The Worst Atheistic Argument in the History of Western Thought
"If God created the universe, then who created God?" Famous atheist Quentin Smith called this “the worst atheistic argument in the history of Western thought". Let's debunk it together.
If everything was created, then who created God?
You’ve heard this before. It’s one of the first arguments anyone hears against theism, and it stumps far too many Christians. But this question isn’t new. People have been asking some version of it for well over two thousand years. From ancient Greece to the Islamic Golden Age, to Hindu and Chinese philosophy, thinkers across cultures have asked whether reality can be explained by an endless chain of causes, or whether there must be a first, uncaused source of all things. Again and again, they came to the same conclusion: reality requires an uncaused cause.
Because of this, it’s ironic that the question still circulates today as if it were some devastating objection. In fact, even famous atheists have acknowledged its failure. Quentin Smith once called it “the worst atheistic argument in the history of Western thought” because it misunderstands the very definition of the terms being used.
By the word “God”, we do not mean a powerful being inside the universe. We mean the First Cause, the Unmoved Mover, the cause of all being itself—the one who exists outside of space, time, and matter. If God were bound by space, time, and matter, He could not have created them, because He would simply be part of the creation. God never began to exist. Logically, He is the cause of existence itself.
Only things that begin to exist need a cause. The universe began to exist, which means the universe requires a cause outside of itself. This is at the core of the Cosmological argument. To say that someone had to push the first domino for the domino chain to begin is basic logic. It would be logically impossible to believe that nobody ever pushed the first domino, or that it’s been going on eternally in the past, as the theory of Infinite Regression incorrectly proposes. If you’re hiking in the mountains and stumble upon a well-built cabin, you know a builder built it. If you’re standing by a railroad track and passenger cars keep flying past you, even if you can’t see the beginning or the end, you would never believe there’s no engine pulling the train, or that it’s just an eternal line of boxcars. Yet that’s exactly what atheism asks you to believe. That is the logical fallacy, the special pleading. They are the ones that are cheating the system when they admit that everything around us, from your phone to a beautiful painting, has a cause, yet insist that the entire universe, which is infinitely more complex and ordered, somehow had no cause at all.
At its core, this objection is a contradiction in terms. It’s like asking, “Who created the uncreated?” “Who married the bachelor?” Or “What’s north of the North Pole?” The question only sounds compelling if God is incorrectly imagined as just another object within the universe.
The same confusion appears in the familiar middle-school gotcha question: “If God is all-powerful, can He create a stone so heavy He cannot lift it?” This is just another contradiction in terms. Can an all-powerful being be not all-powerful? Can black be white? Can you see how ridiculous this sounds?
So the next time someone asks you, “If God created the universe, who created God?”, just ask them back: what do you mean by God? Or even more simply: can whatever created space, time, and matter be made of space, time, and matter? Who married the bachelor?
Once the definition is clear, the objection disappears.
I hope this helps. God bless, and MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Justino Russell
Student, Founder, Editor
The Aggie Standard