One of, if not the most famous atheists on the face of the planet, Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist from Oxford university, states the following in his book, The God Delusion:
“If you tell me that God created the universe, then I have the right to ask you, ‘Who created God?”
Thus our question for todays blog post, “Where did God come from?”
This, for some reason, gave numerous internet atheists a new point of attack. For almost two decades, “Dawkin Drones” on youtube, instagram, facebook, the street corner, your living room, wherever they could, flooded the space with the question, “who created God?”. After which they would sit back with a smirk waiting for you to realize that they had just destroyed your faith and your whole worldview in a matter of seconds.
Now, we are in 2024, and this “objection” has been refuted and rejected in its entirety, so much so that it does not even get mentioned… in an academic context. The problem is, if you go to the internet, this is still being raised as a valid and legitimate objection to Christianity. It does not matter how much you point out that even atheist philosophers such as Dr Thomas Nagel, scoff at this reasoning. Consider statements such as this comment in his review of The God Delusion; “The God Delusion makes me ashamed to be an atheist”. The internet atheists keep on bringing it up. So much so I have decided to address it here, for what it is worth.
“The God delusion makes me ashamed to be an atheist”
Dr Thomas Nagel
God is Eternal
The first thing I wish to say is that you absolutely have the right to ask that question. As long as you recognise my right to respond to that question. So this would be my response:
First, the problem with that question, is it is built upon a premise that is not present within Biblical Christianity, being that God has a need for a creator. The Christian perspective is that God is eternal, without a beginning, and without an end. In philosophy, one would describe a creator God as the first cause, that is, that God caused the universe to come into existence without any prior creation event. This by definition would mean that God is uncaused, and therefore cannot have a creator Himself.
God is Necessary
Secondly, the fact that God is the uncaused first cause does not mean that His existence does not have an explanation. I believe that God’s existence has an explanation that is not only consistent with the laws of logic, but also derived from reason and the laws of logic. In the 17th and 18th century, prominent philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz put the following argument forward: “Everything that exists, has an explanation for its existence; Either from an external cause, or out of the necessity of its existence.”
“Everything that exists, has an explanation for its existence; Either from an external cause, or out of the necessity of its existence.”
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
In other words, if it exists, it has an explanation for why it exists. Either from an external cause, that is, it is created, or out of the necessity of its existence, that is, it is self existent. I would argue, from the Christian perspective, God, being the first cause, by what we know of cause and effect, is a necessary being, and therefore He exists. His existence is, in other words, necessary for anything to exist. If God does not exist, nothing would exist. His existence is a requirement for everything else to exist.
Conclusion
So to conclude everything… I think we have a situation where the internet atheists are doing the exact same thing they are accusing Christians of doing, and I think it is time we as Christians respond to them, in the exact same way they respond to us. “Read a book…” and if I might recommend a book to them, may I recommend the book that is responsible for the scientific revolution, from the times of Isaac Newton and Galileo, the good book itself, the counsel of the Holy, the written Word of God. The Bible itself.
