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Questions about G-d: Who Made G-d?
I made a short series of videos considering questions about G-d that I have noticed get asked from time to time. Below is a rewriting based on the script for the first video, followed by the video itself.
I hardly know what to say about this question, but it does come up sometimes, and it needs a response. It seems to arise in response to cosmological arguments for the existence of G-d. The response “Who made G-d then?” seems to be a sort of “Gotcha!” response. Or maybe it’s an honest question.
Either way, it’s based on a serious misunderstanding of arguments like this. These arguments don’t say that everything needs a cause. They say that things that do need a cause have one.
G-d does not need a cause. G-d is the Uncaused Cause, the Unmoved Mover, the Uncreated Creator.
Now you can say that you think there is no such thing as an Uncaused Cause, and hopefully explain why you think that. But there’s no point asking who created the Uncreated Creator or who caused the Uncaused Cause. It’s a little bit like asking why 3 is a bigger number than 17, or who put all the right angles in a circle.
The first thing is just to understand what Christians (or other classical theists) are talking about when we talk about G-d as the Uncaused Cause. One good way of putting this is: Most things are caused, and everything that’s caused needs an explanation, and there is no explanation unless there is something that is not caused.
Another good way of putting it is: Everything needs an explanation. Most things need something else to explain them, but the First Cause or the Uncaused Cause is His own explanation.
And the second thing is to understand why we think this way. In terms of biblical history and ancient literature, the idea of G-d as the Uncreated Creator comes originally from the Torah. “In the beginning G-d created the heavens and the earth.” G-d creates by speaking. He has that kind of power. “Let there be light. And there was light.” He is not creating out of any preexisting matter, like the gods in creation myths of the polytheistic religions of the cultures by which the ancient Hebrews were surrounded.
And He is not Himself a being who comes with a past, a beginning, a backstory like the gods of those creation myths tend to.
And in terms of philosophy, or philosophical theology, there are only a few ways we could possibly try to explain cause and effect.
There are chains of causality—me, my parents, their parents, and so on. We could say that these chains go on infinitely into the unlimited past. But then there’s no explanation for anything, because every explanation has to come from somewhere, and it can’t come from anywhere if it never begins anywhere. My parents can’t explain me unless they are explained. If there is no beginning to the chain of cause and effect, nothing is explained: Every supposed explanation is based on the link in the chain before it, but ultimately based on nothing at all, so that nothing is actually explained.
Let me try another way of saying this: My parents cannot explain me unless they are explained, and they cannot be explained unless their parents are explained, and so on. Nothing in a chain of cause and effect is explained except by an explanation that gets passed on from one link to the next. But if every link in the chain needs an explanation, then no link in the chain has one.
This is the sort of thing Thomas Aquinas is thinking of when he talks about G-d as the First Cause in the beginning of his Summa Theologiae.
It’s a little bit like changing some Hong Kong dollars for some US dollars, changing them for Pakistani rupees, changing them for Kenya shillings, changing them for Emirati dirham, changing those for South African Rand, and continuing indefinitely without ever expecting to change any currency at all for any gold, or even using it to buy a Coca-Cola.
And there are other issues with talking about infinite sets of causes, or scientific evidence that the universe had a beginning such that there was not an infinite amount of time for this to happen in anyway.
Those are all concerns with saying there is an infinite chain of causes.
What are our other options? Well, we could try saying that there is something which is the Cause of Itself, but this makes no sense either. It can’t be caused unless it is not there yet, but it can’t cause itself unless it is there. So nothing is the Cause of Itself.
And that leaves us with the idea that something is an Uncaused Cause.
Of course, that’s just a beginning. Proving there is a First Cause does not prove the existence of G-d as such, much less prove that an entire religion like Christianity or Islam or Judaism is true.
The next step might be to argue that the Uncaused Cause is a personal G-d, like my friend Andrew Loke does in one of his books. Or arguing for a MASSIVE amount of other information about What and Who the First Cause is, like Aquinas does in the rest of his Summa Theologiae. Or telling the story of how this Creator G-d interacted with his creation, like the Torah and the rest of the Bible does.
Please don’t misunderstand the beginning.
And please don’t stop at the beginning.
Published in Religion and Philosophy
I suppose we agree that the known universe, or the universe as we know it, had a beginning?
Tell me more.
Tell me how scientists say the universe began. Not the expansion began, because the expansion was of something that was already there. Where did that something come from? What does science have to say about that?
And if it’s “scientific knowledge,” then why do so many scientists put forth theories such as those I mentioned, those about endlessly cyclical inflation, variations on string and membrane theories, or Penrose’s conformal cyclical theory? Why don’t those often prominent scientists simply accept the “scientific knowledge?”
Tell me what science says about the actual origin of the so-called “cosmic egg,” the nucleus that, we now believe, underwent rapid inflation some 13.8 billion years ago.
I think we agree that the universe underwent a rapid expansion, from a quantum-scale object of such density that at least three of the four known fundamental forces were not yet present, and the state of the object was governed by quantum effects. Cosmologists refer to the time the universe was in this state as the “Planck era,” and acknowledge that we don’t have mathematics, nor even concepts, that we can use to describe what existed or may have existed prior to this moment. Space and time are, we think, the product of this initial expansion; before that we can thus far only speculate.
Which is why we don’t actually know whether the universe began at the moment of expansion, existed indefinitely prior to expansion, has expanded an infinite number of times and continues to do so, etc.
There are theories that say the universe we observe is merely one bubble in an infinite number of expanding bubble universes. There are theories that say that this expansion is one cycle in an infinite number of expansions. There are theories that say that “pocket universes” are continually expanding all around us, without our knowledge. There are theories that say that our universe will expand until it is so dispersed that it recreates the emptiness that preceded the “big bang,” and will then begin again.
We don’t know.
The math and theory are actually pretty good, pretty convincing, beginning about 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds after the expansion began — after a so-called Planck second has elapsed. At that point the laws of physics begin to make sense, and we can find evidence supporting the predictions made based on the standard model of quantum physics.
But prior to that, we speculate. And that’s the point: the beginning of “expansion” could be the beginning of the universe, but might not be. It quite possibly is the beginning of space and time as we understand them. But we just don’t know if whatever it is that expanded was there already, had been their forever, came into being at the moment of expansion, or is cycling endlessly between expansion and contraction.
Apparently it is, according to your earlier paragraph.
This appears to be a lot of words for “The entire universe as we know it definitely began, and we have no knowledge of any physical explanation for this; but we can speculate that there is more to the universe than we know that might explain things.”
I’ve been talking about the first clause. Are we both definitely in agreement on at least that much?
If so, maybe we could talk about the next two clauses.
Well, they don’t.
Anyway, they don’t with any clarity except for when all the theistic scientists side with Thomas Aquinas.
Let’s settle this one point first.
I maintain that we don’t know that the universe had a beginning. We’re pretty sure that the expansion had a beginning, and that the universe as we observe it today is the product of that expansion. But we don’t know what, if anything, preceded the expansion, nor for how long.
You tell me that we have “scientific knowledge” that the universe had a beginning. I believe you are referring to the beginning of the expansion, which is not the same as the beginning of the universe — merely of the universe as we observe it today.
I think that’s an important distinction.
Beyond that, as I mentioned earlier, we don’t “know” that the universe is finite in size. We know that we can observe only about 95 billion lightyears of it; we know nothing about what may or may not extend beyond that, nor how long it may have existed.
I emphasize these points because (a) you claim that the audience of your post is the scientifically-minded, and (b) the post is about origins, the need (or not) for origins, and the matter of beginnings. If all that is true, then it’s worth fairly representing the state of the science regarding the true “origin” of the universe — versus the beginning of the expansion that produced the universe in its current state.
Then why tell me that we have “scientific knowledge” of its beginning?
We don’t.
We can have scientific knowledge that a thing happened without having scientific knowledge of its cause.
So . . . yes? Yes, we agree on that clause?
If I’m following, I don’t think you do.
Henry has made a distinction between the expansion of the universe and the beginning of the universe (if there was one), before there was anything to expand. I think you are conflating the two. I am also unclear about your claim that “we know the universe had a beginning.” Can you explain how we know that?
The clause to which I refer is “The entire universe as we know it definitely began.”
HR says, among other things, “We’re pretty sure that the expansion had a beginning, and that the universe as we observe it today is the product of that expansion.”
Is that not an agreement?
If not, is it because the universe as we know it and the universe as we observe it are different things? Or is there something else going on?
The first thing is to get clear on that one clause.
I don’t believe that we’re in agreement. I think you are trying to replace “the universe” with “the universe as we know it,” and I reject that. My whole point is that we don’t know that “the universe as we know it” is or ever was the entire universe. While we can point to a formative event — a “beginning” — for the universe “as we know it,” what we’re really pointing could be either a creation event or a transition from a state we don’t know or understand: the universe as we didn’t know it.
Simply put: We do NOT know that the universe, the totality of everything in existence, had a beginning. It’s remains an open question.
Of course.
However, in this case — in the matter of the universe having had a beginning — we have neither scientific knowledge of its cause nor scientific knowledge of it actually happening.
I have a particular discomfort with the blending of science and theology. Though a non-believer, I am respectful of religion and try to be respectful of people of faith. As I’ve said many times, I think it is harmful to both faith and science to mix these two very different domains.
I’m responding at length to your post because I think it veers into this mixing, and does it in the way typical of people who approach it from the faith side — by incorrectly representing the science.
(Those who approach this mixing from the science side make a similar mistake, in my opinion, because they misrepresent, not the observations and conclusions of the science, exactly, but the scope and method of science: science has nothing to tell us about theology, and, in my opinion, scientists should concede that and stay in their lane.)
The event you mention in your post is a nice example of both kinds of mistake (again, a “mistake” in my opinion).
From the side of faith, the mistake was to have proposed a “cosmological argument for the existence of G-d.” Faith should require no such argument from the believer, and I’ve yet to encounter such an argument that I find persuasive.
From the side of science, the mistake was to have responded with “Who made G-d then?” That question indicates a failure to appreciate the difference between the methods of theology and the methods of science. People of faith are free to assert that G-d is eternally pre-existing, that He transcends space and time, that He is not bound by the laws of physics, and that any given aspect of His nature may be an impenetrable mystery beyond the possibility of science, reason, or, indeed, logic to resolve.
HR, you have a very odd way of reading the phrase “as we know it.”
No, it doesn’t. That’s not what words mean.
Let me rephrase it in a form that might be acceptable to us both:
“We believe that the portion of the universe of which we’re aware, which may or may not be the entirety of the universe, underwent some process that resulted in it being the portion of the universe we observe today.”
Are you good with that?
Plainly, that is a topic to take up if ever, and after, we can successfully communicate about that one simple first clause.
Would you please restate that “one simple first clause” for me, as succinctly as practical?
Henry answered this better than I can, and his answer reinforces my belief that you and he do not agree. Some of the language is a bit slippery, I think, so there may be a degree of talking past each other.
Added: Reading back, I realize that that SA made two claims:
1) “It is scientific knowledge that the universe had a beginning.”
2) “The entire universe as we know it definitely began…”
Those are different, though somewhat related, claims. I wasn’t careful in my reading and I conflated the two. Thanks, Henry, for teasing them apart.
HR, do you accept these statements?
Who ever said it does?
I will agree with that if we also stipulate that we don’t know that we see all of the universe, and that we don’t know that there were not unseen portions of the universe present before the universe “as we observe it” began. Can we agree to that?
Probably, but we don’t know that. If you’ll go back, you’ll find that both times I mentioned space and time beginning I expressed that as a possibility, not as a certainty. Not everyone agrees that either space or time began with the “big bang.”
Some scientists argue, for example, that the universe immediately prior to the big bang was an infinitely small singularity of infinite density. Others argue (more plausibly, in my opinion), that it was of finite size, though almost unimaginably small even compared to atoms and other thing we normally think of as small.
Regarding terminology:
I’d like it to be very clear that “the universe as we observe it” may not be the same thing as “the universe.” We can talk of the former beginning, but that may not be the same as talking of the universe in its entirety beginning.
We don’t know that we observe all of the universe.
We don’t know that the universe — versus only the portion we observe — came into being in the “big bang.”
We don’t know that “came into being in the ‘big bang'” is even the right way of saying it. It might be more accurate to say that “something that may have been there already underwent a process that we call the ‘big bang’ that resulted in the universe as we see it today.”
Maybe this is is partially what you’re getting at, but the phrase “as we observe it” is doing a lot of lifting here. Is there some way to tighten that up in a way that you’d both be comfortable with?
Good observation — and the point of my comment immediately preceding yours. ;)
Certainly not. You are begging the question. To be more precise, you are assuming some things about what comes later–on the third clause, if I’m not mistaken.
But we can certainly agree that at this point there should be no assumption that the universe as we observe it is the whole universe.
That was already there, though. The statement “The universe as we observe it had a beginning” does not mean that we observe the entire universe. Neither does “The entire universe as we know it definitely began.”
Why not just answer the question? Do you agree that space and time had a beginning? You said “Space and time are, we think, the product of this initial expansion . . . .” Do you not think the thing that “we think”?
You could just say “Yes, I agree that space and time had a beginning.” And then can specify, if you think it’s important, that we don’t know that; we only have a probable belief.
Or if you don’t actually agree, as you say here–“Others argue (more plausibly, in my opinion), that it was of finite size”–then there’s a very easy way to answer the question. The answer is “No.”
(giggles as he pulls the pin on a epistemological grenade…)
Define “aware.”
Give it a drink, boys.
I’m done with jasmine for a while. It’s time for an iron Buddha.
Twinings Chai black tea here.