Why is there something rather than nothing?

Ask a little kid why the sky is blue, then keep asking "why?" after every answer. Eventually you reach the biggest why there is: why is there anything at all?

For a long time many scientists assumed the universe had always existed. In the twentieth century the evidence piled up that it had a beginning. Space, time and matter all seem to have started at a point in the finite past.

The argument in three steps

• Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
• The universe began to exist.
• So the universe has a cause.

If that cause made all of space, time and matter, it can't be made of them. It would have to be timeless, immaterial and powerful beyond measure. And since it chose to create, many would argue it is personal.

What skeptics say back

"Then who made God?" The first step only covers things that begin to exist, and the claim is that God never began. Skeptics call this special pleading. Believers answer that something must be uncaused, or you get an endless chain with no first link.

"We don't know enough about the beginning yet." That's fair, and worth admitting. Good arguments don't need to claim certainty. The question is which explanation fits the evidence best right now.

Why it matters

This won't tell you who Jesus is. But it shows that believing in a Creator isn't a blind leap. It is a reasonable answer to one of the oldest questions people have ever asked.