A: Nothing can exist without a cause. The universe exists; what caused it? I say it was God!
B: OK, who caused God, then?
A: Nothing. God wasn’t caused or created; he always existed.
B: Then why can’t the universe have always existed?
A: That’s impossible, nothing can exist without a cause…
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? 
This is one of the most common examples of a fallacy called special pleading, that is, introducing an exception to a rule without justifying or proving that exception. Believers postulate God’s existance due to the fact that, according to them, everything needs a cause, or a creator, or a designer. Then what caused, created or designed God in the first place? Ah, that’s an exception. God always was. Why? Just because! And so on.
Unfortunately, arguing with someone who makes a claim like this and doesn’t see a problem with it is typically useless. We’re talking about a person who already “has” the answers, and will ignore any facts or logic contradicting them. You can’t argue with someone who sees no relation between truth and reality.
Fortunately, many believers aren’t like this, and would not use the argument above as proof of their god’s existence. Unfortunately, then we run into another problem: the more a believer is sophisticated and educated, the more he gets away from the absurd, Ray Comfort-like “proofs of God” (a banana?!? seriously…), and the closer he gets to admitting that he has no proofs or evidence at all, just faith… and if he still sees no problem with it, if he sees faith (complete disregard for facts and reality) as a virtue, then, again, there’s nothing that can be done for that believer.
Related posts:
Subscribe to this blog
I’m sorry to say that this argument seems to have originally begun as a straw man.
The correct argument begins: “No *physical* thing can exist without a cause” therefore “All *physical things* are caused”.
As far as we know all physical things are temporally finite. In the case of the universe, it had a beginning. As far as we know all physical things that have a beginning have a cause.
(Strictly speaking, we do not know that all physical things have a beginning. All physical things that have a beginning, _in our experience_, are simply the result of pre-existing physical things or energy. Possibly the result of quantum fluctuations in a pre-existent de Sitter space. Nevertheless …).
It is conjectured, therefore, that the physical universe has a cause that is neither finite, nor physical, nor caused. This is what is meant by the statement, “God is spirit”.
This is the correct version of the argument.
Jey,
It is no straw man and you should know it. The more common argument is “all things which ‘begin to exist’, have a cause”.
There are several things wrong with this. The first difficulty I would like to point out is epistemological; HOW would anyone know what the characteristics of God are if they don’t know that God even exists. The last time I checked theism was still classed as a “faith-based belief”, i.e., belief which is NOT based on logical proof or material evidence. Simply put, the believer is claiming “knowledge” no human being can acquire or possess. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion; they are not entitled to their own facts, which btw theists are trying to establish by arbitrary decree.
The second difficulty is that theists are assuming the conclusion in their premise, i.e., Begging the Question, which is a fallacy. By the rules of Logic, it is not a legitimate argument.
The third difficulty is that by proposing that matter is a much better candidate for having always existed, non-theists eliminate an unnecessary step in conformity with Occam’s Razor. There is genuine scientific support for matter being uncaused in that matter/energy can neither be created nor destroyed.
The forth difficulty is that in our world in which an estimated ten thousand gods are worshipped, the clear unequivocal evidence is that man is a prolific inventor of gods and the God of the Bible can in no way be shown to be an exception. The logical evidence from a comparative study of mythology and religion is that the God of the Bible did begin to exist and that man was his creator.
The world’s first recorded monotheist was Akhenaten who ruled from 1352-1336 BC. The second recorded monotheist, Moses, was supposedly a member of the same royal family.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten
The fifth difficulty is that the Bible’s creation story, Genesis, is a cultural borrowing from the mythology of the various states which existed between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, starting with Sumer, whose citizens were the first literate people. Sumer’s creation stories predated Genesis by a thousand years. The Jews were exposed to this mythology during their captivity in Babylon. That mythology included a seven day creation (named after the seven heavenly bodies), in which man was created on the sixth day, so the gods could rest. Gilgamesh, the hero of the world’s first epic, went in search of eternal life but had it stolen from him by a snake, with the use of a magical plant (sound familiar?). Their mythology also included a very similar flood story, a tower of Babel story, men living to great age, etc. All of this is beyond coincidence and cuts the rug out from the claim that the Bible can be read as God’s word or as history. I have provided a supporting link. With more time readers can find others and probably better ones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_mythology
Then there is this final difficulty. That the cosmos exists is no more proof of the Biblical God’s existence as the creator, than it is proof of the Spaghetti Monster’s existence as the creator.