Einstein MUST Have Believed in a Creator

One of the many things I genuinely appreciate about Ray Comfort (and there are many) is that he actually reads and replies to some of the comments in his blog. He does not ignore them, nor does he only reply to those praising him. As such, I was going back through his recent posts since he posted that despicable post about Einstein believing that the Bible is the "Word of God." In a comment to the post Quote-mining From an Atheist Site, one individual writes:

Seriously, Ray, I think that it is disingenuous of you to have that quote from Einstein at the header of your website.

Einstein was not a Christian, and he did not believe in Jesus, nor did he beleive [sic] in a personal God.

You should remove that quote and replace it with some bible verse.

To this, Ray had the following to say:

I have never said that Einstein was a Christian, that he believed in Jesus or in a personal God. He wasn't dumb. He knew there was a Creator, because creation couldn't have created itself. Something that didn't exist, can't create itself...because it didn't exist. It's impossible. Whatever created, had to be eternal. That's obvious to a thinking person. (emphasis added)

Firstly, from this I have a new quote I can mine to put in my header, namely:

I have never said that Einstein was a Christian, that he believed in Jesus or in a personal God. He wasn't dumb.

But secondly, I think this comment really sheds light on why he uses these mined quotes and also how he could so mangle a quote by reading his own view into it as to argue that Einstein believed the Bible was the "Word of God." It is because Ray's argument is that Einstein must have believed in God. He says that Einstein knew there was a Creator and then tacks on his argument about creation couldn't have created itself. Where has Einstein ever said this? Where has he ever said there was a Creator? He lived a little before the time of Hawking's developments, but I am sure he wouldn't play a god of the gaps type argument.

Nonetheless, this post shows why Ray interprets the quotes the way he does. He doesn't understand how someone could not believe the same as He. As such, he reads his own arguments, understanding, and definitions into the writings of great men. To his oft-repeated argument:

Something that didn't exist, can't create itself...because it didn't exist. It's impossible. Whatever created, had to be eternal. That's obvious to a thinking person.

Then, as a "thinking" person, Ray, you must also concede that the Creator must have at a Creator-creating Creator. After all, the Creator "can't create itself... because it didn't exist."

I know what he's thinking: "But ah! JT! That only applies to things that didn't exist; God, however, always existed." That's Ray's false premise. "Something that didn't exist." Absolutely, something that didn't exist could not create itself. But that argument for God only works if you assume that everything at one point didn't exist and that God always existed. That is called the fallacy of begging the question and an arbitrary false premise.

As anyone who has read Stephen Hawking's many books and articles knows, which you must have seeing as how you quote him in your header. The quote Ray has mined from Stephen Hawking comes from Chapter 8: The Origin and Fate of the Universe from his bestselling book A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (it may have also come from A Briefer History of Time, but I am still in the middle of that book). The quote comes from roughly the middle of it when he is discussing the governance of the universe and some people's view of the role of God. In the same fashion as Ray, I will also quote from the same Chapter 8, with context, by leaving you the concluding paragraph of that chapter:

The idea that space and time may form a closed surface without boundary also has profound implications for the role of God in the affairs of the universe. With the success of scientific theories in describing events, most people have come to believe that God allows the universe to evolve according to a set of laws and does not intervene in the universe to break these laws. However, the laws do not tell us what the universe should have looked like when it started -- it would still be up to God to wind up the clockwork and choose how to start it off. So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?