Infinite Regression

 

            When philosophers ask you, “If God made man and the universe, than who made God?” What’s to stop from going further as to, who made God, than who made who made God and then regress, regress, regress. And then they’ll say you can’t reason this way because you fall into the fallacy of infinite regression.

            There is a quick answer for the argument of infinite regression. When a person says to you, “You can’t argue me back to God, who made God?” That’s Bertrand Russell’s great argument in his book, Why I Am Not A Christian. Russell is the source of this criticism. Ok, say to the person who gives you this argument, “Ok, lets assume the we regressed from mankind, through creation and the universe and we are now back at God.”

The person says, “Alright, who made God?”

Than you say, “Well let’s assume that somebody did make Him. So what does it prove? It proves that we are responsible to our maker”.  Why? Because if we appear before His throne and we give Him the argument, “I didn’t believe in you because I can regress beyond you to somebody who made you.”

God could answer, “It doesn’t make any difference if somebody made me. The only thing that makes any difference is I made you. Now I want to know what you did with what I told you to do.”  

            Very reminiscent with the hippies on trial in Chicago, who were violently complaining to the judge. They said that the judge had no authority to do anything to them; they were a free moral agents. And the judge answered them by saying, “I may not be the supreme court of the United States, but I do have enough authority to take care of you. Thirty days.” And he put them in.

            There is a lesson to be learned from that. That judge was not the Supreme Court. That judge was simply an intermediary. But the intermediary had the power to judge those people.

            All right, lets use the philosophical argument that there is a finite God. That some force greater than God made Him. The argument is totally irrelevant. The argument has no bearing and no weight the moment you grant it. Because we are going to have to answer to the God that made our universe and that made us. And so the person that wants to regress beyond Him has no reason to regress any further. Why? Because God’s the one responsible for us and He’s the one that’s going to demand from us, why we didn’t obey Him.

             So give them their finite God and then end right there. With the finite God demanding you to give an account to Him, what are you going to say? You have cut the infinite regression right out. And you’re at a God who has the power to send you to hell, because you wouldn’t believe in Him.

This was taken from Dr. Walter Martin's lecture titled, "Seven Campus Curses"