Okay, first and foremost, I am an atheist and this is just a little play into the realm of devil's advocacy. I am posting this partly because I am convinced it could explain away the apparent paradox of god's creation, and partly because I love sparking discussion, so here goes.

Earlier this week I was reading A Brief History of Time. Some of it is over my head, but I understand the gist of it... so far. Anyway, in it, Hawkings addressed the issues of time, space, and spacetime. It was then that he explained how human concept of time is completely based on the space that our universe exists in. No space, no time. This is why the theory of relativity works, in fact. Were our time not connected to our space, relativity would cease to function.

So, thinking through this, if it was in fact the Big Bang that "began" the universe as we know it (and I believe that is what happened), then that means that before the Big Bang, space did not exist. This is proven by the idea that space has been constantly expanding since the Big Bang. Thus, before Big Bang, there would have been no space, and therefore no time, at least in human terms. Thus, it would have been entirely possible for a god like being to have been "created" (loosely, cause I still don't know what would have created him/her/it) and yet seem eternal because the "time" in which he was created would be completely incomprehensible to humans. He/her/it may as well be eternal, because there is no possible way for humans to understand "when" he/her/it was born.

So, thoughts anyone?