If you’ve ever wondered things like “Why am I here?”, “Why does life exist?”, or “Why is there a universe at all?”, you’re not alone—in fact, some of the greatest thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas wrestled with the same questions. From this struggle, two important claims arose to answer the question of why the universe exists.  These claims are: Something must have caused the universe, and the existence of the universe has an explanation outside of itself. Let’s look at both claims.  

 

 

  1. Something must have caused the universe.

When we think about our world, there is a recognizable pattern: things are caused by other things. For example, a painting doesn’t just pop into existence. Rather, a painter causes it to exist when he puts his brush to the canvas. In the same way, you didn’t pop into existence. And as the story goes, when two people loved each other very much they caused a bunch of humans, like you, to exist. So, in our world where beginnings have causes, the beginning of the universe must have a cause as well. 

This idea—everything that begins to exist has a cause—goes on to say that the universe had a beginning, and therefore, the universe must have a cause. 

 

 

     2.The universe has an explanation outside of itself.

In this post-Christian culture where Tik Tok is teaching us life on this “floating rock” is meaningless, and scientists are assuring us they’ll disprove all religion soon enough, this is quite the bold claim. Yet it cannot be ignored, because the universe did not have to exist, yet it does. Why? 

Just as we live in a world where beginnings have causes, we also live in a world where unnecessary things have explanations. We can imagine the universe not existing, which means the universe didn’t need to exist. So, why does the universe exist? 

We cannot look within the physical universe to find the answer to this question, because nothing physical needs to exist. It must rely on something else for its existence—something that must exist. This necessary Being can’t have a beginning, and it can’t need anything to keep it going. It must just always exist—it can’t not exist. 

 

 

This is what we know so far: whatever caused the universe to exist is non-physical, and it is a necessary Being. There are two more important traits this Being must have. Once we add them to the list, we can see if we know of anything that fits the description. The traits are: beyond space, and beyond time. This is because space and time began to exist when the universe did. It might surprise you how many options are left when we put this list of descriptors together. The only non-physical, spaceless, and timeless things are: abstract objects (logic, numbers) and God. However, the problem with abstract objects is that they cannot create anything, so they definitely could not create the universe. God is the only option that fits all the traits required of the necessary being! 

 

To keep digging into this topic, use some of the resources below:

 

 

Written by Abbey Harley