Now it is time to supply the “missing link” and show that the universe did have a creator. The proof is extremely simple. Everything that begins to exist has a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore the universe has a cause. That cause we call God. For a long time the denial of a creator was based on denying the second proposition. No, the atheists insisted, pointing to Newtonian science as their evidence, the universe does not have a beginning. It’s a kind of perpetual motion machine. It has always been there. Science has now removed that argument.

So atheists—including atheist scientists—are reduced to denying the first proposition. Everything that has a beginning doesn’t necessarily have a cause. The universe simply is and there’s nothing more we can say about it. Philosopher Bertrand Russell adopted this position in a debate on the existence of God. He said, “The universe is just there, and that’s all.” Physicist Victor Stenger says the universe may be “uncaused” and may have “emerged from nothing.” Even David Hume, one of the most skeptical of all philosophers, regarded this position as ridiculous. For all his skepticism, Hume never denied causation. Hume wrote in 1754, “I have never asserted so absurd a proposition as that anything might arise without cause.”

If every effect in nature has a cause, what is the cause of nature itself? Who or what put the matter and energy into the universe? Is it even remotely reasonable to suggest that nature created itself? If for even a single instant there was nothing in existence—no matter, no universe, no God—then how could there be anything at all? When events occur—we see a huge crater where level ground used to be, a famous movie star is found with his head cut off—we immediately ask what caused these things to happen. It would hardly be considered a reasonable or scientific explanation to say, “Well, they just happened. There is no cause.” We know that something caused the crater to show up. We know that someone cut off the movie star’s head. We may not know the identity of the person who committed the act, but we know that someone did it.