The problem of the creator of God is the controversy regarding the hypothetical cause responsible for the existence of God, knowing God exists. It contests the proposition that the universe cannot exist without a creator by asserting that the creator of the Universe must have the same restrictions. This, in turn, may lead to a problem of infinite regress wherein each new presumed creator of a creator is itself presumed to have its own creator. A common challenge to theistic propositions of a creator deity as a necessary first-cause explanation for the universe is the question: "Who created God?"
Some faith traditions have such an element as part of their doctrine. Jainism posits that the universe is eternal and has always existed. Isma'ilism rejects the idea of God as the first cause, due to the doctrine of God's incomparability and source of any existence including abstract objects.
Perspectives
Osho writes:
No, don't ask that. That's what all the religions say – don't ask who created God. But this is strange – why not? If the question is valid about existence, why does it become invalid when it is applied to God? And once you ask who created God, you are falling into a regress absurdum.
John Humphreys writes:
... if someone were able to provide the explanation, we would be forced to embark upon what philosophers call an infinite regress. Having established who created God, we would then have to answer the question of who created God's creator.
In The God Book, deist Michael Arnheim writes:
The atheist objection is that if God created the universe, who created God? Judging by the number of times that (Richard) Dawkins repeats this same point in The God Delusion, one must assume that he sees this as a killer argument against the existence of God.
Alan Lurie writes:
In response to one of my blogs about God's purpose in the creation of the universe, one person wrote, "All you've done is divert the question. If God created the Universe, who created God? That is a dilemma that religious folks desperately try to avoid." The question, "Who created God?", has been pondered by theologians for millennia, and the answer is both surprisingly obvious and philosophically subtle ... ... whatever one thinks about the beginnings of the Universe, there is "something" at the very origin that was not created. This is an inescapable given, a cosmic truth.
Responses
Defenders of religion have countered that, by definition, God is the the first cause, and thus that the question is improper:
We ask, "If all things have a creator, then who created God?" Actually, only created things have a creator, so it's improper to lump God with his creation. God has revealed himself to us in the Bible as having always existed.
Atheists counter that there is no reason to assume the universe was created. The question becomes irrelevant if the universe is presumed to have circular time instead of linear time, undergoing an infinite series of big bangs and big crunches on its own. However, this view itself raises questions such as why the universe would have such a structure, and whether those properties can be extended to apply to objects within it.
Believers, for their part, sustained by the Neoplatonic and Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysical tradition, are not affected by the possibility of this hypothetical scenario, since for them God, as Subsistent Being, would be the continuous (not punctual) reason for the existence of the ontologically contingent universe, independently of its temporal finitude.
