Who Created God?
Confronting the Ultimate Question of the First Cause Argument
The basic premise of Christianity (and, for that matter, most religious faiths) is found in the very first verse of the Bible. "In the beginning," declares Moses, "God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1).
This declaration remains fundamental to all religious faiths today, because if God did not create the universe, then either there is no Supreme Being or He/She/It is an irrelevant bystander to existence itself. If, on the other hand, Genesis 1:1 is true, then all the universe and its inhabitants owe their existence and allegiance (at least if such is demanded) to God.
What Caused God?
The strongest argument for the existence of God is that the universe must have an ultimate “first cause,” and that God qualifies perfectly as this ultimate cause. (See "The Case for a Divince Cause").
Atheists and agnostics have countered the cosmological or causality argument in a way exemplified best perhaps by Bertrand Russell, who asked, “What caused God?” If everything, reasoned Russell, needs an ultimate cause, why except God? What caused God?
There is a flaw to Russell's logic. Modern science has overwhelmingly demonstrated that the universe had a beginning. While there remains some speculation about "multiverses" and similar scenarios, these alternative explanations are more influential on science fiction than on science. The universe had a beginning, and this makes the universe an "effect." An effect, by its nature, requires a cause. When atheists and agnostics take Russell's position, they are not confronting the reality of a caused universe, they are ducking it.
The Nature of God
Since the universe exists as an effect (or a "contingent being"), it can safely be concluded that it was caused....by something. Whether God also needs a cause is a separate issue. The fact is that the universe needed a cause, and exploring the nature of that cause leads one to the likelihood of a divine force at work in the universe.
Atheists and agnostics tend to dismiss this type of reasoning, because they have effectively redefined God into a form of matter or energy. By defining "God" in physical or energy terms within the space-time continuum, it becomes plausible for them to argue that "God" needs a cause.
The problem with this line of thinking is that God is neither matter nor energy. According to the Bible anyway, God is Spirit (John 4:24). Indeed, the Genesis account of Creation identifies the “Spirit of God” (Genesis 1:2) as the driving creative force for the universe.
What's the relevance? The answer is simple. There is no scientific law which demands that a spiritual being needs a cause. A spiritual being either transcends the universe (monotheism) or embodies and animates the universe (pantheism). It is not, however, a material part of the universe, and therefore is not subject to the same laws of the universe.
If one then accepts that God (or whatever term one wishes to assign a divine force) would be spiritual, then such a view is consistent with the classic understanding of the term "Necessary Being," a being that essentially transcends the space-time universe and is necessary for all other beings to exist.
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