Did the Universe Come From Nothing?

By Ajit Krishna Dasa

Some atheists claim that the universe could have manifested uncaused from literally nothing. Therefore, they say, God is not necessary as an explanation for the existence of the universe.

But as we shall see this idea, that the universe could come from nothing, is self-contradictory.

Why?

Well, because “nothing” is the absence of all qualities and properties. It is therefore obvious that if something comes from “nothing”, then this alleged “nothing” must at least have property that something can come from it. And thus it is not “nothing” at all. It is something – with the property that something can come from it.

Some atheists try to circumvent this disproof by saying something like:

“Well, I do not mean to say that nothing produced the universe. What I mean is simply that first there was nothing, and then suddenly the universe just manifested – totally uncaused!”

But this does not remove the problem. We still end up with the same contradiction.

Consider the following:

If it’s true that nothing (no thing) existed before the universe came uncaused into being then not even the potentiality required to make it possible for a universe – or anything else for that matter – to come into being existed. In other words, we have a situation in which no qualities and properties exist, and then something just burst into existence. This would, obviously, only be possible if the potentiality for something to burst into existence already existed. Thus the atheist is still caught in the same self-contradiction.

We must also note that no human being lives as if things can come uncaused into existence from nothing. If things could burst uncaused into being, then why do we not observe all kind of things bursting uncaused into being all over the place? For example, when the atheist is visiting his friends is he afraid that back in his living room a poisonous spider has bursted uncaused into being from nothing, and is now hiding somewhere in his house? When he comes home from visiting his friends, does the atheist search his house for poisonous spiders, or other entities, that bursted into existence while he was away?

Obviously not!

He does not live like that, because he knows that things do not burst uncaused into being. He knows that when things come into being there is a reason, a cause, for it. To believe the opposite is blind faith in a self-contradictory idea, unsupported and contradicted by our experience.

The unavoidable conclusion is, as the old saying goes, ‘ex nihilo, nihil fit’, meaning ‘From nothing, nothing comes.’

The idea that something can come from nothing is nothing but another way in which the atheist tries to suppress his innate knowledge of God.