The
following dialogue has taken place countless times in homes with inquisitive
children: “Mommy, who made me?” “God made you, darling.” “Well, Mommy who made
the sky and trees and mountains?” “God made the sky, the trees and the
mountains. Genesis 1:1 says that God made everything.” “Oh . . . well, Mommy
who made God?”
For all
you parents or grandparents out there you recognize the teachable moment that
lies before you. But what do you say? That’s when we all wish for an “easy button.”
Of course, we expect a small child or your average layman to wonder how we
explain the existence of God. However, one may not expect the same from world
renowned scholars and scientists.
Richard
Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist from Oxford, is known for his vitriolic attacks
against God. In his best-selling book, The
God Delusion, he uses the age-old schoolboy teaser as sledgehammer blow
against the foundation of faith, “If we say that God created the universe we
shall have to ask who created God and so on, the only way out of an infinite
regress is to deny God’s existence.”[1]
Other
skeptics have voiced the same criticism, Stephen Hawking, undoubtedly one of
the finest minds in astronomy and physics, wrote in his recent work, The Grand Design, “It is reasonable to
ask who or what created the universe, but if the answer is God, then question
has merely been defected to that of who created God.”[2]
It would
seem that believers are caught dead to rights by kindergartners and eggheads
with an alphabetic parade after their name. While this argument is used by many
atheists to wiggle out from under the existence of God, it is actually a pretty
flimsy objection—a house of cards held together by wisps of smoke.
First, the
question misunderstands the Law of Causality—which does not say that everything needs a cause; it says that
everything that has a beginning has a
cause. However, this does not apply to God because He does not require a cause.
He is eternal (Ps. 90:2), self-sufficient (Is. 40:21-22), and self-existent (Ex.
3:14). He causes all things to be, but He is caused by no one or no thing.
There was no time when God started to exist. He has always been and the
universe is contingent upon Him (Acts 17:28). God cannot not exist; He simply
IS!
Second,
the question commits a logical fallacy known as “category error.” This is a
common hiccup in reasoning that happens when we incorrectly place something into
a class that it doesn’t belong. For instance, consider the following questions,
“What does the color blue taste like?” or “How many seconds are in a mile?” or “Which
side of the circle is shortest?” All of these are absurd questions because they
commit the category error. The same is true of asking, “Who made God?” Since
God is uncaused and eternal it is logically silly to put Him to put in the
group of created, finite, dependent things.
Perhaps,
the Apostle Paul said it best when he wrote to the Colossians about the cosmic
Christ, “For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible
and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things
were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him
all things hold together” (Col. 1:16-17). God is not only the Unmoved Mover of
creation, but the Uncaused Maintainer of creation.
Ultimately,
we are left with only two options: either no
one created something out of nothing or Someone
created something out of nothing. Which view is more reasonable—an uncaused
universe or an uncaused God? Even Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music knew the answer when she sang, “Nothing comes
from nothing. Nothing ever could.” So, if you can’t believe that nothing caused
something, then you don’t have enough faith to be an atheist![3]
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