Today we come across people who ask this question exactly as the way the noble Prophet had described. These sorts of questions are asked with an intention to confuse the minds of people with weak Iman. The reality is that Allah is the creator, not a cause. In the logic of philosophy, no scientist will fall into a debate of chain reaction. This means that, if we say, another God created the God than the next question will be who created that God? The questions will continue to come until you have billions of gods. At the end you would have to accept the existence of one God that creates but does not need to be created. If we have to accept that there is one Creator at the end, then why do we need all these other fake gods in the middle? Allah is the creator, He creates but He was not created.
Even in physics, it is impossible to explain the history of matter. Let’s say, the sun is made up of gases such as hydrogen and helium. Then we ask what are they made up of? The answer is they are made up of atoms. The following question would be what are atoms made up of? We would answer they are made up of smaller particles. This line of questioning would end at a certain point because physics cannot go any further. We do not even have proper understanding of the matter Allah has created, but we try to understand His being.
This question is like the chicken and the egg question. Did the chicken come out of the egg or did the egg come out of the chicken first? The only way we can have a logical answer to this is when we say, Allah created the chicken first.
Here is an example:
Let’s say that you are sitting on a chair that has no back legs. You would obviously fall back. To avoid falling you have placed another chair under the back of the chair you are sitting on, but that chair also has two legs missing at the back. So you do the same with that chair as well and place another one behind that one. You can continue to place chairs with back legs missing forever, but when you sit on the front one you will still fall back like dominos. This means that you need to have one chair at the very back which actually has four legs. This has to be a chair that supports all of the others but does not need support itself.
Let’s tackle the issue with a mathematical approach. A zero has no value. Placing a zero next to a zero would not give you a value. You can write billions of zeros next to each other, the result would not change. It is still zero. This means, in order to obtain a value, you need a one. Now everything in the universe needs something else to exist or survive, hence they are all represented by a zero. According to the physical law of cause and effect, everything occurs with a cause. But all causes come to an end when we go back to the beginning of the universe. This means that Allah is the creator of cause, but He does not need a cause to exist. He is the One.
Yes, the universe, matter and time are not endless things. They were all created. They need a creator to exist. But, Allah has always existed and His existence does not depend on a reason.
Let’s take a look at two more examples:
On a train, the last wagon is pulled by the wagon in front. When we ask what pulls the wagon in front of that, the obvious answer would be the one in front of the second last wagon. We can continue to ask the question until we reach the locomotive. It would be very silly to ask, “What pulls the locomotive”. We know that the locomotive is self-powered. It pulls all the wagons but it does not need to be pulled.
If you ask someone a question like, “what carries your head?” He would say, “My body”. Then you can ask, “What carries your body?” The answer would be the earth. Now it would be foolish to ask, “What carries the earth”. Because the answer is nothing, it is in an empty space. This means that there is a point where causes end. It would be unscientific to continue asking questions beyond this point.
Everything points to a Creator and by dying or coming to an end, everything states that the Creator is eternal. This also means that everything that has a beginning also has an end. However, the creator of all temporary things, is everlasting, therefore there is no beginning to His existence.
Think about a train that leaves Melbourne heading towards a town 100km away. The train is traveling at a speed of 100km per hour, which means that it will reach the town in one hour. But when it reaches half way, the train slows down to 50km per hour. This means that the second half of the trip would take another hour. However, as it reaches the halfway point of the second half, once again it slows down to 25km per hour. Then there is another hour to go. If the train continues to slow down at the same rate, it may never reach this town. However, this is wrong and the truth is that all distances will be traveled one day, but we think that we will never get there by traveling at such a tempo.
We can relate this example to the mysteries of existence of matter. Everything in the universe is heading towards an end. Whether it happens soon or millions of years later, there is no doubt that everything will come to an end. Only then it will be realized that Allah is the One who will continue to exist.
He is the creator of all and thinking that He was also created is a sign of total ignorance. This means that such a person is not capable of understanding the difference between the creation and the Creator. These sorts of questions are quite absurd and unscientific today.