Here is something you and I should be able to agree on: I wrote this sentence, you’re reading it, and we’re not the same person. And since you and I have communicated through space and time, it means that something rather than nothing exists.

Before we get too far into discussing nothing, I want to issue a disclaimer by sharing with you the results from my favorite intelligence test.

Choose which statement best describes your knowledge:

1 - I know everything.

2 - I know something.

3 - I know nothing.

When I was a teenager, I answered a firm number one. As I matured, I realized I was probably closer to a two. Growing older, I know that what I know compared to the unknown is like comparing a molecule of water to the ocean. I’m a strong 2.95 on this scale. How would you rate yourself?

Scoring a healthy 2.95 means I’m almost an expert on knowing nothing, which means that I like to have open discussions and often will take the contrary side. To me, that is the most effective way to learn—to question, think, imagine, and compare and contrast ideas.

Just because I quote someone or use a source does not mean that I am endorsing every point or belief expressed by those I cite. I’m just trying to get to 2.94. With that disclaimer in place, let’s discuss how nothing is incredible.

Something From Nothing

I remember growing up that I had a question in my mind about the universe. “If you could travel through the universe, would you ever get to where you passed out of it? And, what is on the other side?”

To my young mind, I thought maybe the universe was like an aquarium. You’d get to the edge, and then … what?

The following video and graph finally answered that question from my youth. The video is by Gerald Schroeder, a MIT scientist, and the graph is from NASA’s WMAP satellite website.

This is NASA’s timeline of the universe based on the WMAP satellite data. At the 2:27 mark in his video Schroeder brings up that inside the cone of expansion is space, time, vacuum, matter, energy, and galaxies—those are all something. He then states that outside of that cone is nothing. He says that since we are inside of the cone, we can’t wrap our minds around the idea of nothing being outside of it.

After all these years, I finally got an answer to my question. What is on the other side? Nothing. To me, that’s incredible.

When I was growing up I was taught in school that the universe was eternal. Schroeder points out that if you had taught that the universe had a beginning fifty years ago you would have lost tenure and your job. Within my lifetime science has changed from believing that the universe is eternal to the universe had a beginning. That’s incredible.

But an even better question is what is on the left-hand side of that graph? The beginning.

Notice the graph shrinks down to a point. When you wind time and space backward, you get to a point. What was before that singular point before time, space, vacuum, matter, and the universe existed?

The chart has the word “Quantum Fluctuations.” What is that? “Quantum Fluctuations are the random nature of matter’s state of existence or nonexistence. At these incredibly small sub-atomic scales, the state of reality is fleeting, changing from nanosecond to nanosecond.” 1 That is a fancy way to say random chance.

Quantum fluctuations are not nothing, but they are as close to nothing as you can get.

Here is the question that both believers and unbelievers face about the left-hand side of that graph:

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Both agree that it can’t really be nothing on that side because if there were ever a time that there was nothing, there would be nothing now because nothing could only result in nothing. Therefore, there has to be something to produce all that we see.

It’s incredible to think about how much man has discovered about the universe. We peer through telescopes and see the majestic wonder of it all. It’s so big and beautiful, with innumerable stars and galaxies. Brilliant minds have come up with complex and simple math equations to describe the chemistry, physics, and various mechanisms of how it works.

Switching from the big view of telescopes, we peer through microscopes and build supercolliders to witness whole new tiny worlds. Our minds are again blown away by the discoveries of quantum mechanics. We’ve gone smaller and smaller until we really can’t see anymore, only the blur of probabilities.

But all of these achievements are on the right side of the graph, inside the cone. These all take incredible intelligence, math, and science to discover and understand. Science can answer the “how” questions well. The “why” question remains: why is there something rather than nothing.

Belief in something is waiting for you on the left side of that graph.

The current answer of science to why there is something rather than nothing is “Quantum Fluctuations.” It’s counterintuitive, to say the least, that random chance in the amount of energy in a point of space is responsible for all that we see.

NASA says this about how the universe started:

“The universe began with an unimaginably enormous density and temperature. This immense primordial energy was the cauldron from which all life arose. Elementary particles were created and destroyed by the ultimate particle accelerator in the first moments of the universe.

There was matter and there was antimatter. When they met, they annihilated each other and created light. Somehow, it seems that there was a tiny fraction more matter than antimatter, so when nature took its course, the universe was left with some matter, no antimatter, and a tremendous amount of light.” 2

In the beginning, primordial energy with unimaginably enormous density and temperature somehow didn’t turn into the biggest inescapable black hole ever?

Somehow there was a tiny fraction more matter than antimatter, even though the nature of matter and antimatter is to anihilate each other?

Somehow we ended up with a lot of light, some matter, and no antimatter?

Somehow “nature” took its course based on random fluctuations?

Somehow we live in a universe that didn’t expand too fast or too slow but just right so that all that you see around you could form.

Somehow we happen to live on a planet just the right distance from a star, with a moon that stabilizes our orbit, and giant gas planets that protect us from impacts.

Somehow we happen to live on a planet with liquid water and an atmosphere that allows intelligent life to flourish.

Somehow non-living molecules randomly combined to form DNA to program all of the various forms of life we see.

As far as I can tell, NASA seems to be telling me to believe in “primordial energy,” “the ultimate particle accelerator,” “nature,” and “somehow.”

However, as a Christian, I remember reading somewhere about the beginning having a someone, not a somehow, who spoke a command and a lot of light, matter, and energy were made from nothing.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. … Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light (Genesis 1:1, 3).

By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible (Hebrews 11:3).

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it (John 1:1-4).

15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. 17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist (Colossians 1:15-17).

The Christian answer to why there is something rather than nothing is:

“O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder. Consider all the worlds your hands have made. I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, your power throughout the universe displayed. Then sings my soul …”

Which is more incredible to you? That random flucations somehow made all that you see or that there is an intelligence, wisdom, and mind that created all that you see?

Nihilism Is Incredible

Why is there something rather than nothing? The Christian answer is God (Genesis 1:1; Hebrews 11:3). That statement of faith buttresses all of Christian teaching and morality.

Friedrich Nietzsche understood that removing God from belief would lead to nihilism.3 Existential nihilism denies that man can know the “why” and that we must face the absurdity of life and the harsh reality that we are going to die.4

Without God, you cannot escape Nihilism. Nihilism wants you to believe in nothing.

Why are we here? Random fluctuations.

What is the purpose of life? Random fluctuations have no purpose.

You appear for a brief moment, and then you die. Why? Silence from the universe.

You may make up your own “why” and “purpose” but Nihilism stares blankly back at you, reminding you that in the course of nature, you aren’t even a whisper in a hurricane.

You came from nothing, and you’re going back to nothing.

Anything you may tell yourself is delusion or deceitful–and then you die.

Should we wonder why so many people take their own life or fill it with drugs, hedonistic pleasures, and despair?

Nihilism turns everything it touches into nothing.

Let me apply nihilism to the second most famous declaration about human beings ever penned by man:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal randomly generated, that they are endowed by their Creator Quantum Fluctuations with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Once God is removed, what is left to base these ideas on? Randomness? Does energy or matter say anything about such things?

Atheists for years have used Euthyphro’s dilemma in an attempt to prove that God is either arbitrary or that there are certain truths independent of God therefore making something greater or higher than God.

“It is generally agreed that whatever God wills is good and just. But there remains the question of whether it is good and just because God wills it or whether God wills it because it is good and just; in other words, whether justice and Goodness are arbitrary or whether they belong to the necessary and eternal truths about the nature of things.” 5

Wouldn’t this dilemma also apply to the belief in nothing or randomness? Is morality arbitrary or is it higher than randomness?

Is a thing good because Quantum Fluctuations randomly generated it, or did Quantum Fluctuations randomly generate it because that thing is good?

I remember, in the early 1980’s, sitting in a psychology class hearing an atheist professor try to argue for situational ethics. According to him, there was no God; morality and ethics are simply a function of humans deciding what was right or wrong based on their situation.

I raised my hand and asked: “So, you’re saying that whenever a majority of people decide that a thing is right or wrong, good or bad, that determines whether it is right or wrong, good or bad?” He answered, “Yes.” I then asked him, “So, you’re saying that if we were living in Germany in the 1930’s and we decided that one group of humans should be exterminated, that would make that morally right?” After stammering a bit, he tried to fall back to there is no objective morality, humans decide what is right or wrong, etc. He never could answer the question “Yes,” although what he was teaching implies that the answer is yes.

Let me modify Euthyphro’s dilemma again:

Is a thing good because a majority/democracy/government says it is good or is it good because it is good?

People today think they can escape the horns of that dilemma by saying, “Follow the science.”

Okay. Is a thing good because science says it is good or is it good because it is good?

Science can tell you how to build a nuclear bomb. What does science say about using it?

Which horn will you take? Morality is arbitrary based on the whims of human desires, or morality is based on independent eternal truths?

There is a third horn: God is why there is an objective reality beyond mere human desires.

Which seems more incredible to you?

How Nothing Changed My Life

Let’s just say I had troubled teenage years. It was the 70’s, and there was a lot of partying and drug use in the town that I grew up in and a neighboring city. I don’t know why, but I partied hard. There were only a few things I didn’t try. It’s a miracle that I’m still alive today.

God sent me a giant wake-up call on February 1, 1978. I was home sick with pneumonia because the previous week I had been on a partying binge. The doorbell rang, and it was the mailman dropping off the owner’s manual for my mom’s new car. I received the package and decided to take it downstairs to the basement where my father had gone earlier in the morning.

As soon as I cleared the landing, I could see that something wasn’t right. My father had died of a heart attack and was on the floor. Nothing will slap you into reality faster than staring face to face with death.

To this day, I still remember my heartbroken, scared mom frantically wanting me to pray to God with her. I didn’t pray. I already knew he was dead.

Pain and loss were now driving my partying. My best friend in high school had lost his father earlier, and while we partied, we also talked. We talked about life, death, the future, and even about God. Some of the best conversations I’ve had about such matters occurred that year.

Something had changed though. There were persistent questions that kept popping into my head. “Is this all there is? Is this it? Are we on this planet just to party?”

I couldn’t help thinking about my dad. He was a good man and a Christian. If there is no God, no heaven, and no point to life–is this all there is? If this is it, how was he any better or worse off than Adolf Hitler? My dad was a good man, but he’s just as dead. In a thousand years will it matter? In a million?

Nihilism was staring back at me. To me, it is incredible to think that life came from nothing and is going back to nothing gives you anything but nothing! No hope, no purpose, no ultimate difference. Why should you not be Hitler? How could it matter if this is all there is?

No, there is something rather than nothing, and it makes a difference the kind of person you are. I didn’t realize it at the time, but God used the worst thing that ever happened to me as a wake-up call that led me to him.

My friend and I disagreed about God, the purpose of life, and its meaning. But it was those conversations that planted seeds in me for the future.

The first famous declaration about the nature of human beings ever written is:

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them (Genesis 1:26-27).

Nihilism says that humans came from nothing, go back to nothing, and their lives are nothing in the cosmic scheme of things. Christianity teaches that humans are reflections of the divine.

Which seems incredible to you?

Is Nothing Incredible To You?

You will believe something about what is on the left-hand side of that graph.

Maybe you’ll believe that the first cosmic supercollider by random chance made everything you see.

Maybe you’ll decide that what you see in the universe displays an intelligence, wisdom, and power that random fluctuations cannot credibly explain.

Looking at the same evidence, two people come up with different beliefs based on how they interpret the universe. Both have to admit that nothing is incredible. There had to be something for there to be something now.

How do you answer the question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”

Which seems more incredible? Everything you see and experience is from randomness and going back to randomness or God?

Kevin Huddleston