God is the best explanation for why anything exists at all (the argument from contingency)
Why is there something rather than nothing?
It’s the most foundational question you can ask about existence. Why does anything exist at all? Every single thing that exists in this universe — every atom, every star, every person, every mountain, every animal — it is possible for that thing not to exist. So too, there is no law of logic or nature that dictates anything has to exist.
So why does anything exist? There must be an explanation. This is an observation made by many great philosophers of the past, including the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz. Leibniz was one of the first to state what is sometimes called the “principle of sufficient reason” (PSR), which can be summed up like this: Every contingent fact has an explanation.
What’s that???
A contingent fact is something that is true, but it’s possible for it not to be. Your existence is a contingent fact. If your parents had never met, you would not be here. The nonexistence of unicorns is a contingent fact. It is logically and physically possible for a unicorn to exist; they just don’t. There are explanations for both of these facts. You exist because of your parents, and unicorns don’t exist because God didn’t create them/evolution didn’t go that route.
In fact, the existence of every person, structure, and thing in this universe is a contingent fact. Christian philosopher William Lane Craig, credited for modernizing the kalam cosmological argument, is also (among others) credited for modernizing what is called the Leibnizian cosmological argument. He puts Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason in a more direct way: Everything that exists has an explanation for its existence.
How do we know this is true? Because it’s true of everything we’ve ever observed, and it’s a foundational assumption the entire enterprise of science is based on. Every field of study and branch of human knowledge is based on the idea that everything that exists has an explanation for its existence. Secularists and theists alike agree on this. The explanation for the existence of the Great Pyramids is that people built them long ago. The explanation for the moon’s existence may be that a large planetoid hit the Earth early in its history and broke a part of it off, which coalesced to form the moon. Ultimately, the material, scientific explanation usually invoked for the existence of most things is some form of evolution. We may disagree on the explanation, but we all agree there is one. If some explanation turned out to be false, we would search for another, because we know there must be one.
Why you should never accept that something has no explanation for its existence
But maybe, someone might say, there are things that just are the way they are, and there is no rhyme or reason. Maybe the universe just exists without any explanation. We don’t need to assume there’s an explanation for everything, do we?
Of course we do. If you were walking along the beach and found a laptop washed up on the shore, you would never assume it had just appeared there with no explanation. In fact, you would probably contact the authorities, hoping it wasn’t lost cargo from a boater in distress. But even if it weren’t, you would know that there was an explanation for why that laptop existed, and why it was where you found it. If someone said to you, “The laptop is just there; there’s no explanation for it,” you would think they were either joking or crazy.
If that laptop happened to be the size of a house, or a city, or the universe itself, the same principle still holds. It’s absurd to say that once the laptop reaches a certain size, it no longer needs an explanation. This would hold true for any object, even something as simple as a clear, translucent ball. So saying that the universe simply exists, without any explanation necessary, is not a valid option for a sincere seeker of truth.
Therefore, the universe has an explanation for its existence.
The necessary being
But there is a problem here. If we simply say that everything that exists has an explanation for its existence, then we end up with an infinite regress. Everything that exists would have to be explained by some other thing, and the sequence of explanation would never end. While infinite regresses and closed causal loops are good material for philosophical exercises and science-fiction stories, they translate into nonsense in the real world. So, in order to avoid an infinite regress, there must be a first cause. There must be something that explains the existence of everything else.
That doesn’t mean this thing would be an exception to the PSR. The explanation for the existence of that thing would be that it simply has to exist. It would have to be impossible for this being not to exist. Some philosophers, adapting phraseology from Thomas Aquinas, refer to this as a “necessary being.” It would be something that exists “by the necessity of its own nature,” as Craig puts it.
A possible example of a “necessary being” could be a number. There is some debate among philosophers as to whether things like numbers actually exist, or whether they are just useful fictions to help us make sense of the world. But let’s assume the number 2 does exist independently of our usage of it, and without it you weren’t capable of performing any operation or task that involved 2 of anything. In that case, could you imagine a world where there was no such thing as the number 2? It would be an utterly incoherent world. The number 2 just has to exist. Numbers, however, aren’t the answer, because numbers can’t cause anything.
God is a better example. If God exists, he is by definition the greatest conceivable being. He is uncreated and indestructible. Nothing can be more powerful than God so as to cause him to exist, nor can there be any circumstances under which God would not exist. Any being that did not fit that description could not, by any widely accepted definition, be called God. If God exists, he is a “necessary being.”
But do we need to turn to God as the explanation for everything? Could the explanation simply be the universe itself — that it’s impossible for nothing to exist? How do we know the universe is not that necessary thing which explains the existence of everything else?
The universe cannot be the necessary being
If you’ve read the last post, you may know what’s coming. We know the universe doesn’t have to exist because the universe had a beginning! Modern science has shown this with high confidence. Obviously, if the universe had a beginning, then unless whatever brought the universe into existence had done so, the universe would not exist.
This would apply to any hypothetical expanding multiverse, of the sort we discussed in the last post, as well. In fact, it would apply to any realm in which time or cause-and-effect operate in any meaningful way. Even in some realm where there was no evidence for a Big Bang, we could still show that a material realm cannot go infinitely back into the past.
For one thing, if the universe had existed eternally in the past, then the amount of time that has ever passed would be infinite. You would have had to pass through an infinite amount of time to get to today. Getting from infinity past to today would be like starting from 1 and counting up until you reached infinity. Obviously, you can’t do that. By definition, you cannot count to infinity.
So, nothing in the material realm — including the material realm itself — can be that “necessary being” that explains the existence of everything else.
The best explanation for the existence of anything at all
With anything in the material realm ruled out as that “necessary being,” we must turn to the immaterial. By using similar reasoning to the kalam argument, we can determine that the necessary being must be outside of time and space, and extremely powerful. Because a necessarily-existing being, by definition, can neither be created nor destroyed, we can also conclude that the necessary being that explains the existence of the universe (and everything else) is uncreated, eternal, and indestructible.
The necessary being must also be personal — that is, a being who could make a freewill decision to create a universe from nothing.
The reason we can conclude this? Because the necessary being is the explanation of everything else. Therefore, nothing external can explain why the necessary being created the universe. The reason the necessary being created must come from within. It must be the act of a mind, a freewill decision to create a universe from nothing. Free will is only possessed by personal beings such as ourselves who are capable of relating to one another.
This is about as close to a definition of God as you’re going to get without getting into specific theological doctrine. He is the best explanation for the existence of everything else, far superior to any alternatives.
Why you should care about the explanation for the universe’s existence
But, someone may say, we are perfectly fine not knowing why or how many things came to exist. Plenty of people are perfectly fine not knowing why or how lacrosse, the strong nuclear force, platinum, the spleen, or the Swiss government came to be. Why should we care about the explanation for the universe’s existence? Why don’t we leave that to the astronomers and physicists?
You should care because the explanation of the universe’s existence is directly related to the explanation for your existence. We don’t usually care about the explanation of things that we don’t need to know in our everyday lives. But once they have something to do with the way we live, we certainly do care and should care!
Say you download an app on your smartphone. Unless you’re a programmer, you probably don’t care about how the programmers made the app, what coding they used and how they got it through the acceptance process. You’re quite justified in not caring about that explanation.
But that’s not the only explanation of the app’s existence. Before the programmers ever started the coding process, they had an intention behind the app. They had a reason for making it, a function they wanted users to be able to perform with it. That would be the ultimate explanation for the app’s existence. And if you are downloading the app, you would surely want to know that explanation! If you don’t understand the explanation for the app’s existence, you won’t have any idea how to use it. If you try to use a finance app like a weather app, you’ll get nowhere. You can get it to display some numbers and some words that might resemble meteorological words, and pretend it’s telling you the weather, but it won’t be what it was made for. You would want to use the app for the purpose it was optimized for. It would be impossible to use an app without knowing the explanation and purpose for its existence.
Obviously, you are not an app. You are a person who is not reducible to the sum of your parts. But in the same way, you should care about the explanation (and purpose) of your existence. You want to know what you were optimized for, what you were made for. If God really is the Creator who made you for a purpose — namely, to glorify him and enjoy him forever — then if you live for anything that doesn’t work toward that end, it’s a waste.
But if you do live for that purpose, you can know that everything you do will matter and be worthwhile in the end, even after the world is no more. This isn’t just the answer to a scientific or philosophical question. This is your life. If this is true, it will change your life. It will give you a hope you could not otherwise reasonably have, and a purpose you could not otherwise reasonably believe.
