Mind of a Christian

In God's Defense II - God Does Not Need His Own Creator

Note: I'm going to be heavily borrowing from True Reason: Confronting the Irrationality of the New Atheism. Specifically, I will be heavily borrowing from the fourth chapter, "Richard Dawkins's Illusions" by Chuck Edwards.

This is also a continuation of my response to the same person's writing on Wattpad.

One argument against the existence of God goes like this:

"How can a perfect God exist without something or someone to create it and make it perfect?"

Or

"How is it possible for such a perfect being to exist without a creator and yet you say that our universe needs someone else to create it?"

This regression argument is easy to manipulate into a debate on infinite regression. If God has a creator, then who created the creator? Then who created the creator's creator? Then who created the creator of the creator's creator? Then who created the creator of the creator's creator's creator? Then who crea...

Or you can sum it up in a nice infinite while loop:

while (true) { System.out.println("Then who created the creator's creator?"); }

This endless loop shows that it's impossible for God to exist, because you cannot trace how He was created.

Well, no, that's not quite how it works.

Richard Dawkins uses this idea to argue for God's nonexistence, but we'll see that the infinite regression argument doesn't disprove God. Edwards quotes Michael Ruse on this topic:

"'Does [Dawkins] honestly think that no philosopher or theologian has ever thought of or worried about the infinite regress of the cosmological argument?'" (Edwards  49)

If it was that easy to use infinite regression to disprove God, then theism as a whole would have been outright abandoned by now. It would have been gone during the times of Plato an Aristotle, or the Renaissance, or the Enlightenment Era, or the post-World War times. Basically, if logic and philosophy can easily disprove God, then any time period of philosophical growth would have produced a strong philosophical case against the existence of God.

As we can clearly see, this is not the case. Like it or not, you simply cannot deny that religion is still very present in the world, in followers and students of religion alike. You cannot use infinite regression to simply wave away God as if He doesn't exist.

Infinite regression does not apply to God.

The problem of arguing against God's existence using infinite regression, is that infinite regression does not apply to God. However, the regression argument can still argue for the existence of God, and the kalam cosmological argument is just one example of it. We'll look at how Edwards put it:

"In simplified terms, the kalam cosmological argument proposes:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.

2. The universe began to exist.

3. Therefore, the universe has a cause." (Edwards 47)

The kalam cosmological argument, as simplified by Edwards, pretty much lines up with how any person would think the cause-and-effect argument goes. This particular argument is valid, and Edwards expresses that this argument is also sound. I checked its truth tree, there are no counter examples, no loopholes to twist this argument elsewhere.

To say that it's stupid just spits on the face of reason, and no one wants to spit on reason, right?

But what about God Himself? Applying the cause-and-effect argument to God is what leads to infinite regression, which leads one to believe that it is impossible for God to exist.

Surely Edwards clarifies and explains the kalam cosmological argument with this:

"The first point of the kalam cosmological argument is that whatever begins to exist must have a cause. God, by definition, never began to exist. Thus, God is the 'Uncaused Cause,' and the question, where did God come from? is irrelevant." (Edwards 48)

The Wattpad author who this chapter is responding to says it himself that "God is supposed to be someone or something that can exist forever outside of time". In that case, he agrees that God, by definition, exists forever outside of time. With that established, you don't have to keep asking Who created God, and who created that creator?

God does not need His own creator.

If you have any questions or thoughts on this, don't be shy to comment!

Sources:

Edwards, Chuck. "Richard Dawkins's Illusions." True Reason: Confronting the Irrationality of the New Atheism , edited by Tom Gilson, and Carson Weitnauer, Kregel Publications, 2013, pp. 42-59.