The question is tricky because it sneaks in the false assumption that God came from somewhere and then asks where that might be. The answer is that the question does not even make sense. It is like asking, “What does blue smell like?” Blue is not in the category of things that have a smell, so the question itself is flawed. In the same way, God is not in the category of things that are created or caused. God is uncaused and uncreated—He simply exists.

How do we know this? We know that from nothing, nothing comes. So, if there were ever a time when there was absolutely nothing in existence, then nothing would have ever come into existence. But things do exist. Therefore, since there could never have been absolutely nothing, something had to have always been in existence. That ever-existing thing is what we call God. God is the uncaused Being that caused everything else to come into existence. God is the uncreated Creator who created the universe and everything in it.

It's not clear why this question is supposed to be a problem for a design inference. In general, in order to recognize an explanation as the best, you don't need to have an explanation of the explanation. In fact, so requiring would lead to an infinite regress of explanations, so that nothing could ever be explained, and science would be destroyed. In the case of a cosmic Designer we can leave it an open question for future inquiry whether this being even has a designer and if so, who that designer might be.

Now your concern is different than Dawkins'. You say that we can infer an unknown designer for, say, archaeological artifacts because we are familiar with the production of such artifacts by human beings. It was precisely to forestall this sort of objection, however, that I gave my second illustration concerning astronauts' finding a pile of machinery on the back side of the moon. They know that no country other than the U.S.A. has successfully carried out moon landings and that we didn't leave that stuff there! We might not have even a clue as to the function of these devices, they are so unfamiliar. Nevertheless, even though such machinery is not the product of human intelligent design, it is still clearly the product of intelligent design.

The salient point is that intelligent design is characterized by certain recognizable earmarks that tip us off to its presence quite independently of our familiarity with the designer. In William Dembski's analysis in The Design Inference it is the combination of high improbability plus conformity to an independently given pattern. If we discover such characteristics in, say, a signal emanating from outer space, as in the movie Contact, then we may infer that the signal is not random noise but the result of some sort of intelligence out there and that we are not alone.

In the case of biological complexity, any reservations we have about a design inference is not because we haven't seen, for example, trees being produced by intelligent design, but rather because we are uncertain that a tree does exhibit those earmarks of intelligent design such as high improbability plus an independently given pattern. The detractor of design will offer a naturalistic, evolutionary story to show that the improbability of the existence of a tree is merely apparent and so warrants no inference of design.

I think, then, that whether or not we are familiar with human production of certain artifacts is really a red herring. Rather the relevant questions will be: (1) What are the characteristics of intelligent design, and (2) Does some entity exhibit those characteristics?

Critics of intelligent design theory often throw this question out thinking to highlight a weakness in ID. Richards shows that the theory's inability to identify the designer is not a weakness, but a strength. ID does not identify the designer is because ID limits its claims to those which can be established by empirical evidence.

If something comes into being, it must have been prompted by something else. A book has an author. Music has a music artist. A party has a party-thrower! All things that begin, that have a start, have a cause to their beginning.

Consider the universe. Scientists once held to the "steady-state" theory, that the universe has always existed without beginning.

Cosmological evidence now refers to the "Big bang" as the point in time that the universe came into being. Our space-time-matter-energy universe had a distinct and singular beginning.

Since it did not always exist, but came into existence (had a singular beginning), then some other reality must have caused or created it.1

Everything we observe in nature has a beginning. God however is in a different category, and must be so. God is different from all nature and humanity and everything that exists, in that he has always existed, independent from anything he created. God is not a dependent being, but self-sufficient, self-existent. And this is exactly how the Bible describes God, and how God has revealed himself to be. Why must God be this way?

Our universe cannot be explained any other way. It could not have created itself. It has not always existed. And it could not be created by something that itself is created. Why not?

It isn't coherent to argue that the universe was created by God, but God was in turn created by God to the second power, who was in turn created by God to the third power, and so on. As Aristotle cogently argued, there must be a reality that causes but is itself uncaused (or, a being that moves but is itself unmoved). Why? Because if there is an infinite regression of causes, then by definition the whole process could never begin.

Question: "Who created God? Where did God come from?"

Answer: A common argument from atheists and skeptics is that if all things need a cause, then God must also need a cause. The conclusion is that if God needed a cause, then God is not God (and if God is not God, then of course there is no God). This is a slightly more sophisticated form of the basic question “Who made God?” Everyone knows that something does not come from nothing. So, if God is a “something,” then He must have a cause, right?

The question is tricky because it sneaks in the false assumption that God came from somewhere and then asks where that might be. The answer is that the question does not even make sense. It is like asking, “What does blue smell like?” Blue is not in the category of things that have a smell, so the question itself is flawed. In the same way, God is not in the category of things that are created or caused. God is uncaused and uncreated—He simply exists.

How do we know this? We know that from nothing, nothing comes. So, if there were ever a time when there was absolutely nothing in existence, then nothing would have ever come into existence. But things do exist. Therefore, since there could never have been absolutely nothing, something had to have always been in existence. That ever-existing thing is what we call God. God is the uncaused Being that caused everything else to come into existence. God is the uncreated Creator who created the universe and everything in it.

A number of skeptics ask this question. But God by definition is the uncreated creator of the universe, so the question Who created God? is illogical, just like To whom is the bachelor married?

So a more sophisticated questioner might ask: If the universe needs a cause, then why doesn't God need a cause? And if God doesn't need a cause, why should the universe need a cause? In reply, Christians should use the following reasoning:

Everything which has a beginning has a cause.1
The universe has a beginning.
Therefore the universe has a cause.
Its important to stress the words in bold type. The universe requires a cause because it had a beginning, as will be shown below. God, unlike the universe, had no beginning, so doesn't need a cause. In addition, Einstein's general relativity, which has much experimental support, shows that time is linked to matter and space. So time itself would have begun along with matter and space.


Since God, by definition, is the creator of the whole universe, he is the creator of time. Therefore He is not limited by the time dimension He created, so has no beginning in time God is the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity (Isaiah 57:15). Therefore He doesn't have a cause.

In contrast, there is good evidence that the universe had a beginning. This can be shown from the Laws of Thermodynamics, the most fundamental laws of the physical sciences.

1st Law: The total amount of mass-energy in the universe is constant.
2nd Law: The amount of energy available for work is running out, or entropy is increasing to a maximum.
If the total amount of mass-energy is limited, and the amount of usable energy is decreasing, then the universe cannot have existed forever, otherwise it would already have exhausted all usable energy the heat death of the universe. For example, all radioactive atoms would have decayed, every part of the universe would be the same temperature, and no further work would be possible.

So the obvious corollary is that the universe began a finite time ago with a lot of usable energy, and is now running down.


Now, what if the questioner accepts that the universe had a beginning, but not that it needs a cause? But it is self-evident that things that begin have a cause no-one really denies it in his heart. All science and history would collapse if this law of cause and effect were denied. So would all law enforcement, if the police didn't think they needed to find a cause for a stabbed body or a burgled house.

Also, the universe cannot be self-caused nothing can create itself, because that would mean that it existed before it came into existence, which is a logical absurdity.

IN SUMMARY

The universe (including time itself) can be shown to have had a beginning.

It is unreasonable to believe something could begin to exist without a cause.

The universe therefore requires a cause, just as Genesis 1:1 and Romans 1:20 teach.

God, as creator of time, is outside of time. Since therefore He has no beginning in time, He has always existed, so doesn't need a cause.

OBJECTIONS

There are only two ways to refute an argument:

Show that it is logically invalid

Show that at least one of the premises is false.

Is the argument valid?

A valid argument is one where it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false. Note that validity does not depend on the truth of the premises, but on the form of the argument. The argument in this article is valid; it is of the same form as: All whales have backbones; Moby Dick is a whale; therefore Moby Dick has a backbone. So the only hope for the skeptic is to dispute one or both of the premises.

Are the premises true?

1. Does the universe have a beginning?

Oscillating universe ideas were popularized by atheists like the late Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov solely to avoid the notion of a beginning, with its implications of a Creator. But as shown above, the Laws of Thermodynamics undercut that argument. Even an oscillating universe cannot overcome those laws. Each one of the hypothetical cycles would exhaust more and more usable energy.

This means every cycle would be larger and longer than the previous one, so looking back in time there would be smaller and smaller cycles. So the multicycle model could have an infinite future, but can only have a finite past.2

Also, there are many lines of evidence showing that there is far too little mass for gravity to stop expansion and allow cycling in the first place, i.e., the universe is open.


According to the best estimates (even granting old-earth assumptions), the universe still has only about half the mass needed for re-contraction. This includes the combined total of both luminous matter and non-luminous matter (found in galactic halos), as well as any possible contribution of neutrinos to total mass.3

Some recent evidence for an open universe comes from the number of light-bending gravitational lenses in the sky.4 Also, analysis of Type Ia supernovae shows that the universes expansion rate is not slowing enough for a closed universe.5,6 It seems there is only 40-80% of the required matter to cause a big crunch.

Incidentally, this low mass is also a major problem for the currently fashionable inflationary version of the big bang theory, as this predicts a mass density just on the threshold of collapse a flat universe.

Finally, no known mechanism would allow a bounce back after a hypothetical big crunch.7

As the late Professor Beatrice Tinsley of Yale explained, even though the mathematics say that the universe oscillates, There is no known physical mechanism to reverse a catastrophic big crunch.

Off the paper and into the real world of physics, those models start from the Big Bang, expand, collapse, and that's the end.8

2. Denial of cause and effect

Some physicists assert that quantum mechanics violates this cause/effect principle and can produce something from nothing. For instance, Paul Davies writes:

spacetime could appear out of nothingness as a result of a quantum transition. Particles can appear out of nowhere without specific causation Yet the world of quantum mechanics routinely produces something out of nothing.9

But this is a gross misapplication of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics never produces something out of nothing. Davies himself admitted on the previous page that his scenario should not be taken too seriously.

Theories that the universe is a quantum fluctuation must presuppose that there was something to fluctuate their quantum vacuum is a lot of matter-antimatter potential not nothing.

Also, I have plenty of theoretical and practical experience at quantum mechanics (QM) from my doctoral thesis work. For example, Raman spectroscopy is a QM phenomenon, but from the wavenumber and intensity of the spectral bands, we can work out the masses of the atoms and force constants of the bonds causing the bands. To help the atheist position that the universe came into existence without a cause, one would need to find Raman bands appearing without being caused by transitions in vibrational quantum states, or alpha particles appearing without pre-existing nuclei, etc.

If QM was as acausal as some people think, then we should not assume that these phenomena have a cause. Then I may as well burn my Ph.D. thesis, and all the spectroscopy journals should quit, as should any nuclear physics research.

Also, if there is no cause, there is no explanation why this particular universe appeared at a particular time, nor why it was a universe and not, say, a banana or cat which appeared. This universe can't have any properties to explain its preferential coming into existence, because it wouldn't have any properties until it actually came into existence.

Is creation by God rational?


A last desperate tactic by skeptics to avoid a theistic conclusion is to assert that creation in time is incoherent. Davies correctly points out that since time itself began with the beginning of the universe, it is meaningless to talk about what happened before the universe began. But he claims that causes must precede their effects. So if nothing happened before the universe began, then (according to Davies) it is meaningless to discuss the cause of the universes beginning.

But the philosopher (and New Testament scholar) William Lane Craig, in a useful critique of Davies,10 pointed out that Davies is deficient in philosophical knowledge. Philosophers have long discussed the notion of simultaneous causation. Immanuel Kant (17241804) gave the example of a weight resting on a cushion simultaneously causing a depression in it. Craig says:

The first moment of time is the moment of God's creative act and of creation's simultaneous coming to be.

Some skeptics claim that all this analysis is tentative, because that is the nature of science. So this cant be used to prove creation by God. Of course, skeptics can't have it both ways: saying that the Bible is wrong because science has proved it so, but if science appears consistent with the Bible, then well, science is tentative anyway.