Often when a Christian points out that God created the universe, the skeptic will reply; “Then who made God?”. This response is based on the Law of Causality. It is taken for granted that everything needs a cause. In this way the skeptic is attempting to reduce the claim of God creating the universe to a logical absurdity; the problem then becomes who made the thing that made the thing that made God? …and so on …and so on …and so on.
So why then doesn’t God need a cause? Because the skeptics question regarding who made God doesn’t correctly understand the Law of Causality. This law does not say that everything needs a cause. What the law does say is that everything that comes into being must have a cause. If a thing has a beginning, then it must have a cause. Of course this does not apply to God because the Bible points out that God is eternal. God does not have a beginning and thus he didn’t need a cause.
The skeptic will likely respond; “Hold on a minute! If you can claim that God is eternal and thus needs no explanation for his cause, then I can say that the universe is eternal and thus the universe needs no cause (God!) to explain its existence!”. While this response is logical, it is not consistent with the observable scientific evidence which demonstrates that the universe is not eternal. Scientists agree that the universe had a beginning; the widely accepted Big Bang theory holds that prior to the “big bang” the universe simply did not exist. Likewise, the second law of thermodynamics demands that the universe cannot be eternal. There are many other scientifically observable conditions that demonstrate that the universe has not always existed.
It needs to be understood that there are only two possibilities for anything that exists;
- It has always existed and is therefore uncaused – in which case the Law of Causality does not apply.
- It came into being and therefore had a cause – in which case the Law of Causality does apply.
As pointed out above, the overwhelming scientific evidence indicates the universe had a beginning, so it must be caused by something else: by something outside itself. This conclusion is not simply based on the claims found in the Bible. This conclusion is based upon logical understanding of the Law of Causality which does not apply to things that do not have a beginning.
Indeed, the Bible does claim that the “something else” that made the universe is God. The Bible is making the claim that God is the something else – outside the universe itself – that brought the universe into existence. The bible is giving us a logically coherent explanation when it makes this claim. The bible also points out that God is eternal – he is not a created thing, he has always existed. Thus the Law of Causality does not apply to God.
When we as Christians make the claim that God created the universe, we should also point out that we are simultaneously claiming that God is the eternal being who was not created. God is a being that has always existed. It makes no logical sense to ask who or what created a being that was never created in the first place!