Q&A: God
God
Question
If God is a being more complex than the universe, isn’t it more reasonable that the universe came about by chance than that God came about by chance?
Answer
A. Who says He is complex?
B. He was not created, so the question of how He was created does not arise. Nobody claims that God was created, whether by chance or not by chance.
Discussion on Answer
This is a very common and mistaken challenge to the physicotheological and cosmological argument. I addressed it at great length in The First Existent, so I’ll answer briefly here.
There are only two possibilities: an infinite regress of creator and created, or a chain that begins with a first link that itself was not created by anything else. An infinite regress is a failure, so there is apparently such a first link. A material object is not suited by its very nature to be such a primary link, and therefore we are dealing with a different kind of entity, one that does not need an external creator in order to exist. One that always existed and has the ability to create our universe.
This is proof that even if one accepts the principle that every object (at least every complex object) requires a component / creator, there must be at least one exception to it. QED.
What seems to me to be the contradiction is that everything was created except God.