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Why Does Anything at All Exist? | HBU Apologetics Intensive - October 2018

In October of 2018, Dr. Craig participated in an Apologetics Intensive through Houston Baptist University, hosted by Second Baptist Houston. In a series of lectures, he provides a robust foundation for belief in God and defending the Christian faith.


DR. CRAIG: The second lecture is entitled, “Why does anything at all exist?”

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 preoccupied the minds of the greatest philosophers for centuries. For example, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the co-discoverer of the calculus and a towering intellect of 18th century Europe, wrote, “The first question which should rightly be asked is why is there something rather than nothing?” 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.

We can put Leibniz’s reasoning into the form of a simple argument. This has the advantage of making its logic very clear and focusing our attention on the crucial steps in his reasoning. It also makes the argument very easy to memorize so that we can share it with an unbeliever. 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 then that explanation is God (a transcendent cause of the universe).
  3. The universe exists.

That's the argument. What follows logically from these three premises? Well, look at premises (1) and (3). If everything that exists has an explanation of its existence, and the universe exists, then it follows logically that,

  1. Therefore, the universe has an explanation of its existence.

Notice the premise (2) says that if the universe has an explanation of its existence then that explanation is God (a transcendent being). And (4) says that the universe does have an explanation of its existence. So from (2) and (4) the conclusion follows logically that,

  1. Therefore, the explanation of the universe's existence is God.

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. If he wants to reject the conclusion then he has to say that at least one of the 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 premise (1) or premise (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, in a moment we'll look at them. But first I want to show you this video which will help to make this argument more perspicuous.

VIDEO: We live in an amazing universe. Have you ever wondered why it exists? Why does anything at all exist? Gottfried Leibniz wrote, "The first question which should rightly be asked is: Why is there something rather than nothing?" He came to the conclusion that the explanation is found in God. But is this reasonable? Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God. The universe exists. From these it follows logically that the explanation of the universe's existence is God. The logic of this argument is airtight. If the three premises are true, the conclusion is unavoidable. But are they more plausibly true than false? The third premise is undeniable for anyone seeking truth. But what about the first premise? Why not say, "The universe is just there, and that's all"? No explanation needed! End of discussion! Imagine you and a friend are hiking in the woods and come across a shiny sphere lying on the ground. You would naturally wonder how it came to be there. And you'd think it odd if your friend said, "There's no reason or explanation for it. Stop wondering. It just IS!" And if the ball were larger it would still require an explanation. In fact, if the ball were the size of the universe, the change in its size wouldn't remove the need for an explanation. Indeed, curiosity about the existence of the universe seems scientific - and intuitive! Someone might say: "If everything that exists needs an explanation, what about God? Doesn't he need an explanation? And if God doesn't need an explanation, then why does the universe need an explanation? To address this, Leibniz makes a key distinction between things that exist NECESSARILY and things that exist CONTINGENTLY. Things that exist NECESSARILY exist by necessity of their own nature. It's impossible for them NOT to exist. Many mathematicians think that abstract objects like numbers and sets exist like this. They're not caused to exist by something else; they just exist by necessity of their own nature. Things that exist CONTINGENTLY are caused to exist by something else. Most of the things we're familiar with exist contingently. They don't HAVE to exist. They only exist because something else caused them to exist. If your parents had never met, you wouldn't exist! There's no reason to think the world around us HAD to exist. If the universe had developed differently, there might have been no stars or planets. It's logically possible that the whole universe might not have existed. It doesn't exist necessarily, it exists contingently. If the universe might NOT have existed, why DOES it exist? The only adequate explanation for the existence of a contingent universe is that its existence rests on a non-contingent being - something that cannot not exist, because of the necessity of its own nature. It would exist no matter what! So "Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence"..."either in the necessity of its own nature, or in an external cause." But what about our second premise? Is it reasonable to call the explanation of the universe...God? Well, what is the universe? It's all of space-time reality, including all matter and energy. It follows that if the universe has a cause of its existence, that cause cannot be part of the universe - it must be non-physical and immaterial - beyond space and time. The list of entities that could possibly fit this description is fairly short - and abstract objects cannot cause anything. Leibniz' Contingency Argument shows that the explanation for the existence of the universe can be found only in the existence of God. Or, if you prefer not to use the term "God," you may simply call him: "The Extremely Powerful, Uncaused, Necessarily Existing, Non-Contingent, Non-Physical, Immaterial, Eternal Being Who Created the Entire Universe...And Everything In It."

DR. CRAIG: Let's now unpack the premises of Leibniz’s argument.

Consider premise (1). At first blush, premise (1) might seem to be 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 absurd because then God's existence would be dependent upon 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 that God exists inexplicably. The atheist will say why not just stop with the universe? The universe just exists inexplicably. And so we seem to reach a stalemate.

Not so fast! This obvious objection to premise (1) is based upon a misunderstanding of what Leibniz meant by “an explanation.” In Leibniz's view, there are two kinds of things. First, things which exist necessarily, and, second, things which are produced by some external cause. Let me explain. Things which 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 a necessity of their own nature. Now, 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 has an explanation of its existence, the explanation may be found either in the necessity of its own nature or else in an 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.

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. So 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.

Is there any question on that reformulation of premise (1) and why God is not an exception to that premise?

QUESTION: It helps that you split it into the necessity of its own nature and external cause. But that doesn't explain that everything that's in the universe . . . or rather, to put this more simply, why everything can’t just exist because of its own nature?

DR. CRAIG: Right. That's right. That will be premise (2) but here we're saying that there are no things that exist inexplicably. Everything that exists has an explanation why it exists, and it will either be because of a necessity of its own nature (and prime examples would be mathematical objects) or it exists through an external cause (and prime examples of that would be things like people and planets and galaxies and chairs and trees – these don't exist by a necessity of their own nature; they exist contingently because they have causes). Now, it remains to be seen as to whether or not there might be something in the universe that exists by a necessity of its own nature. That will be premise (2).

QUESTION: Can we then say that God did not create mathematics?

DR. CRAIG: I used the illustration of mathematics because, as I say, many mathematicians believe that mathematical entities exist necessarily and so they're the most intuitive and understandable illustration of necessary existence. But, as a theist, I myself do not believe that mathematical objects exist at all, much less necessarily. My work on divine aseity, or self-existence, was published in 2016 by Oxford University Press under the title God Over All. If you're interested in the question of God's relationship to mathematical objects and other abstract objects look at the book God Over All. But for our purposes today I'm using mathematical objects merely as an illustrative example of what many people think exist necessarily to help to convey to you what necessary existence is. I'm not in any way committing myself to the necessary existence of mathematical objects.

QUESTION: Dr. Craig, are you construing “explanation of existence” narrowly as something like efficient causation?

DR. CRAIG: I think that the premise leaves it open, although my inclination would be to think of it in terms of efficient causation. Philosophers sometimes distinguish different types of causes, and efficient causes are things that produce the effect in being. For example, the efficient cause of a human being will be his parents mating and siring that person. The efficient cause of a chair would be a carpenter who makes it. So the premise doesn't really say what kind of cause, though my inclination would be to interpret it in terms of productive efficient causes.

QUESTION : Can we say that mathematics is kind of a logic, and logic really comes from the nature of God? Even if we talk about the Big Bang, the [Big Bang can’t happen unless it follows] the logic in God’s mind.

DR. CRAIG: If I understand your question, my answer would be the same as to the question about mathematical entities. With respect to logical truths and so forth, I'm merely appealing to these as illustrations of what many philosophers think are necessarily existing objects. I'm not, myself, committing myself to that view. But I find that most Christian laymen have never even heard of the idea of necessary existence, and they don't understand what it means to exist by a necessity of its own nature. So the appeal to things like logic and mathematics is the best way to evoke, I think, in people an understanding of what we mean when we talk about necessary existence. But I'm not committing myself theologically here to the necessary existence of mathematical objects or logical notions.

What reason might be offered in defense of premise (1)? 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 upon a translucent ball lying on the forest floor. You would naturally wonder how it came to be there. If your hiking buddy said to you, “It just exists inexplicably. Don't worry about it” you'd think that he's either joking or just wanted you to keep moving. Nobody would take seriously the suggestion that the ball exists 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 object does nothing to affect the need for an explanation.

Sometimes atheists will say that premise (1) is true of everything in the universe, but it is not true of the universe itself. Everything in the universe has an explanation, but the universe itself has no explanation. But this response represents what has been aptly called the taxicab fallacy for as the 19th century atheist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer quipped, premise (1) cannot be dismissed like a hack once you've arrived at your desired destination. You can't say that 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). The illustration of the ball in the woods shows 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, which is the study of the universe, is devoted to the search for an explanation of the universe's existence. The atheist’s attitude would cripple science.

Some atheists have tried, therefore, 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 for the explanation of the existence of the universe would have to be some prior state of affairs in which the universe did not exist. But that would be nothingness, and nothingness cannot be the explanation of anything. So the universe must exist inexplicably. 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. He's 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. Any discussion of that defense of premise (1)?

QUESTION: The argument I don't think makes too much sense just because everything that's made of matter intrinsically has an explanation. All the matter had to be formed in a specific way by manufacturers or by organic life or whatever. But we're talking about two different things. Things that are made of matter, and matter. So the argument makes sense for things that are made of matter because they have to have an explanation, but I don't see the argument for why matter itself needs to have an explanation. It works if you're a Christian and you're working down from God to the matter, but it’s hard to accept if you're working upwards from non-belief.

DR. CRAIG: All right. I will address this question more when we get to the second premise. We'll look at the suggestion that perhaps the matter of the universe exists necessarily but then it is just configured in different contingent ways. I'll respond to that possible objection. But for now it seems to me that the story of the ball in the woods and the irrelevance of simply increasing the size of the object until it's the size of the universe would go to show that the existence of the universe does cry out for some explanation of its existence as to why there is a universe at all.

Let's go on to premise (2): “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 is impossible for one to be true and the other to be false. They stand or fall together. 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 notice that this is logically equivalent to saying,

B.    If the universe has an explanation of its existence, then atheism is not true.

A and B are logically equivalent. If atheism is true, the universe has no explanation of its existence. If the universe has an explanation of its existence then atheism is not true. You can't affirm A and deny B, but B is virtually synonymous with premise (2). Just compare them. B says that if the universe has an explanation of its existence, atheism is not true; premise (2) says if the universe has an explanation of its existence that explanation is God. So B is virtually synonymous with premise (2). 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.

Any question about that defense of premise (2)?

QUESTION: Pretty much going over what you're saying. It's like for those that believe in the Big Bang theory, even the Big Bang theory has an explanation. It has reasoning behind it and has purpose if it was to happen. Eventually everything points back to God because only God could actually cause the Big Bang to happen just due to the fact that the impossibility of it happening by chance.

DR. CRAIG: We will be looking at that question in class tomorrow. If you look at the contents of these lectures, lecture 3 is, “Where did the universe come from?” We'll be looking at the question of the beginning of the universe and Big Bang theories of the origin of the universe. But it's important to understand that Leibniz’s argument is consistent with a past eternal universe. Leibniz is not talking about an explanation for the origin or the beginning of the universe. On Leibniz’s view the universe could have existed from past eternity. But what he wants to know is why is there a universe rather than not? Why does anything exist rather than nothing? So this is a distinct argument from the argument based on the beginning of the universe, and that's one of the reasons I consider it first. This is a more fundamental argument for God's existence than the argument based on the beginning of the universe because this is asking for an explanation of why anything at all exists.

QUESTION: This is a quick question for clarity. How strictly is “God” being used in premise (2)? How specific of a category . . . ?

DR. CRAIG: That's a good question. I think here one is talking about a personal, transcendent being of enormous power. So it's a fairly minimal concept of God. Certainly it wouldn't imply any of his moral attributes such as goodness or holiness, but the main thing that it will get you will be a metaphysically necessary, personal cause of the universe as we'll see.

Here's another argument in support of premise (2). Premise (2), I think, 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 non-physical, 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, doesn't have 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 grasp the power of Leibniz’s argument. If it's successful, it proves the existence of a necessary, uncaused, timeless, spaceless, immaterial, personal creator of the universe. This is really mind-blowing.

Any question or discussion of that second argument in support of premise (2).

QUESTION: Thank you, Dr. Craig. My question is on the way that the universe is being defined in this context. It sounds to me like we're talking about a set and its elements and whether or not the set itself is one of the elements in the set.

DR. CRAIG: I don't think that the universe is a set. A set is an abstract object. That's a mathematical object, not a concrete object. Whereas the universe is clearly a concrete reality. So by “the universe” I mean all contiguous space-time reality and its contents. So this would comprise any multiverse that might be thought to exist beyond our observable universe. Any contiguous space-time reality and its contents – all matter and energy – would be comprised in the notion of “the universe” here.

FOLLOWUP: [off mic] So it is not a boundary?

DR. CRAIG: Not necessarily. It would be consistent with Leibniz’s argument to say that the universe is spatially infinite as well as temporally infinite. Remember we saw a moment ago that Leibniz’s argument is consistent with the universe being past-eternal. I can't see any reason to think that it wouldn't also be consistent with the universe being spatially infinite. Just being big doesn't do anything to explain a thing's existence. Remember the story of the ball in the woods. Just making the object bigger doesn't do anything to remove the need for or to provide an explanation of its existence.

QUESTION: I just had a quick question. Could you expound a little bit about the concept of an unembodied mind. How does that create?

DR. CRAIG: OK. This is good. By that I mean a consciousness without a body. Think of your consciousness. You're a self-conscious person. You can say, “I think that.” Imagine that your body was stripped away so that only your self-consciousness remained. That's what I'm talking about by an unembodied mind – a self-consciousness without a body.

QUESTION: If the universe is really eternal then that proposition A if atheism is true then there is no need of explanation of the universe’s existence.

DR. CRAIG: That’s what the atheist says, but I agree with Leibniz that that is, in fact, false. And I think the story of the ball in the woods shows why. Just as the ball would require an explanation of its existence, so would the universe. Merely increasing the size of the ball does nothing to remove the need for an explanation of its existence. And for that reason I would disagree with A. But the point I'm making here is that in asserting A the atheist implicitly commits himself to the truth of B which is synonymous to the second premise of the argument.

QUESTION: Just to clarify, you're saying that how big something is doesn't prove that there's no need for an explanation. Also how long something has existed, how slow it took to come to pass, how fast or whatever. Just like if I said, “I am a person, and I have always existed.” That would bring a question in your mind, and it should. So the universe is no different.

DR. CRAIG: If I understood you correctly, you're saying that how long something exists doesn't have any relevance to why it exists. Is that right? Yeah, and I would agree with that. So this will lead to a concept of a being which is not merely eternal but rather metaphysically necessary – a being that exists by a necessity of its own nature. That's the point. Not something that just exists a long time (an eternal being) but a being that exists by a necessity of its own nature.

The atheist has one other alternative open to him at this point. 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 which exists necessarily. This would be a very radical step for the atheist to take, and I can't think of any contemporary philosopher who has, in fact, taken this line. A few years ago at a philosophy of time conference at City College in Santa Barbara, I thought that Professor Adolf Grünbaum, who is 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 as to whether Grünbaum thought that the universe existed necessarily, he was quite indignant in his response. “Of course not,” he snapped, and he went on to say that the universe just exists without any explanation. The reason that 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) seem 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 what about the matter out of which these things are made, as our questioner asked a moment ago? Maybe the matter exists necessarily, and all of 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 particles like quarks or electrons. The universe just is the collection of all of these quarks and particles arranged in different ways. But now the question arises, couldn't a different collection of quarks have existed instead of this one? Does each and every one of these quarks exist by a necessity of its own nature? Notice what the atheist cannot say at this point. He cannot say that the quarks are just different configurations of matter which could have been different even though the matter of which the quarks are composed exists necessarily. He can't say this because quarks aren't composed of anything. They just are the basic units of matter. So if a quark doesn't exist, the matter doesn't exist. Now, it seems obvious that a different collection of quarks 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 shoes. Could your shoes – the ones that you're wearing – have been made of ice? Now notice that I'm not asking whether you could have had a pair of ice shoes in the place of your leather shoes that have the same size and shape. Rather, I'm asking if your shoes – the very shoes – made of leather, if those shoes could have been made of ice. The answer seems obviously no. The ice shoes would be a different pair of shoes, not the same pair of shoes even if they had the same size and shape. Similarly, a universe made up of different quarks, even if 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. So atheists have not been so bold as to deny premise (2) and say that the universe exists necessarily. Premise (2) also seems to me to be plausibly true.

Any question about that atheist alternative.

QUESTION: Not a question so much as a comment. In mathematics, a set is defined as a collection of distinct objects. So you could define the universe as all space, all time, all energy as a set.

DR. CRAIG: Well, in that case you still need an explanation of the matter and the energy that are included in that set. So I think the argument will still go through even if you think of the universe as not an object in and of itself but as a set of objects. In fact, when the universe was very hot and very dense at a point in the past, there I think that the universe is an object. Even if now it's a scattered object that is blown apart, in the distant past it was so dense and so compacted that it seems to me it was an object very much like the ball in the woods in a sense except there were no woods, just the object, just the ball – the super-dense universe.[1]

QUESTION: We're on the same team here, so I hope you don't think I'm beleaguering the point. But we can use that same analogy as a balloon. A balloon is different than the air that's inside it regardless of whether you expand or contract the balloon. So to equate the balloon itself with what's inside of it – they're not the same thing. The nature of the things are different. I think the question that we're asking is: Are we confusing, in trying to clarify your argument, the nature of the container versus what's inside of it.

DR. CRAIG: It seems to me that if you don't think that the universe is an object in and of itself but it's just a set or it's a collection or something like that, the argument that I've given still goes through because you want to know the explanation for the existence of the matter and energy that make up that universe or that the universe includes. Then the second point that I made was at some point in the distant past it does seem to me quite proper to refer to the universe as an object. When it was extremely dense it would be an object just as much as any other material object that we're familiar with. So I don't see how that would provide any sort of escape route for saying that the universe either exists necessarily or that the matter and energy in the universe don't need to have an explanation of why they exist.

QUESTION: Angels and other created beings that aren't part of this universe?

DR. CRAIG: We're not thinking about those at this point because those are typically part of the furniture of a theistic view of the world, and this is an argument that doesn't presuppose theism. What we've said doesn't exclude the existence of angels and other spiritual beings, but it's primarily concerned with why does the universe exist.

QUESTION: Couldn't you start the whole syllogism by having sort of a pantheistic worldview where the universe itself is God, so you still sort of satisfy condition (2) but you still remove, like the atheists often want to, a personal privilege sort of mind outside.

DR. CRAIG: It seems to me that the pantheistic view would be equivalent to the alternative I just talked about – that the universe exists by a necessity of its own nature. The universe does have an explanation contrary to what the atheist typically says. Yes, the universe has an explanation of its existence. It exists necessarily. And I've just given an argument as to why I think that won't work based upon the incredibility of thinking that every quark in the universe exists necessarily. We could have had a different collection of quarks in which case we would have a different universe, and that shows the universe is contingent, not necessary as the pantheist claims. So I think this is a good argument not just against atheism but it's against pantheism. It’s an argument for a transcendent, metaphysically necessary, personal creator of the universe. Leibniz’s argument is extremely powerful if it goes through. It results in a very strong conception of God that is inconsistent with atheism, polytheism, pantheism, panentheism. It leads you to a very strong monotheistic view of God as a metaphysically necessary, timeless, spaceless, immaterial, personal cause of the universe.

QUESTION: I’ve been mulling over this for a little while. Please forgive me if I’ve misunderstood your argument. But it seems that you're saying that with the quarks that since they are in this specific arrangement instead of a different one that they need an explanation. Since the quarks of the universe are in a specific arrangement (this one) instead of a different one then they need an explanation.

DR. CRAIG: No, not that the quarks are in a specific arrangement and they could have been differently arranged. Obviously that's true. Rather, what I was saying is we could have had a different collection of quarks or a different collection of electrons. The atheist would have to say that every single quark in the universe is a metaphysically necessary being. And I think that just strains credulity. It is far more plausible to think that there is a single transcendent, metaphysically necessary being than to think that all of these quarks in the universe are metaphysically necessary beings that exist. That's the point.

By way of conclusion then, 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 lecture (tomorrow) our minds will be stretched even further still as we try to grasp the infinite and discover the beginning of the universe. We'll see you tomorrow.

 

[1] Dr. Craig further expands his answer to this question the following day - see here: https://www.reasonablefaith.org/videos/lectures/where-did-the-universe-come-from-hbu-apologetics-intensive-october-2018 (accessed September 27, 2022). For completeness, a transcript of that expanded response is included here: “We concluded our session last time with a discussion of Leibniz’s argument from contingency for the existence of God. After class yesterday, I reflected a bit more on a couple of questions that were posed in the discussion time here concerning what effect would it have on the argument if we were to think of the universe not as a huge material object but rather as a set of material objects (whether these be planets, stars, galaxies, and so forth) or these be fundamental particles like quarks and electrons. It occurred to me that if we do adopt the view that the universe is a set of things then it becomes all the more obvious that the universe does not exist by a necessity of its own nature. The reason for that is that the peculiar property of sets is that they have their members essentially. If two sets differ in even one member then they are not the same set. Sets are constituted by their membership. So sets that have different members are essentially different. They are not the same set. What that means is that if one single quark more were to exist in addition to those that exist, or a single fewer quarks were to exist than those that exist, or one quark were substituted for a quark that exists, you would have a different universe because you would have a different set. So that makes it, I think, all the more obvious that if the universe has an explanation then that explanation is to be found in a transcendent cause rather than a necessity of its own nature. If the universe is a set, it has to have all of its members essentially, and that would require to say that every single quark, every particle in the universe, is a metaphysically necessary being which just seems outrageous.”