Q&A: God
God
Question
When an atheist asks a believer how God was created, isn’t that a symmetric question to the believer’s question of what was before the Big Bang? Atheists say they don’t know what was before it, and that there’s no need to keep digging further down the causal chain. Can’t one answer them with the same response? That is, say: I don’t know how God was created?
Answer
I dealt with this in The First Cause. One can always say, “I don’t know.” I also don’t ask what was before the Big Bang, but who caused it. That’s not the same question. But “I don’t know” is a statement about you, not a claim. If someone offers an explanation for some phenomenon, and you have no alternative explanation but say “I don’t know,” then you’ve lost. There is one explanation, and you have no alternative. When I prove to you that your position is wrong because it cannot explain something, and from this it is shown that my position is correct (because it does succeed in explaining it), you can’t answer me by saying that you don’t know. That is not an answer. Otherwise every proof by negation would be dismissed out of hand with the claim that “I don’t know.”
Discussion on Answer
Yes, but he is claiming that the believer also has no explanation.
I’m trying to understand whether the atheist can really gain anything from asking how God was created. After all, even if the believer says he doesn’t know, the atheist still has no alternative that explains what caused the Big Bang.