I often hear the argument that the universe needs a creator. That it simply cannot exist without having been designed and created, by an intelligent being.
The most obvious next question would be, Who created the Creator? And the answer is usually along the lines of, "God doesn't need a creator." Or, "God is the uncaused cause."
So I find it a bit odd that the universe absolutely cannot exist without a creator carefully planning and creating everything in existence, yet this creator doesn't need any explanation for it's existence.
So.... A universe is too complex to exist on it's own but an even more complex being (who often seems incredibly human in how He thinks and acts...) isn't?
I hold that the universe needs no creator. If God doesn't need a creator, the universe can also exist on it's own.
Thoughts?
Thank you for your thoughtful philosophical consideration. It seems to me that there are three distinct issues raised in this post. 1. Who created God? 2. If God is necessary (or the unoriginate source) and thus thus requires no explanation for his existence as Christians ("I AM who I AM, Ex. 3:14) and theists think, why cannot the universe be necessary and consist of a sufficient explanation for its own existence? 3. If God is a superior necessary explanation or uncaused, would he not be even more complex than the creation? This being the case, it is not merely arbitrary but superfluous and fantastic to postulate God as an explanation for the universe rather than to maintain that the universe is self-explanatory. This seems to me to be the points raised in your post. I will attempt to take each one in turn.
1. It is true that vast majority of theists like myself hold God to be a necessary being and the grounds for all being so that God's nature is as such to require no explanation for his existence. God then cannot not exist and the universe is contingent, requiring an explanation other than itself. That is how theism is generally held. 2. The second point has been a matter of considerable debate and personally I am not aware of any logical reason why the universe could not have a sufficient explanation for its own existence as a matter of principle. However, there exist features within the universe that have generally persuaded theists that the notion of a contingent universe upon an incontinent first uncaused cause or unoriginate source is a superior explanation. I am sure that you are somewhat aware of teleological arguments appealing to order and cosmological arguments appealing to motion or contingent events that, if traced back, so it is said, are more reasonably explained in an intelligent designer. Thus the inference to God as a necessary being over the universe has, in my mind, some advantages. Further I would point out that the natural sciences over the last fifty years have tended to cohere quite remarkably well with these classic "proofs" for the existence of God. That is to say, cosmology consists of the overwhelming consensus view presently that the universe came into being and is thus probably not eternal as seen in the expansion of the universe and its increase in entropy (running out of usable energy). It appears reasonable if not suggestive that the universe is contingent then and not necessary (presently). 3. Finally, on the last point. In principle it could be the case that if we consider the complexity of the universe, we could think that God is even more complex. From this, it has been argued that positing God in this way as an explanation is not satisfactory. Supposedly, we should look for simpler explanations. Although, I am not sure why this would be the case even if we press this unorthodox notion of God (since the theistic God of Christianity for example, is neither physical or made up of any parts). We often, in explaining various phenomenon, infer from the experience of various objects to more complicated explanations. For example, if we find a message written on a piece of paper and wanted to explain its origin, it would only be a partial explanation to make reference to the paper and the ink. You also need an intelligent agent which is considerably more complex. Or consider that you are flying a shuttle over Mars and you see what appears to be construction equipment on the surface unattended. Inferring intelligence (perhaps martians), though we would be inferring greater complexity to explain something relatively simple, would not only be reasonable but even, as in many other cases, the only appropriate induction even if we knew absolutely nothing of the nature of the explanation (in this case martians). That is all to say, the idea that God is not a good explanation on the grounds that he would have to be more complex, does not seem in principle problematic at all. Of course I would want to stress that the great mystery as regards the "essence" of God, though we speak of him by analogy as being like a person, does not contain, nor can it contain the notion that God is corporal or made up of any parts. That being the case, as I understand, God in his ontology, whatever he may be, is simple. Let me know if you take issue with any of my points.
