Over the years I have heard plenty of arguments for atheism, many of which are quite underwhelming, but this one seems to be the worst: Who created God? For those who have not yet studied theology or theistic arguments and ask the question out of genuine curiosity, I will give them the benefit of the doubt.
This is not really an argument for atheism, but a naïve objection to theism. Serious philosophers do not raise this point because they themselves are not naïve; only at a popular level would one hear this question asked. And so, it is unsurprising to find that the world’s most famous atheist apologist, Richard Dawkins, makes the ‘who designed the designer?’ objection central in his bestselling book, The God Delusion.
Simply asking the question shows a misunderstanding of what we mean by ‘God’. God is not a created thing like the rest of the universe. If He were, then He would not be God. It is the very essence of God to be uncreated. God is a se (self-existent): He exists independently of anything else. God is also metaphysically necessary: He exists in every possible world, or, in other words, He exists because He must exist and He cannot fail to exist. God is by definition uncreated and undesigned, so to ask the question is to confuse the very definition of God. Therefore, the argument fails from the very start.
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