Let’s begin by asking what it is that theists (people who believe in God) want– with the understanding that we are talking about monotheists only. I think there are three key beliefs at the heart of monotheism:

• There is one and only one God in the universe
• God is responsible for the creation of all that exists
• God also exists

If God created all that exists, and God also exists, then God must have created God. Does that make any kind of sense?

Well, it’s an idea that certainly has precedent. The Egyptian gods Ra and Ptah were both self-created gods, according to some of the Egyptian creation myths. But regardless of whether the idea has been advanced previously, is it reasonable? Is it even possible?

To answer that question we first need to identify the attributes that a being must have to be able to self-create. We’re not talking about a god that just suddenly pops into existence with no antecedent. To self-create the being must have consciously decided to bring himself into existence.

At the absolute minimum such a being must have self-awareness– that is, sentience. But this being must also realize that he doesn’t exist. That is, the being must have consciousness, but must not exist– and must be aware that he does not exist.

Secondly, this being would need to have the will to bring himself into existence. And that implies that he must perceive some advantage in existence.

And thirdly, he must have the power to bring himself into existence.

As I see it this line of inquiry poses far more questions than it answers. I don’t understand how it is possible for a being to have conscious awareness without existence. I would want to have that explained to me– and as far as I am aware, no one has ever offered any such explanation.

As to the requirement that he perceive some value in existence, I suspect that the only way such a being could appreciate the advantages of existence is if he had already experienced existence.

And finally, I have difficulty believing that this being could bring himself into existence without having some foothold in existence. I think of this being immersed in an ocean of non-existent consciousness who must somehow bring himself out of this ocean of non-existence into a realm of existence. I don’t understand how that would be possible– and again, I’ve never heard anyone explain such a thing.

So I regard the notion of a self-created God as profoundly unhelpful to our understanding of God. It raises a lot of questions, but provides no answers to any of those questions. Consequently I believe we should not base our theology on this idea.

So we are back to our original dilemma. How do we resolve the two thoughts that (a) God is responsible for the creation of all that exists and that (b) God also exists?

To address that question I would ask that you cast your thoughts back 5,000 years to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to see how religion was observed in that very ancient time. That’s a reasonable thing to do because those were the only two regions of the world at that time that had writing systems.

And when we think back to that very ancient time we find that the forms of religion at that time were broadly similar. Each town had its own god or goddess. That deity lived in a temple in the form of a carved or cast statue. Every morning the temple priests would bathe the god, dress the god, feed the god, pray to the god, and plead to the god for answers to the issues of the day. When should we plant crops. Our neighbors to the east are acting aggressively; should we be planning for war?

Then once a year the priests would remove the god– the carved statue– from the temple, put it in a sedan chair, and parade it down the main avenue of the town. That would be the one time when the average citizen would be able to see and interact with his god. And yes, it really does seem that the people of that very remote time did think that the carved statue really was imbued with the spirit of the living god.

That is how religion was practiced for at least 2,000 years throughout that broad region. But then, sometime after the Bronze Age Collapse, a people who called themselves Israelites appeared on the scene. They said, per the Second Commandment, that it isn’t possible to represent their God as a carved statue. God, they said, is beyond human understanding. Moses went to Mt. Sinai and saw a bush burning– but it was never consumed. And then he heard God’s voice speaking from it. He watched as God carved the ten commandments in stone. But he only saw the hand of God– never God’s face. In the book of Job, it was only when Job finally acknowledged that God’s purposes and designs are beyond human understanding that God finally restored to him everything that had been taken from him. God is not something that you can liken to a mere human, or represent in physical form. God is beyond our understanding. God transcends reality.

Consider a chair– a real chair, perhaps the one you are currently sitting on. No one would argue with the statement that the chair exists. But what exactly does that mean? In a modern context it means that we understand the chair to be comprised of a very large number of elementary particles– quarks, leptons, and bosons– and that those particles abide by a rather large set of rules. Rules that govern the strong force, the weak force, electricity and magnetism, special relativity, general relativity, the laws of thermodynamics, the Pauli Exclusion Principle, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and so forth. When someone tells me that God created the universe from nothing, I interpret that to mean that God created the material substances of the universe– the quarks, leptons, and bosons– and the rules that govern their interactions. If God created those rules, then God must not be subject to those rules. God must in a very real sense transcend the rules that govern reality. So the statement “God exists” cannot mean anything like what the statement “this chair exists” means.

If God is not bound by the rules that govern material objects, then not only cannot God be represented as a carved statue, but God cannot be represented as any kind of material object. If God truly transcends reality, then God is not bound by any of the constraints of reality. And therefore God cannot be real.

I am reminded of a song by George Harrison:

I really want to see you, really want to be with you

My Sweet Lord, George Harrison

Isn’t that what we all want– to know that which cannot be known? To see that which is hidden from us? To touch the face of God? But just because you want something, that doesn’t mean you can have it.

We need a new definition of God. And so I will offer you my own:

God is that which makes reality possible.

Note that this definition does not say how, or when, or why. It purposefully leaves unanswered the question of whether God created God. And yet I claim that this definition gives monotheists everything they want without giving them the one thing they cannot have– existence.

There is one and only one reality. Therefore there can only be one “that which makes reality possible.” The notion that there is only one God in the universe falls naturally out of the above definition.

Reality envelops us. Everything you can do, or think, or imagine, or dream– everything you know and touch and believe– is a component of reality. So “that which makes reality possible” is absolutely necessary. Logically necessary. Therefore God is the logical antecedent of reality. And God is logically necessary.

But this definition of God says nothing about the existence of God. That’s not a limitation of the definition. It’s the boundary of our knowledge about God.

Did God create himself? The definition above gives us no answer– but it also doesn’t exclude the possibility.

2,500 years ago the leaders of the Israelites asked their people to believe that their God could not be represented as a physical statue. They said that God’s purposes are beyond human understanding. Now I ask you to carry that principle to its logical extent by recognizing that God cannot exist for the simple reason that God is transcendent. The God that has made reality possible is necessarily beyond reality– and existence.

I really want to see you Lord, but I know that I cannot.

Copyright (c) 2025, David S. Moore

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