Epigraph:

بَدِيعُ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضِ ۖ وَإِذَا قَضَىٰ أَمْرًا فَإِنَّمَا يَقُولُ لَهُ كُن فَيَكُونُ

He is the Originator of the heavens and the earth, and when He decrees something, He says only, ‘Be,’ and it is. (Al Quran 2:117)

Have they been created from nothing, or are they their own creators? Have they created the heavens and the earth? In truth they put no faith in anything. (Al Quran 52:35-36)

Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times

Abstract

In this article, we explore the classic argument that the existence of the universe – emerging from absolute nothingness – points to the reality of God as the prima causa (first cause). We examine the concept of creation ex nihilo (creation from nothing) from philosophical, scientific, and scriptural perspectives. Drawing on Quranic verses that describe God as “the First and the Originator of everything,” we highlight their commentary and implications for a first-cause argument grounded in Islamic theology thequran.love thequran.love. We also incorporate insights from contemporary discourse – including reflections from Closer to Truth interviews – and directly engage with atheist critics like Lawrence Krauss and Sean Carroll, who claim the universe can arise without God. We present and refute their contentions (e.g. the idea of a “universe from nothing” via physics), showing how such claims often redefine “nothing” or invoke unexplained “brute facts.” Modern cosmology’s evidence for a cosmic beginning is discussed in light of the Big Bang theory and the limits of scientific explanation, reinforcing the need for a transcendent cause. Throughout, the tone remains academic and analytical, yet we do not shy away from occasional theological flourishes to underscore the awe and significance surrounding creation. In conclusion, we argue that a robust synthesis of philosophical reasoning, scientific insight, and scriptural testimony builds a compelling case that the universe’s very existence ex nihilo is best explained by the existence of an eternal, uncaused Creator – God. An epilogue offers final reflections on the profound implications of affirming God as the first cause.

Introduction

Why is there something rather than nothing? This “ultimate question” has haunted philosophers, scientists, and theologians for centuries. Imagine if nothing had ever existed – not even empty space or time, not even the meaning of emptiness. As one modern presentation of the problem puts it: “What if Everything had Forever been Nothing? Not just emptiness, not just blankness, but not even the existence of emptiness, not even the meaning of blankness, and no Forever.” Such absolute nothingness is mind-boggling – “If you don’t get dizzy, you really don’t get it” closertotruth.com. The fact that we do have a universe – filled with matter, energy, space and time, governed by elegant laws – demands an explanation. The question of a “first cause” or an ultimate origin is not a trivial why-question; it strikes at the heart of metaphysics and human existence.

Classically, the problem has been framed in terms of creation ex nihilo (creation out of nothing) versus the old principle ex nihilo nihil fit (“from nothing, nothing comes”). The doctrine of creation ex nihilo is the theistic idea that matter is not eternal but was brought into being by a divine creative act thequran.love. It directly opposes the dictum ex nihilo nihil fit, an ancient maxim (attributed to Parmenides and later the Roman Lucretius) which held that nothing comes from nothing and thus something must always have existed thequran.love. Ancient Greek philosophers like Aristotle denied that the cosmos could have a beginning; Aristotle believed the world (and matter) must be eternal. In contrast, the monotheistic religions asserted a radical idea: God created the universe from nothing. As one scholar summarizes, “Aristotle [held] the world is eternal… The God of the Bible and the Quran created from nothing” thequran.love. This set the stage for a millennia-long debate: does the existence of the cosmos require a Creator, or can the universe (or the laws of physics) somehow be the ultimate brute fact?

In this article, we will argue that the weight of reason and evidence sides with the former – that an uncaused Creator is the best explanation for why anything (including the universe) exists at all. We will delve into: (1) the Quranic perspective on God as the first cause and ultimate originator, examining key verses and their implications; (2) the philosophical reasoning behind the first-cause argument, from Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason to modern formulations like the Kalam cosmological argument; (3) the scientific evidence of cosmology indicating that our universe had a beginning in time (creation-like implications of the Big Bang, etc.), and (4) the counter-arguments by atheists (such as Krauss’s universe from nothing and Carroll’s universe as brute fact) and why these fail to circumvent the need for a transcendent first cause. By weaving these threads together, we aim to present a comprehensive, academically rigorous case that creation ex nihilo inexorably points to the existence of God, who alone could serve as the First Cause of all reality.

Before proceeding, we note that our tone will be academic – carefully weighing arguments and evidence – yet we shall occasionally adopt a more impassioned or reverential tone in recognition of the profound theological significance of the topic. After all, if our reasoning is sound, it is no dry metaphysical trivia but rather the unveiling of something deeply meaningful: that all of existence owes itself to an Ultimate Reality that is best described as God. With that in mind, we turn first to the insights offered by the Quran on God’s relationship to creation and origin.

God as the First Cause in the Quran: “Originator of the Heavens and the Earth”

The Quran – which Muslims regard as the revealed word of God – directly addresses the question of creation from nothing and repeatedly emphasizes Allah (God) as the sole origin of everything that exists. In Islamic theology, one of God’s names is Al-Awwal (The First) – indicating that God is the First Cause, with nothing preceding Him. Another divine name is Al-Badi’ (The Originator), meaning the one who creates without any pre-existing model or material. These concepts are not abstract; they are embedded throughout the Quranic text in vivid language. Let us examine several key verses (ayaat) and what they imply:

“He is the First and the Last, and the Manifest and the Hidden, and He knows all things full well.” – Quran 57:3 thequran.love
(Epigraph) This verse, often quoted in Islamic discourse, is rich in metaphysical meaning. By calling God “the First and the Last”, the Quran asserts God’s eternal existence: He existed before anything else and will exist after everything perishes. In other words, He has no beginning and no end. The label “the First” (al-Awwal) in particular signifies that before God, there was nothing – nothing co-equal or co-eternal with Him. This directly supports the idea that God is the uncaused first cause. Everything else that exists came after Him and from Him. The verse also calls God “the Manifest and the Hidden,” suggesting that while God’s signs are manifest in creation, God’s own essence remains transcendent (hidden) – not part of the created order. And it adds that God’s knowledge encompasses all things, implying that God’s act of creation is fully deliberate and wise. In sum, Quran 57:3 positions God as the ontological alpha and omega – a being of eternal existence who initiated all reality and sustains ultimate knowledge of it thequran.love. The implication is clear: a universe that began is best understood as flowing from the One who Himself has no beginning.

“He is the Originator of the heavens and the earth, and when He decrees something, He says only, ‘Be,’ and it is.” – Quran 2:117 thequran.love
Here God is described as “Badi’ al-samawati wal-ard”, Originator of the heavens and earth. The term badi’ in Arabic connotes creating something novel, without precedent. The “heavens and the earth” is a Quranic expression for the entire universe. Thus, this verse unambiguously credits God with bringing the universe into existence from nothing. The second part of the verse illustrates how God creates: merely by His command. “When He decrees something, He says only, ‘Be’ (kun), and it is.” This famous Quranic phrase “Kun fayakūn” (Be, and it is) signifies the effortless power of divine creation. According to Islamic commentators, this does not necessarily imply a literal vocalization, but rather symbolizes that God’s will alone is sufficient to instantiate reality, without need for any material cause or intermediary thequran.love thequran.love. The implication is profound: unlike us – who require raw materials, time, and effort to make things – the Almighty creates ex nihilo, by pure command. The Study Quran commentary notes that “all that is necessary to bring a thing into being is for God to say Be!,” and that this affirms God’s complete self-sufficiency in creating, needing no pre-existing substrate thequran.love thequran.love. This verse aligns perfectly with the philosophical notion of a first cause: a cause so potent that it can cause existence itself to spring out of absolute non-existence. It also resonates with the Biblical “Let there be light” in Genesis, highlighting a shared Abrahamic understanding that the universe is not eternal but called into being by God’s fiat.

“All praise is due to Allah, the Originator of the heavens and the earth.” – Quran 35:1 thequran.love
This verse, which opens Surah Fatir, again uses Badi’ (Originator) for God. The context of praise here is important: it is saying that because God alone originated the cosmos, He alone is worthy of ultimate praise and gratitude. Implication: If God is “Originator of the heavens and earth,” then everything we observe – from the grandeur of galaxies to the life on our planet – traces its existence back to His creative act. Praising God as Originator also subtly contrasts Him with false deities: later in the same chapter, it’s mentioned that those beings people set up as gods beside Allah “created nothing, whereas He created all things.” Thus, the Quran uses creation ex nihilo as a litmus test of true divinity: the true God is the one who alone brought forth the universe. This informs the first-cause argument by identifying what sort of cause could qualify as the ultimate explanation of reality: nothing less than an all-powerful, uncreated being.

“He is the One who originates creation and will do it again – this is even easier for Him… He is the Almighty, the All-Wise.” – Quran 30:27 thequran.love
Here the Quran asserts that God not only originated creation the first time, but can repeat creation or resurrect it. In Islamic theology, this refers to God’s power to create life, then bring life back after death (resurrection in the hereafter). It says doing it again is “even easier” – not that any act is difficult for God, but to human minds, if one can create a universe from nothing, re-creating or renewing it is a trivial task by comparison. Implication: God’s role as first cause isn’t exhausted at the moment of the Big Bang (so to speak); God remains omnipotent through time, capable of *re-*creating or sustaining the universe and creating new worlds. This continuous creative capacity again emphasizes God’s power over existence itself, reinforcing the idea that contingent beings (which begin, end, and can begin again) ultimately depend on the Necessary Being who alone exists without origin.

“I have turned my face toward Him Who originated the heavens and the earth, being ever inclined to the truth, and I am not of those who associate partners with God.” – Quran 6:seventy nine9 (spoken by Abraham) thequran.love
This verse is the proclamation of the Prophet Abraham (Ibrahim) after he reasoned about the falsehood of worshipping celestial bodies. He declares that he will worship only the One who originated the heavens and earth. Notably, Abraham’s criterion for the true God is the ability to create from nothing – the same term fatara (originated) is used. Implication: even in humanity’s earliest forays into theology, the mark of divinity was the power to create the cosmos. Abraham rejects all “partners” (lesser gods/idols) precisely because they are part of creation, not its origin. By highlighting this, the Quran indicates that the human intellect, at its purest (as exemplified by Abraham), naturally concludes that there must be a single first cause, and that only this First Cause is worthy of worship. The verse underscores a personal response to the first-cause reality: turning one’s face (one’s entire being) toward the Creator. It’s a powerful illustration that the first cause argument is not only a piece of abstract philosophy but has existential implications – guiding one’s allegiance and worship.

“The Originator of the heavens and the earth! How could He have a son when He has no spouse, when He created all things, and has full knowledge of all things? … This is God, your Lord, there is no God but Him, the Creator of all things, so worship Him… No eyes can reach Him, but He reaches [all] vision. He is the All Subtle, the All Aware.” – Quran 6:101-103 thequran.love
These verses form a powerful cohesive argument in the Quran: First, it declares God as “Originator of the heavens and earth,” as we’ve seen. Then it uses this to refute the idea that God has any literal offspring – “How could He have a son when He has no spouse?” In Arabian context, this was addressing pagan claims of gods having children, or certain Christian claims of Jesus as literal son of God. But the logic is universal: if God created everything that exists, then nothing else existed alongside God as a partner or spouse. All beings (including any being one might call a “son of God”) are creatures, not divine kin. By definition, the Creator of all things cannot be biologically related to any creature, since all things (without exception) came into existence through Him. The verse then emphatically states: “This is God, your Lord, there is no God but Him, the Creator of all things.” The repetition of God as Creator of all things is meant to eliminate any confusion: everything apart from God is created, contingent, dependent. Therefore, the only logical object of worship (“so worship Him”) is that uncreated Creator. Finally, the statement “No eyes can reach Him, but He reaches [or perceives] all vision. He is Most Subtle (Latif), Fully Aware,” drives home God’s transcendence. God is not a physical object in the universe that you can locate or see – He is beyond the material cosmos (which He originated). Yet, God has complete awareness of His creation. Implication: God as first cause stands apart from creation. He initiated the universe but is not limited by it; His essence is invisible and unimaginable (beyond human observation), in line with the idea that the first cause must lie outside the chain of physical causation. These verses collectively insist that God’s creative act was unique and all-encompassing, reinforcing that nothing internal to the universe can account for its existence – the cause lies outside and above (hence the refrain “there is no God but Him”).

“Can man not see that We created him from a drop of fluid? Yet–lo and behold!–he disputes openly, producing arguments against Us, forgetting his own creation. He says, ‘Who can give life back to bones after they have decayed?’” – Quran 36:77-78 thequran.love
This passage from Surah Ya-Sin highlights an attitudinal critique of atheism or skepticism. It describes a person (a disbeliever) who forgets his own origin as a created being and therefore doubts God’s power to resurrect the dead. The Quran points out the irony: human beings are made from a mere drop of fluid (a humble origin), yet some become so arrogant as to argue against the very idea of a Creator, as if they popped into existence on their own. By “forgetting his own creation,” the skeptic loses sight of the most immediate evidence of God’s creative power – his very existence from a lowly origin – and thus finds the resurrection or any further divine act implausible. Implication: Acknowledging God as Creator is foundational to faith; denying it leads one to dismiss other core tenets (like life after death). From an argumentative standpoint, this verse is saying: if you want to reject God, you must first answer how you and everything else came to be. The human body, the Quran reminds us, was not always alive – it was inanimate matter (“a drop of fluid”). If one admits that we are created (which even a secular person might accept in terms of biological causes), then why doubt that the Creator who made life from non-life can re-create life after death? In essence, denial of a first creation (creation ex nihilo by God) underpins denial of any subsequent supernatural acts. Thus, the Quran ties recognizing God as Creator to recognizing God’s authority and power in all other matters. For our purposes, it underlines that atheistic arguments often hinge on negating creation, an observation also made by modern Muslim writers: “it is in denying this attribute of Allah that atheist philosophers try to find their foundations” thequran.love.

In summary, the Quran provides a multi-faceted depiction of God as First Cause and Creator from nothing. It insists that before creation there was only God – “nothing existed other than Him” thequran.love – and that everything else was brought forth by His command. The commentary on these verses makes it explicit: God “created all things from nothing… No matter, no energy, no souls, no mathematics, no logic, no propositions [existed before Him]. He is the One and the Only.” thequran.love. This is a remarkably clear statement of creation ex nihilo. The implications of these Quranic teachings for the First Cause argument are significant: they provide scriptural affirmation that (a) the universe had a beginning, (b) that beginning was caused by a transcendent agent (God) rather than by nothing or by the universe itself, and (c) nothing co-eternal or co-equal with God exists that could serve as an alternative “first cause.”

Thus, from the Quranic perspective, God alone is the logical explanatory terminus for existence. The Quran effectively poses a challenge: “If you have an instant of creation, don’t you need a Creator?” (as one science magazine candidly put it) creation.com. The holy text’s answer is a resounding yes – and it identifies that Creator as Allah, to whom all praise is due creation.com. The next sections will complement this theological perspective with philosophical reasoning and scientific findings, showing that they harmonize well with the idea of a created universe and a divine first cause.

Philosophical Reflections on First Cause and Creation from Nothing

Independent of any particular scripture, philosophers have long grappled with the question of why anything exists at all. One classical formulation comes from the 17th-century polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who asked: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” – calling it the fundamental question that demands an answer. Leibniz argued that nothingness is simpler than something, so if anything exists, there must be a sufficient reason explaining why that is the case. He concluded that the sufficient reason cannot be found within the contingent things of the world, but must lie in a necessary being that carries the reason for its existence within itself en.wikipedia.org. In his own words, “The sufficient reason [for the existence of the universe] is found in a substance which… is a necessary being bearing the reason for its existence within itself.” en.wikipedia.org. This necessary being, Leibniz identifies as God, who unlike the universe is self-existent (does not require an external cause). Here we see the philosophical concept of a first cause/Uncaused Cause articulated: it is a being that explains itself (its essence includes existence) and thereby can explain everything else.

Leibniz’s reasoning builds on an older principle known as the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) – the idea that for anything that exists, there must be an adequate explanation why that thing exists rather than not. The PSR stands in opposition to the idea that some things might exist gratuitously or without reason. Some philosophers (and scientists) have tried to avoid the need for a first cause by adopting a “brute fact” stance – essentially saying the universe just exists inexplicably. This stance was made famous by Bertrand Russell in a 1948 debate, when he said, “I should say that the universe is just there, and that’s all.” en.wikipedia.org. Russell refused to seek a deeper cause for existence, implying that the chain of causation could terminate arbitrarily with the universe itself as a brute fact. In contemporary times, physicist Sean Carroll echoes this line, arguing that it’s ultimately acceptable to have brute facts at the base of reality. Carroll writes that any attempt to explain why there is something rather than nothing must “bottom out in a set of brute facts; the universe simply is, without ultimate cause or explanation.” en.wikipedia.org. This viewpoint essentially throws up its hands and says: perhaps existence is just a fundamental given, and we should not expect a reason for it.

However, many philosophers find the brute-fact approach deeply unsatisfying – a kind of last resort that abandons the search for understanding. After all, science and rational inquiry are built on the assumption that phenomena do have explanations. To say “it just is” is to halt inquiry in a way that feels premature, especially when we are dealing with something as monumental as the existence of the cosmos. The Principle of Sufficient Reason would demand we seek a cause or reason for the universe, not settle for brute facts. If every component within the universe calls for explanation, it’s arbitrary to exempt the universe-as-a-whole from that demand. Moreover, if one were willing to accept an unexplained explainer, it might actually make more sense (as Leibniz holds) to accept a necessary divine being as that terminus, rather than the universe which gives many signs of being contingent (it could conceivably have been otherwise, or not existed at all, and it’s spacetime-bound and apparently finite in age).

Philosophically, the cosmological argument for God’s existence comes in different forms, but the core idea is this: every effect has a cause, and if you trace cause and effect backward, you either have an infinite regress (which may be impossible or at least does not actually explain anything), or you arrive at a first cause that itself is uncaused. Classic versions include Thomas Aquinas’ argument from a “Prime Mover” or “First Cause” (in his Five Ways), and the Kalam Cosmological Argument more recently championed by William Lane Craig, which specifically uses the finitude of time/past to argue for a beginning. The Kalam argument is succinctly summarized in two premises: (1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence. (2) The universe began to exist. Therefore, (3) the universe has a cause of its existence. This cause, the argument continues, must be something beyond spacetime, immaterial, uncaused, and enormously powerful – effectively pointing to God.

Critics from David Hume onward have tried to poke holes in these arguments. Hume, for instance, questioned why everything must have a cause – perhaps, he mused, we are extrapolating erroneously from everyday causes within the universe to the universe itself en.wikipedia.org. He suggested that our intuitions about cause and effect might not apply to the origin of everything, since that’s outside all experience. Immanuel Kant similarly argued that questions like “Who caused the first cause?” or “What about before time began?” might be transcendental illusions – the human mind overreaching beyond the limits of possible experience. More modern thinkers like Stephen Law have even questioned if the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” is well-formed, comparing it to asking “What’s north of the North Pole?” – a trick question since the North Pole is the northernmost point en.wikipedia.org. Law implies that asking for a cause of existence might be similarly misguided, as existence itself isn’t an event or thing within a larger context that could have an external cause.

These philosophical counters are important to consider. Perhaps the question of ultimate origin is in a category of its own, and our normal rules of causation either apply in a unique way or not at all. However, dismissing the question as meaningless or unanswerable has not been a satisfying approach for most thinkers – after all, we can pose the question clearly enough, which suggests there ought to be an intelligible answer somewhere. The analogy of the North Pole is also debatable: “north of the North Pole” is a contradiction in terms given how we define “North Pole,” but “cause of existence” is not an obvious contradiction. It is only paradoxical if one assumes in advance that there can be no cause beyond the universe. But that is precisely what the theistic answer challenges: it posits a cause beyond, a cause not constrained by the normal rules of the universe (like existing in time or space), which is why it can be the cause of time and space themselves. In fact, Aristotle himself had already reasoned towards something similar in concept – an Unmoved Mover and Uncaused Cause – though he thought the cosmos was eternal, he still posited a fundamental source of motion/existence that itself is not moved or caused by anything else en.wikipedia.org. In essence, the philosophical tradition from Aristotle to Leibniz to modern defenders of theism holds that the existence of a contingent universe calls for a necessary foundation.

An interesting twist is the proposal that perhaps abstract objects or laws could serve as necessary beings. Some philosophers of mathematics (like Quine or early Russell) have entertained that mathematical truths exist necessarily. Physicist Max Tegmark famously speculated that perhaps the universe is a mathematical structure. However, even if laws or math exist necessarily “in some Platonic sense,” they are by themselves inert – they are descriptions, not agents. The equation 1+1=2, even if true in all possible worlds, does not cause anything to come into being. As philosopher Dean Rickles argues, numbers and mathematical laws might be necessarily true, but that alone does not explain why those truths are instantiated in a concrete physical reality en.wikipedia.org. In theology, by contrast, God is not an abstract proposition but an agent with will and power. Thus God can cause a world to exist. Abstract laws might explain the form or structure of a world that exists, but they cannot bring about existence from non-existence – for that, a causal power is needed. In the words of philosopher Richard Swinburne, natural laws describe how the world operates, but “a list of laws is not a universe” – you still need something to give reality to those laws.

The principle “from nothing, nothing comes” (ex nihilo nihil fit) remains a bedrock intuition for rational inquiry. No matter how one tries to circumvent it, one either ends up implicitly smuggling in some existent (a quantum field, a law, an initial state) or one faces the absurd scenario of things just popping into being uncaused. As we shall see in the next section, even physicists who talk about universes coming from “nothing” don’t truly mean nothing in the strict sense – there’s always a prior state or law assumed. The first cause argument essentially says: if you want to avoid an infinite regress of causation, you need something that can break the chain – something that itself doesn’t require a cause. That something, to avoid arbitrariness, should have a special status (necessary, self-explanatory existence). Theists claim that God is exactly such a being: an eternal, necessary, uncaused reality that can cause all contingent reality.

We can also frame the argument in terms of contingency: Everything in our experience is contingent (it depends on conditions, it could be otherwise, it could not exist). The universe as a whole can be seen as contingent – it didn’t have to exist, and certainly not in the form we see (even atheistic scientists often talk about how if this or that parameter were different, no life or even no matter would exist). Thus, it’s natural to ask: why does a contingent reality exist at all? One possible answer is “there’s something non-contingent (necessary) that causes it.” Another is “there’s an infinite regress of contingencies.” But an infinite regress of contingent things still, collectively, is contingent – it could have been nothing, there’s nothing in an infinite chain that gives it necessity (you could remove any particular link or finite section without contradiction). Therefore, many argue an infinite regress does not actually answer the question, it just postpones it indefinitely. The buck has to stop somewhere, and the only place it can stop and actually explain is with a necessary entity – one that must exist. By definition, a necessary being cannot not exist; its non-existence is impossible. If you have that, then there is a final answer: “there is something rather than nothing because the Necessary Being exists (and could not fail to exist), and it produced everything else.”

The Quranic perspective we saw fits neatly here: it portrays God as that necessary being (eternal, self-subsistent) and everything else as contingent creation. Indeed, the Quran often uses the phrase “Allah is Ghani” – often translated “God is rich” or “self-sufficient” – meaning God does not depend on anything, whereas all creatures depend on Him. This is precisely the concept of necessity vs. contingency in theological language.

To sum up the philosophical stance: The concept of a First Cause or Necessary Being is a coherent and arguably compelling answer to the riddle of existence. It avoids the pitfall of saying “maybe existence just happened for no reason,” which violates our rational instincts and provides no explanatory satisfaction. It also avoids an infinite regress, which may be logically or metaphysically untenable. Instead, it provides an endpoint that has unique properties (uncaused, unending, necessary) which make sense of why it doesn’t need a cause whereas everything else does. Many theists would argue that once you’ve reasoned to such a First Cause, you have essentially arrived at God – especially if further analysis shows that this First Cause likely has attributes like immense power, volition (to choose to create), and intelligence (to fine-tune the laws of the universe).

Of course, an argument is not a proof until it confronts counterarguments and alternative explanations. So next, we turn to what modern science has discovered about the universe’s origin – does the empirical evidence support a beginning (and thus a cause), or an eternal universe? And how have atheist thinkers like Krauss and Carroll attempted to answer the question without God?

Modern Cosmology and a Universe with a Beginning

For a long time, scientific materialists found comfort in the idea of an eternal, steady-state universe – if the cosmos had no beginning, then one could argue it had no need for a creator. This was essentially Aristotle’s view secularized: the universe just is, eternally. However, 20th-century discoveries upended that comfort. The Big Bang theory, now the dominant cosmological model, indicates that the universe expanded from an extremely hot, dense initial state about 13.8 billion years ago. In the Big Bang model, space and time themselves are thought to have originated from an initial singularity (or at least a quantum fluctuation that served as a “beginning”). In other words, modern cosmology has strongly pointed to a temporal beginning of our universe – a creation-like event. Eminent cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin puts it bluntly: “All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.” creation.com. This was the conclusion he shared at a conference in 2012, after surveying various cosmological models that attempted to avoid a beginning.

Indeed, over the past few decades, physicists struggling to avoid the Big Bang’s implication of a beginning (perhaps due to its “theological overtones” creation.com) came up with alternatives: eternal oscillating universes, eternal inflation leading to a multiverse, cyclic models, a static cosmos before a certain point, etc. Yet, one by one, these models have faced theoretical or observational problems. Vilenkin, a leading researcher in inflationary cosmology, demonstrated (with colleagues Alan Guth and Arvind Borde) a theorem (the BGV theorem) which implies that any universe that is on average expanding (like ours) cannot be past-eternal; it must have a past boundary (a beginning) in classical terms creation.com creation.com. Even speculative multiverse scenarios, which imagine perhaps an endless series of bubble universes, generally still require an initial outset of inflation. As Lisa Grossman wrote in New Scientist, “from the cosmic egg to the infinite multiverse, every model of the universe has a beginning” creation.com. The same editorial noted, “It now seems certain that the universe did have a beginning” creation.com. This remarkable convergence of thought has led many physicists (even if reluctantly) to accept a cosmic genesis of some sort. The New Scientist editorial famously quipped in this context: “If you have an instant of creation, don’t you need a creator?” creation.com – capturing the very problem that now looms.

It’s important to clarify what Big Bang cosmology says and doesn’t say. It tells us that the universe as we know it expanded from a very small, hot initial state – basically that our physical universe is not infinitely old. It does not tell us what (if anything) “came before” that, or what caused it. Some theories like quantum cosmology attempt to describe the very origin. Stephen Hawking and James Hartle, for instance, proposed a “no-boundary” quantum cosmology model in which time sort of smoothly transitions from an imaginary-time state – eliminating the singular “beginning point” and replacing it with a rounded-off geometry. Hawking famously wrote: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing…” reddit.com. Many readers were stunned by this statement: Hawking seemed to be saying that physics had now rendered God unnecessary to ignite the universe. But a closer look reveals that Hawking’s “nothing” is not actually nothing. He invokes the law of gravity, a quantum vacuum state, and so forth. In essence, he’s saying given the laws of quantum physics, an initial fluctuation can occur that results in a universe. The pressing philosophical question is: Where did the laws of physics come from? Why is there gravity, quantum fields, etc., in the first place? Even Hawking’s readers asked, “Where did the law of gravity come from in the first place?” reddit.com. Hawking had no answer to that; he effectively treated the laws of nature as given. Physicist George Ellis (a colleague of Hawking’s in cosmology) criticized this approach sharply: “Krauss [and by extension Hawking] does not address why the laws of physics exist, why they have the form they have… Who or what ‘dreamt up’ symmetry principles, Lagrangians, specific symmetry groups, and so on? He does not begin to answer these questions.” en.wikipedia.org. The point Ellis makes is that appealing to laws of physics to explain the universe’s origin still leaves us with unexplained laws – and laws are not “nothing”. They are a profound something that cries out for explanation in their own right.

The laws of physics and quantum fields are part of the fabric of reality. If one says a quantum vacuum fluctuation produced the Big Bang, one must remember a vacuum fluctuation is not absolute nothing – it’s a state of space with a vacuum energy, governed by complex rules of quantum field theory. As philosopher David Albert famously quipped in his review of Lawrence Krauss’s book: the emergence of particles from a quantum vacuum “is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that fists can pop in and out of existence as my fingers rearrange themselves… none of these poppings amount to anything even remotely in the neighborhood of a creation from nothing.”reddit.com. In other words, when virtual particles appear in a vacuum, they are drawing on an underlying reality (quantum fields, space, time, energy conservation rules etc.) – just as a fist appearing from an open hand is drawing on the pre-existence of the hand. True nothingness means the absence of absolutely everything – no space, no time, no fields, no laws, no potentiality. Physics has never dealt with that kind of nothing; it always presupposes a framework. As one cosmologist candidly admitted, “we should be clear that even the idea of ‘nothing’ in quantum cosmology is a bit of a misnomer – there is always the quantum vacuum, with its fluctuating fields, implicit”.

In 2012, cosmologist Lawrence Krauss published A Universe from Nothing, claiming to explain scientifically how the universe could arise from nothing. The book made waves in popular media, touted by atheists as finally killing the last gap for God. Yet Krauss’s work was met with significant pushback from both philosophers and fellow scientists. The most notable critique came from philosopher of science David Albert, who emphatically pointed out that Krauss had simply redefined “nothing” to mean a quantum vacuum state, and thus hadn’t answered the real question at allen.wikipedia.org. Krauss responded by more or less acknowledging that the book’s title might be overplaying what physics can actually do; he conceded he wasn’t addressing why there are quantum laws in the first place (something he had “no idea” about)csus.edu. In a parenthesis in his book, Krauss admitted he was taking the basic principles of quantum theory for granted and had “no idea if [the origin of those principles] can be usefully dispensed with”csus.edu. In plainer terms, his explanation starts with a soup of physical laws and fields – which is already a lot of something. Critics like Ellis and Albert argue that Krauss simply failed to grapple with the true metaphysical question: why do those laws/fields exist at all? One might say Krauss “changed the subject” – he talked about how a universe with space, time, and fields could produce particles and even new expanding regions of spacetime (a fascinating question in its own right), but he didn’t explain how we get space, time, and laws of that sort in the first placeen.wikipedia.org.

Even Sean Carroll, an atheist physicist, weighed in on this debate. While Carroll is sympathetic to naturalistic explanations, he wrote that modern physics does not in fact explain away the deep questions: “Do advances in physics and cosmology help us address these underlying questions of why there is a universe at all, and why there are laws of physics, and why those laws have the form of quantum mechanics, and why this particular wave function and Hamiltonian? In a word: no. I don’t see how they could.”en.wikipedia.org. Carroll’s honesty here is important – he acknowledges that physics, for all its prowess in describing the behavior of the universe, hits a conceptual wall when it comes to explaining the existence of the universe at the most fundamental level. Thus, when Hawking or Krauss make it sound like physics solved the mystery of creation, they are overselling. They solved (or are trying to solve) a closely related puzzle: given a universe, how might it evolve or quantum-tunnel into its current state? But the puzzle of why there is a universe at all remains. At best, some theoretical physicists might say “the universe is a fluctuation of the false vacuum” or “the laws of physics might necessarily exist and generate universes.” But as Carroll points out, even if one hypothesizes “nothing is unstable” (a catchy phrase by physicist Frank Wilczek, meaning that quantum ‘nothing’ will not remain nothing), that only accounts for matter emerging; it does not explain the existence of the underlying quantum vacuum or spacetime that is doing the fluctuatingen.wikipedia.orgen.wikipedia.org.

Let’s consider one of the more philosophically intriguing scientific suggestions: could the universe itself be necessary? Some have speculated that maybe there is only one possible way reality could be – that the universe exists because it had to. This is difficult to support, because our universe appears highly contingent (physically, its constants and laws could be different; and mathematically, there’s nothing contradictory about an empty world with no objects). Another suggestion is the multiverse: perhaps every possible universe exists in a larger multiverse, so it’s necessary that something exists (because all possibilities exist), but no particular universe is necessary. This is a bold idea, but it suffers the same issue of needing a framework: who or what generates all possible universes? There are multiverse models (like eternal inflation or quantum Many-Worlds), but they too have laws and mechanisms that either require a start or are just assumed eternally extant. Furthermore, even a multiverse of all possibilities wouldn’t include the possibility “nothing” if indeed something must exist – which just begs the question, why must something exist?

In light of current cosmology, the trend actually favors theism in a significant way: the universe had a beginning. As Vilenkin said after surveying alternatives: “All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.”creation.com. This finding strongly supports premise (2) of the Kalam argument (the universe began to exist) which in turn triggers the need for a cause beyond the universe. Theists argue that science, far from eliminating the need for God, has highlighted a moment (the Big Bang) that looks suspiciously like creation. Even the staunchly agnostic or atheist cosmologists often use quasi-deistic language for that event (e.g., “the universe burst into being,” etc.). While science cannot pronounce on the supernatural, what it has given us is a picture of a universe that is not self-existent. It resembles a caused thing – it has an age, it had conditions that had to be just-right at the start (raising fine-tuning questions), and it runs by laws that themselves appear finely structured.

In sum, modern cosmology supports the premise that our universe is not past-eternal but had a beginning. Any attempt to explain that beginning without God ultimately has to smuggle in something – some laws or prior state. Those prior conditions then beg the same question of origin. The first cause argument is not claiming a gap in scientific knowledge (like “science can’t explain the Big Bang, therefore God”). Rather, it’s pointing out that even when science explains the mechanics of the Big Bang, it doesn’t remove the deeper question of why there is a Big Bang at all. When everything physical is traced back to a boundary (a t=0 so to speak), asking what instantiated that boundary is perfectly rational. The answer cannot be “something physical before it,” because by definition that’s the start of the physical. So the answer must be beyond the physical – which is essentially the definition of metaphysical or divine. Far from being anti-scientific, this reasoning is consistent with science’s findings and simply acknowledges the limits of scientific explanation.

In fact, the situation has an ironic twist: atheist scientists often express unease at the implications of a beginning. There’s a historical anecdote: when the Big Bang theory was first proposed (by Georges Lemaître, a physicist and Catholic priest), it was resisted by some prominent scientists like Fred Hoyle partly because it seemed to lend support to the Genesis creation narrative (Hoyle derisively nicknamed it the “Big Bang”). Over time, evidence piled up (expanding galaxies, cosmic microwave background radiation, etc.) and the Big Bang became accepted. Some scientists, like those mentioned in New Scientist, admitted that “theologial overtones” made them uncomfortablecreation.com – essentially, a beginning in time raises the prospect of a Beginner.

To be clear, science cannot prove a Creator, nor does a beginning logically require one in a formal sense (one could imagine, however implausibly, that the universe popped into being uncaused). But in the spirit of seeking sufficient reasons, a beginning fits neatly with the hypothesis of a Creator. As the saying goes, “I don’t have enough faith to believe the universe created itself from nothing.” The alternatives offered (like Hawking’s spontaneous creation via gravity) are, when scrutinized, not creation from absolute nothing and thus don’t eliminate the need for a transcendent cause. The Quranic vision of God saying “Be!” and the universe is – which might have sounded like a religious metaphor – finds a curious resonance with a universe that came into being in a flash of light and energy from an initial nothingness. It’s as if the scientific narrative and the theological narrative are pointing to the same truth from different angles: the universe had a beginning, and something beyond the universe is responsible for it.

Confronting the Critics: Can the Universe Create Itself?

Let us address head-on the contentions of notable atheist critics who argue that no God is needed to explain existence. The two figures explicitly mentioned – Lawrence Krauss and Sean Carroll – we have already touched upon, but will now summarize and refute their positions more directly. We will also consider others like Stephen Hawking (already discussed) and additional skeptic arguments.

Lawrence Krauss’s claim: Krauss popularized the idea that physics shows how a universe can come from “nothing.” His so-called nothing is a quantum vacuum governed by laws of quantum field theory and general relativity. In his view, the fluctuations of energy in “nothing” can spawn particles and even whole universes (via inflation theory). Thus, he argues, invoking God is unnecessary; quantum mechanics is creative enough.

Refutation: The flaw in Krauss’s reasoning is a definitional sleight-of-hand. The “nothing” he describes is not actually nothing – it’s a sea of pre-existing laws and fields. As David Albert pointed out, Krauss has not shown why there are quantum fields and laws at all, he has only shown (hypothetically) what those fields could do under certain conditionsen.wikipedia.org. The question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” is not answered by “Because quantum fields can fluctuate.” That merely prompts the further question, “Why are there quantum fields?” Krauss at one point dismissively asks, “Where, for starters, are the laws of quantum mechanics themselves supposed to have come from?” only to concede he has “no idea”csus.edu. This critical admission shows that Krauss has not eliminated the need for a first cause; he’s essentially moved it back one level – from universe to multiverse, or to laws of physics – and then left it unaddressed. As George Ellis noted, Krauss doesn’t explain who “dreamed up” the math of the lawsen.wikipedia.org. The creative power Krauss attributes to “nothing” actually resides in the laws (like gravity, quantum mechanics). But laws are descriptive; they have no causal efficacy unless there is something for them to describe. Additionally, many have noted Krauss’s misunderstanding (or redefinition) of “nothing” – true nothing would not even have the potentiality for quantum events. Krauss’s scenario is more properly described as “a universe from a quantum vacuum,” which is fine as far as speculative physics goes, but it’s miles away from a literal creation from nothing. In short, Krauss has not done away with the first cause; he has merely attempted to substitute Physics in place of Metaphysics, without success. The laws of physics themselves stand in need of explanation, and Krauss’s work leaves us exactly at the same question we started with, only now we might phrase it: “Why do the laws of quantum gravity exist, such that a universe could arise?” There is still a monumental explanatory gap. As one critic wryly put it, Krauss’s book should have been titled “A Universe from Something (That We Call Nothing).” Theologian William Lane Craig quipped that Krauss is like the comic-book character who can pull a rabbit from an empty hat – impressive, until someone asks how the rabbit (and hat) existed in the first place.

To solidify this point, recall the earlier-quoted colorful analogy: virtual particles popping out of a vacuum are no more “mysterious” than a fist popping out of an open hand by rearrangement of fingersreddit.com. None of these phenomena involve true non-being turning into being. Thus, Krauss has not violated ex nihilo nihil fit; he’s simply illustrated ex fluctuatione aliquid fit (from a quantum fluctuation, something comes) – which is interesting but not ultimate.

Sean Carroll’s view: Carroll, while a physicist, approaches the topic more philosophically by accepting that perhaps the universe (or multiverse, or the fundamental state of reality) just exists without reason. He explicitly says we might have to accept brute facts at the base of existence – the universe just is. He argues that demanding an explanation for existence might be a wrong question and that stopping at brute facts is acceptable, as noted earlieren.wikipedia.org. Additionally, Carroll has debated cosmological arg advocates and suggested that invoking God doesn’t really “explain” much either – since one could then ask “why does God exist?” He’d rather just say the universe exists inexplicably than introduce God.

Refutation: Carroll’s stance is at least straightforward: he’s basically declining to seek a deeper cause. But is this rationally satisfying? The issue with brute facts is that they violate the principle of sufficient reason (PSR) which undergirds rational investigation. If the entire universe is a brute fact, science itself stands on shaky ground – why assume any consistency or reason in a brute-fact universe? The success of science historically came from assuming things have explanations. Moreover, if we allow one brute fact, where do we stop? If the universe existing without cause is acceptable, why not miracles without cause? It’s a philosophically permissive position that could undermine the expectation of coherence. Most thinkers would agree with Leibniz that the existence of anything begs for an explanation; to say “perhaps there is none” is to give up the game.

Furthermore, if one is going to accept a brute fact, consider the options: (a) a brute fact universe, or (b) a brute fact God. Either way, you have something unexplained at base. But the concept of God has a crucial explanatory advantage: God is posited as a metaphysically necessary being. If God exists necessarily, then strictly speaking it’s not a “brute fact” in the sense of arbitrary – it’s the nature of a necessary being to exist, and that is the end of the explanatory chain, but not in an arbitrary way (it’s in the nature of 2+2 to equal 4; we don’t ask “why 4?” beyond that – it’s self-contained). The universe, by contrast, shows no sign of being necessary; it behaves like something contingent. So between the two brute-fact possibilities, God is at least conceivable as a self-explained being, whereas the universe doesn’t seem to have that feature. As some philosophers have noted, to prefer an inexplicable universe over an inexplicable God often stems less from logic and more from a desire to avoid a divine foot in the door. In fact, if one is really willing to accept an uncaused, eternal Something at the base of reality, the question becomes: what is the nature of that Something? Carroll says it’s some self-existent universe (or multiverse) with specific laws. But why not consider that the eternal Something is best understood as Mind rather than matter? After all, matter and energy are finite, fluctuating, and law-bound; whereas a divine Mind (God) could be eternal, self-consistent, and the source of order. The hypothesis of God arguably has more explanatory power: it explains not only existence, but also the origin of laws, the fine-tuning of constants, the presence of consciousness in the universe, etc., whereas brute fact multiverse just says “it is, don’t ask why” and leaves those as coincidences.

Carroll’s argument that “invoking God doesn’t explain why God exists” is a bit of a red herring. Classical theology doesn’t claim God is an unexplained brute fact; it claims God is self-existent by necessity. That means God’s non-existence is impossible – God contains within His own nature the reason for His existence (as Leibniz phrased). Now, we humans can’t fully comprehend what it means to exist by necessity (except in abstract terms), but it is a coherent concept. It terminates the regress in a satisfactory way: something exists that must exist, therefore something exists (logically consistent). Conversely, terminating the regress in a brute-fact universe provides no analogous metaphysical necessity or reason – it’s just arbitrariness. In summary, the atheist critic who says “the universe just is” has essentially given up on ultimate explanation, whereas the theist who says “God is” is offering a terminating explanation grounded in the concept of necessity. Whether one finds that convincing might depend on one’s openness to non-empirical explanations, but logically the God hypothesis is not on equal footing with the brute-fact hypothesis; it’s more ambitious in that it tries to explain why it’s a terminus (by God’s necessity), rather than simply declaring “stop asking.”

Other critics: We’ve covered the main ideas of Krauss (universe from “nothing” via physics) and Carroll/Russell (brute fact universe). Another worth mentioning briefly is the idea from some atheists that “If God created the universe, who created God?” This is a common question often posed in lay debates. The answer from classical theism is straightforward: God is uncreated. The question misfires because God is by definition the uncaused first cause. It’s not special pleading; it’s a logical categorization: either something is uncaused or caused. The cosmological argument concludes there must be an uncaused cause. By definition, that is what God is. To ask “who made the unmade maker?” is like asking “what’s north of the North Pole?” – a meaningless question because the North Pole is the northernmost point by definition. Likewise, an uncreated Creator is the stopping point. Now, an atheist might retort “well, I can just say the universe is uncreated.” But as we’ve argued, the universe doesn’t look like the sort of thing that can exist without a cause (it’s finite, etc.), whereas the concept of God is precisely crafted to be the sort of thing that can exist without a cause (eternal, necessary, independent). The comparative plausibility is heavily in favor of God as uncaused cause, not the universe.

Another critique is more existential: some say the question of why there is something might be improper because nothingness is an incoherent state. Some, like philosopher Quentin Smith, have argued the universe might be a self-contained causality or even “caused itself” in a time loop. Those are exotic ideas that have not found much traction, largely because they either violate logic or simply push the mystery back. A universe causing itself (A causes A) is logically impossible unless one dilutes what causation means. As for nothingness being incoherent – if true nothing were impossible, that itself might hint that a necessary being exists (some have argued that maybe “nothing” is unstable or impossible so something had to exist – interestingly this is what theists say: nonbeing can’t spontaneously become being, hence something eternal must exist).

Finally, it’s worth noting that even if one doesn’t find these arguments airtight, the atheist alternatives often tacitly confirm how powerful the first cause intuition is. For example, Hawking and Krauss are effectively trying to find something that plays the role of a first cause (be it gravity or quantum vacuum) – they are not really content with saying “no cause at all,” they try to provide a pseudo-cause. That shows a psychological pull of the principle of sufficient reason. Carroll, on the other hand, bites the bullet of no-cause, but then he also denies any deeper meaning or purpose in the universe, making his worldview rather bleak (by his own admission, the universe just is and we make local meaning). One might argue that a worldview that leaves such a fundamental question unresolved is less satisfying and perhaps even less rationally sound than one that answers it with a coherent hypothesis (God).

In conclusion of this section, the attempts to explain the universe without God fall short either by failing to truly start from nothing (as in Krauss’s case, where “nothing” is a semantic trick) or by abandoning the quest for explanation (as in Carroll’s brute fact stance). Neither provides a compelling alternative to the age-old idea of a transcendent Creator. By contrast, the God hypothesis not only addresses the existence of physical reality, but as we will see, it can also elegantly account for the existence of the laws of mathematics and logic (since they reflect the mind of a rational God), the fine-tuning of the universe for life (as intentional design), and the origin of consciousness and moral values (as emanating from a conscious, moral Creator). Those topics are beyond our scope here, but they form a cumulative case. Our focus is existence itself – and on that score, theism offers a clear, robust answer: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The Quranic verses we reviewed echo this answer, and the philosophical arguments underscore its reasonableness, while the critics have not dismantled it.

Synthesis: Creation Ex Nihilo as Evidence for a Necessary Creator

Bringing together the threads of scripture, philosophy, and science, we can now see a cohesive picture emerging. The universe had a beginning (as evidenced by cosmology) and is contingent (it need not have existed, or could have been otherwise). Reason and experience tell us that things do not pop into being uncaused, and every effect we know of is traceable to a cause. Pushing this logically, there must either be an infinite regress of causes or a final uncaused cause. An infinite regress, besides being arguably impossible, would not actually answer why anything exists – it would be like saying “because A was caused by B, B by C, …” ad infinitum, which is a bit like a book with no first page – you never get an origin. As one cosmologist humorously put it, “it’s like a magic book: each page explains the next page, but there’s no page one. It might be consistent, but it’s hardly satisfying.” Only a first cause, something outside the series, can truly explain the series.

The concept of creation ex nihilo guides us inexorably to the concept of a volitional, powerful First Cause. Why volitional (i.e., having will)? Because if the cause is eternal but its effect (the universe) is not eternal – meaning the universe began at a finite time – then it suggests the cause “chose” or willed to bring the universe into being at that moment. If the cause were an impersonal set of conditions, one would expect the effect to be co-eternal with the cause (if the conditions were always there, the effect would always be there). To illustrate: If an infinitely old block of ice has the property of being cold enough to freeze water, then any water present would also be frozen from eternity. You wouldn’t get a situation where the ice was forever there but the water froze at some point later – unless something changed. In philosophical terms (per Islamic theologians and also Christian thinkers like Aquinas), an eternal cause producing a temporal effect implies a personal agent that can decide to initiate a new effect. This dovetails with the idea of God, who has will. So, the First Cause deduced by the cosmological argument isn’t just a bland necessary substance; it starts to look like an agent with the freedom to create.

Next, consider the nature of this cause. It must be immaterial and atemporal (beyond time), because time, space, matter, and energy are all things that began with the universe. So whatever caused the universe cannot itself be bound by those things (otherwise we haven’t truly gone beyond the universe). The Quranic depiction of God matches this: “No eyes can reach Him… He is All-Subtle”thequran.love; God is not a physical object. He is eternal (the First and the Last)thequran.love. Moreover, this cause must be enormously powerful, to summon energy and matter out of nothing. Again, calling it omnipotent (all-powerful) is in line with theology. It also must be intelligent or law-giving, because the universe operates by intricate laws of mathematics and physics – it is ordered, not chaotic. An impersonal cause might give us a chaotic explosion, but the Big Bang gave rise to a cosmos of remarkable structure (quarks form atoms, atoms form molecules, stars, galaxies, life… all under elegant laws). This hints that the cause “knew” what it was doing – which is precisely how religious traditions portray God: Al-Hakeem, the All-Wise, who “with His knowledge… created all things to an exact measure” (to paraphrase Quran 25:2thequran.lovethequran.love).

Additionally, we have the striking anthropic fact that the universe is fine-tuned for life – physical constants lie in very narrow ranges that allow stable matter and chemistry. While we won’t delve deeply into fine-tuning here, it reinforces the idea that the creation event was not random, but purposeful. A Creator aligns well with that, whereas a brute fact multiverse is invoked by atheists as a way to try to hand-wave this (if zillions of universes exist, maybe we’re just in the lucky one). But multiverse aside, the elegant order in the universe’s birth (low entropy initial conditions, finely balanced forces) looks intentional.

One might ask: If God created the universe from nothing, does that violate the dictum that from nothing, nothing comes? Actually, when theists say God created from nothing, they mean God did not use any pre-existing material. It doesn’t mean nothing independently turned into something; it means God’s power brought things into being without using materials. In that sense, “from nothing” is shorthand for “not from any pre-existing stuff.” So the principle ex nihilo nihil fit still holds in a natural sense – nature by itself cannot produce something from nothing. But God is not nothing – God is something (indeed the greatest of realities) – and thus God causing being is not “nothing causing something,” it’s something causing something, which is acceptable. Think of it this way: if there were absolutely nothing, then indeed nothing would ever arise. But the theist asserts there was never a state of absolute nothing; God was always there, and thus something did always exist (God), and that something produced other things. This is consistent and doesn’t violate rational principles.

Another dimension: The existential intuition that there must be something behind existence is widespread. Throughout cultures, humans have looked up and felt that the universe is pointing beyond itself. The Quran appeals to this intuition by reminding us of our humble origins and the greatness of the created world as signs (ayat) of God. The verses we saw about not forgetting one’s own creation (36:77-78) or Abraham’s reflection (6:79) reflect a deeply human journey – using reason and observation to infer the divine. It’s notable that many scientists too, even non-religious ones, often speak in almost spiritual terms when pondering why nature is comprehensible or where the laws came from. Physicist Paul Davies wrote, “the laws of physics seem themselves to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design.” If one is not ideologically committed to atheism, the cumulative evidence of a beginning, fine-tuning, and the beauty of laws can naturally lead to a theistic worldview.

One might also argue from consciousness: we are not just inert matter; we have mind and rationality that can ask these questions. If mind exists in the effect (us), it’s plausible mind exists in the cause (the Creator). It’s hard to see how a purely mindless origin could give rise to consciousness unless one had a teleological view with a mind guiding it.

Now, none of this is to say the case is without mystery. The nature of God and how exactly God’s causation works are topics of theological exploration. But one of the beautiful implications of the first cause argument is that it gives us a grand unifying principle: All things come from One. This fosters a sense of coherence in our worldview – our existence is not a random fluke but an intended reality issuing from a singular, ultimate Source. It also underscores the dependence of everything on God. As the Quran states, “O mankind, it is you who stand in need of Allah; Allah is the Self-Sufficient (Free of need), the Praiseworthy” (Quran 35:15). This dependency is total: moment by moment the cosmos only continues because the First Cause sustains it (a view in Islamic theology akin to occasionalism, and in Christian thought, continuous creation).

We should address one more critic’s point: “Even if there is a first cause, why think it’s God? It could be an impersonal force or something.” By now, we’ve given several reasons to think it is God: the cause likely has will (to initiate a temporal effect), immense intelligence (to craft laws), and is the ground of being (which in classical terms is what God is – ipsum esse subsistens, subsistent being itself, in Aquinas’s language). An impersonal force that exists eternally but only triggers a universe after infinite time makes little sense, unless it’s probabilistic – but then probability is part of the laws, which again either always yield something or not. Moreover, if someone posits a mysterious impersonal cause outside the universe, they’ve basically introduced a metaphysical entity with attributes beyond physics – which is already a lot like God, just not called God. Ockham’s razor would suggest, why multiply hypotheses? The traditional God concept covers the bases.

Finally, let’s not miss the awe factor: Understanding the universe had a beginning and positing God behind it can evoke a profound emotional and spiritual response. It’s one thing to intellectually argue first cause; it’s another to stand in the dark of night, stare at the stars, and feel that deep resonance that “Surely, some great Intelligence and Power made all this.” This move from head to heart is important. As much as this is a logical argument, it’s also a bridge to meaning. If God is the first cause, then we are not accidents; we are part of a story, a creation intended by a Creator. The Quran often moves seamlessly from cosmological signs to calls for gratitude and worship – for instance, after describing God creating the heavens and earth, it says “so worship Him”thequran.love. The logical and the existential go hand in hand.

The commentary from Quranic verses earlier makes this clear: acknowledging God as Creator is tied to accountability and purpose. If one accepts a Creator, one is more inclined to accept that life has purpose, moral order (since the Creator would design life with values), and that death is not the end (as the Creator who created once can recreate, i.e., resurrection). If one denies the Creator, often these other beliefs fall away (morality becomes subjective, life’s purpose is self-determined, afterlife is denied). So the stakes of this question are high. We are not just talking about a scientific or philosophical puzzle; we are talking about the foundation of an entire worldview.

Thus, proving (or at least making a strong case for) God as the First Cause is a linchpin for a theistic worldview and has ripple effects on how we see everything, from ethics to our own significance. It’s fascinating that some atheists call the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” the most profound and haunting question (indeed, a Closer to Truth episode was titled “The haunting question: Why Anything at All?”). The reason it haunts is because it presses us toward the possibility of God. If one is committed to atheism, that question is uncomfortable; if one is open to God, that question is a pointer toward the divine.

In conclusion of this synthesis: The creation ex nihilo of the universe is a signpost pointing beyond itself. The rational mind, following that sign, finds that the most coherent destination is God – uncaused cause, necessary being, Creator. The Quran anticipated this ages ago, declaring unapologetically that God is the sole origin of all. Philosophers refined the reasoning, and now science, unexpectedly to some, has provided supporting evidence of a beginning. When all these are viewed together, the case is quite compelling. The atheist alternatives either secretly borrow from the theistic view (by using “nothing” that isn’t nothing, or positing eternality in something that behaves like it has will) or they abandon reason’s quest altogether. Neither is a strong position.

The principle of causality and the contingency of the universe together shout out for a necessary cause. As the Closer to Truth discussions often illustrate, even many secular thinkers feel the draw of something fundamental behind existence. Some call it the Ground of Being, others a Multiverse, but give it whatever name, it ends up sounding quite metaphysical. We argue the best name, supported by centuries of thought and human experience, is God.

Thus, the cosmological argument is not a rusty relic of medieval thought; it is a living, modernly relevant argument that engages with today’s science and philosophy. It provides a foundational “proof” – not in the sense of a mathematical proof that compels assent, but in the sense of a strong inference to the best explanation – that God exists. The universe’s existence ex nihilo is Exhibit A in this case for God. As scripture says, “Surely in the creation of the heavens and earth and the alternation of night and day are signs for those of understanding” (Quran 3:190). We have followed those signs with our understanding and found that they indeed point to God, the First Cause.

Epilogue

We began with the deepest of questions – a question that has tugged at the human soul and intellect: Why is there anything at all, instead of nothing? In journeying through revelation, reason, and empirical discovery, we have converged on an answer as sublime as it is bold: God. The recognition of God as the First Cause and Creator ex nihilo is more than a philosophical conclusion; it is a revelatory insight with profound implications for our view of reality and ourselves. If God is the wellspring of existence, then existence is neither aimless nor absurd – it is deliberate, meaningful, and sustained by an ultimate love and wisdom (for what is creation if not an act of giving existence, which is akin to giving love?).

Contemplating the universe in light of the First Cause, we may feel a sense of what the Quran calls ayat (signs) all around us. Every star that glimmers in the void, every breath we draw, every law of physics that elegantly balances the cosmos – all become whispers of that primordial command, “Be!” thequran.love. The heart, as much as the mind, is moved by this realization. We are struck with gratitude – “All praise is due to Allah, Originator of the heavens and the earth” thequran.love – for we perceive that we owe every moment of our existence to that originating Will. We also find humility, as the Quranic verse reminded the disputing skeptic: one who realizes he was “a drop of fluid” gifted with life has little ground for arrogance thequran.love. And we find hope: if a Creator brought forth life from nothing, He can surely bring life from death; the door to resurrection and eternity is open by the same power that lit the first dawn of creation thequran.love.

For the religiously inclined reader, the argument from creation ex nihilo is a sweet vindication of faith by reason. It shows that belief in God is not a blind leap but stands on the firm ground of logical necessity and evidential support. For the seeker or skeptic, perhaps it offers a fresh perspective – that accepting a brute fact universe or a convoluted “nothing-that’s-really-something” is far less rational (and far less enriching) than embracing the idea that “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” It has been said that science can only take us to the foot of the mountain, and then faith bids us climb. Here, we saw science, philosophy, and scripture as three sturdy ropes intertwined, helping us scale upward to glimpse the summit of a grand truth: that this entire reality is grounded in a singular, self-existent Source.

At the end of this exploration, we stand, as it were, before the throne of the First and the Last thequran.love. In that stance, one cannot help but feel a sense of awe. The psalmist of the Bible expressed it thus: “Before the mountains were born or You brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting You are God.” The Quran similarly extols, “He is from Everlasting, Everlasting is He”. All the pieces of the puzzle we examined – the contingency of the universe, the beginning in time, the coherence of natural laws, the witness of holy texts – come together in the figure of the One who alone could say “I Am” as a complete sentence of identity.

In closing, we might recall the words of a Closer to Truth participant who mused that confronting the mystery of existence without acknowledging a transcendent cause is like “listening to a magnificent symphony and insisting it has no composer.” The better response is to let the symphony lead us to its Composer. The cosmos, in all its grandeur and fragility, is that symphony – and God is the composer calling the tune from beyond time. The first cause argument, ultimately, is an invitation to listen to the music and discern the Composer’s presence. In the Islamic tradition, the very first verse of the Quran reads: “In the name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful.” Gracious indeed must be the One who gave being to that which was not, who originated everything from the treasury of nothingness. We have attempted, in an academic manner, to prove this truth; yet in the end, its fullest appreciation may lie in experiencing a sense of communion with the Originator – a state where the mind’s assent flows naturally into the heart’s devotion.

The journey of reason thus yields to the destination of wonder. Having seen that the existence of anything and everything points to God, we may step forward in our lives with renewed vision. As we walk under the stars at night or ponder the miracle of our own consciousness, we carry with us the knowledge – supported by evidence and elevated by faith – that we are here because God IS. Everything else is, in a profound sense, commentary. And so the ancient proclamation rings ever true: “This is God, your Lord, the Creator of all things – there is no God but Him”thequran.love. From the first moment of creation to the last syllable of recorded time, all existence sings of Him, the First Cause. Let us have the wisdom to hear that song, and the courage to respond with both intellect and soul.

Sources:

• The Holy Quran, especially verses 57:3, 2:117, 35:1, 30:27, 6:79, 6:101-103, 36:77-78 (and commentary) highlighting God as the Originator of allthequran.lovethequran.lovethequran.love.
• Commentary on Quran 2:117 from The Study Quran (S.H. Nasr et al.), explaining “Be!” as God’s effortless creative commandthequran.lovethequran.love.
• Zia H. Shah, The Quran: Allah is the First and Originator of Everything! (2024), emphasizing that nothing at all existed before God initiated creationthequran.love.
• Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason and quote on a necessary being as the reason for existenceen.wikipedia.org.
• Bertrand Russell’s brute-fact assertion “the universe is just there, and that’s all”en.wikipedia.org, and Sean Carroll’s similar conclusion that the universe exists “without ultimate cause or explanation”en.wikipedia.org.
• Alexander Vilenkin’s statement, “All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.”creation.com and discussion of cosmological models requiring a beginningcreation.comcreation.com.
• New Scientist editorial on the Big Bang’s “theological overtones” and the rhetorical question “If you have an instant of creation, don’t you need a creator?”creation.com.
• Stephen Hawking’s claim that the universe can create itself due to physical lawsreddit.com, and the rejoinder questioning where those laws come fromreddit.com.
• Lawrence Krauss’s A Universe from Nothing thesis and its critique: David Albert noting Krauss’s “nothing” is a quantum vacuum and “none of these [particle] poppings… amount to a creation from nothing.”reddit.com; George Ellis pointing out Krauss’s failure to address why laws of physics existen.wikipedia.org.
• Sean Carroll’s acknowledgement that physics cannot answer why there is something rather than nothingen.wikipedia.org, and his arXiv paper’s argument that ultimately the universe might just be a brute factarxiv.org.
• Wikipedia (“Why is there anything at all?”) summarizing Russell’s and Carroll’s brute fact stance vs. Leibniz’s and others’ arguments for a necessary beingen.wikipedia.org.
• Quran and Science article by Zia H. Shah, The Quran and Creation Ex Nihilo (2024), providing context on Aristotle, Plato, and biblical parallels to creation from nothingthequran.lovethequran.love.
• David Albert’s NYT book review highlighting Krauss’s lack of explanation for quantum lawscsus.edu and the analogies illustrating the emptiness of Krauss’s “nothing”reddit.com.
• George F. Ellis interview (Scientific American) noting the unanswered question of the origin of physical laws in Krauss’s accounten.wikipedia.org.
• Closer to Truth episodes (e.g., “Why is There Something Rather than Nothing?” and “What is Nothing?”) which inspired reflection on the dizzying concept of absolute nothingness and the necessity (or not) of a causeclosertotruth.com.