People of varying kinds and amounts of faith when confronted with the idea of God not existing often assert something similar to the following: “if God doesn’t exist then where did all this come from?” meaning of course that the universe is so complex that it hurts their heads so there must be someone out there twiddling the knobs.
This is actually a simplified version of an old, lengthy, and very sophisticated theological argument known as the watchmaker. It goes as follows:
“A watch requires a watchmaker.”
Translation: the watch is so complex that it hurts my head so there must be someone twiddling the knobs.
This is meant to be a general rule that doesn’t just apply to Rolexes, but to all things including universes so it follows:
“A universe requires a universe maker” which is of course: (insert your favorite god).
However, the problem with this rule is that it if it’s to be applied to other situations such as the origins of the universe, then consistency demands that it also be applied to itself (consistency is a hard taskmaster).
So, is the watchmaker himself complex? Remember the hip bone’s connected to the brain bone, or something of that effect.
If so then according to our new and edifying rule does a watchmaker require a watchmaker-maker? Did God come from a God factory? Was there a rebate involved?
The answer usually given is that the universe maker has always existed so there’s no need to lose sleep about how such a complex being came into existence.
But consistency has tossed another penalty flag. We’ve made a special rule for our universe maker that we aren’t allowed to apply to the universe itself (illegal procedure). Otherwise we could also just say that the universe has always been around so there’s no need to ponder how it came into being either (false start). There are other more important things to worry about like “tastes great vs. less filling.”
Some apologists will try to circumvent this problem by tossing God out of the universe altogether, i.e. “God is outside of the universe and therefore not subject to rules.”
However, anything that is not subject to rules also can’t have reasoning applied to it and therefore can only come from faith as an accepted premise.
The universe maker rule would then depend on this accepted premise being true. Remember, can’t have a consistent universe maker rule without an unmade universe maker can we?
Again inconsistency raises it’s ugly head because the purpose of the universe maker rule is to support the idea that the premise (the unmade universe maker exists) is true and so you end up with a circular argument which is… ummmm… invalid.
In other words it’s invalid for a rule to support a premise that the rule itself is based on.
Rule supports premise supports rule supports premise supports rule… Jane, get me off of this crazy thing…