CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 3
WHY DOES ANYTHING AT ALL EXIST?
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.… All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. (John 1:1, 3)
Keokuk was a great place for a boy to grow up. On the banks of the mighty Mississippi River, in the southeastern toe of Iowa that hangs down over Missouri, Keokuk is Mark Twain territory. As kids, we had every kind of pet we could catch: frogs, toads, snakes, salamanders, rabbits, birds, stray dogs and cats that wandered by our house, even a bat and a possum. You could see the stars clearly at night in Keokuk, too. I remember as a boy looking up at the stars, innumerable in the black night, and thinking, Where did all of this come from? It seemed to me instinctively that there had to be an explanation why all this exists. As long as I can remember, then, I’ve always believed in a Creator of the universe. I just never knew Him personally.
Only years later did I realize that my boyhood question, as well as its answer, had occupied the minds of the greatest philosophers for centuries. For example, G. W. Leibniz, codiscoverer of calculus and a towering intellect of eighteenth-century Europe, wrote: “The first question which should rightly be asked is: Why is there something rather than nothing?”[1]
In other words, why does anything at all exist? This, for Leibniz, is the most basic question that anyone can ask. Like me, Leibniz came to the conclusion that the answer is to be found, not in the universe of created things, but in God. God exists necessarily and is the explanation why anything else exists.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) was a German philosopher, mathematician, and logician. He invented differential and integral calculus at about the same time Sir Isaac Newton did. In fact, he spent the last five years of his life defending himself against the accusation that he had stolen Newton’s ideas and published them. Today most historians agree that Leibniz did invent calculus independently.
Leibniz’s Argument
We can put Leibniz’s thinking into the form of a simple argument. This has the advantage of making his logic very clear and focusing our attention on the crucial steps of his reasoning. It also makes his argument very easy to memorize so that we can share it with others. (You’ll find an argument map at the end of this chapter.)
There are three steps or premises in Leibniz’s reasoning:
1. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence.
2. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.
3. The universe exists.
Which of the three premises have you heard atheists challenge? On what basis did they do so?
That’s it! Now what follows logically from these three premises?
Well, look at premises 1 and 3. (Read them out loud if that helps.) If everything that exists has an explanation of its existence and the universe exists, then it logically follows that:
4. The universe has an explanation of its existence.
Now notice that premise 2 says that if the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God. And 4 says the universe does have an explanation of its existence. So from 2 and 4 the conclusion logically follows:
5. Therefore, the explanation of the universe’s existence is God.
Now this is a logically airtight argument. That is to say, if the three premises are true, then the conclusion is unavoidable. It doesn’t matter if the atheist or agnostic doesn’t like the conclusion. It doesn’t matter if he has other objections to God’s existence. So long as he grants the premises, he has to accept the conclusion. So if he wants to reject the conclusion, he has to say that one of the three premises is false.
But which one will he reject? Premise 3 is undeniable for any sincere seeker after truth. Obviously the universe exists! So the atheist is going to have to deny either 1 or 2 if he wants to remain an atheist and be rational. So the whole question comes down to this: Are premises 1 and 2 true, or are they false? Well, let’s look at them.
Premise 1
Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence.
An Objection to Premise 1: God Must Have an Explanation of His Existence
At first blush premise 1 might seem vulnerable in an obvious way. If everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, and God exists, then God must have an explanation of His existence! But that seems out of the question, for then the explanation of God’s existence would be some other being greater than God. Since that’s impossible, premise 1 must be false. Some things must be able to exist without any explanation. The believer will say God exists inexplicably. The atheist will say, “Why not stop with the universe? The universe just exists inexplicably.” So we seem to reach a stalemate.
Answer to the Objection: Some Things Exist Necessarily
Not so fast! This obvious objection to premise 1 is based on a misunderstanding of what Leibniz meant by an “explanation.” In Leibniz’s view there are two kinds of things: (a) things that exist necessarily and (b) things that are produced by some external cause. Let me explain.
(a) Things that exist necessarily exist by a necessity of their own nature. It’s impossible for them not to exist. Many mathematicians think that numbers, sets, and other mathematical entities exist in this way. They’re not caused to exist by something else; they just exist by the necessity of their own nature.
(b) By contrast, things that are caused to exist by something else don’t exist necessarily. They exist because something else has produced them. Familiar physical objects like people, planets, and galaxies belong in this category.
So when Leibniz says that everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, the explanation may be found either in the necessity of a thing’s nature or else in some external cause. So premise 1 could be more fully stated in the following way:
1. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature or in an external cause.
If He exists at all, why is it impossible for God to have a cause?
But now the objection falls to the ground. The explanation of God’s existence lies in the necessity of His own nature. As even the atheist recognizes, it’s impossible for God to have a cause. So Leibniz’s argument is really an argument for God as a necessary, uncaused being.
Far from undermining Leibniz’s argument, the atheist’s objection to premise 1 actually helps to clarify and magnify who God is! If God exists, He is a necessarily existing, uncaused being.
Defense of Premise 1: Size Doesn’t Matter
So what reason might be offered for thinking that premise 1 is true? Well, when you reflect on it, premise 1 has a sort of self-evidence about it. 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.
The Taxicab Fallacy
Sometimes atheists will say that premise 1 is true of everything in the universe but is not true of the universe itself. Everything in the universe has an explanation, but the universe itself has no explanation.
But this response commits what has been aptly called the “taxicab fallacy.” For as the nineteenth-century atheist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer quipped, premise 1 can’t be dismissed like a hack once you’ve arrived at your desired destination! You can’t say everything has an explanation of its existence and then suddenly exempt the universe.
It would be arbitrary for the atheist to claim that the universe is the exception to the rule. (Recall that Leibniz does not make God an exception to premise 1.) Our illustration of the ball in the woods showed that merely increasing the size of the object to be explained, even until it becomes the universe itself, does nothing to remove the need for some explanation of its existence.
Notice, too, how unscientific this atheist response is. For modern cosmology (the study of the universe) is devoted to the search for an explanation of the universe’s existence. The atheist attitude would cripple science.
Another Atheist Fallacy: It Is Impossible for the Universe to Have an Explanation
So some atheists have tried to justify making the universe an exception to premise 1. They say that it’s impossible for the universe to have an explanation of its existence. Why? Because the explanation of the universe would have to be some prior state of affairs in which the universe didn’t yet exist. But that would be nothingness, and nothingness can’t be the explanation of anything. So the universe must just exist inexplicably.
TALK ABOUT IT
It’s hard to imagine nothing. We can imagine empty space, but empty space is something, not nothing. Try to imagine that only God exists. Not the universe, not empty space, not even time. What goes on in your head when you try to conceive of this? Now suppose that not even God exists.
This line of reasoning is obviously fallacious. For it assumes that the universe is all there is, so that if there were no universe there would be nothing. In other words, the objection assumes that atheism is true! The atheist is thus begging the question, arguing in a circle.
Leibniz would agree that the explanation of the universe must be a prior state of affairs in which the universe did not exist. But that state of affairs is God and His will, not nothingness.
So it seems to me that premise 1 is more plausibly true than false, which is all we need for a good argument.
Premise 2
If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God.
Atheists Agree with Premise 2
What, then, about premise 2, that if the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God? Is it more plausibly true than false?
What’s really awkward for the atheist at this point is that premise 2 is logically equivalent to the typical atheist response to Leibniz’s argument. Two statements are logically equivalent if it’s impossible for one to be true and the other one false. They stand or fall together. So what does the atheist almost always say in response to Leibniz’s argument? As we’ve just seen, the atheist typically asserts the following:
A. If atheism is true, the universe has no explanation of its existence.
This is precisely what the atheist says in response to premise 1. The universe just exists inexplicably. But this is logically equivalent to saying:
B. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, then atheism is not true.
So you can’t affirm (A) and deny (B).
But (B) is virtually synonymous with premise 2! (Just compare them.) So by saying in response to premise 1 that, given atheism, the universe has no explanation, the atheist is implicitly admitting premise 2, that if the universe does have an explanation, then God exists.
Another Argument for Premise 2: The Cause of the Universe: Abstract Object or Unembodied Mind?
Besides that, premise 2 is very plausible in its own right. For think of what the universe is: all of space-time reality, including all matter and energy. It follows that if the universe has a cause of its existence, that cause must be a nonphysical, immaterial being beyond space and time. Amazing!
Now there are only two sorts of things that could fit that description: either an abstract object like a number or else an unembodied mind. But abstract objects can’t cause anything. That’s part of what it means to be abstract. The number 7, for example, can’t cause any effects. So the cause of the existence of the universe must be a transcendent Mind, which is what believers understand God to be.
I hope you begin the grasp the power of Leibniz’s argument. If successful, it proves the existence of a necessary, uncaused, timeless, spaceless, immaterial, personal Creator of the universe. This is not some ill-conceived entity like the Flying Spaghetti Monster but an ultramundane being with many of the traditional properties of God. This is truly mind-blowing!
Atheist Alternative: The Universe Exists Necessarily!
What can the atheist do at this point? He has a more radical alternative open to him. He can retrace his steps, withdraw his objection to premise 1, and say instead that, yes, the universe does have an explanation of its existence. But that explanation is: The universe exists by a necessity of its own nature. For the atheist, the universe could serve as a sort of God-substitute that exists necessarily.
Now this would be a very radical step for the atheist to take, and I can’t think of any contemporary atheist who has in fact adopted this line. A few years ago at a Philosophy of Time conference at Santa Barbara City College, I thought that Professor Adolf Grünbaum, a vociferous atheistic philosopher of science from the University of Pittsburgh, was flirting with this idea. But when I raised the question from the floor whether he thought the universe existed necessarily, he was positively indignant at the suggestion. “Of course not!” he snapped, and he went on to claim that the universe just exists without any explanation.
Do you know anyone who believes that the universe or the world is a God-substitute (like Gaia or the Force from Star Wars)? What leads them to believe that?
The reason atheists are not eager to embrace this alternative is clear. As we look about the universe, none of the things that make it up, whether stars, planets, galaxies, dust, radiation, or what have you, seems to exist necessarily. They could all fail to exist; indeed, at some point in the past, when the universe was very dense, none of them did exist.
But, someone might say, what about the matter that these things are made of? Maybe the matter exists necessarily, and all these things are just different configurations of matter. The problem with this suggestion is that, according to the standard model of subatomic physics, matter itself is composed of tiny fundamental particles that cannot be further broken down. The universe is just the collection of all these particles arranged in different ways. But now the question arises: Couldn’t a different collection of fundamental particles have existed instead of this one? Does each and every one of these particles exist necessarily?
Notice what the atheist cannot say at this point. He cannot say that the elementary particles are just configurations of matter which that could have been different, but that the matter of which the particles are composed exists necessarily. He can’t say this, because elementary particles aren’t composed of anything! They just are the basic units of matter. So if a particular particle doesn’t exist, the matter doesn’t exist.
Now it seems obvious that a different collection of fundamental particles could have existed instead of the collection that does exist. But if that were the case, then a different universe would have existed.
To see the point, think about your desk. Could your desk have been made of ice? Notice that I’m not asking if you could have had an ice desk in the place of your wooden desk that had the same size and shape. Rather I’m asking if your very desk, the one made of wood, if that desk could have been made of ice. The answer seems to be obviously, no. The ice desk would be a different desk, not the same desk.
Similarly, a universe made up of different particles, even if they were identically arranged as in this universe, would be a different universe. It follows, then, that the universe does not exist by a necessity of its own nature.
Now someone might object that my body remains identical over time despite a complete exchange of its material constituents for new constituents. We’re told that every seven years the matter that makes up our bodies is virtually completely recycled. Still my body is identical to the body I had before. Analogously, someone might say, various possible universes could be identical even though they’re composed of wholly different collections of particles.
The crucial disanalogy, however, is that the difference between possible universes is no kind of change at all, for there is no enduring subject that undergoes intrinsic change from one state to another. So universes made up of different particles are not like the different stages of my one body. Rather they’re like two bodies that have no connection with each other whatsoever.
Ask a physics teacher: Why do elementary particles exist? Is it impossible for them not to exist? (Be prepared for the possibility that your physics teacher doesn’t want to have this conversation.)
No one thinks that every particle in the universe exists by a necessity of its own nature. It follows that neither does the universe composed of such particles exist by a necessity of its own nature. Notice that this is the case whether we think of the universe as itself an object (just as a marble statue is not identical to a similar statue made of different marble), or as a collection or group (just as a flock of birds is not identical to a similar flock made up of different birds), or even as nothing at all over and above the particles themselves.
My claim that the universe does not exist necessarily becomes even more obvious when we reflect that it seems entirely possible that the fundamental building blocks of nature could have been substances quite different from the elementary particles we know. Such a universe would be characterized by different laws of nature. Even if we take our laws of nature to be logically necessary, still it’s possible that different laws of nature could have held because substances endowed with different properties and capacities than our fundamental particles could have existed. In such a case we’d clearly be dealing with a different universe.
So atheists have not been so bold as to deny premise 2 and say that the universe exists necessarily. Like premise 1, premise 2 also seems to be plausibly true.
How has this chapter shown that God:
Is unembodied Mind?
Transcends the universe?
Created the universe?
Conclusion
Given the truth of the three premises, the conclusion is logically inescapable: God is the explanation of the existence of the universe. Moreover, the argument implies that God is an uncaused, unembodied Mind who transcends the physical universe and even space and time themselves and who exists necessarily. This conclusion is staggering. Leibniz has expanded our minds far beyond the mundane affairs of daily life. In the next chapter our minds will be stretched further still, as we try to grasp the infinite and discover the beginning of the universe.
[1] G. W. F. von Leibniz, “The Principles of Nature and of Grace, Based on Reason,” in Leibniz Selections, ed. P. Wiener (New York: Scribner’s, 1951), 527.