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Who Created God?
Who Created God?
In “The God Delusion”, Richard Dawkins asks the question, “Who created God?” This is a favorite “gotcha” question of atheists. This is ironic because atheists often believe in abiogenesis, the scientific theory that life originated from non-living matter through natural chemical processes. I say ironic because theists can simply return the volley and ask, “Who created the original non-living matter?” and also, “Who created the natural laws by which chemical processes produced life?”
Both theists and atheists answer that nothing created their “source”. This means both theists and atheists believe in an eternal, uncreated, source of life! And admittedly, neither can explain how their source eternally exists.
So, which best explains the evidence how the original source exists?
- Can an atheist explain how non-living matter existed without having a beginning? No. It is accepted on faith because non-theism needs an alternative explanation other than God.
- Can a theist explain how God exists as a non-conditional, necessary being? No. It too is accepted on faith, not because an alternative explanation is needed, but because God Himself has provided evidence.
For atheists, one of their insurmountable problems is that life comes from non-life, that meaning comes from non-meaning, that rationality comes from non-rationality, and so on. And yet they claim miracles can’t happen!
For theists, is there any problem that comes from the theist’s position? An atheist will simply say the idea of God is the problem! And yet the idea of God does come with evidence (philosophical, theological, historical, and scientific). There is no scientific evidence that abiogenesis exists. That is why it is called a “theory”.
To help with this dilemma, the theist’s position is that a closed system is self-defeating. The solution to the origin of life, meaning, and rationality, how and why, must be outside of the system for these problems to disappear. God is life, meaning, and rationality.
To use an analogy, with full knowledge every analogy is flawed, let’s illustrate that when there is a problem within a system, the only solution must come from the outside:
You are 1 million dollars in debt. Your income cannot even cover the interest rate. Every time you make a payment you therefore get further into debt. There is no solution to the problem because you do not have the ability to pay the debt. No one within your circle of family, friends, or business partners, can help. What is the solution? You need someone outside of your circle, unaffected by the debt, who has the ability and willingness to pay the debt. You need a benefactor.
Atheism has a million-dollar debt problem. It is a closed system. There is nothing outside of that materialistic system that has the ability and will to begin all existence. Therefore, it can’t answer, “Who or what began that which begins everything, and why?”
Theism has the solution because it believes in an open system, a power outside of the finite, material existence, which is divine having no beginning nor need for a beginning.
For atheism, asking who or what created that non-living original matter remains a valid question for which there is no answer. Being a closed system it either accepts that the original matter is eternal, or there is an eternal sequence of created beginnings. That is not very scientific.
For theism, asking who created God doesn’t apply. God being outside the system, outside of time, and outside of the material universe does not have nor need a beginning.
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