Who Created God?

When my brother and I were young and would play together, often one of us would be more “in control” of what we were doing. By this I mean that we would each control our various toys, but one of us would direct the overall storyline of whatever it was our toys were doing, while the other would, in a sense, simply be along for the ride. Generally, there would be some sort of problem to which our toys must find a solution. But only one of us knew the solution, and would direct events to move toward that solution, while the other would be in the dark and trying to solve the problem as if watching a movie or playing a video game.

I remember one such time when I was “in control” of the storyline. There was amongst our toys an imposter, an alien who appeared exactly like the toy it was impersonating. The problem was that the toys needed to discover which one was the alien. My brother cleverly came up with the idea of his toys asking each other toy questions that only the true individual would know, in order to weed out the imposter. The only problem was that this was not the solution I had in mind. So in order to preserve my desired storyline, I bent the rules by granting this alien the ability to read minds and discover the answer to any question it might be asked. Needless to say, this was frustrating to my brother. Without any fixed rules, I could change whatever I needed to in order to lead to the conclusion I wanted.

If God created the universe, who created God? This is a question asked by young children as well as highly intelligent skeptics. And similar to my story above, it may be frustrating if we simply assert that God must exist because everything else that exists must have a cause. If asked what caused or created God, we will answer by saying that God Himself is eternal and uncreated and so does not need a cause. But didn’t we just say that everything must have a cause? It’s easy to see why we appear to be bending the rules in our favor, just like in my example above, reasoning in a circle in order to support the conclusion we had decided on in the first place.

So how do we justify exempting God from the need for a creator? To get a better idea of the problem, let’s analyze the above statement in syllogistic form:

Premise 1: Everything that exists must have a cause.

Premise 2: The universe exists.

Conclusion: Therefore, the universe must have a cause.

The problem with this syllogism is the first premise. If it’s true, then God Himself must also have a cause; there could be nothing that did not have a cause. If everything had a cause, in order to avoid an infinite series or previous causes, something at some point had to have been its own cause before causing everything else (which is clearly impossible, as it would have to exist to cause itself but at the same time not yet exist in order to be caused!).

Therefore, because there are things that exist, the first premise cannot be true. It can be fixed, however, by a slight adjustment:

Premise 1: Everything that begins to exist must have a cause.

This slight change is no longer internally contradictory, and also allows for God’s exemption from the need for a cause. But we must be clear about why God can be exempt. We are not starting with the idea of God, declaring that He has no need for a cause and then working backwards to find a way to justify this belief. Rather, we can reason from the bottom up, beginning with the simple observation that there are things that do exist. In order for that to be the case, at least one of them must not have had a cause. We call this necessary cause “God.” Of course, this proves nothing more than the Prime Mover postulated by Aristotle; this line of reasoning is not sufficient to establish the existence of a God who hears our prayers, is morally perfect, loves us, or has any of the other qualities of the Christian God. But, of course, these points are beyond the intent of this argument.

At this point we are moving in the right direction, but we have not yet made a convincing case. All we have done thus far is show that logically, there must be something that has existed eternally and had no beginning or cause. Why is it necessary that this be God? Why not the universe itself? Indeed, this is what many philosophers and scientists throughout history have assumed.

But there are two problems with this idea. The first is that more recent scientific evidence points very strongly to a beginning to the universe, roughly 13.7 billion years ago, out of a single point of infinite density and energy. It is for this reason that it is primarily Atheists who have resisted the Big Bang hypothesis and attempted to show that the universe did not have a beginning after all. The second problem is more logical in nature: it is impossible for there to have been an infinite series of moments in the past. If there were, we would never have reached the present moment. The fact that we are here, now, indicates that however many moments have occured before now, the amount must be finite.

Therefore, since the universe itself could not be the entity that has existed eternally, it must be something other than (and outside of) the universe. As I said, we still have a long way to go before supporting any of the other attributes of God, but that is not the present purpose. For now, I hope I have shown that it is not “bending the rules” to suggest that God is uncaused and had no beginning. And we must strive to make this point clear whenever discussing the matter with skeptics, so that it never appears that we are arguing in circles and contradicting ourselves merely in order to conveniently support our own presuppositions.