Timeless Wisdom - Ultimate Issues Hour: How Something Came From Nothing
Dennis Prager examines the origin of the universe, arguing that matter couldn’t create itself—contradicting science’s Big Bang consensus and dismissing "who made God?" as a deflection. Callers like John (Grays Lake) and Patrick (Cleveland) clash over science’s limits, with Prager insisting consciousness and matter’s existence demand a transcendent cause. Rabbi David underscores the paradox of self-creation, while Graham (Roanoke) clarifies quantum fluctuations don’t predate the Big Bang. Prager concludes atheism’s resistance often stems from emotion, not logic, leaving the "nothing to something" question unanswered without invoking a creator beyond natural law. [Automatically generated summary]
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Hi, everybody.
This is the Ultimate Issues Hour on the Dennis Prager Show.
Every week at this time, an hour devoted to the subject of the great questions of life.
Whatever area it is, from whether people are basically good to truly the meaning of life to a whole host of the great issues of life.
Welcome to the program.
This is the Dennis Prager Show.
And this is the hour where I take a subject that is truly basic and try to discuss it with you and have you call in and react and question and disagree or agree, whatever it might be.
I chose a basic one.
Well, they're all basic, so that's a little redundant.
I chose a basic one today, and that is the answer that many people give when you offer an argument for God's existence and you say, you know, where did everything come from?
This to me is one of the, this to me actually is the single most powerful argument for a creator God.
Now, it doesn't mean a personal God.
It doesn't even mean a good God.
Those are separate.
These are all separate discussions, and they're often melded into one, and that's not a good thing intellectually.
It just declarifies, mystifies the subject.
But one of the most powerful and perhaps the most powerful single argument for a creator God is, where did everything come from?
I mean, whatever you see, you know it was made.
Everything you see, you know was made.
If there is no God, then everything made itself.
Isn't that absurd?
I mean, just on the face of it, isn't that absurd?
Things made themselves.
Where did everything come from?
It's so obvious that it's an unanswerable.
It's an unanswerable argument, in my opinion.
Where did it all come from?
You have only two answers.
One, it came out, it came about by itself.
And I characterize that as absurd because we can't even imagine the idea that things make themselves.
The other is everything was always here.
But we know that that's not true.
Everything wasn't always here.
There was a big bang.
That is the overwhelming consensus of science today.
Something banged itself into existence or was banged into existence.
Let there be bang is the answer that people who believe in a God offer.
The very fact that there was light prior to any of the stars, and certainly before the sun, suggests that the very beginning, let there be light, does in fact suggest a big bang approach in Genesis.
I'm not one to believe that you will read Genesis for science, but in this instance, you certainly have, I'm sure the ancients were puzzled by this, what you have here.
You have light before any of the things that bring light.
I wonder what did the ancients think?
I think we are far better to understand the very beginning of Genesis than the ancients were.
So those of us who argue for a creator God Have a far more rational argument.
Things don't come about by themselves.
And the idea that we went from nothing to you and me, to this infinitely complex human with consciousness and feelings and mind and self-awareness, which is what consciousness is about.
Okay, I find that literally incredible.
In other words, lacking the ability to be credible, to be believable.
But the answer that is so often given by people to the argument, well, you know, where did everything come from, Dennis?
Well, where did God come from?
You say that everything had to be made.
Well, who made God?
And I have heard this since I'm a kid, and I've never exactly been dazzled by it because it's a meaningless question.
It is meaningless.
First of all, it substitutes a question for an answer.
I want to know where did the entire material world come from.
I want to know.
So for you to ask me, where did God come from doesn't answer the question at all?
I'll deal with that question in a moment, but please understand that that question is not an answer.
It's deflecting the question.
I want you to tell me, if you're an atheist, I want you to tell me where it all came from.
And I want you to be honest enough to say it all came about on its own.
The world made itself.
I want you to be honest enough to say that's your position as an atheist.
I find that an incredible position.
I find it, my mind recoils at its inherent absurdity that something made itself.
It is playing with words that something made itself, let alone the universe.
Knowing that, knowing that it is an absurd position that the material world made itself from nothing to something on its own, the person who believes that has only one choice if they're not going to be intellectually honest, and that is to ask a question and not answer the one posed to them.
Well, well, what they're saying is, well, I don't want to answer your question because I don't have an answer to your question.
But by golly, you can't answer mine either.
And nan and that ends the debate.
After all, who made God?
But of course, God is not material, so the question in and of itself is pointless.
We're talking about how matter came about.
God is not matter.
Secondly, definitional to God is definitional.
It's playing with words again.
Definitional to God is that God always was.
If God wasn't always, then God isn't God.
God is not born.
That is again the Genesis revolution, the revolution of the book of Genesis.
God has no birth.
Like all of the gods of the non-monotheistic world, of the worlds outside of the Jewish scriptures, all of them were born.
But they were all material anyway, so of course they were born.
But here is an immaterial God.
No matter, made of no matter.
So please understand why the question is even posed.
Well, who made God?
It is in order to avoid what any atheist would recognize as a very difficult, indeed, let's be honest, impossible position to really hold.
That is that matter made itself.
It's believing in magic.
It's believing in it, that it's no longer magic.
Gee, how did that elephant disappear?
Well, we all know it's a trick.
But for the atheist, it's not a trick.
Matter made itself, but that would be a trick.
The phone number here is 1-8 Prager, 1-8-P-R-A-G-E-R 776, which digitally, numerically, is 877-243-7776.
877-243-77776.
You don't know how many people have written and called, and at speeches have said to me, as for example, a very common way of posing this question to me is, Dennis, what do I say to my kid when my kid said, who made God?
And I've always known since I began lecturing that whenever somebody says, how do I answer my child?
It's because they don't have an answer for themselves.
Believe me, when you have answers for you, then you won't have answers for your child.
And if you have answers for yourself, then you will for your child.
So let's discuss this right now on this, the Ultimate Issues Hour, on the Dennis Prager Show.
And John in Grays Lake, Illinois, thank you for calling.
Hi, Dennis.
Outstanding show.
Thank you.
There is a third answer, but you're not going to like it.
And that is, we don't know yet.
And I don't know why.
And to me, that's the basis of religion.
Or the origins of religion is trying to answer the as yet unanswerable.
But we, for instance, we do know, or at least they're theorizing, that there's this thing called dark matter.
And so we're constantly learning more and more about the universe.
I would much rather turn to science for those answers than to rely on right.
I will answer.
Stay on with me.
Okay, stay on with me.
It's a very, very good and important subject you raised.
So I want to continue it with you.
Well, we don't know yet, and science may not have the answer now, but science will have all these answers.
I will respond to each of those objections, and they're important ones.
1-8-Prager776, the Ultimate Issues Hour on the Dennis Prager Show.
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Now, back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
Hi, everybody.
Dennis Prager here.
This is the Ultimate Issues Hour.
Every week now at this time, the hour is devoted to some great ultimate issue of life.
We get so caught up in, and totally understandably, in the events of the day, all of us do.
I don't only mean talk show hosts, every one of you.
And I don't only mean even the current events outside of your life, but I mean the daily events of our life with our children, with our spouses, with our friends, with our work.
And we forget to ask the great questions again and rethink them.
So that's the purpose of this hour.
And this one is a response to The question that people who don't believe in God offer, when you say, when you make the argument for a creator God, well, how did the material world come about?
Did things invent themselves?
Which is, to me, an unanswerable question.
And then people say, well, who made God?
And of course, all it does is deflect from answering the question.
But now we have John with some very good challenges.
Hi, John.
Welcome back in Grayslake, Illinois.
Now, you answered with number one, well, your answer is we just don't know yet, right?
Basically, yes.
Okay, and that's intellectually, we're not talking emotionally.
That intellectually satisfies you.
Well, I would see intellectually, I can't subscribe to going with a supernatural, in other words, outside of the laws of nature answer.
To me, as an atheist and as someone who looks, you know, at the tries to look at the scientific side of things, that, you know, for instance, you know, you think that's a good idea.
But why do you think that's why we didn't know about this, that, or we're learning more every day?
I know, John, but why do you, you see, here's where we differ.
Not in our acceptance of science.
I completely accept science.
Where we differ is your belief that science can answer everything, but you know that science doesn't have certain answers.
Yet.
No, science.
No, no, wait.
No, no, no.
Forget about creation.
Science cannot answer questions, all questions of feeling and emotion.
It cannot answer every single question about a whole host of things.
Unless you believe you are a robot, you do believe, I assume, that do you believe you have freedom at all or you are entirely scientifically programmed?
No, you do have freedom.
Okay, the moment you, then you are saying you are free, meaning that you can do things that are not scientifically explicable.
But the building blocks that go to enable that are explicable.
Yes, that's fine.
The building blocks that go to explain certain things.
Yes, I agree with you.
But why are there any building blocks at all is no more a scientific question than why do you love your child?
Oh, it most absolutely is.
Okay, that's where we differ.
But why do you say that, though?
Belief Divide00:02:03
Even scientists, many will acknowledge there are realms that I believe that there are things religion can't explain, but you don't believe that there's anything that science can explain.
You believe in religion more deeply than I believe in religion.
You believe in science more deeply than I believe in religion.
Science is your religion.
I don't believe that.
I don't believe that.
I would say human nature is my religion.
If I had to have faith in something, it would be, you know, if you're going to coin it as faith, it would be faith in the human intellect to rise above whatever challenges you may have.
Well, it's done a pretty intellect ultimately.
Well, you're right, John.
That proves to me that you have it as a religion because the human intellect has not only on rare occasions has risen above its nature.
Look at all the evil in the world.
Anyway, I thank you.
It's a very important, but I don't believe, for example, I don't believe that religion can develop antibiotics.
Okay?
I don't.
I know that there are limitations to religion.
Religion doesn't explain everything.
So I have a more humble approach to religion than many people who believe in science have for science.
I don't believe religion can explain everything.
There is no religious person I know who does.
You're going to find how to make a carburetor in Leviticus?
I mean, come on.
We all know that religion has answers for X, Y, and Z.
It gives me values.
It gives me an explanation for the origins of the universe.
It gives me much, but it doesn't tell me science.
And science has its limitations.
I wish people who believed in science were as humble as people who believe in God.
And that's pretty ironic because they think that the really arrogant are the people who believe in God.
Religion's Limits00:03:18
Alrighty, 1-8 Prager776.
A deep thank you to John, and I know that he wanted to say a lot more.
Rabbi David in Milwaukee.
Rabbi David, thank you for calling.
Thank you, Dennis.
I'm calling to agree with you this time.
I wanted to say that often when I discuss this idea with people about materialism creating itself, the material world creating itself, I just ask them the simple question, which highlights the paradox and the absurdity by saying, when exactly did it create itself?
Did it create itself before it existed?
Well, then how was it able to create itself if it didn't exist yet?
Or did it create itself after it existed?
In which case, it obviously didn't need itself to create itself.
Yes, right, exactly.
That's a very good way of putting it.
I appreciate it a lot.
I'd like to hear from you, by the way.
You tell me where you don't agree with me.
And that's right.
Did it happen before?
If it happened before it existed, then what created it?
It's a good way of putting it.
Exactly.
I appreciate it.
We go to Dimitri in San Francisco, California.
Dimitri Dennis Prager.
Hi.
Hi.
I do believe in the creation theory, but I do have a problem comprehending things like always, eternity, infinity.
Dimitri, welcome to the human race.
There is no human, certainly myself included, who understands the word always.
Oh, by the way, your co-screener said that she doesn't have a problem understanding that.
It was funny.
Did you speak to her in Russian?
Yeah, I talked to your screener, and she said, Yeah, I say, did you speak to her in Russian?
No.
Ah, you should have asked her.
Tipani Meisch, f sigda?
Fzigda?
That's what you should have said.
You said something that drives me totally crazy when I think about it.
I agree.
It does.
You are so right, Dimitri.
It does drive you crazy.
And you know what else, though?
Here is, I wonder if you thought this one always drives you crazy, but a beginning also drives you crazy.
Exactly.
So that is, this is perfect example, dear listeners.
This is a perfect example of why I know our intellect cannot perceive so much.
We don't understand the idea that anything was always there, and we don't understand the idea that something began, because what happened the day before it began?
Well, you say, but time is relative and there was nothing before time.
And I understand, I can say those words too, but neither you nor I understand them.
That's how limited our minds are, and we need to know that.
You're listening to the Ultimate Issues Hour on the Dennis Prager Show.
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
Alrighty, my friends, you're listening to the Dennis Prager Show, an hour each week devoted to the ultimate issues of life, and it's called the Ultimate Issues Hour.
1-8, Prager 776.
Why Matter Isn't Provable00:15:24
This one happens to be about God.
They vary in topic.
Sometimes they are of a religious variety, and most of the time they're not.
But this is a big one because it has to do with the greatest question in life, and it really is the greatest question, whether there is a God or not.
Alan, we should put that even as a subject.
Why the single most important question in life is whether there is a God.
Yeah, I'll put that down as an ultimate issues hour topic.
Because whether you believe in God or not, what I would do with that hour is attempt to convince you that that's the most important question.
But right now, I'm attempting to convince you that the typical response to the argument for God that, hey, where did everything come from?
Who made everything?
The typical response is, well, who made God? is a meaningless response.
A, it doesn't respond to the argument.
It just asks a question.
So there's no response.
It's just an attempt to dismiss the questioner.
And B, it doesn't make sense.
God wasn't made.
The God we're talking about, the Creator God, was not a God who was made.
It is the God who was the Maker.
And if God was made, God isn't God.
Simple as simple as that.
In fact, do you know that God's name, God's name, the God that the Judeo-Christian world believes in, that name, which is said in English as Yahweh, that name means being.
That's all it means.
It means God's name.
Did you know, I'm sure most of you, even biblically aware, do not know that.
That God's name is is.
Not short for is he or Isidore, but is, just I, S. That's why when asked, who are you by Moses at the burning bush, and God said, I will be what I will be, or I am what I am, both translations are accurate because Hebrew does not have a present tense for the verb to be.
Many languages don't, as it happens.
Slavic languages don't, Semitic languages don't.
And so God is and was and will be, but that's not true for matter.
Matter came about.
And so the question is, who made it come about?
Or what?
Matt, Matt in Sacramento, California, Dennis Prager, thank you for calling, Matt.
Hi, Dennis.
Thanks for taking my call.
I have come to understand that most people, when they speak about the existence of anything, they usually use the phrase, everything has a cause.
But I think science normally attributes that every effect has a cause.
God is not an effect.
He has always eternally existed.
And therefore, I think when we try to attribute a cause to God, we fall apart because we feel that most important word of effect.
What are your thoughts?
Yeah, that's a very fine point.
When we say everything has a cause, everything has a cause, but God's not a thing.
Correct.
There's one other phrase I commonly use in talking with people about this.
If ever there was a time when nothing existed, nothing would exist today.
And that just gives more evidence to the eternality of God.
Right.
Yeah, well, that's right.
It's another excellent way, Matt.
Thank you.
It's another excellent way of saying that nothing doesn't become something.
See, I'm asking those of you who are atheists to acknowledge that.
I have to acknowledge difficulties in belief in God.
The existence of such immense amount of injustice in the world and natural suffering.
I acknowledge challenges, but I never meet atheists who acknowledge challenges.
And isn't this a big one?
Gee, nothing comes from nothing.
So where did something come from?
Where did the material world that we have come from?
And certainly where did consciousness come from?
That I am speaking to you now, that I am aware of being Dennis and you are aware of being you.
Where did that come from?
And the idea that it just came about, you don't recoil in some way.
I'm talking intellectually, not emotionally, just intellectually, that doesn't seem absurd to you.
But it is.
It is absurd.
In that sense, the atheist has to say about matter, credo qui absurdimes.
Famous statement of Tertiliot, I believe, because it is absurd.
We'll be back in a moment.
You are listening to the Dennis Prager Show, 1-8 Prager 776.
This episode of Timeless Wisdom will continue right after this.
Now, back to more of Dennis Prager's Timeless Wisdom.
You're listening to the Dennis Prager show.
I thank you for doing so.
And I'm talking to you about a famous question that is posed to those who believe in God as the creator of the universe.
We who believe in God offer as one of our paramount arguments the argument that, well, who made everything?
And then we get the response, well, who made God?
Which, again, sorry to repeat it, but I have to because I have to just set the agenda each time.
First of all, it's no answer to the question.
And secondly, God wasn't made.
God is not matter.
Matter is made.
God is not.
So let's go to your calls here.
And Cleveland, Ohio.
Patrick, hi, thanks for calling.
Hi, how are you doing, Des?
Good.
This is, I'm actually a very conservative atheist, so you and I agree on almost everything.
Right.
When it comes to politics, I frankly, I rather have you around than the person who theoretically believes in God and has the opposite values of me.
I'm with you on that one.
Right.
Well, here's the thing: I think that everything has always existed in one form or another.
You can't create or destroy energy or matter.
You can change it from a liquid to a solid, a solid to a gas, you know, and there's even a fourth one, plasma.
But you can't completely destroy or create anything.
I'm not calling eternal.
Well, but that's not the claim that I think even science makes now.
I think they claim that energy itself was made, that it wasn't always there.
And that is a leap of faith, too, that everything was always there.
Well, I think the difference is that we have solid concrete proof.
Wait, wait, wait.
We have solid, concrete proof that what?
That matter is self-evidence.
Wait, that matter is what?
I'm sorry.
I didn't get the words.
That matter is what?
Matter exists.
Yeah, of course we know matter exists.
Whereas I see no solid concrete proof that God exists.
There is no solid concrete proof that God exists.
It's like asking me to tell you that water is not wet.
It is wet.
There is no empirical proof of God's existence.
It just seems to me that all of your beliefs are relying on men that lived in the desert thousands of years ago and wrote on scrolls.
And I just don't see how that holds any credibility in your mind or anyone else's.
Well, the fact that men wrote it on scrolls in the desert thousands of years ago is not here or there.
It doesn't make it valid, and it doesn't make it invalid.
I mean, I think you would agree that if it was written on a scroll thousands of years ago, love your neighbor as yourself, you would still hold it's a good idea.
Well, I agree, but my point is that wait.
So the fact it's a non-sequitur.
The fact that it's old or came from the desert doesn't mean anything.
Well, they lack scientific knowledge.
You're right.
So what?
I don't...
Well, if you're talking about moral issues, you're right.
Moral issues are not.
No, no, but I'm talking about an extra science, extra scientific, above science.
There is something that is not empirical.
You believe that the only reality is empirical.
I don't.
Empirical, for those who don't know, by the way, empirical means can be experienced by one of the five senses.
And God can't be smelled, and God can't be felt, and God can't be heard in terms of the ear hearing sound waves, and God can't be seen as you see a material thing, and God can't be tasted.
But the notion that only the empirical exists is what if we lost all of our senses?
Would there be no reality?
We would not experience any reality, but it would not deny that there is reality.
So God is trans-empirical.
Now, I have many, many other arguments for God's existence, but I am narrow focusing on the one question, and it's a pleasure to talk to you, Patrick, and I thank you for your call.
On this hour of the ultimate issues hour, I am focusing on one specific reaction or so-called argument against those of us who believe in a creator God, and that is, well, who made God?
It is not an argument.
That's the point that I am making here.
All right, and let's go to Graham in Roanoke, California.
Graham, Dennis Prager, thank you.
Hey, Mr. Prager.
I just wanted to introduce the concept that virtual matter, virtual subatomic particles, can instantaneously appear and disappear out of nowhere.
Well, what do you mean by virtual?
Well, real matter.
Virtual means that it disappears as quick as it appears within the vacuum of space.
Right, but no, but it's not held that those things existed prior to the Big Bang.
The scientific community today is close to universally accepting of a Big Bang, which means that all matter came into being at a given moment, at one trillionth of a second in time.
Well, now, I mean, supposedly that could have propagated from these instantaneous virtual subatomic particles.
No, but nobody offers that because that means that matter existed prior to the Big Bang.
The fact that they disappear doesn't mean that they're not matter.
Yeah, that's true.
And I'm not making an argument against the creator God.
I think God can dictate science, and I think science and God can coexist in relative harmony.
Yeah, not only coexist, I think that they mutually reinforce.
That's my view.
I think that the study of science leads one to God.
Obviously, it doesn't lead everybody, but I'll tell you this: the fact that science arose as we understand science, and the scientific method only arose in what we call the Judeo-Christian world is something to think about.
Many, many writers, including non-religious ones, have noted that God was a necessity for the development of science as we have it.
The one God ushered in by the Old Testament, carried forth by the new, that God made science possible because it meant that there was order to the universe.
You could study thunder because there were laws that made thunder.
There was no God of thunder who made thunder.
It's a big deal.
Final segment of this Ultimate Issues Hour coming up.
Welcome your calls, 877-243-7776, Dennis Prager.
I'm Dennis Prager, final segment of this edition of the Ultimate Issues Hour.
And I have attempted to explain to you why the answer to the absolutely powerful argument for God's existence, well, where did everything come from?
Who made everything?
The answer given, well, who made God, is meaningless.
It's a meaningless answer.
The honest atheist would have to say this.
Look, I am baffled by the notion that matter came from nothing.
It doesn't make any sense to me.
But for whatever reason, I just can't believe that there is some supreme being or higher intelligence than made it.
Okay, I can accept that.
But then I think that your argument against God is more psychological or emotional, and I'm not putting it down at all, than it is intellectual.
And by the way, there's another possibility.
And you could say, well, yes, there is a higher being that made everything.
It is inconceivable to me that everything came about on its own.
Matter doesn't make itself, let alone intelligence make itself.
But you could say, all right, that makes sense to me, but I can't believe that this God knows me or cares about me.
Okay, that's an entirely separate question about God.
I am arguing right now for the Creator God.
Do I believe God knows you?
Yes, I do.
I don't know why God would make a world where you know you, but he doesn't know you.
It doesn't make any sense to me.
I will make human beings conscious of themselves, but I am not conscious of them.
Okay, it's possible.
And, you know, it's possible.
I don't offer any of these things as proofs, incidentally.
There are arguments for God's existence, not proofs.
There are proofs for the existence of matter.
God is not material.
And so, I ask that you forgive me, Jerry and Joe, and Bruce and Tom, because the time is just about out.
God Not Defined As Universe00:01:02
Joe wants to say that atheists believe in God.
They just define God as the universe.
Well, I don't want to make atheists sounding what they're not.
I'll honor them.
They don't believe in the God that I believe, so they don't believe in God.
God is more complex than matter, so idea that God made matter doesn't make sense.
Hmm.
Well, I would have needed more time, Jerry, to quite understand that.
Because God is more complex than matter, therefore he wouldn't make it.
Well, for whatever reason, he made this universe.
And by the way, I don't know the reason.
I mean, I have, well, we'll deal with that another time.
Which is exactly why I have an ultimate issues hour.