Episode 15 – Why Must There Be a Creator?

Introduction and Confirmation of the Previous Evidence

Peace be upon you. In the previous two episodes, we explained that everything is evidence for the Creator's existence, because the existence and precision of beings necessarily require a Creator. We also explained that this is conclusive evidence for anyone possessing a sound heart and mind.

We noted that our discussion of doubts is not part of the evidence itself. If you sense complexity in these discussions, it arises from the difficulty of explaining clear matters to someone who debates self-evident truths, not because proving God's existence is a complicated process.

Answering the Objection: "Why Assume a Creator Exists?"

A doubter may tell you: "You infer the Creator's existence from the existence and precision of beings. Put precision aside for a moment. Why do you assume that beings necessarily require someone to bring them into existence? This is an unsupported assumption. It is true that we do not know the cause of life's beginning on earth, but science may discover it in the future. Instead of assuming a Creator merely to relieve yourself of the burden of thinking, search for the scientific cause of life's beginning."

We answer: fine. We will postpone the question of precision and the fact that this exact system requires a knowledgeable, powerful, and wise agent. We will discuss with you the question of bringing things into existence.

The Quranic Argument for the Necessity of a Creator

God Almighty said—"No, that is not an argument. Do not argue against me by saying 'God said' when I do not acknowledge God's existence in the first place."

I am presenting the argument contained within God's words. I know you will not accept the phrase "God said." Leave that phrase to me and discuss with me the rational evidence contained in what I believe to be God's words. Agreed? "Agreed."

God Almighty says: “Or were they created by nothing, or were they the creators [of themselves]? Or did they create the heavens and the earth? Rather, they are not certain.” [At-Tur 52:35–36]

Analyzing the Possibilities of Creation

"Were they created": you, the human being, what created you? That is, what brought you into existence after you had not existed? What possibilities are there?

1. Nothingness brought you into existence.
2. You brought yourself into existence.
3. Someone else brought you into existence.

The first two possibilities are plainly false. Nothingness brings nothing into existence. And once you exist, even with a complete body and mind, you cannot prolong your life by a single day or prevent your aging and death. How, then, could you initially bring yourself into existence from nothing? The third possibility remains: you came into existence through a cause external to yourself.

You may say, "I came into existence from my father's sperm and my mother's egg." Fine, but what in turn brought that cause into existence? You may say, "You will trace the chain back to Adam, whom you say God created, while I will say it goes back to a cell that evolved, and we will never agree."

No, wait. Whatever explanation one adopts for the emergence of the human race, the chain must ultimately stop at a certain point, even if we disagree about what that point is. There must be a starting point. Causes cannot regress through a chain with no beginning; that is impossible.

The Impossibility of an Infinite Regress of Causes

Why is a regress without a beginning impossible? You may say, "I do not concede that." This is precisely the problem: you refuse to accept rational axioms that require no proof.

An infinite regress is impossible because it means that ultimately nothing would ever happen. How so? Why would such a regress prevent anything from happening?

Consider an example. Imagine a prisoner has been ordered to be released. The soldier guarding him says, "I will not release him until my commander orders me." His commander says, "I cannot give that order until my own commander orders me." The commander's commander says the same, and so on without a beginning. The prisoner could never be released. If we find that he has in fact been released, we know with certainty that the chain stopped at a definite point: someone ordered his release without waiting for anyone else to issue that order.

If you see domino pieces falling one after another before you and know that each piece falls only after the preceding one falls, you know with certainty that someone moved the first piece. You cannot say that the sequence of falling pieces had no beginning.

The same applies to our case. If beings come into existence only through something preceding them, and so on without any beginning, they could never exist at all. Yet beings do exist. This shows that the chain of causes ended at a first cause with no prior cause responsible for its existence.

This first cause either had been preceded by nonexistence or had not. If it had been preceded by nonexistence, it would require a cause to bring it from nonexistence into existence, but we have established that no cause precedes it.

What remains is that this cause was not preceded by nonexistence. It is eternal, without beginning, and self-subsisting: it exists by itself and needs no other being to bring it into existence.

Now let us return to the verses. What applies to you as a human being also applies to the heavens and earth. The human race did not bring the heavens and earth into existence after their nonexistence; they did not create themselves, and nothingness did not create them. They therefore necessarily have a Creator.

From the First Cause to God's Attributes

The doubter may say, "Fine. Even if we concede that there must be a cause—call it the first cause, for example—why do you call it Allah and attribute so many qualities to it?"

The answer is that the preceding argument proves more than the existence of a first cause. This cause's act of bringing creation into existence shows that it possesses power, life, and will. Had it not been living, it could not have bestowed life upon creatures, because one who lacks something cannot give it. Through its will, it willed creation to exist, and through its power, it carried out that will.

When we examine the perfection of creation and its details, we will see that they indicate further attributes: lordship, knowledge, wisdom, mercy, greatness, self-subsistence and sustaining power, and others. Put simply, this Creator possessing these attributes is the one called Allah within the Islamic system.

Summary of the Rational Evidence for God's Existence

Belief in God's existence is therefore not merely an emotional matter of submission. It is a demonstrative, evidential, and rational conviction, in addition to being innate, as we explained in the series on the innate evidence for God's existence.

Our belief in God's existence proceeds by deriving certain knowledge from necessary premises. We do not say, "We do not know what originated the universe, so let us assume God exists to solve the mystery." Rather, necessary rational inference shows that the universe must have an eternal Creator who Himself has no creator, and it also establishes some of this Creator's attributes.

Nor do we say, "We found the chain of causes continuing without beginning and wished to put a limit upon it, so through intellectual laziness we assumed God." Our argument instead rests upon the impossibility of causes regressing without beginning, because the necessary result of such a regress would be the absence of all existence, contrary to both observation and reason.

When an atheist says that science may someday discover the cause of life, we answer that whatever science discovers, it will never discover that nothingness brought life into existence, that life brought itself into existence, or that the cause of life belongs to an endless regress without beginning. Science cannot discover what contradicts rational axioms, because denying rational axioms would itself invalidate empirical science, as we explained in the fifth episode.

Conclusion

In the next episode, we will answer the question: if God created creation, then who created God?

Peace and God's mercy be upon you.