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Who made God?
A bright five-year-old, when his friend asked, “Who made God?” answered Richard Dawkins’ query regarding “who designed the designer.” The child didn’t miss a beat, replying “God made his self!” Of course, the child did not understand that self-creation requires existing before you exist, which is meaningless. In contrast, biblical theologians have taught for centuries that God is eternal. Let’s consider this view logically.
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If there ever was a time that absolutely nothing existed, nothing would exist now.
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Something exists now.
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Therefore, there was never a time that absolutely nothing existed.
The above three propositions comprise what is known in formal logic as a valid syllogism. A syllogism is simply a set of three statements. The first statement presents the major premise. The second statement puts forth the minor premise, and the third represents the conclusion, which necessarily follows from the first two premises in a properly constructed syllogism. The statements above represent what formal logic defines as a modus tollens syllogism. The basic format of such a syllogism is:
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If P, then Q.
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Not Q.
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Therefore, not P.
Another way of stating the conclusion, “There never was a time when absolutely nothing existed,” is to remove the double negative and say, “There always was a time when something existed.”
Who made God - What are our alternatives?
The question that then bears asking is, ‘Just what has always existed?’ We have only two options: the material universe comprised of space, time, matter and energy, or an eternal and spiritual God, who exists separately from the material universe. Given that well-respected quantum cosmologists, such as Alexander Vilenkin, believe that science unequivocally shows the universe must have had a beginning at the big bang, that leaves only one other option, God. Since something must be eternally self-existent (not self-caused), and the universe itself does not qualify, the only logical conclusion open to us is that a spiritual, self-sustaining God exists and has existed eternally.
Who made God – Logical Implications
The logical argument for the eternality of God doesn’t represent the only flaw in Dawkins’ reasoning. Christian philosopher William Lane Craig notes that an explanation of an explanation (God’s existence) is logically unnecessary.
In order to recognize an explanation as the best, one needn't have an explanation of the explanation. This is an elementary point concerning inference to the best explanation as practiced in the philosophy of science. If archaeologists digging in the earth were to discover things looking like arrowheads and hatchet heads and pottery shards, they would be justified in inferring that these artifacts are not the chance result of sedimentation and metamorphosis, but products of some unknown group of people, even though they had no explanation of who these people were or where they came from. Similarly, if astronauts were to come upon a pile of machinery on the back side of the moon, they would be justified in inferring that it was the product of intelligent, extra-terrestrial agents, even if they had no idea whatsoever who these extra-terrestrial agents were or how they got there. In order to recognize an explanation as the best, one needn't be able to explain the explanation. In fact, so requiring would lead to an infinite regress of explanations, so that nothing could ever be explained and science would be destroyed. So in the case at hand, in order to recognize that intelligent design is the best explanation of the appearance of design in the universe, one needn't be able to explain the designer.1
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1 http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5493
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