Who Created God?

by Jonathan Sarfati

This is often asked of Christians. But God by definition is the uncreated creator of the universe, so the question “Who created God?” is illogical, just like “To whom is the bachelor married?”.

So a more sophisticated questioner might ask: “If the universe needs a cause, then why doesn’t God need a cause? And if God doesn’t need a cause, why should the universe need a cause?” In reply, Christians should use the following reasoning:

1. Everything which has a beginning has a cause.1
2. The universe has a beginning.
3. Therefore the universe has a cause.

It’s important to stress the words in bold type. The universe requires a cause because it had a beginning, as will be shown below. God, unlike the universe, had no beginning, so doesn’t need a cause. In addition, Einstein’s general relativity, which has much experimental support, shows that time is linked to matter and space. So time itself would have begun along with matter and space. Since God, by definition, is the Creator of the whole universe, he is the Creator of time. Therefore He is not limited by the time dimension He created, so has no beginning in time. Therefore He doesn’t have a cause.

In contrast, there is good evidence that the universe had a beginning. This can be shown from the Laws of Thermodynamics, the most fundamental laws of the physical sciences.

• 1st Law: The total amount of mass-energy in the universe is constant.
• 2nd Law: The amount of energy available for work is running out, or entropy is increasing to a maximum.

If the total amount of mass-energy is limited, and the amount of usable energy is decreasing, then the universe cannot have existed forever, otherwise it would already have exhausted all usable energy. For example, all radioactive atoms would have decayed, every part of the universe would be the same temperature, and no further work would be possible. So the best solution is that the universe must have been created with a lot of usable energy, and is now running down.2

Now, what if the questioner accepts that the universe had a beginning, but not that it needs a cause? But it is self-evident that things that begin have a cause no-one really denies it in his heart. All science, history and law enforcement would collapse if this law of cause and effect were denied.3 Also, the universe cannot be self-caused nothing can create itself, because that would mean that it existed before it was brought into existence, a logical absurdity.

In Summary

• The universe (including time itself) can be shown to have a beginning.
• It is unreasonable to believe something could begin to exist without a cause.
• The universe therefore requires a cause, just as Genesis 1:1 and Romans 1:20 teach.
• God, as creator of time, is outside of time. Since therefore He has no beginning in time, He has always existed, so doesn’t need a cause.4

See also my more technical version of this article, which answers some objections.

Notes

1. Actually, the word “cause” has several different meanings in philosophy. But in this article, I am referring to the efficient cause, the chief agent causing something to be made. Return to text.
2. Oscillating (yoyo) universe ideas were popularized by atheists like the late Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov solely to avoid the notion of a beginning, with its implications of a Creator. But the Laws of thermodynamics undercut that argument as each one of the hypothetical cycles would exhaust more and more usable energy. This means every cycle would be larger and longer than the previous one, so looking back in time there would be smaller and smaller cycles. So the multicycle model could have an infinite future, but can only have a finite past. Also, there is far too little mass to stop expansion and allow cycling in the first place, and no known mechanism would allow a bounce back after a hypothetical “big crunch”. See the references in Note 4 for more details. Return to text.
3. Some physicists assert that quantum mechanics violates this cause/effect principle and can produce something for nothing, but this is not so. Theories that the universe is a quantum fluctuation must presuppose that there was something to fluctuate their “quantum vacuum” is lot of matter-antimatter potential not “nothing”. Also, if there is no cause, there is no explanation why this particular universe appeared at a particular time, nor why it was a universe and not, say, a banana or cat which appeared. This universe can’t have any properties to explain its preferential coming into existence, because it wouldn’t have any properties until it actually came into existence. Return to text.
4. More information can be found in William Lane Craig, Apologetics: An Introduction (Chicago: Moody, 1984) and The Existence of God and the Beginning of the Universe; Norman L Geisler, Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker, 1976). But beware of the unfortunate (and unnecessary) friendliness towards the unscriptural “big bang” theory. Return to text.

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