Who made God?

A fair question, often misunderstood

Children ask it, and so did philosophers. Bertrand Russell said this question helped turn him from belief: he had read in John Stuart Mill's Autobiography that the question "Who made me?" cannot be answered because it immediately raises the question "Who made God?" Richard Dawkins revived the objection in The God Delusion (2006), arguing that any designer would be more complex, and therefore more improbable, than what it designs.

The question deserves a careful answer. But it rests on a misunderstanding of both the arguments for God and what Christians mean by "God".

The arguments don't say "everything has a cause"

If someone argued "Everything has a cause; therefore God exists", then "Who caused God?" would be a fatal reply. But that is a straw man. The major arguments use more careful premises:

In each case the premise identifies a feature that requires a cause: beginning, dependence, contingency. The conclusion is a being that lacks that feature. Asking "Who made God?" is like asking "What is north of the North Pole?" The question assumes something that the answer rules out.

Everyone has an ultimate stopping point

Every explanation must end somewhere. The atheist does not escape this. Either the chain of explanation goes on forever (which explains nothing), or it ends in something that just is, without any further cause.

For many atheists the stopping point is the universe itself, or the laws of physics, or a quantum vacuum, or a multiverse. For the Christian, it is God. So the question is not "Do you have an uncaused something?" Everybody does. The question is: which uncaused something best explains the world we observe?

Consider the candidates:

• The universe. The best evidence is that it began to exist about 13.8 billion years ago. It is made of parts that could have been arranged differently. Its laws could have been different. It looks contingent through and through.
• God. Understood classically, God has no beginning, no parts and no dependence. He exists not by borrowing being from something else but by his own nature. He is exactly the kind of reality that could be the end of the line.

Is God "complex"?

Dawkins's version adds that a designer must be at least as complex as what it designs, and complex things need explaining. But classical theism, held by Christian thinkers like Augustine, Anselm and Aquinas and by Jewish and Muslim philosophers like Maimonides and Avicenna, teaches that God is simple. God is not a large machine with many working parts. He is a single, undivided reality of infinite knowledge and power.

Also, we don't normally require an explanation to be explained before we can accept it. If astronauts found machinery on the far side of the moon, they would rightly infer intelligent makers, even without knowing who those makers were or where they came from. Demanding an explanation of every explanation would make science itself impossible.

What the Bible says about God's self-existence

Scripture presents God as the one being who does not depend on anything. He is "from everlasting to everlasting" (Psalm 90:2). The Father "has life in himself" (John 5:26). He is not served by human hands "as though he needed anything" (Acts 17:25). Everything else is creature; he alone is Creator. Revelation 4:11 sums it up: all things exist and were created by his will.

Why it matters

If God is the uncaused source of all things, then he does not need us; but he chose to make us and love us. The God who has "life in himself" is the God who gives that life away. Jesus said he came that people "may have life and have it abundantly" (John 10:10). The self-existent God is not a distant first cause but a Father who invites us into his own life.