Contending For The Faith---Part 26

 

In St. Jude 1:3, we read, "Dearly beloved, taking all care to write unto you concerning your common salvation, I was under a necessity to write unto you: to beseech you to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints." [Emphasis mine]. Contending For The Faith is a series of posts dedicated to apologetics (i.e.,  the intellectual defense of the truth of the Traditional Catholic Faith) to be published the first Monday of each month.  This is the next installment.

Sadly, in this time of Great Apostasy, the faith is under attack like never before, and many Traditionalists don't know their faith well enough to defend it. Remember the words of our first pope, "But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect..." (1Peter 3:16). There are five (5) categories of attacks that will be dealt with in these posts. Attacks against:

• The existence and attributes of God
• The truth of the One True Church established by Christ for the salvation of all 
• The truth of a particular dogma or doctrine of the Church
• The truth of Catholic moral teaching
• The truth of the sedevacantist position as the only Catholic solution to what has happened since Vatican II 

In addition, controversial topics touching on the Faith will sometimes be featured, so that the problem and possible solutions may be better understood. If anyone had suggestions for topics that would fall into any of these categories, you may post them in the comments. I cannot guarantee a post on each one, but each will be carefully considered.

Who Created God?

Everyone who believes in the Christian concept of God, has no doubt heard, at one time or another, "If God created the universe, then who created God?" Inquisitive children, as well as adult skeptics and atheists, will ask this question. Children ask in innocence, and atheists ask in an attempt to confound Christians. After all, if everything needs an explanation of its existence, wouldn't it be the fallacy of special pleading to exempt God from that rule? Hence, if God needs an explanation of His existence, there is something greater than God, and the entire concept of God collapses. You have an infinite regress of causation, with nothing that is ultimate. 

This post will explain how to answer that question when confronted by enemies of the Faith. Besides the citations herein, I give credit to the numerous philosophers and theologians I have read both online and in books. I give all these intellectual giants full credit and attribution for the content of this post.---Introibo 

God: The Uncaused Cause

Noted Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking (d. 2018), in his book A Brief History of Time, asks questions about what started the universe and what makes the universe continue to exist. What theory exists to unify everything? “Or does it need a creator, and, if so, does he have any other effect on the universe? And who created him?” (See A Brief History of Time, [1988], pg. 174). When we examine the concept of God and the history of the universe, we begin to see that these questions are less difficult to answer than we had perhaps imagined—most obviously because they are ill conceived.

The Big Bang Theory (proposed by Roman Catholic priest Fr. Georges Lemaitre) states that the universe—physical time, space, matter, and energy—came into existence cataclysmically roughly13.8 billion years ago. This discovery is based on observations such as the expanding universe and the tendency of energy to spread out or dissipate; the fact that the universe is “winding down” (based on the second law of thermodynamics) implies that the universe will eventually die a “heat death” and thus meet its demise. Such discoveries have remarkably confirmed the Church doctrine of creation ex nihil ("out of nothing"): “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).

Even atheistic scientists acknowledge this scenario. According to the astrophysicists John Barrow and Joseph Silk, “Our new picture is more akin to the traditional metaphysical picture of creation out of nothing, for it predicts a definite beginning to events in time, indeed a definite beginning to time itself.”(See John D. Barrow and Joseph Silk, The Left Hand of Creation, 2d ed. [1993], pg. 38). In fact, Nobel Prize–winning physicist Stephen Weinberg once remarked that the now rejected “Steady State Theory (which views the universe as eternally existent) is philosophically the most attractive theory because it least resembles the account given in Genesis.” (See John D. Barrow, The World within the World [1988], pg. 226; Emphasis mine).

Unfortunately for atheists, the universe did begin, much to Weinberg’s dismay, and the physical state prior to the big bang was literally nothing. By “prior” I don’t mean that there were moments of time before the Big Bang. (By “time” I mean that which is constituted by the succession of events or happenings. If there were no events, there would be no time.) Rather, I refer to the priority of being (“metaphysical priority”): One state of being (God’s timeless existence) serves as the ground for another (temporal, contingent existence). Or we could just speak of God with or without the universe.

Some people would claim that the universe came into existence uncaused out of nothing. One atheist, Michael Martin, says that “this beginning [of the universe] may be uncaused” and that such theories are in fact “being taken seriously by scientists.” (See Michael Martin, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification [1990], pg. 106). However, something cannot come into existence uncaused out of nothing since being cannot come from nonbeing. This is a basic truth about reality itself (i.e., metaphysics); it isn’t, as Martin believes, some culture-bound conviction that will be overturned in some future scientific revolution (comparable to what Newton or Einstein introduced).

Think about it: How can something be produced when absolutely no potentiality exists for its emergence? (By “nothing,” I do not mean subatomic particles or other unobservable entities.) The chances of something coming from absolute nothingness are zero, since there is not even the potentiality for a universe to come into existence. It seems that such claims about something-from-nothing may be rooted in an underlying attempt to avoid the implications of God’s existence. That is, the principle “from nothing, nothing comes” (ex nihilo, nihil fit) would likely be universally assumed by skeptics were it not for the fact that the universe’s beginning greatly resembles the account in Genesis 1:1.

The atheist philosopher Kai Nielsen acknowledges how misplaced is the notion of something coming from nothing: “Suppose you hear a loud bang . . . and you ask me, ‘What made that bang?’ and I reply, ‘Nothing, it just happened.’ You would not accept that. In fact you would find my reply quite unintelligible.” (See Kai Nielsen, Reason and Practice, [1971], pg. 48). 

Answering the Atheists and Skeptics

Against the background information above, one can now attack the question of "So who created God?" in four points:

1. The theist does not claim that whatever exists must have a cause, but whatever begins to exist must have a cause. No right-thinking theist argues that everything must have a cause; if this were the case, ONLY THEN God would need a cause too! Rather, we begin with the fundamental principle about reality that anything that begins to exist has a cause. The universe clearly began and therefore has a cause. On the other hand, the eternal and self-existent God by definition does not need a cause; he is uncaused. When talking to a skeptic, you might be told, “Everything—even the cause of the universe—must itself have a cause.” But the skeptic is making a questionable assumption, one that has no room for a being like God. This is question-begging or assuming what one wants to prove. It’s like saying, “All reality is physical; therefore God can’t exist.” Clearly, all reality is not physical. For example, laws of logic or moral truths (e.g., “torturing babies for fun is wrong”) are not physical but are still obviously real.

2. Start with a non-question-begging beginning point in your discussion, and "everything that begins to exist has a cause" does just that. Thinkers in the past such as Plato and Aristotle assumed that the universe was eternal and needed no caused explanation for its origin. Two hundred years ago atheists assumed the universe’s eternality and that it needed no cause or explanation. If the universe can hypothetically be self-explanatory, then why can’t the same be true for God? However, no one could reasonably accept that something could pop into existence uncaused, out of nothing. Now that contemporary science has revealed that the universe began, many non-theists are squirming at the possible theistic implications of this fact. What I’m saying is that our principle does not rule out the possibility of something being self-existent—whether God or the universe. Ask those who persist in arguing that the universe came from literally nothing, “Why should this be any more likely than its having come from God?” Something coming into existence from nothing is absurd and without any logical, scientific or metaphysical justification.

3. Fourth, certain realities—such as logical laws or mathematical truths—are clearly uncaused, as they are eternal and necessary; therefore, it cannot be true that everything must have a cause. Even if the world did not exist, would the statement 2+2=4 still be true? Of course! Would the law of non-contradiction (A cannot equal non-A) still be true? Yes. Such truths are real (even though they are not physical), but there is no good reason to think that they have been caused. If this is true, why couldn’t we say the same about God himself? The point, again, is that not everything must have a cause.

4. The question “Who made God?” commits the “category fallacy.” It is another form of begging the question. In other words, it eliminates from the outset any possibility of God being the explanatory cause of the universe. How so? The question assumes that everything must be a contingent (dependent) entity and that there can be no such thing as a self-existent and uncaused entity like God. However, God is in a different category than caused entities; to put them in the same category is unfair. It’s like asking, “How does the color green taste?” or, “What flavor is middle C?” God, by definition, is an uncaused, necessary (non-contingent) being. God must not be blamed for not being finite and contingent! If we reframe the question “Who made God?” to clarify our categories, we will find that the question answers itself. Let’s rephrase the question in this way: “What caused the self-existent, uncaused Cause, who is by definition unmakeable, to exist?” Any further questions?

Conclusion

When terms and concepts are clarified, it becomes clear that "Who made God?" is a nonsensical question. Remember the Kalam Cosmological Argument:

• Whatever begins to exist must have a cause
• The universe began to exist (Big Bang Theory)
• Therefore, the universe has a Cause

Since all matter, as well as space and time itself, came into being at the moment of the Big Bang, the Cause must be immaterial, space-less, timeless, and of infinite power. Moreover, the Cause must be a personal agent, for if all the necessary and sufficient conditions for creation always existed, the universe would be eternal. Science has proven what theology always knew; the universe began to exist.  Therefore, the cause must have willed the universe into existence, something only a Personal Agent can do. God, unlike the universe, has no beginning, and therefore needs no explanation or cause of His Existence.