This presentation answers the ancient philosophical question "why do we have something rather than nothing?" and provides evidence for a Creator.

1. Origins
“For since the creation of the world His
invisible attributes, His eternal power and
divine nature, have been clearly seen, being
understood through what has been made, so
that they are without excuse. ”
(Romans 1:20)
Why Something is Here

2. “Why do we have something rather
than nothing at all?”
Martin Heidegger
“The Fundamental Question of Metaphysics”

3. “Some would claim the answer to these
questions is that there is a God who
chose to create the universe that way. It is
reasonable to ask who or what created
the universe, but if the answer is God,
then the question has merely been
deflected to that of who created God. In
this view it is accepted that some entity
exists that needs no creator, and that
entity is called God. This is known as the
first-cause argument for the existence of
God. We claim, however, that it is
possible to answer these questions purely
within the realm of science, and without
invoking any divine beings.”
– Stephen Hawking
The Grand Design

4. Four Possible Options
1. Reality is an Illusion – It’s not there.
2. Reality was Self-Created– It made
itself.
3. Reality is Self-Existent– It’s always
been there.
4. Reality is Created by Something
that is Self-Existent– It was made
by something that has always been
there.

5. Reality an Illusion?
Student: “Professor, I’m not sure I even exist!”
Professor: “Who ,then, may I say is asking?”
You must exist to deny your own existence; it is self-defeating to claim
you don’t exist and are just an illusion. Illusions require something
experiencing the illusion. In other words, reality is not an illusion.

6. Reality Self-Created via Chaos/chance?
“Because there is a law
like gravity, the universe
can and will create itself
from nothing in the
manner described in
Chapter 6”
– Stephen Hawking
The Grand Design

7. First Problem: Uniformity & Naturalism
Naturalists like Hawking affirm two contradictory presuppositions. Naturalism
provides no answer as to how the very laws (like gravity) producing uniformity in
nature also lend themselves over to the evolution of nature. If naturalists state that
nature violates its own laws in order to account for something like macroevolution
they are essentially allowing for interruptions in the normal and predictable
operations of nature while simultaneously refusing to make allowances for miraculous
works of God within the same realm.
A naturalistic worldview provides no guarantee that the future will be like the past
because without belief in a sovereign God who governs the universe and maintains
its uniformity the world is left to chance. Yet chance occurrences do not provide any
basis for uniformity in nature.

8. Second Problem: What is ‘Nothing’?
particles matter
…everything
energy
motion
space

9. How to Think About ‘Nothing’

10. “Nothing is what
rocks dream
about.”
– Aristotle

11. “Hawking's argument appears to me
even more illogical when he says the
existence of gravity means the
creation of the universe was
inevitable. But how did gravity exist in
the first place? Who put it there?
And what was the creative force
behind its birth?
Similarly, when Hawking argues, in
support of his theory of spontaneous
creation, that it was only necessary
for 'the blue touch paper' to be lit to
'set the universe going', the question
must be: where did this blue touch
paper come from? And who lit it, if not
God?”
– Dr. John Lennox

12. Two Down, Two to Go…
• Something exists
• Nothing cannot create
something
• Therefore, a necessary
and eternal being exists
-Jonathan Edwards

13. “There are not many options
– essentially just two. Either
human intelligence ultimately
owes its origin to mindless
matter; or there is a Creator.
It is strange that some people
claim that it is their
intelligence that leads them to
prefer the first to the
second.”
– Dr. John Lennox

14. So Which Is it…?
“However concrete physical reality is sectioned up, the
result will be a state of affairs which owes its being to
something other than itself.”
– Dallas Willard

15. The Position Logically Stated
• Everything in the universe is dependent (contingent)
• If every part of the universe is dependent, then so is
the whole
• Therefore, the universe is dependent right now on
some independent / Necessary Being for its present
existence

16. Biblical Support for the Position
"He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together."
Colossians 1:17
"And He ... upholds all things by the word of His power..."
Hebrews 1:2-3

17. The Position Broken Down Further
• Some limited, changing being(s) exist
• The present existence of these beings is caused by
another
• There cannot be an infinite regress of causes of being
• Therefore, there is a first Cause of the present
existence of these beings
• The first Cause must be infinite, necessary, eternal,
simple, and unchangeable
• This first uncaused Cause is identical with the God of
the Bible

18. The First Cause is Infinite
If all other beings that are
caused are limited beings,
then the first cause must be
unlimited. The first cause
determines what kind of
beings exist, is uncaused, and
since everything is limited,
then you must go back to an
unlimited or ‘infinite’ being
that began everything.

19. The First Cause is Necessary
If all other beings are
contingent (dependent)
beings, then the first cause
must be independent. Put
another way, all other beings
are unnecessary – they could
not exist. The first cause
must exist so everything else
can, so it is the only
necessary being that exists.

20. The First Cause is Eternal
Non-existence cannot give rise to existence, and the first
cause gives rise to all other existence, so it must be eternal.
No matter what a person thinks about God, they must
necessarily go back to some eternal being/thing.

21. "An egg which came
from no bird is no more
'natural' than a bird
which had existed from
all eternity."
– C. S. Lewis

22. The First Cause is Simple
All multiplicity implies a prior singularity. The first cause
cannot be composed of anything/multiple parts, but
instead must be pure and simple in its existence. It must be
one.

23. The First Cause is Unchangeable
Change indicates potential,
but because the first cause is
infinite, it has no potential or
ability to go from worse to
better or from better to
worse. So the first cause is
unchangeable.

24. Why Can’t The Universe Be the First Cause?
Can the universe meet the previous
set of criteria? No…

25. Why Can’t The Universe Be the First Cause?
• The universe is not infinite, necessary, or eternal: all
the scientific evidence points to the fact that it had a
beginning, and what has a beginning has a cause and is
not eternal. Something must have existed prior to it
• The universe is not simple: it definitely has multiple
parts to it
• The universe is not unchangeable: change in the
universe is quite evident

26. What Proof Do You Have?
• Second Law of Thermodynamics – the universe is running down
• Expanding Universe – confirmed through Hubble telescope
• Radiation Echo – discovered in the 1930’s by Bell Lab
scientists
• Galaxy Seeds – discovered in the 1990’s by COBE explorer
• Einstein’s theory of relativity – proves universe had a beginning

27. “A Creator must exist. The Big Bang ripples
and subsequent scientific findings are clearly
pointing to an ex nihilo creation consistent with
the first few verses of the book of Genesis.”
- Henry F Schaeffer III, Quantum Chemist

28. The Kalam Cosmological Argument
• Everything that begins to exist must have a cause
• The universe began to exist
• Therefore, the universe had a cause

29. “Now we see how the
astronomical evidence leads to a
biblical view of the origin of the
world. The details differ, but
the essential elements and the
astronomical and biblical
accounts of Genesis are the
same; the chain of events
leading to man commenced
suddenly and sharply at a
definite moment in time, in a
flash of light and energy.”
- Dr. Robert Jastrow

30. Genesis and the Categories of Reality
Evolutionist Herbert Spencer said all of reality was
made up of five components:
1. Time
2. Force
3. Action
4. Space
5. Matter
Time Force Action Space Matter
“In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the earth.”
– Genesis 1:1

31. What About the ‘multi-verse’ Hypothesis?
The multiple universe theory postulates the simultaneous
existence of many, possibly infinitely many, parallel universes in
which almost anything which is theoretically possible will ultimately
be actualized. So, then, there is nothing surprising in the fact
that we have the universe that we do.

32. What About the ‘multi-verse’ Hypothesis?
Philosophical Response: Scientific Response:
A multi-verse still has the Scientifically, no evidence
problem of an infinite for it, but also, good
regress. Such an issue is reasons that such a thing
not limited to this universe; does not exist. No model
it applies to any reality. has evidence showing any
You still must get back to reality that extends into
a first cause, and the infinite past. One of
uncaused cause for the best proofs of this is
everything, including a the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin
multi-verse. theorem

33. What About the ‘multi-verse’ Hypothesis?
The 2003 theorem that was proposed by Arvind Borde, Alexander
Vilenkin, and Alan Guth proved that any universe which has, on average, been
expanding throughout its history cannot be infinite in the past but must have a
past space-time boundary.
What makes their proof so powerful is that it holds regardless of the physical
description of the universe. The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem is
independent of any physical description of that moment. Their theorem
implies that even if our universe is just a tiny part of a so-called “multiverse”
composed of many universes, the multiverse must have an absolute beginning.

34. “It is said that an argument is
what convinces reasonable men
and a proof is what it takes to
convince even an unreasonable
man. With the proof now in
place, cosmologists can no
longer hide behind the
possibility of a past-eternal
universe. There is no escape,
they have to face the problem of
a cosmic beginning.”
- Dr. Alexander Vilenkin, Physicist

35. What About the ‘multi-verse’ Hypothesis?
“Let us recognize these speculations for what they are.
They are not physics, but in the strictest sense,
metaphysics. There is no purely scientific reason to
believe in an ensemble of universes.”
-Dr. John Polkinghorne, scientist/quantum physicist
“To postulate a trillion-trillion other universes, rather
than one God, in order to explain the orderliness of our
universe, seems the height of irrationality.”
-Dr. Richard Swinburne, professor/philosopher
Finally, why couldn’t multi-verses be the work of a Creator?

36. What About Quantum Mechanics?
Some assert that Quantum Mechanics is the
answer. They say that things come into
existence from nothing, and QM proves this.
This is patently false. There are at least 10
different interpretations of the mathematical
equations of QM. Some of them are fully
deterministic. Only some have indeterminate
causes (one in particular). And no one knows
which is correct.
Second, it is not true that QM events begin
to exist from nothing. They result in
fluctuations in the quantum vacuum, which is
not nothing. When these particles form, they
come from energy that is locked in the vacuum.
It is a sea of fluctuating energy governed by
physical laws having a physical structure. No
evidence suggests that things come into being
from nothing.

37. Drowning the Fish
Spontaneous or self-creation, multi-verses, quantum mechanics
and other such propositions by non-believing scientists are an
example of “drowning the fish”. You can use all the water in the
oceans in an attempt to drown the animal, but in the end, it will still
be there affirming its existence and presence.

38. Why do Stephen Hawking and
Others Offer Such Obviously
Dead-End Propositions?

39. “Many people do not
like the idea that time
has a beginning,
probably because it
smacks of divine
intervention.”
– Stephen Hawking

40. “It is rather ironical that in the
sixteenth century some
people resisted advances in
science because they seemed
to threaten belief in God;
whereas in the twentieth
century scientific ideas of a
beginning have been resisted
because they threatened to
increase the plausibility of
belief in God.”
– Dr. John Lennox

41. “I believe in order
to understand.”
– Anselm

42. Scientists Used to Start with God
Great scientists of the past started with God. They began with
God because only a God of order could enable them to believe
in an order of the universe, mathematics, etc. They knew you
don’t get that type of order from random chance, chaos, or
disorder. But today, some scientists reject God so they have no
where else to go other than impossible options like self-creation,
aliens bringing life to earth, etc.

43. “Men became scientific
because they expected law
in nature and they expected
law in nature because they
believed in a lawgiver."
– C. S. Lewis

44. "Theologians generally are
delighted with the proof that the
universe had a beginning, but
astronomers are curiously
upset. It turns out that the
scientist behaves the way the
rest of us do when our beliefs
are in conflict with the
evidence."
- Dr. Robert Jastrow

45. “The tragedy of
disbelieving in God is not
that a person ends up
believing in nothing, alas it is
much worse: they may end
up believing in anything.”
– G. K Chesterton

46. “There are only two possibilities as to
how life arose; one is spontaneous
generation arising to evolution, the other
is a supernatural creative act of God,
there is no third possibility. Spontaneous
generation that life arose from non-living
matter was scientifically disproved 120
years ago by Louis Pasteur and
others. That leaves us with only one
possible conclusion, that life arose as a
creative act of God. I will not accept that
philosophically because I do not want to
believe in God, therefore I choose to
believe in that which I know is scientifically
impossible”
- Dr. George Wald
Professor Emeritus of Biology at the
University at Harvard
Nobel Prize winner in Biology

47. So Why Is Something Here?
“Out of nothing didst Thou
create heaven and earth – a
great thing and a small –
because Thou are Almighty
and Good, to make all things
good, even the great heaven
and the small earth. Thou
wast, and there was nought
else from which Thou didst
create heaven and earth.”
- Augustine, Confessions

48. “The best data we have
[concerning the origin of the
universe] are exactly what I
would have predicted, had I
nothing to go on but the five
books of Moses, the
Psalms, and the Bible as a
whole.”
– Arno Penzias, Nobel Astrophysicist

49. So Why Is Something Here?
“Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory
and honor and power; for You created all things, and
because of Your will they existed, and were created.”
(Revelation 4:11)

50. Origins
“For since the creation of the world His
invisible attributes, His eternal power and
divine nature, have been clearly seen, being
understood through what has been made, so
that they are without excuse. ”
(Romans 1:20)
Why Something is Here