Another Response To Atheists

𝗔𝗡𝗢𝗧𝗛𝗘𝗥 𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗣𝗢𝗡𝗦𝗘 𝗧𝗢 𝗔𝗧𝗛𝗘𝗜𝗦𝗧𝗦
As I continue to field comments (sometimes vitriolic and abusive) from atheists on my YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@kevinsimington2523 I occasionally post a reply to the most commonly raised objections. Here is another of my recent replies, this time a response to the commonly asked question, “𝗪𝗛𝗢 𝗠𝗔𝗗𝗘 𝗚𝗢𝗗?”:

𝗠𝗬 𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗣𝗢𝗡𝗦𝗘
A common objection raised below and also on a couple of the other episodes is regarding the origin of God. During my years of teaching high school students, the question, “𝙒𝙝𝙤 𝙢𝙖𝙙𝙚 𝙂𝙤𝙙?” was probably the one that was most commonly asked. Not surprisingly, the question gets a lot of airplay in the adult world as well. “𝙄𝙛 𝙂𝙤𝙙 𝙢𝙖𝙙𝙚 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜, 𝙬𝙝𝙤 𝙢𝙖𝙙𝙚 𝙂𝙤𝙙?” is one of the sceptic’s favourite questions, asked repeatedly by Richard Dawkins and other outspoken ‘new atheists’. It is wielded like a mighty sword that is designed to cut the legs out from underneath anyone foolish enough to declare their belief in a supernatural Creator.

But the question “𝙒𝙝𝙤 𝙤𝙧 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙢𝙖𝙙𝙚 𝙂𝙤𝙙?” is facile. Because if someone or something else made God then, clearly, the being we are calling ‘God’ is not God at all – he is merely another created being himself. Furthermore, whoever made the being we previously called ‘God’ is clearly greater than ‘God’. Perhaps, this earlier creator is God? But who made him? This kind of thinking leads to an infinite regression of causes.

Proposing a God who is temporally finite and who had a beginning contradicts any sensible definition of God. If there is a God who created our space-time continuum, it is fair to assume that he must exist outside or beyond our space-time continuum and must, therefore, be both immaterial and timeless – having no beginning. This is why I say that the question “𝙒𝙝𝙤 𝙢𝙖𝙙𝙚 𝙂𝙤𝙙?” that many on this discussion thread are asking is facile.

The theistic view that “𝙂𝙤𝙙 𝙢𝙖𝙙𝙚 𝙪𝙨” is not the unanswerable dead end that atheists claim it to be. There is a logical, reasonable answer to the question, “𝙒𝙝𝙤 𝙢𝙖𝙙𝙚 𝙂𝙤𝙙?” The answer lies in the uncaused nature of God himself, as is inferred by logical, philosophical deduction. Let me unpack this line of deductive reasoning in more detail:

> Any Creator of the natural world (the physical universe) must necessarily exist outside of nature and not be bound by it. It or He (let’s stick with “He”) must necessarily be supernatural (meaning beyond nature), as it is a self-defeating statement to say that nature created itself.

> As nature is now understood by science to be the ‘space-time continuum’, meaning that it consists of physical dimensions and lineal time, the Creator must exist outside of those natural constraints. He cannot be bound by the things he created before he created them, nor can he be bound by them afterward.

> Thus, the supernatural Creator of nature is necessarily both timeless and dimensionless. A being who is anything less than this, could not have created our space-time continuum.

> The timelessness of God, in particular, infers ‘causeless-ness’. Cause and effect only apply to lineal time within the natural world, where there is a ‘before’ and an ‘after’. In an atemporal (timeless) realm, ‘before’ and ‘after’ are meaningless, as are the concepts of ‘beginning’ and ‘end’, and ‘cause’ and ‘effect’.

> Thus, if God exists, he must be timeless (eternal) and causeless (uncreated).

This accords with the Christian scriptures, which describe God as “𝙨𝙥𝙞𝙧𝙞𝙩” (spatially dimensionless) and timeless (eternal). Several Bible passages hint at this latter truth, including God’s revealed name to Moses as “𝙄 𝘼𝙈” (Exod 3:14), meaning the ever-present one, and Jesus’ reference to his eternal existence with the Father before the creation of the world (John 17:5).

So, who made God? No-one. He is unmade and causeless. Without beginning.

The theological and philosophical term for this concept is the “aseity” of God. It refers to God’s self-existence and self-caused nature. It comes from the Latin words “a” (“from”) and “se” (“self”). It means that while everything else that exists has a cause outside itself, God is eternally self-caused. His existence is derived “𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙝𝙞𝙢𝙨𝙚𝙡𝙛” – He is his own eternal cause.

Of course, merely giving something a fancy name doesn’t make it so. But the point is that the question, “𝙒𝙝𝙤 𝙢𝙖𝙙𝙚 𝙂𝙤𝙙?”, is strangely self-contradictory. It is essentially asking, “Who created the uncreated one?” That is because God, if He does exist, must, by definition, be eternal. The One who created time must necessarily exist beyond it.

This is not to say that the theistic explanation is easy to understand. A timeless, uncaused God may be logically deducible, but the concept certainly does our heads in!

Here is the link to my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@kevinsimington2523

If you are interested in my “𝙀𝙫𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙣𝙘𝙚 𝙁𝙤𝙧 𝘽𝙚𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙛” series, I suggest you start with Episode 1: “𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙊𝙧𝙞𝙜𝙞𝙣 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙐𝙣𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙚”.