Few questions have stirred the human spirit as deeply as this: Who created God? It is a question that bridges the realms of science, philosophy, and theology—a question that has haunted both the devout believer and the skeptical thinker. To ask who created God is to probe the boundaries of existence itself, to seek the origins of all origins. It is the ultimate inquiry, where reason and wonder converge.
Throughout history, every culture and civilization has grappled with the mystery of beginnings. How did the universe arise from nothing? Why is there something rather than nothing at all? If everything must have a cause, then what caused the first cause? These are not merely abstract musings; they touch the deepest human impulse—to understand where we came from, why we exist, and whether there is meaning in the vastness of the cosmos.
The question “Who created God?” arises naturally when one considers the law of causality: that every effect has a cause, and every cause must have a prior cause. Yet if we follow this chain backward, we face an infinite regress—unless there exists something that itself is uncaused, something eternal and necessary. For millennia, philosophers and theologians have proposed that such a being—uncaused, timeless, and self-existent—is what we call God.
But what does it mean for something to be uncreated? And can modern science, with its understanding of time, space, and the origins of the universe, shed light on such a profound metaphysical claim?
The Human Desire for Origins
The longing to understand beginnings is woven into the fabric of the human mind. From the earliest myths to modern cosmology, we have sought to trace the thread of existence back to its source. Ancient civilizations imagined gods who formed the world from chaos, who sculpted humans from clay, who lit the heavens with their breath. These stories were not primitive errors; they were poetic expressions of an intuitive truth—that the universe, in all its complexity and order, seems to require explanation.
Even in a scientific age, the question remains. The Big Bang theory describes the evolution of the cosmos from an initial singularity—an unimaginably dense and hot state—but it does not explain why there was a Big Bang, nor what, if anything, preceded it. Physics can model the unfolding of time and matter, but it cannot tell us why reality itself exists. Thus, science and philosophy meet at the same precipice: the mystery of being.
The question “Who created God?” reflects this deep impulse. It assumes that if the universe must have a cause, then so must the deity that supposedly caused it. Yet the classical concept of God—across traditions such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and certain schools of philosophy—defines God not as a being within the universe but as the ground of being itself, the necessary reality upon which all contingent things depend.
The Philosophical Foundations of the Uncaused Cause
Long before modern physics, philosophers wrestled with the notion of the first cause. In ancient Greece, Aristotle reasoned that everything in motion must have been set in motion by something else. But this chain could not go on infinitely; there must be a Prime Mover, unmoved yet moving all things. This Prime Mover, Aristotle argued, is pure actuality—eternal, changeless, and perfect. It is not a god in the mythological sense but a metaphysical principle: the ultimate explanation for existence.
Centuries later, Christian philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas refined this idea into the argument for the Uncaused Cause. In his Summa Theologica, Aquinas proposed that everything in the universe is contingent—it exists but could just as easily not have existed. Therefore, there must be something whose existence is necessary, something that cannot not exist. This necessary being is what we call God.
The key insight here is logical rather than theological: not everything can be contingent, or there would be nothing to explain why anything exists at all. There must be a reality that is self-sufficient, whose essence is existence itself. To ask “Who created God?” in this framework is to misunderstand the concept of God. God, by definition, is uncaused—the eternal ground from which causality itself emerges.
The Illusion of Infinite Regression
To understand why philosophers reject the idea of an infinite regress of causes, consider a simple analogy: a line of dominoes falling. Each domino knocks over the next, but if there were no first domino to begin the motion, the sequence would never start. Likewise, if every event required a prior cause, and there were no uncaused cause, then nothing could ever exist. The existence of a first cause, therefore, is not only plausible—it is logically necessary.
However, the first cause need not be a physical event or entity; it must transcend time and space, since time and space themselves began with the universe. The “uncaused cause” must therefore exist outside of temporal sequence—it does not “begin” or “happen” in time. In this sense, the question “Who created God?” loses coherence, because creation itself presupposes time, and time began with the universe. An eternal being is not subject to temporal causation.
In physics, this is analogous to the idea of a timeless law. The law of gravity, for instance, does not “begin” at a particular moment; it simply is. Likewise, if God exists as the ultimate ground of reality, He is not part of the temporal chain of cause and effect but the foundation upon which it rests.
Science and the Beginning of Time
The rise of modern cosmology in the 20th century added new dimensions to the question of origins. When Edwin Hubble observed in 1929 that galaxies are receding from each other, it implied that the universe is expanding—leading to the revolutionary idea of the Big Bang.
The Big Bang was not an explosion in space; it was the expansion of space itself. Time, matter, and energy all emerged from this initial state approximately 13.8 billion years ago. Before this moment, there was no “before” in any physical sense, since time itself began at that boundary.
This raises profound philosophical implications. If time had a beginning, then causation—defined as one event leading to another in time—cannot apply “before” the universe. Asking what caused the Big Bang, or who created God, may therefore be like asking what lies north of the North Pole: the question assumes a context that does not exist.
Yet many scientists have recognized the metaphysical weight of this insight. The physicist Stephen Hawking famously said, “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.” But this statement invites deeper questions: where do the laws of physics themselves come from? Why does the universe obey mathematical order at all? Why should there be something as opposed to absolute nothingness?
Science can describe the mechanisms by which the universe evolves, but it cannot explain the existence of those mechanisms. The question of ultimate origins remains beyond empirical reach, resting instead in the realm of metaphysics.
The Quantum Frontier and the Question of Nothingness
Some physicists have proposed that the universe could have arisen from a quantum vacuum—a state of “nothing” that is actually a sea of fluctuating energy fields. In quantum mechanics, particles can momentarily pop into existence and annihilate again, borrowing energy from the vacuum according to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Could the entire universe have originated as a quantum fluctuation?
At first glance, this might seem to explain existence without invoking a creator. Yet this “nothing” of physics is not true nothingness. The quantum vacuum presupposes a framework of physical laws, space-time geometry, and quantum fields—all of which require explanation. A vacuum with physical properties is not the absence of being; it is a highly structured something.
Thus, the philosophical question persists: why do these laws exist? Why are there quantum fields rather than absolute void? The mystery of being cannot be dissolved merely by pushing the question into the language of equations. The ultimate “why” remains untouched.
In this sense, the question “Who created God?” can be reframed as “Why does anything exist at all?” For many thinkers, both religious and secular, the existence of contingent reality points toward something necessary, eternal, and self-explanatory—a reality that simply is.
The Timeless Dimension of the Divine
When theologians and philosophers speak of God as “uncreated,” they are not describing a being who existed for an infinitely long time in the past. Rather, they describe a being beyond time. To be eternal, in this sense, is not to have existed for endless ages, but to exist outside of temporal succession altogether.
Imagine time as a line—a sequence of moments stretching from past to future. We, within time, move along that line, experiencing one moment after another. But an eternal being would exist outside the line, seeing all points—past, present, and future—simultaneously.
This timeless conception of divinity is supported by both classical philosophy and hints from modern physics. Einstein’s theory of relativity revealed that time is not absolute; it is intertwined with space and affected by motion and gravity. To an observer outside the fabric of space-time, the entire history of the universe could, in principle, be perceived as a single whole.
If such a perspective exists, then God’s relationship to time would resemble that of an author to a story. The characters within the story experience events sequentially, unaware that the author exists outside their narrative, perceiving it in its entirety. To ask “Who created God?” is like a fictional character asking “Who created my author?”—the answer lies beyond the story’s frame.
The Fine-Tuned Universe
Another scientific mystery that fuels discussions of a creator is the apparent fine-tuning of the universe. The physical constants—such as the strength of gravity, the charge of the electron, and the cosmological constant—appear precisely calibrated to allow the existence of stars, planets, and life. Even slight variations in these values would render the universe sterile or short-lived.
There are three broad explanations for this fine-tuning: chance, necessity, or design. The chance hypothesis suggests that we simply exist in a rare universe where conditions happen to permit life. The necessity hypothesis posits that the laws of physics could not have been otherwise. The design hypothesis suggests that the universe is the product of intelligent intention.
Some physicists invoke the multiverse—a hypothetical ensemble of countless universes, each with different physical constants. In such a scenario, it is not surprising that at least one universe (ours) has the right conditions for life. However, this explanation pushes the question further: what generated the multiverse itself? Even if infinite universes exist, why does existence exist at all?
To many thinkers, the fine-tuning of the cosmos implies that reality is not an accident but the expression of an underlying intelligence or purpose. Whether one calls this intelligence “God” or “the laws of nature,” the sense of order and coherence remains awe-inspiring.
God, the Laws of Physics, and the Nature of Explanation
One modern attempt to reconcile science and theology is the idea that God is not a being within the universe but the ground of its intelligibility. In this view, God is not one cause among others but the reason why there are causes at all. Just as mathematics underlies physics, and logic underlies mathematics, God underlies existence itself.
The philosopher and theologian Paul Tillich described God as the “ground of being”—not an object or entity, but the condition for the possibility of all existence. Similarly, the physicist John Polkinghorne suggested that God and science answer different kinds of questions: science explains how the universe works, while theology asks why it exists in the first place.
To say that God is uncreated, then, is to affirm that God’s existence is necessary rather than contingent. Just as two plus two cannot fail to equal four, so the divine cannot fail to exist if existence itself depends upon it. This is not an argument from ignorance but from coherence—a recognition that reality’s deepest layers may be grounded in something beyond empirical observation.
The Psychological Dimension of the Question
The question “Who created God?” also arises from a psychological need to understand the world in terms of familiar cause-and-effect reasoning. Our brains evolved to detect patterns and assign causality—traits that once ensured survival but now extend to the cosmic scale. We naturally assume that everything, even the universe itself, must have an origin story.
However, when we reach the boundaries of time and causation, these instincts falter. Asking “Who created God?” is an attempt to extend human reasoning into a domain where it no longer applies. The question itself reflects both our intellectual power and its limits.
From a philosophical standpoint, the human mind encounters mystery not as an obstacle but as an invitation. The limits of comprehension become the edges of wonder—the place where thought gives way to awe. Whether one names that mystery “God,” “the universe,” or “being itself,” the experience of transcendence remains the same: a recognition that existence is larger than understanding.
The Interplay of Faith and Reason
Faith and reason are often portrayed as opposites, but history reveals a more nuanced relationship. Many of the greatest scientific minds—Kepler, Newton, Einstein—viewed the universe as a rational, ordered system, reflecting a deeper intelligibility. For them, science did not negate belief; it deepened it.
The belief in an uncreated creator does not rest solely on blind faith but on philosophical reasoning. If everything that begins to exist has a cause, and the universe began to exist, then there must be a cause outside of it—timeless, immaterial, and powerful. This is not a scientific proof of God, but it aligns with logic and the evidence of cosmic beginnings.
Conversely, even atheistic interpretations rest on acts of faith—faith in the self-sufficiency of physical laws, in the ultimate intelligibility of matter, or in the idea that something can arise from nothing. Every worldview, whether religious or secular, faces the same existential riddle: why does reality exist at all?
The Mystery of Existence
Ultimately, the question “Who created God?” invites us to confront the mystery of existence itself. Whether one accepts the notion of an uncreated creator or not, the fact remains that something exists rather than nothing—and that something possesses order, beauty, and complexity.
If the universe is all there is, then it is itself the ultimate mystery—uncaused, eternal, or self-originating. If there is a creator beyond the universe, then that creator is the necessary reality that grounds all others. In either case, we encounter the same profound truth: existence cannot be explained away; it must simply be.
The philosopher Leibniz framed the dilemma succinctly: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” This question cannot be answered empirically, for any scientific explanation presupposes an existing framework of reality. The ultimate answer, if there is one, must transcend time, matter, and causality.
The Uncreated Light
To speak of an uncreated creator is to speak of the ultimate mystery—the source from which all being flows. Whether understood through theology, philosophy, or the language of cosmology, this concept points toward a reality that is timeless, self-existent, and necessary.
Perhaps the question “Who created God?” is itself a mirror—reflecting our desire to find beginnings, even when none exist. The answer may not lie in logic alone but in the recognition that existence is not something that “happens”; it is. The uncreated creator is the infinite ground of that isness—the eternal foundation upon which reality rests.
In the end, every path of inquiry, whether through particle physics or metaphysics, leads us to the same threshold: the awareness that being itself is the greatest miracle. To say that God is uncreated is not to evade the question of origins but to acknowledge that there must be a reality that simply is—a luminous, self-sustaining presence without which nothing could be.
The question “Who created God?” dissolves not in dogma but in understanding. For the ultimate cause does not lie in time, nor in matter, nor in chance—it lies in the eternal mystery of existence itself.
In contemplating that mystery, we find both humility and awe. The cosmos, vast and ancient, whispers of an origin beyond origins—a light uncreated, timeless, and absolute. Whether we call it God or the foundation of being, it is the same truth that has beckoned humanity from the beginning: that behind all that is seen and measured lies something infinite, silent, and eternal—the uncreated creator of all that is.