Chapter 13 THE QUESTION BENEATH QUESTIONS

“Why is there something rather than nothing?” is a question that won’t dissolve.

13.1 The Question

There is a question that children ask and philosophers never adequately answer.

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Not: why is there this particular thing rather than that? Not: why did this event happen rather than another? These are questions within the world, answerable by reference to causes and conditions.

The deeper question is: why is there a world at all? Why does anything exist?

This question seems simple. It may be unanswerable. But it won’t go away.

Consider what it asks. Every explanation we normally give assumes that something already exists. We explain fire by combustion, combustion by chemistry, chemistry by physics, physics by mathematics. But each explanation presupposes a framework—laws, entities, relationships. The question “why is there something?” asks about the framework itself.

What could possibly answer it?

Option 1: “It’s just a brute fact.”

Perhaps existence simply is, and there’s nothing more to say. The universe exists; it has no explanation; asking why is like asking what’s north of the North Pole—a grammatically correct question with no meaningful answer.

This response has appeal. It stops the regress. It avoids mysterious entities. But it feels unsatisfying. We accept brute facts for specific things—this electron is here rather than there—but accepting the totality of existence as brute feels like giving up too early.

Why should there be brute facts at all? Why should existence have this character rather than some other?

Option 2: “The universe is necessary.”

Perhaps the universe couldn’t have been otherwise. Perhaps existence is logically or metaphysically required—the only possibility, such that non-existence is actually impossible.

Some philosophers have argued this. If you define “nothing” carefully, they say, you find contradictions. Nothing would have no properties, not even the property of being nothing. The concept collapses. Something must exist.

But this argument is slippery. It seems to confuse concepts with reality. Even if the concept of nothing is problematic, why should that determine what actually exists? Why should reality conform to our conceptual difficulties?

And even if something must exist, why this something? Why these laws, these constants, these particular contents?

Option 3: “The multiverse explains it.”

Perhaps every possible universe exists. Ours is one among infinitely many, each with different laws, different constants, different contents. The question “why this universe?” becomes: “why not? everything is actual.”

This response has gained popularity in some physics circles. But it doesn’t answer the original question—it relocates it. Why is there a multiverse rather than no multiverse? Why are all possibilities actualized? The mystery recurs at a higher level.

Option 4: “God explains it.”

Perhaps a necessary being—God—exists and creates everything else. The universe exists because God chose to create it. God’s existence explains the universe’s existence.

This response has been dominant in theistic traditions for millennia. But critics ask: what explains God? If God needs no explanation, why not stop one step earlier and say the universe needs no explanation?

Theists respond: God is different. God’s existence is not contingent but necessary—not something that happens to be but something that must be. Unlike the universe, which could conceivably be otherwise, God is the kind of being whose non-existence is impossible.

Whether this response succeeds depends on whether the concept of a necessary being is coherent and whether such a being could explain contingent existence.

13.2 Failed Escapes

The question has a way of surviving attempts to dismiss it.

“The question is meaningless.”

Some philosophers argue that “why is there something rather than nothing?” is not a genuine question. It violates the rules of meaningful inquiry. Questions require a context in which they can be answered; this question has no such context.

But the question doesn’t feel meaningless. When we ask it, we seem to be asking something. The sense of mystery is genuine. Dismissing the question as meaningless feels like philosophical sleight of hand—defining the problem away rather than solving it.

“We can’t know, so why ask?”

Pragmatists suggest we should focus on questions we can answer and leave the rest alone. Maybe the ultimate question is beyond human cognition. Maybe we should shrug and get on with life.

This is psychologically reasonable but philosophically unsatisfying. The question matters. It shapes how we understand everything else. If existence is ultimately arbitrary, that’s one kind of universe. If existence has a ground or reason, that’s another kind. The answers—or the absence of answers—have implications.

“Science will eventually explain it.”

Some trust that scientific progress will ultimately answer even the deepest questions. We’ve explained so much; given enough time, we’ll explain everything.

But this hope seems misplaced for this particular question. Science explains things within the universe by reference to other things within the universe. It traces causal chains. But a causal chain cannot explain why there’s a chain at all. No matter how far physics progresses, it will presuppose existence rather than explain it.

Cosmology can describe the Big Bang, perhaps even what “caused” it in physical terms. But why there are physical terms—why there’s a physics to do—is not itself a question physics can address.

13.3 Taking It Seriously

What if we take the question seriously? What would an answer look like?

An answer would need to identify something that:

Exists necessarily—its non-existence is impossible
Explains contingent existence—accounts for why the universe exists
Is self-explanatory—doesn’t itself require further explanation

These are demanding criteria. Most things we know don’t meet them. The chair I’m sitting on exists contingently—it might not have existed. The same is true of stars, galaxies, perhaps the universe itself.

If anything meets these criteria, it would be radically different from ordinary things. It couldn’t be one entity among others—one more item in the inventory of existence. It would have to be existence itself, considered in its ground or source.

This is where theology enters.

The great theological traditions have argued that “God” names precisely this: the necessary ground of contingent existence. Not a very powerful being (like Zeus, only more so) but Being itself—the reason there is being at all.

Aquinas called God ipsum esse subsistens—subsistent being itself. Not a being that happens to have existence as a property, but existence itself, pure and unlimited. Everything else exists by participation in this ground.

Spinoza called God Deus sive Natura—God or Nature. The infinite substance of which all things are modes or expressions. Not separate from the world but the world considered in its deepest dimension.

These formulations are difficult. They don’t give us a picture—a white-bearded figure enthroned in heaven. They give us a concept: the necessary condition for anything to exist at all.

Whether this concept refers to anything real—whether there is such a ground—is the question. But the concept is not arbitrary. It’s the shape an answer would have to take.

13.4 The Axiomatic

Here’s another way to think about it.

In mathematics, we begin with axioms—propositions accepted without proof. We don’t prove the axioms; we assume them. Everything else is derived from them.

The axioms are not arbitrary. We choose them because they’re fruitful—they generate rich, coherent systems. We choose them because they’re self-evident, or at least more certain than anything we could derive from more basic principles. The axioms are where explanation stops and foundation begins.

Perhaps existence has an analogous structure.

Perhaps there is something axiomatic—something that isn’t explained by anything more basic because it is the basic. Not a first cause in a temporal chain, but a ground in a logical sense: that which makes everything else intelligible.

This axiomatic ground is what theistic traditions have called God.

The comparison illuminates what “God as axiom” means. An axiom isn’t proven from below; it’s posited because of what it makes possible from above. Similarly, God isn’t proven by evidence in the ordinary sense; God is the condition that makes evidence—makes existence—possible.

You don’t believe in axioms the way you believe in empirical facts. You accept them because rejecting them makes reasoning impossible. You don’t believe in God (in this sense) the way you believe that water is H₂O. You accept God—or something functioning like God—because rejecting the concept leaves existence utterly unintelligible.

This isn’t proof. Axioms can be wrong. Alternative axiom systems exist. The choice between them involves judgment, not demonstration.

But it’s not arbitrary either. Some axiom systems are more fruitful, more coherent, more elegant than others. Some make more sense of our experience. The question is whether positing a ground of existence makes more sense than treating existence as brute fact.

Thoughtful people disagree. The question remains open.

But it remains a question—the question beneath all questions, the one that won’t dissolve no matter how cleverly we try to dismiss it.

Why is there something rather than nothing?

We may never know. But asking is not foolishness. It may be the deepest sanity—the mind confronting the ultimate mystery of its own existence.