the first questions to be addressed was “Is there a god?” The answer is always, yes. There are a variety of flavors of methods to get there, but it it a logical necessity, and once one has answered that question, there are an infinite number of directions one can go from there to further questions that come from that answer. That is where one may be entering the field of theology. Since you have mentioned the Name, Jesus, you have pretty much delineated Christianity. That takes one into theology. One may investigate the philosophy back to well before Christianity in non religious books/papers, and discover much the same.
Most of these evolution/big bang threads rarely get into the questions you pose, and that is why they end up with name calling and silly arguments over words that without some basis or foundation, have quite different meanings to different people with different assumptions.
One can make philosophical deductions about the “First Cause,” and base one’s beliefs upon that. Further “proof” may have to be accepted from what we refer to as revealed truth. That’s where one has to make some leap, but that is well after one has deduced that the “First Cause” actually exists. That is one of the questions one arrives at after that first philosophical proof. Since this “what/who”, as you put it, exists, what would He want from the creatures He created?
One may deny that the “First Cause” created the universe as presumably, He wrote in the books we are referring to in this thread, but that is quite a different question than whether He exists.
I’m not going to try to explain the philosophies for these questions, because I’m not a philosopher and anyone can look it up, and it’s very easy with computers. You can look up Augustine in the 4-5th centuries, Aquinas in the 13th, or go back in the BC’s where Aquinas started. But be assured, logical truths are not easily denied without giving up logic, and when one does that, he cuts off the limb he’s sitting upon. -Glenn
I have to disagree with you there. I doubt philosophy is a science, and I know theology is not a science unless you are speaking of something like the study of comparative religions (as is often taught in fields such as anthropology).
Theology is not a science because it does not rely on the scientific method. Its "evidence" comes from scripture and divine revelation, not from research and investigation, leading to data and theory. This is the opposite of science.
For most theologies, new discoveries are the last thing that they want to see, as new discoveries might cast doubt on existing belief and dogma!
Once we get back to the unknown “first cause” then we are obviously dealing with the unknown. The unknown in this case being totally unknown with no facts existing to support any hypothesis. Any and all conjectures about the nature of the totally unknown are all equally valid creations of the imagination.