Who Created God? Gotcha! — Strawman Arguments 101

Discussions with people of different belief systems should be interesting maybe even exciting, but the reality is often different. I see two reasons, 1) People choose to stay silent for fear of upsetting someone or 2) The rationale they hold is not thought through, they simple make statements assuming them to be facts rather than reason it out logically.

I’m going to focus on the 2nd point and share some questions / statements that have come my way. The way to approach these statements is not to address it directly, but to question the assumptions / beliefs they’re standing on. So here we go.

1. Science is the answer / ultimate judge of whether God exists or not

• Says who? Science works on the fundamental assumption that the physical / material world is all that exists. It is a metaphysical claim that is not scientifically provable. It holds this position because that is where its principles (verification, experimentation, falsification, etc) function.
• Just because science cannot test something doesn’t mean that “something” doesn’t exist. As Ravi Zacharias said, “science is holding one finger but claims to have caught the whole fist of reality.”

2) If God created the universe, then who created God?

• Assumption here is that God is a created being. This is a category error — anything that needs to be created is called a contingent being, but God is a necessary being. He is not dependent on anything to be created.
• This is not evasive simply because even if you remove God, you will still need something to have existed for the universe to be created — be it dark matter, gravity, energy. We cannot have infinite regress — there has to be a first cause. This first cause by definition has to exist outside the created universe.

3) There are so many gods, so there is no true/real God

• The presence of counterfeits is no proof against the reality of the original, if anything it strengthens the case. There could/should be multiple versions because man is a misguided finite being and is liable to make mistakes — so the “gods” that he creates will also be limited by his imagination / motives. This is seen as a problem only by those who lump all religions together without understanding the significant differences between them.
• There are 2 propositions here: 1) Does God exist and 2) Does the “God” of a particular religion exist. If prop 1 is proven to be false, then prop 2 automatically fails. But the reverse doesn’t work — prop 2 can fail and prop 1 can still be true.

More to follow. Maybe will pick on some of the more wacky ones like multiverses, simulation theory.