Who designed the Designer? Or Who created the Creator?

The above is one of the more popular questions often raised by skeptics to debunk the idea of an Almighty Creator who created the entire universe. Truth be told, such skepticism is not new at all. Questions similar to the ones above have been raised by people throughout history. It seems quite obvious and understandable why such questions are common; you claim that a Divine entity created the entire universe, then a similar question conveniently follows, who created that Creator? Great thinkers of old have also dealt with that question adequately. For instant, Aristotle once mentioned that there has to be a First Initial Cause that is itself Uncaused. Muslims call that Uncaused Initial Cause, God or Allah. Aristotle argued that some point in the past there has to be something that first kicks off everything else and there cannot possibly be no Uncaused Cause; lest everything will be trapped in an infinite, never-ending chain of creators/designers. The questions can climb up, incessantly, the hierarchical ladder of questions of who designed the Designer, followed by who designed the one who designed the Designer and so forth.

Imam Ghazali came up with a similar philosophical argument. Count down all the natural numbers from a million to 1, what is before 1? Nothing.

Then comes the interesting part, where modern science handles the task of answering this seemingly disturbing question…

The theory of relativity founded by Einstein showed that time itself as an entity is relative. Meaning time only exists when you have something else to refer to, hence the relativity. So the religious claim that God is the Creator of everything entails the idea that at one point of time in the distant past, there existed a moment where only God and God alone existed. At that moment, there is absolutely nothing else to refer to in order to have the concept of time existing. Hence at that moment time does not exist and it automatically follows that the concept of before and after fails at that moment. Hence, nothing comes before God the One, the Unique.

Subhanallah, it’s just fascinating beyond description to witness how God enlightens us about the Truth via the sciences. I remember a former atheist Professor of Physics who converted to Islam when he found out that physics could potentially prove the basic qualities of God, namely that He is Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent. He was Professor Muhammad Mahdy and I was fortunate enough to attend his highly scientific lecture at Masjid Istiqamah some years back. If I am not mistaken, he holds a PhD from one of the Ivy League. It was truly breathtaking to understand for yourself how the most fundamental principles of Tauhid is being proven by Modern Science. ;)

Just as a cautionary measure, the concept of God being One or Unique requires a more thorough appreciation than just a simplistic understanding of God being one and not many. Don’t be alarmed if you could still measure time when you are absolutely alone in the universe. This is because you are not one! You are many! You are made up of more than a trillion cells of which each is further made up of parts such as the cell membrane, nucleus, endoplasmic reticulum, mitochondria, ribosomes and what not. At the bottommost of the scale will be atoms and its constituents.

The Oneness of God is about Absolute Oneness, which automatically entails Indivisibility. That is why Surah Al-Ikhlas begins with the proclamation that God is One, Unique. It further reiterates the concept of indivisibility of God when it denies the Christian Trinitarian doctrine that God has a Son. The Muslim Tauhid rejects the Trinity precisely because God is One and Indivisible. It does not accept “three that bear witness in heaven and these three are one.”

May Allah Forgive us and Bless Us with wisdom and beautiful insights into His Beauty and Majesty, thereby strengthening our faith in Him and His chosen Way of Life, Al-Islam, Amin! Peace and Salutations of God be upon His Most Beloved, Sayyidina Muhammad saw.

copied on 291207