Why Asking 'What Caused God?' Misses the Target

Gavin Ortlund defends the cosmological argument for God's existence from the common objection, "if everything needs a cause, what caused God?"

Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.

SUPPORT:

FOLLOW:

MY ACADEMIC WORK:

PODCAST:

DISCORD SERVER ON PROTESTANTISM

CHECK OUT SOME BOOKS:

00:00 - Introduction
00:46 - (1) Responding to "What Caused God?"
07:29 - (2) The History of This Objection
12:18 - (3) The Elegance of Theism
19:28 - Emotional Implications

[jfitz]

From my observation, the New Atheist movement mostly capitalized on lay people’s common misunderstandings of classical arguments for God’s existence, not the original arguments.

[galaxyn]

20:15 Plato's Analogy of the Cave transposed to become Ortlund's Analogy of the Basement.

[mwright_boomer]

“Jenny baked those pies.”
“Oh yeah? Well who baked Jenny? Gotcha!”

[coopercobbs]

If you design the bumper stickers, we’ll buy them!

[tims]

Thanks Gavin for defending this particular side of the cosmological argument!

[raphaelfeneje]

God bless you immensely. Great Job, Dr Gavin. You're a breath of fresh air ✝️❤️🙏

[mattwilliams]

I’m so glad you asked if you should actually make the bumper stickers. I was thinking that that should begin to exist.

[joelancon]

Catholic love your videos and find them edifying and even challenging

[murattanyel]

Maybe those of us who are Christians (or, theistic, in general) should add the necessary qualification to the cosmological argument and say, "Everything in creation needs a cause." That way, the creator will not be confused with the creation.

[williamnathanael]

If an infinite chain of causality works, a painting can be painted without a painter provided that the paintbrush handle is long enough.

[colinmichaelis]

Loved this! Another great one, Gavin.

[maxwolfleyiii]

Hey Gavin! Your work has blessed me so much! Would you consider doing a video for the common objection: what about those who never hear about Christ/those who existed before Christ's incarnation. I thought it would be helpful if you could higlight what the church has taught about this throughout history. This popped to my head while i was reading "Till We Have Faces."

[jeffreyanderson]

On the Bertrand Russell quote from Why I Am Not A Christian, the way that passage is composed is a little bit telling of what he thought about the statement. First he makes a vague statement about "The philosophers and the men of science have got going on cause, and it has not anything like the vitality it used to have". This is probably something to do with a brute fact denial of effects needing cause, which is not uncommon even now. Later on when he presented the question of "who made God", he attributes it to another philosopher, who himself attributes it to his father, no one alive seemingly wanted to take credit for the statement, if it was interpreted correctly. Also telling of how insecure Bertrand Russell was in this argument he very quickly presents a different argument "If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God". This is one of the most popular arguments against God today, especially among those who hold a steady state, actual infinity cosmology, and many who do believe in a steady state do so, like Fred Hoyle, simply due to the implications of a beginning.

Considering all this it's hard to believe how popular the question still is of what created God. It should be known that in the definition of God is an aseitous, uncreated, first cause of all. This should be the starting point of all conversation, anything else is not speaking to the Christian worldview.

[jamesthemuchless]

I'd buy a bumper sticker from Truth Unites lol

[thirdparsonage]

Agreed. I like the Shakespeare analogy. The problem with some of the technical explanations of this is that it can come across as though we're just using technical explanations to obfuscate the fact that we have a problem and are doing fancy footwork to explain away our problem.

At the street level I would argue something like the following:

1) We both agree that the universe came into existence.

2) In order to explain that both of us resort to something "magical or mysterious."

3) I'm simply admitting that and saying that that's God.

4) You're denying it and hoping (in faith) that there will eventually be a coherent materialist explanation of the magic which would really just be the same as saying the material universe has always existed.

5) Let's just call a spade a spade and admit we're both resorting to a cause that transcends the material universe, a cause which must be uber intelligent and uber powerful....I'm telling you that's God.

[NathanSturtevant]

I appreciate the connection to the Ontological argument. The fact that something must be uncaused seems to point there - I've been looking to see more arguments making that connection.

[Mark-cdwf]

An atheist saying there’s no evidence for God is like Hamlet saying there’s no evidence for Shakespeare.

[BBassistChrist]

Let's grant "Everything has a cause: therefore, what caused God?" Okay, what caused the thing that caused God? And what caused the thing that caused the thing that caused God? And what caused that thing before that? Or the thing before that? We can't keep going back. We must eventually get to a first cause. What caused that? It's the first cause, it doesn't have a cause.

What we conclude is this: either 1.) Everything needs a cause, and thus nothing should exist, or 2.) Everything needs a cause except the fundamental thing which caused all other things. We know the first is false, because things do exist. So the second is necessarily true, that there is one thing which does not need a cause since it is the fundamental thing. What is that fundamental thing? It is not physical, as physical matter is part of causation. It is not temporal, as time is a matter of causation. It must be fundamental to existence, as it brings things into existence. It must be self-determining to change state in order to begin causation (i.e. intelligent). It must be one in nature, as for multiple things to exist prior to existence would root them in existence rather than existence in them. This thing sounds exactly like our definition of God.

Reducing it all down, we see this thing is fundamental existence (it is), and it is one. It is, and it is one, or as the Shma puts it, "Shma Yishra'el, YHWH Elohenu, YHWH Achad." -"Hear, O Israel, YHWH (I AM) is our God, YHWH (I AM) is one" (Deuteronomy 6:4).


P.S. Stephen Woodford's argument is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Sure, every brick of the wall being small doesn't mean the whole of the wall is small, but if every brick of the wall doesn't exist, then the wall doesn't exist. Since the conversation was regarding causation, every brick of the wall needs a cause in order to exist. If the bricks need a cause to exist, and the wall needs existing bricks in order to exist, then the lack of cause for the individual bricks of the wall necessarily demands that the wall doesn't exist. How does somebody miss such a thing?

[KingoftheJuice]

"Of course every brick in the wall has a cause, but the wall as a whole—one day it was just there."
—Rationality Rules

[joeinterrante]

Love the ministry of this channel. Gavin can you please address the claims around greek mythology being so similar to the gospels? Thank you.