Nicholas asked:My wife isn't Catholic and asked me if there is one God then isn't there a God that also created Him and so on and so on?Patrick Madrid replied:"...that would lead to something that would be philosophically impossible, known as an infinite regress of contingent finite beings. If God needed a creator then he's finite. He's not infinite. He's not eternal and he's not self-existant and that is really the issue here.The Catholic church points out that in order for anything to exist it requires receiving its existence from something else... things just don't pop into existence from nothing ... and that means that everything you can point to has something that brought it into existence. Well that had something that brought it into existence. And we can go back in time at a certain point we have to say where did all of this come from? And the answer is there must have been a self-existant eternal being that required no one or no thing to give it its existence. In other words its existence and its essence are the same thing and this being we call God. So this answers the question. It it not necessarily an easy thing for people to think about if they're not used to thinking about this kind of thing. But it is rationally, logically, philosophically air-tight. It is a solution to this question that requires the existence of God but that's no problem for some body who actually believes in God. If your wife is willing to believe in God in some sense then with a little bit of study ... I think that this question mark can be pretty easily cleared up for her..." Source material:Handbook of Catholic Apologetics: Reasoned Answers to Questions of Faith by Dr. Peter Kreeft and Fr. Ronald TacelliTheology for Beginners by F. J. Sheed Copyrights:© 2012 Immaculate Heart Catholic RadioEditor's note: This is an excerpt of the answer provided. For the complete response download the podcast. |  Click icon for archived podcast answering this question in its entirety. Show air date: September 27, 2012 Question appeared in show: 46:15 |
