The Objection That Sounds Decisive
It is the first thing a clever teenager says when confronted with the argument for God’s existence. It is the objection Richard Dawkins considers his strongest. It appears in online debates with the regularity of sunrise.
“If God created everything, who created God?”
The implication is clear: if you say everything needs a cause, then God needs a cause too. And if God needs a cause, that cause needs a cause, and so on forever. The argument for God’s existence collapses into an infinite regress. Game over.
Except it does not. The objection misunderstands the argument — fundamentally, completely, and in a way that five minutes of careful thought can correct.
What the Argument Actually Says
The cosmological argument — the argument from creation — does not say “everything needs a cause.” It says something more precise: everything that begins to exist needs a cause.
This is a crucial distinction. The argument identifies two kinds of things in the world: things that are contingent (they exist but do not have to — they came into being and could have not existed) and things that are necessary (they exist by their own nature — they cannot not exist).
Everything in the physical universe is contingent. You exist, but you might not have. The earth exists, but it might not have. The universe exists, but — as modern cosmology confirms — it had a beginning and therefore might not have existed. Contingent things require an explanation outside themselves. Something caused them to exist.
But the chain of contingent causes cannot go back forever. An infinite chain of contingent things, each depending on the one before it, never gets started — like an infinite line of dominoes with no one to push the first one. There must be something at the end (or rather, the beginning) of the chain that is not contingent — something that exists necessarily, by its own nature, without needing a cause.
That necessary being is what we call God.
Why the Objection Fails
“Who created God?” fails because it applies to God a category that, by definition, does not apply to Him.
God is not a contingent being. He is a necessary being — a being whose nature is to exist. He did not begin to exist. He did not come into being at some point. He always was, is, and will be. Asking “who created God?” is like asking “what is north of the North Pole?” or “what happened before time began?” The question assumes a framework that does not apply.
This is not a dodge. It is the very point of the argument. The whole purpose of the cosmological argument is to show that there must exist a being that does not need a cause — a being that exists by its own nature, necessarily, eternally. To then ask “what caused that being?” is to miss what the argument has just demonstrated.
Dawkins’s version of the objection adds a twist: “Who designed the designer?” He argues that a God complex enough to design the universe would Himself require an explanation — and that explanation would require another, and so on.
But this assumes that God is a complex physical entity — like a brain or a computer — whose complexity requires an explanation in terms of simpler prior components. The Catholic (and classical theistic) understanding of God is the opposite: God is not complex. He is simple — not in the sense of being unsophisticated, but in the metaphysical sense of being without parts, without composition, without the kind of physical complexity that requires assembly or explanation.
God is not a very big thing among other things. He is the ground of all things — the reason anything exists at all. He is not one more item in the universe that needs explaining. He is the explanation.
The Deeper Question
The “who created God?” objection often serves as a conversation-stopper — a way of avoiding the real question. But the real question remains, and it is not easily dismissed.
Why does anything exist at all?
This is the most fundamental question a human being can ask. You can dismiss it as unanswerable. You can shrug and say “it just does.” But “it just does” is not an explanation. It is a refusal to explain. And the human mind — which is built to seek explanations — finds this refusal deeply unsatisfying.
The theistic answer is that things exist because a necessary being — God — chose to create them. God did not need to create. He created freely, out of love, because His goodness naturally overflows into creation. The universe exists not because it had to but because God willed it.
The atheistic alternative is that the universe exists without any ultimate explanation — that at the bottom of reality is a brute fact: stuff exists, and there is no reason why. This is a coherent position. But it requires you to accept that the most fundamental question — why is there something rather than nothing? — has no answer. And if you are willing to accept a brute fact at the bottom of reality, why not accept the brute fact that seems most explanatory: a necessary being whose nature is to exist?
What Kind of Being Does Not Need a Cause?
If the argument is correct — if there must be a necessary being — what kind of being would that be?
It would have to be eternal — without beginning or end, since anything that begins to exist requires a cause.
It would have to be uncaused — existing by its own nature, not dependent on anything else.
It would have to be immaterial — since everything material is contingent and composite.
It would have to be immensely powerful — since it is the cause of everything that exists.
It would have to be intelligent — since the universe it produced is ordered, law-governed, and fine-tuned for life.
This description — eternal, uncaused, immaterial, powerful, intelligent — is not a description the philosopher has invented to match the Christian God. It is a description that follows logically from the argument itself. And it happens to match, with remarkable precision, the God described in Catholic theology.
The Simplicity of the Answer
“Who created God?” is a question that sounds profound. It is not. It is a category error — like asking what the colour blue tastes like, or how much the number seven weighs. It applies a concept (being created) to the one being to whom that concept, by definition, does not apply.
The answer is simple: no one created God. God is not the kind of thing that is created. He is the kind of thing that creates. He is the reason there is a “kind of thing” at all.
And the fact that you exist — that anything exists — is the evidence. Not evidence that demands a leap of faith. Evidence that demands an explanation. The Catholic Church offers one: a being who exists by His own nature, who created freely out of love, and who sustains everything in existence at every moment.
“From everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.” Before the mountains. Before the earth. Before time itself. He is. And because He is, everything else can be.