How do we know that God isn't created by someone else?

[EugeneCharles]

Hello everyone!
Sorry for this odd question that I’ll ask. We studied the 5 arguments of St. Thomas at school. I’ve been quite confused with the 2nd argument of St. Thomas which tells that God is the first cause. St. Thomas said that we should have a first Cause so it won’t lead to an infinite regress.

If St. Thomas argued like we’re from our parents and our parents came from our forefathers, while our forefathers came from God, how can we prove that God isn’t made by someone else and that He existed by Himself? Please be patient with me. Thanks for the help! Any prayers for enlightenment can be appreciated too Stay safe and God bless

 

[lwest]

If God was created by someone else, why hasn’t this person revealed himself? God has revealed Himself to His people. He has said that He is God and there is none other than Him. ??

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

Whoever is at the beginning is God

 

[Dan_Defender]

St. Thomas said that we should have a first Cause so it won’t lead to an infinite regress.

This is the key. If you assume that God was created by someone else then you are continuing the regress. The regress has to stop at the First Cause, the uncreated being.

 

[Rubee]

I don’t know how helpful I can be but I’ll try.

The basic argument is: the fact anything exists at all (that we have something rather than nothing) is proof that an uncaused cause exists. Why? Because if infinite regression were true, (if everything was caused by something else prior to it, without exception) and there was ONLY an infinite series of causes stretching back behind us, without stopping at one ultimate cause, the chain of causation that led to us (something) could never “kick off.” We would never get to here where there’s something and not nothing. In other words, with infinite regression (everything was caused by something else before it), nothing would ever happen and nothingness would be the result, not existence. Because the first thing (to kick off the chain of causation) would need another thing (that didn’t exist because it needed yet another thing to exist etc) to cause it in order to begin whatever chain of causation leads to our present reality.

But we know we exist (there’s “something” and not nothingness), though some may dispute our actual existence (trust me). Therefore, from the basic fact of our own existence, we know for a fact that the chain of causation DID kick off somewhere and that SOMETHING started a series of causes that leads to us, here and now. In other words, that the series of causes is finite, not infinite: It stops at whatever thing was able to kick it off.

(Continued in the example in the next post)

 

[Rubee]

To borrow an example from Fr. Spitzer, an infinite regression of causation (arguing that everything, without exception, has been caused by something else, .i.e. has a creator, including God) is like: You need a book (existence), and go to get it from person Z. Person Z tells you, “I don’t have it, ask Y” and on and on it goes, where EVERY person you asked to hand the book over to the next (so it could pass down to you!) simply kept pointing to another person before them, shrugging ("Ask A, B, C, D). Now imagine there was an INFINITE LINE of people, each of whom needs to get the book from someone ELSE before they can hand it to the next person: Would you ever get that book? Nope.

But here you are, holding the book (your own existence) and trying to find WHO passed it down to you. That means there isn’t an infinite line of book-givers/lenders behind you. As we’ve seen, if there were, the result would be NO book. Not unless SOMEONE just had the book and didn’t need to point to another could this process (of book-giving that has led to you holding a book) ever start.

So even without knowing anything else about this first book-giver except that you have received a book, you can know two things: (1) A book-giver exists, given you’re holding a book; (2) This first-book giver did not get the book from ANYONE else (or he could never hand it down to you). So you know the first book-lender OWNS the book in an absolute sense: He doesn’t get it from a prior cause, he just has the book by his very self/nature, which is how he’s able to start the chain of book-giving/lending that has led to the book you’re holding.

Therefore, we can know from our basic existence that a truly uncaused cause exists and it is the reason, in the ultimate scheme, of all the “somethings” we know. From this, other chains of reasoning lead to a few other conclusions about what else this ultimate book-giver must be for any of this to be how it is.

 

[Mishakel]

Hello everyone!
Sorry for this odd question that I’ll ask. We studied the 5 arguments of St. Thomas at school. I’ve been quite confused with the 2nd argument of St. Thomas which tells that God is the first cause. St. Thomas said that we should have a first Cause so it won’t lead to an infinite regress.

If St. Thomas argued like we’re from our parents and our parents came from our forefathers, while our forefathers came from God, how can we prove that God isn’t made by someone else and that He existed by Himself? Please be patient with me. Thanks for the help! Any prayers for enlightenment can be appreciated too Stay safe and God bless

The simple answer is because God himself has told us so.

Read Isaiah 45 and 46.

 

[Gorgias]

If St. Thomas argued like we’re from our parents and our parents came from our forefathers, while our forefathers came from God, how can we prove that God isn’t made by someone else and that He existed by Himself?

The posters here have done a great job explaining it! Just two additional thoughts:

• The way that we come from our parents (and they from theirs, and so on) is different than the way the first human persons came from God. That’s important. The former is merely natural physical generation from parent to child; the ‘cause’ rests in the parent. In the latter, the cause is creation by God; the ‘cause’ does not exist within the creation itself. So, we already know that something different is happening there.
• Aquinas already takes care of the problem you’re setting up – he says that there’s something out there that is not caused, “and we call that something ‘God’”. So, he anticipates your argument, and responds with “ok… keep going back, further and further, among ‘gods’ who are created; you still need one who is uncreated, and that one is ‘God’.”

Make sense?

 

[BartholomewB]

how can we prove that God isn’t made by someone else and that He existed by Himself?

If God was made by someone else, then that “God” isn’t the true God. The “someone else” is the true God.