According to the law of cause and effect, nothing can cause or create itself; it would be a violation of the law of noncontradiction to exist and not exist at the same time or in the same manner. There can be uncaused causes, but not uncaused effects. Everything that begins to exist or any event has a cause or beginning. God is referred to as the Uncaused Cause or Unmoved Mover setting everything into motion according to Newton’s law of motion that an object at rest tends to stay at rest. We need not assume everything is created or must be; self-existence violates no law of logic, math, or philosophy, it is not only rationally possible, but necessary.
If everything was created or happened by cause, there would be no end to the chain of events. If ever there was “nothing,” though, nothing would exist now; nothing can come from nothing (ex nihilo, nihil fit). Add to this the fact that nothing can come from nothing, something must have always existed—this is called the necessary being and all other beings are unnecessary, caused, and created. Either matter or God came first. Is matter over and precedes God or God over and precedes matter?
The fact that God is eternal means by definition that He had no beginning in time; all things in the time-space continuum had a beginning in time, but God is before time and created it for there would be no time without matter and even science acknowledges it all began at the Big Bang.
God’s name as I AM (which can be translated “I Cause to be”) means He is self-existent and also that He causes to be. I AM WHO I AM or I AM WHAT I AM. He existed before time, which is a corollary of space and matter and is not confined, limited, nor defined by it. As being without beginning or end. Before creation (the Big Bang) there was no time either. Time had a beginning as the Bible says, “before time began,” (cf. Tim. 1:9; Titus 1:2).
An eternal amount of time cannot be crossed for it is impossible to cross infinity; infinite regress is impossible—you must begin somewhere with a First Cause, as Aristotle thought of God. If the cosmos were eternal and infinitely old, it would have time to be perfect by now and it would’ve stopped expanding as it is. Astronomers and physicists have determined that at some time in the past the time clock began clicking.
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