Terrible Atheist Argument #1

[Esquilax]

1) "If God created everything then who created God?"

This is one facepalmtastic objection. Typically the atheist is some 12 year old who thinks he's "refuted religion". If he is, it's no use trying to reason.

I don't think it's a terribly wonderful objection either, but it does serve a purpose in demonstrating the lazy special pleading inherent in the Maximally Great Being concept.

a) There are various beings that are called "God", and they all have different features. But philosophically, the most rigorous concept of God is called the "Maximally Great Being", or a being that possesses all the categories of greatness to such a degree that nothing greater can be conceived. Such a being is almost always thought to be personal rather than impersonal.

Incidentally, it's also an infinite concept itself, which is another problem with this argument: it solves exactly nothing. As I've mentioned in other threads, there's no upper limit on "maximally great," and so what you get is an endless chain of maximally great beings that can be surpassed the moment they're posited by simply adding a single additional positive trait onto the current link in the chain: "my maximally great being is the same as yours, only he can kill yours!"

b) One of the features of this maximally great being is it's role as the "First cause" or "uncaused cause". To understand what this is, you have to look at everything in the world in terms of cause-effect relations. Everything contingent has a cause that leads backwards in a causal chain. Does the causal chain go on infinitely, or is it finite? Theists argue that the causal chain is finite, and it begins at an uncaused cause, or first cause which was not itself caused by anything. This is God.

Two problems: sans evidence- which the theist never seems to provide- the argument that the causal chain is finite is hardly worthy of much additional contemplation, and just calling that first cause god is yet another unjustified assumption, since "finite causal chain," does not in any way imply a conscious being, let alone a specific divine one.

If you disagree with this idea, you can either:
i) Challenge the claim that the causal chain is finite, arguing that it is infinite in the past.
ii) Challenge the claim that the first cause must be God.

What you cannot do is imply that God needs to be caused by something.

Of course you can imply that; if your argument merely asserts that god is uncaused, then an equally bland assertion that god does need a cause is fair game. At the very least, it should hint at the problems in arguing by just defining whatever you need into existence.