IF YOU WANT TO GET TECHNICAL: Why Naturalism/Atheism Cannot Escape “Something From Nothing”
A likely response to my article on “Blind Faith and True Reason” from a kind and informed atheist might go like this…
(I’ve read their stuff and understand their arguments and I know if I were an atheist, this is the gist of what I would say):
“I understand why this argument seems persuasive to believers, but it misrepresents what scientists actually mean when we say the universe came from ‘nothing.’ We are not talking about absolute philosophical nothingness. We are talking about the absence of classical matter and energy as we normally experience them. In cosmology, ‘nothing’ can refer to a quantum vacuum—something with physical properties, governed by natural laws, capable of fluctuations. It’s not nonexistence; it’s a different kind of existence. So the claim that atheist scientists believe ‘everything came from absolutely nothing’ is not accurate.
“Second, saying that the universe had a cause doesn’t automatically require a personal God. Science tries to understand natural processes, not insert supernatural explanations. Just because we don’t yet fully understand the earliest moments of the universe doesn’t mean a deity must be involved. Ignorance is not evidence of divine action.
“Third, complexity can arise from simpler beginnings through natural processes. Order emerging from chaos is not irrational—it’s exactly what we observe in physics, chemistry, and biology. Evolution, for example, produces complexity without needing foresight or intention.
“Fourth, the universe doesn’t need to have ‘meaning’ or ‘purpose’ in the way humans think about those words. Meaning is something we create, not something the cosmos has to supply.
“So from my standpoint, your position relies on assuming a personal Creator, while science proceeds based on observable, testable, natural causes. It’s not that Christians think and atheists don’t; we simply start from different premises. I’m not claiming to have all the answers, but appealing to God doesn’t explain the unknown—it just stops the questioning. Science moves forward by continuing to ask how and why, without assuming a supernatural conclusion.”
I recognize that this exercise is somewhat analogous to playing a game of chess against oneself, given that I am articulating both sides of the exchange. However, this reconstruction accurately reflects the core rationale an informed atheist, grounded in contemporary scientific thought, would advance. Consequently, setting forth how I would respond to such an argument is entirely reasonable and methodologically appropriate.
Before responding to claims such as these, two definitions help clarify the discussion. I’ll use “nothing” in the strict metaphysical sense: absolute non-being (no things, no properties, no laws, no potential). I’ll use “brute fact” to mean: “a reality that exists without any deeper explanation or cause.”
Those definitions matter. Many disagreements are really about definitions; I’ll show how the atheist reply avoids one notion of “nothing” but ends up accepting the brute-fact position — which is functionally equivalent to “no ultimate cause.” In other words, the logical terminus of any form of atheism is that everything ultimately emerges from non-being — that reality possesses no final cause or sufficient reason. This is where every atheistic framework inevitably arrives. Atheists are not any more stupid than everyone in any group is. Atheists do not necessarily think literal nothingness popped into something, They don’t say “particles appear magically.”
But if you reject any transcendent, self-existent cause, then whatever exists must exist without an ultimate explanation. And a reality with no cause, no explanation, no grounding is what classical philosophy calls “nothing” in the explanatory sense — no reason why something rather than nothing
Thus, regardless of the conceptual pathway taken or the degree of technical vocabulary employed to articulate the position, the conclusion remains unchanged. It arrives precisely at the destination we contend it must: a worldview in which reality lacks an ultimate cause or sufficient reason — in effect, a framework in which everything ultimately emerges from nothing.
1) The “quantum vacuum isn’t absolute nothing” move
The atheist claim is that when scientists say “nothing,” they usually mean a quantum vacuum — a physical state with properties — not absolute nothing. But a response using logic and common sense is straightforward, because three consequences follow.
First, if the “quantum vacuum” explains existence, then what explains the vacuum? A cause or explanation is being demanded one level down. If you answer “the vacuum,” you haven’t given the ultimate explanation — you’ve just renamed the thing that exists.
Second, if the vacuum itself has an explanation, keep asking until you reach an uncaused thing or stop. Either you: (A) posit an uncaused reality (a brute fact), or (B) posit an ultimate agent that explains why there is a vacuum (which is what theism does). There’s no third logical option.
Third, if you choose (A) — the brute fact — you are saying existence ultimately has no cause. That is the substantive claim: reality exists without an explanation. Metaphysically, that’s equivalent to saying “there is no reason why something rather than nothing” — i.e. “everything ultimately came from nothing” in the sense that no reason or cause exists to account for it.
A plain analogy helps: if someone asks “Who wrote this book?” and the atheist replies “A stack of paper appeared,” you’ve avoided the question. If you stop and say “the paper just is,” you’re saying the book exists without an author. That’s the brute-fact option.
2) “Science seeks natural processes; invoking God is a stop to questioning”
The atheist claim is that science explains by natural causes and that invoking God halts inquiry and is non-explanatory. But this is true only if you accept an assumption that only natural explanations are allowed. But that is an assumption, not a neutral fact. Either there is an ultimate explanatory ground or there is not. If there is, then science’s restriction to “natural causes only” doesn’t avoid the need for that ground. It merely postpones it. If there is not, then you are committed to the idea that the ultimate reality simply exists without explanation — again the brute fact position.
Calling God an “explanation stopper” only works if you’ve already decided explanations must be natural. That decision itself is metaphysical. It’s not science proving there is no explanation; it’s a rule that eliminates one class of explanations (theistic) a priori. So either way, you have only two options. You may accept naturalism plus no ultimate ground, which makes reality inexplicable and ultimately means it came from nothing. Or you may allow theistic explanation and seek why the vacuum or laws exist, which gives a possible account. The atheist complaint about God “stopping questions” changes nothing about the core metaphysical issue.
3) “Complexity can arise from simplicity” (order from chaos)
The atheist claim is that natural laws and processes can turn simple beginnings into complexity and that design can be an emergent result. Our response is that this correctly describes how structures can form within a system, but it does not answer the origin of the system — the existence of the laws and the substrate in which those processes operate. Emergence presupposes a stage. Evolution, self-organization, and quantum fluctuations all presuppose a framework: time, laws, energy, quantum fields, or at least some ontology where change and causation make sense. Asking “how did those laws and that framework get there?” is legitimate. If you answer “they just were” you again accept a brute fact. If you answer “they came from X,” you introduce an explanatory cause.
A common-sense contrast clarifies this. You can explain how a house is built from bricks — emergence and order — but that doesn’t explain where the bricks and the idea of building came from. Saying “order arises from simple rules” is excellent inside the system, but it ignores the origin of the system.
4) “Meaning is human-created; the universe needn’t supply purpose”
The atheist claim is that the universe doesn’t have to have intrinsic meaning and that meaning is made by humans. And this may be acceptable for ethics or personal meaning, but it’s a separate issue from the existence question. Atheists can consistently say meaning is human-made and still be committed to brute-fact metaphysics about existence. Meaning and being are different categories. You can deny cosmic purpose but still face the question: why is there a cosmos at all? Denying purpose doesn’t answer the origin puzzle. So this move sidesteps the issue. It concedes that even if meaning is humanly constructed, the metaphysical question remains: why anything exists? If you do not accept a transcendent cause, then again you accept existence without ultimate explanation.
5) The final logical fork — only two honest options remain
After removing rhetorical maneuvers and definitions, logic forces a simple choice. Option A is that there is an ultimate explanation, a necessary, self-explanatory Being, God. This explains why the physical world, laws, and possibilities exist. Option B is that there is no ultimate explanation and the physical world, or the laws that make it possible, are brute facts that require no explanation. This is metaphysically equivalent to saying reality just is with no sufficient reason — in common language: everything ultimately came from nothing.
You cannot coherently accept both “there is an ultimate explanation” and “there is not.” If you deny God (A) and also deny brute fact (B), you are left with contradiction or an infinite regress of explanations that never answer the first “why.” If you accept an infinite regress without a terminus, you still haven’t produced an ultimate cause — so functionally you have accepted B.
Short, Crisp Syllogism
If every existing thing requires an explanation, then there must be either (i) a first uncaused explanation or (ii) no explanation (brute fact). Science explains contingent things by natural mechanisms but cannot explain why the laws, the entities, or the framework of explanation exist at all. If you refuse a first uncaused explanation (God), you must accept that the universe or its laws are brute facts that exist without explanation. Accepting “brute facts” about existence is metaphysically equivalent to saying there is no ultimate cause — that is the philosophical meaning of “everything ultimately came from nothing.” Therefore, denying a transcendent cause ultimately commits you to believing that existence has no ultimate explanation — i.e., that it “comes from nothing.”
Honest Caveat
This argument targets metaphysical naturalism — the view that only natural entities exist and that there is no ultimate cause beyond the universe. It does not impugn scientists as people; many scientists are agnostic about metaphysics and simply work within methodological naturalism. The atheist may deny the phrase “everything came from nothing” because they use narrower definitions, but the logical outcome of their metaphysical choice (no ultimate cause) is what I’ve named above. That’s not rhetorical trickery — it’s pointing out what their position amounts to at the deepest level.
One-Sentence Close
No matter how many technical qualifications and redefinitions of “nothing” are offered, rejecting a transcendent explanation for why there is something rather than nothing ultimately commits you to saying that existence has no ultimate reason — in other words, that at the deepest level, reality comes from nothing. BDD
