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This post is an an attempt to flesh out part of my creed, see that post to get broader sense of what I believe or ignore it and just take this post as it is.

There is a classic riddle which sounds pretty silly but which contains an interesting philosophical point, the riddle goes as follows: “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” The tricky part in this riddle is of course that the chicken hatches from an egg but the chicken also lays eggs, so whatever you answer there is an example which shows the opposite to be true. I was not planning on making any deeper philosophical result from this riddle but the fact that everything comes from something…

We, as humans, live in a world ruled by time and by the laws of cause and effect, what happens now depends on what happened before and will affect what will happen in the future. If there is a mountain of dishes in my kitchen sink it is because I (or someone else who sneaks in when I sleep) have put it there, and the dishes are dirty because I or a guest of mine (or someone who sneaks in when I sleep) have eaten from them and left some traces of food on them. If I clean the dishes this will make it so that for a (very) short while into the future they will actually be clean.

Okay, lets be philosophical…

I exist right now, this is the very basis of all my knowledge and the only thing I can be really sure of. Since I exist now there are only two possibilities (that I can think of), either I have always existed or I came into existence at some point in time. I cannot remember having always existed (but I have a very weak memory of my childhood and all things are possible I guess) so I tend to hypothesize that I came into existence at some point in time and I believe that my parents had something to do with it. So, I exist because of my parents and they exist because of their parents and so on. In the same way we can start with a stone and go backwards in time, the stone exists because…(actually I have no idea why or how stones are created but I hope you get the point anyway)

But where does it all start? We can follow the chain of cause and effect backwards in time but there has to be some point where it all began. Some people would say that this point is “the big bang”, but what came before that? What made the big bang bang? In the end there has to be something which either has always existed or something which just popped into existence, with no prior cause! None of these options make much sense to us in our world of time. How can something have existed always? How can something happen without a prior cause, how can something just start to exist?

This is as far as our reasoning can take us. I don’t think I have heard a good answer to this from a physicist but they may have some answer and they may even have an answer that I can understand but until someone gives me a very good answer, here is my attempt:

In the beginning was God. He has always existed and He exists outside of time. It is He who is the original cause of everything and it is He who made time itself.

I learned a new English word today, namely the title of this post, “creed”, which is defined as a “system of principles or beliefs”. This is supposed to be my creed, the “creed of Berg” if you wish. It will not be very detailed but my plan is to make more posts on each part of the creed and add them as links from this post later.

I should probably start to say that I belong to a pentecostal church in Sweden and I have been brought up in a Christian family where my parents have even worked as missionaries in Africa so most people would probably think me brainwashed from birth. Nevertheless I am not a person to believe a thing just because someone else tells me to, the things I profess to believe are things I have either worked out for myself or decided to agree with after some study and soul-searching. I am also not sure that all Christians or even all pentecostal Christians would agree with all parts of my world-view (I am pretty sure that many won’t agree with it, at least when I get to the details…). Therefore I will end the introduction of my creed with a declaration that these are my thoughts and my thoughts alone, they should not be seen as the thoughts of my church, my family or my internet service provider.

1. In the beginning was God (What came first?)
2. God created everything
3. God created man in His* image, to have a relationship with Him*
4. Man had (and has) a free will and a capacity to do good or evil
5. Man frequently did (and do) things which were wrong, sins
6. Sin created a barrier between man and God
7. God became a man, Jesus
8. Jesus gave His life to remove the barrier between man and God
9. All men (and women) have an eternal soul
10. After death there will be a judgement and all men will either go to God or away from God

That’s it for now I guess, it probably doesn’t look very thought-provoking, this is more or less what all Christians believe, but it may become more interesting when I manage to flesh it out with more posts which I can add as links to this one.
*I don’t really think that God has a gender but since you have to use some word to refer to Him* I will follow the standard praxis of referring to God as a He.

It is a bit pretentious, I know, this little site of mine. Not only have I switched from my native swedish to the more “international” english, I have also decided to call my new site wisdom.iberg.org, which may make people think that I think that I am wise or some such thing. Oh well, people can think what they want I guess, I only take responsibility for my own thoughts. And that is what this site is about, my thoughts. I guess I could have called it thoughts.iberg.org, but I liked wisdom better. I think thoughts all day long but only the finest and most refined of these thoughts will end up here so this is the wisdom of Berg whether other people find it wise or not.

I don’t have a grand plan for this site, I don’t want to take over the internet or anything, I just want to have a place to collect my thoughts. The world will not end if nobody ever reads it but me but the thoughts will be here for the world to see, if the world is interested.

Since this is the beginning of this site I am not yet sure what pearls of wisdom will end up here but an educated guess would be that I will write about religion/philosophy, some things about computer games, maybe some ramblings about functional design and perhaps a bit about politics.

That’s it for now good folks, I have no idea if there is any content here besides this introduction but there probably will be an update any year or so…;)