The 18th Century intellectual G. W. Leibniz famously asked the fundamental question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” (By the way, he co-discovered calculus…so you can blame him for that one!). In other words, our common sense intuition is that everything that exists has an explanation of its existence. Christian philosopher William Lane Craig offers a very helpful way of making this abstract concept concrete:
“Imagine that you’re hiking through the woods and you come across a translucent ball lying on the forest floor. You would naturally wonder how it came to be there. If one of your hiking partners said to you, “Hey, it just exists inexplicably. Don’t worry about it!” you’d either think that he was crazy or figure that he just wanted you to keep moving. No one would take seriously the suggestion that the ball existed there with literally no explanation. Now suppose you increase the size of the ball in this story so that it’s the size of a car. That wouldn’t do anything to satisfy or remove the demand for an explanation. Suppose it were the size of a house. Same problem. Suppose it were the size of a continent or a planet. Same problem. Suppose it were the size of the entire universe. Same problem. Merely increasing the size of the ball does nothing to affect the need of an explanation.”
Would this apply to God? No, because if He exists, He does so necessarily. But the universe is clearly contingent (i.e., did not “have to” exist of its own nature). This is a version of the cosmological argument for God’s existence. But if God made the universe, then who made God?
Want to explore the evidence for God further? Sean McDowell and I wrote a readable book that will introduce you to the existence of God (we cover science, philosophy, history, and the Bible). We also interview some leading Christian intellectuals in the book as well. We hope you will find it helpful. Learn more here.
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