Why Does Anything Exist At All?

Look around you. What do you see? Of course, no matter where you are while reading this, you can name a thousand things: a wall, a tree, a butterfly, the sun, the moon, a house, a computer, a book, etc. But you do see something, right? There are “things” of all kinds all around you.

But why is there something and not nothing? Please forgive the double negative, it may not be good grammar, but it is on purpose. It helps us think carefully about this question. Why do things exist instead of nothing? How does something come out of nothing? How do things come into existence at all? Where did they come from? Did things just pop into being from nothing like popcorn? But that cannot be right because popcorn does not pop into being from nothing. Popcorn pops into being from something else, namely, raw kernels. And the raw kernels come from cobs of corn, which come from corn stalks, which come from seeds planted in the earth.

But where did the earth come from?

The logic is clear – things don’t come into being by themselves. Someone or something must have caused those things to be there or else they would not be there. This truth gives rise to the Cosmological Argument for the existence of God. It states that God is the first cause that causes everything else to exist. Here is the formal argument:

1. Every contingent thing has a cause.

2. There cannot be an infinite regress of causes.

3. Therefore, there must be a first cause.

4. This first cause is either matter and energy or God.

5. The first cause is not matter and energy.

6. Therefore, the first cause is God.

Okay, if you are not familiar with this, you are probably rolling your eyes and trying to figure out why you are wasting your time reading this book. If this is you, press on! You can get this! If you have studied apologetics or philosophy before, you are familiar with this argument and hopefully want to understand it better. Either way, let’s work through each step carefully.

Every Contingent Thing has a Cause

Without going into a great amount of detail as to how it happened, you know that your parents caused you to exist, right? But did someone cause them to exist as well? Yep, their parents caused them to exist.

But guess what? Your grandparents also had parents. And their parents had parents who also had parents who also had parents. Every person who has every lived was caused to live by someone else. This is called a causal chain. One person caused another who caused another and so on.

It might help to think about a train. Suppose you drive up to a railroad crossing and you see all the train cars going by one-by-one. They are all attached to each other and they are all causing each other to move, so they make up a causal chain.

Now, notice the word contingent in the premise above. A contingent thing is something that requires something else for its existence. It is a dependent thing, a thing that must have a cause. A beautiful painting is contingent upon a skillful painter. A flying airplane is contingent on air, fuel and pilot (assuming it is not remote-controlled).

As you will see momentarily, not everything is contingent. But if something is contingent, then it has a cause which brings it into being. But these causes can’t go back forever.

There Cannot Be an Infinite Regress of Causes

Causes and effects can go back for a long time. Remember your parents and their parents and their parents and so on. Well, we could just keep on going with that. Your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandparents had parents. And your great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandparents had parents. And on and on we could go.

Or could we? Can this causal chain just keep going back forever? Or does this regress of causes ever stop? Is there a point where you get to your very first parents who themselves had no human parents?

Think about the train again. You see five cars, then ten cars, then thirty cars, then fifty cars, then seventy-five cars, then ninety cars go by – and you are frustrated because you are late for work! Can this train be a never-ending train?

Is it possible for you to sit in your car at the railroad crossing and watch the train go by every day, week after week, month after month, year after year, without ever coming to an end (or beginning)? Of course not! An infinite, never-ending regress of causes is impossible.

The same is true with the existence of the universe. The earth was caused to exist, since it is a contingent thing, but what caused it to exist? Galaxies were caused to exist, but what caused them to exist? In other words, what was the very first thing that ever existed that caused everything else to exist? This leads us to the first major conclusion of the Cosmological Argument:

Therefore, There Must Be a First Cause

To most people, this seems to make a lot of sense and is the natural conclusion of the first two premises. At some point you have to have parents who are your first parents who have no prior human parents (Adam and Eve we’ll say). The train at some point must end. There must be a cause (the engine) that is making all the other cars move.

The universe has to have a first cause too. There has to be some type of “engine” that is driving and causing everything else to exist. It is important to note that whatever this first cause is, it must be both uncaused and eternal.

What does it mean to be uncaused? It means that the first cause could not have been caused by anything or anyone else (including itself). Logically, it must have no cause at all. This first cause just is. It would necessarily be an ever present eternal being or substance. Something like this would appropriately be called It Is, or perhaps more appropriately I Am.

Why? Well, if the first cause has a cause, then it is not the first cause. If something created it, then it is not the first cause. This means that the first cause, whatever it is, must by necessity be uncaused and thus eternal. Eternal because if it is uncaused, then there was never a time when it did not exist and never a time when it will not exist. If there was a time when it did not exist, but it does exist now, then it was caused. In fact, that is what it means to be caused – to not exist and then to exist. But the first cause was not and could not have been caused at all. So if it is uncaused, it is also eternal.

This means the first cause must have no beginning and no ending. It must be what philosophers call a necessary being. Without it, nothing else exists. You might call it the First and Last or maybe even the Alpha and the Omega (Revelation 1:8).

Remember above when we were talking about the word contingent? A contingent thing is a thing that depends on something else for its existence. We stated that not everything is a contingent thing. Actually, the first cause is the only thing that is not contingent. It stands alone as the only thing in the universe that does not depend on something else for its existence since it is uncaused and eternal. It cannot be born and it cannot die. It cannot be created and it cannot be destroyed.

Now, this is where our illustrations about parents and trains break down and quit working. Your parents can go back a long way and you can have first parents, but Adam and Eve are not eternal beings because they too had a beginning. Something brought them into being, even if it wasn’t “human” parents. They cannot be the first cause, even though they are the first human parents.

On the train, of course, the source of the movement of all the cars is the engine. The engine might be called the first car, since it propels the other cars, but the engine is a contingent thing too. It requires fuel in order to operate and an architect and builder to put it together, so it is a caused thing as well. It might be the first car, but it cannot fulfill the role of first cause. But what, or who, can fulfill the role of first cause? The answer can basically be reduced to two options.

This First Cause Is Either Matter and Energy or God

This premise is given in a dilemma form. This means it presents only two options for the first cause. But to be fair, there is another possibility that people have considered, but it is filled with problems. Let’s take a brief look at this view.

The Matrix Briefly Considered

Some say that all of reality is nothing but an illusion. These people fight the logic of the first cause argument with the simple denial that there is a first cause at all. They do this by holding to the belief that in reality there is nothing at all.

A modern illustration of this belief was presented in the movie The Matrix. A little kid dressed in Hindu garb gazes at a spoon that bends in his hand like melting wax. He informs the lead character, Neo, that he could bend the spoon with his mind because the spoon wasn’t really there. Some folks actually believe that! But this option – officially called pantheism – is filled with logical and philosophical problems and will be refuted in chapter 11.

Sure, it is possible that we are all living in the matrix. It could be that we all are not really here, but rather we are actually in a cold, dark room somewhere, unconscious, with our brains hooked into a master computer that is feeding our minds mere images of the world. This scenario is logically possible and it does make for a good story, but we have no real reason at all to believe that it is true. In fact, everything we sense and see tells us just the opposite. The word is a real, material place.

Back to Reality

So this brings us back to the idea that the first cause is either matter and energy or God.

What if we say that it is matter and energy? There are many, many people who hold to this option or some form of it. They are called Naturalists. Some believe that matter and energy, which is essentially viewed as different forms of the thing substance, caused itself to exist, while others assert that it simply always has existed (that it is eternal). Still others hold that humanity just cannot know how it got here. Yet regardless of their viewpoint, the unifying belief is that matter and energy is ultimately all that there is.

Now when we say matter what are we talking about? The most basic known form of matter is the atom and the particles and energy that make it up. Atoms, of course, form into molecules, which form into bigger substances such as water, dust, rocks, and ultimately planets, stars and galaxies. The naturalist believes that the universe is only made up of these material things. This stuff, understood as a complete whole and described as matter and energy, is the first cause. Famous naturalist Carl Sagan once said, “The universe is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” [iii]

The First Cause Is Not Matter and Energy

But there are many problems with naturalism. Those who hold that matter is self-caused have a really big problem. Self-causation is utterly illogical and impossible. In order for something to cause anything, it must first exist. But if it does not exist, it cannot cause anything at all to happen. If it cannot cause anything at all to happen, then it certainly cannot cause itself to exist. This option simply cannot work. But the idea that matter and energy is eternal is also highly problematic. It is difficult to conceive of atoms and other material entities as never having a beginning. It takes a great deal of blind faith to believe such a thing, especially since there isn’t any evidence for it.

Another obvious problem with naturalism is that it cannot explain the presence of life. Life does not come from non-life. Even if it were accepted that matter and energy is eternal, it is obviously not personal. How do dirt and dust give “birth” to the complex and living systems which make up the human body, or even the simplest cell? Life only comes from life. The naturalist is reduced to believing that the entire universe is the product of unguided and unintelligent non-life. Somehow, he believes, life sprung into being from this non-life and non-intelligence gave rise to intelligence.

They also have to admit that ultimately there is no real purpose or meaning at all in the universe! After all, if human beings are mere accidents who will soon be extinct, nevermore to be remembered, then nothing we do in life really matters in any kind of significant way.

Even if a person goes on a murderous rampage and kills fifty people, it doesn’t really matter ultimately. Even though these horrible actions might affect the people he kills and the families of his victims for a long time, it still will not be significant ultimately. And even though these actions might affect the killer himself (say he is put to death for his deeds), it still will not matter ultimately.

Think about it. Will anybody care about the killer or his victims when the human race ceases to exist? In 700 billion years, long after the sun and solar system have run their courses and are gone forever, who will care about this murderer and his horrible deeds? If the naturalist is correct, then nobody will care. Because there will be nobody at all in 700 billion years to care. But people know that what we do matters. We know that love is right and unjustified killing is wrong and that all of our actions have real and ultimate meaning.

Naturalism is a position that is not acceptable to billions of people. Even if mainstream science is dominated by people who believe that matter is the first cause, it cannot be accepted and must be declared false. This of course leaves us only one viable option:

Therefore, The First Cause Is God

The first cause must be uncaused and eternal. God is uncaused and eternal. He has no beginning and no ending. Most children wonder about this. “Who made God?” is the question. The answer is nobody. He did not even make himself. He is not self-caused (again, that is impossible), but rather he is uncaused.

How can this be? If everything has to have a cause, what was it that caused God? But let’s be clear here: the naturalist must assert that matter and energy is uncaused just like the Christian must assert that God is uncaused. Just because we cannot explain how God is eternal does not negate the fact that there must be something that is eternal. We may not be able to explain the eternality of God, but without it we can explain nothing else. The crux of the Cosmological Argument is the necessity of a self-existent entity to justify the existence of the universe.

The first cause must also be alive and intelligent, since it brings into existence things that are alive and intelligent (look in the mirror). God is alive and intelligent and we could see why he might desire to create other life and other intelligence. On every account, God is a much better explanation of the first cause than matter and energy.

Limits of the Cosmological Argument

We must stress the limits of the Cosmological Argument. It really is powerful and effective in showing the extreme high probability of God’s existence, but it does not distinguish between false gods and the real God. A Muslim or a Mormon could also use this same argument, but neither the Muslim god nor the Mormon god is actually God. They have constructed false gods and worship them instead of the one true God.

This is why the Bible is vital to the apologetic process! The trustworthy word of God is used by the Spirit of God to show us that the first cause is not just any old god, but rather the one and only true God of the Old and New Testaments. Jesus Christ came to verify this fact by dying on the cross to reconcile sinners and rising from the dead.

Just remember, we cannot use only one defense of our faith, but we must have an arsenal of reasons for the hope that is in us (1 Peter 3:15). The Cosmological Argument for the existence of God is one arrow in our quiver, but it is not the only one.

Notes

[i] Kelly James Clark, “Without Evidence or Argument: A Defense of Reformed Epistemology,” Calvin College,

[ii] The word cosmological comes from the Greek word cosmos, meaning the totality of the universe as a harmonious whole.

[iii] Carl Sagan, Cosmos, 1980.