This post is part of our ongoing series examining Mark Clark’s book, The Problem of God, one section at a time. Each post critically analyzes Clark’s claims through the lens of reason, evidence, and The God Question’s core philosophy: we don’t begin with belief—we begin with curiosity. This installment responds to “Nobody Times Nothing Equals Everything?” (pp. 54–56).
Chapter Summary and Analysis:
In this section, Mark Clark lays out one of the most common arguments in modern Christian apologetics: the Kalam Cosmological Argument, restated in lay terms. His goal is to make the Big Bang appear to point undeniably toward God by arguing that:
- Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
- The universe began to exist.
- Therefore, the universe had a cause.
- That cause must be an immaterial mind—i.e., God.
To strengthen this chain of reasoning, Clark claims that science has ruled out the possibility of an eternal universe and that no reasonable alternative to divine creation can explain the Big Bang. He ridicules the “nothing hypothesis”—the idea that perhaps the universe just began without a cause—as irrational and anti-scientific. He even inserts an anecdote about a house alarm going off at night to illustrate how absurd it would be to believe “nothing” triggered an event.
But does this argument actually succeed?
What Clark Gets Wrong
Let’s examine his assumptions through The God Question’s Core Philosophy:
1. “Whatever begins to exist has a cause.”
This may sound intuitive, but it collapses under scrutiny. The notion of cause and effect is rooted in our experience of time and space—inside the universe. To say it applies before the universe existed (when time itself began) is speculative. The laws of physics—including causality—may not even apply at the boundary of spacetime.
Furthermore, in quantum mechanics, particles can and do appear to emerge from what we call a “quantum vacuum”—an energy field that is not nothing, but certainly isn’t a someone. So the simplicity of “everything that begins must have a cause” is misleading at best.
2. “The universe began to exist.”
It’s more accurate to say the observable universe appears to have originated in a hot, dense state ~13.8 billion years ago. But physicists are not unanimous that this marks an absolute beginning of everything. There are multiple theoretical models—such as the cyclical universe, multiverse, or quantum gravity proposals—that suggest our universe may have emerged from something else entirely.
The honest answer is: We don’t yet know.
3. “Therefore, the universe had a cause… and it must be a mind.”
This leap is unjustified and deeply theological. Clark equates “cause” with “conscious creator” based not on evidence but on desire—he wants a god at the origin. But to posit an immaterial, timeless, spaceless, changeless, all-powerful being as the simplest explanation is a textbook case of special pleading.
Worse, this “cause” is intentionally defined to be immune to the same scrutiny. Who or what caused God? Clark says nothing. The cause of everything must be something that didn’t need a cause—a mind that exists outside time. But this just shifts the mystery, it doesn’t solve it.
4. “Nothing caused everything = absurd.”
This rhetorical jab (“nobody × nothing = everything”) is effective in sermons but misleading in serious discussion. Cosmologists don’t claim that literal “nothing” caused everything. Instead, they admit uncertainty while exploring naturalistic mechanisms—none of which require a conscious mind.
Clark’s argument exploits the discomfort people feel when facing uncertainty. He prefers a wrong answer that feels reassuring to a humble admission of “we don’t know.”
What This Chapter Actually Proves
Clark’s entire chain of logic leads not to God, but to this:
“We don’t understand the origins of the universe completely, so let’s insert God into the gap.”
That’s not evidence. That’s a God of the Gaps argument, which has a long history of retreating in the face of progress. Lightning used to be divine wrath. Disease used to be demonic possession. Now, it’s the Big Bang.
If history teaches us anything, it’s that betting on “God did it” when science hasn’t yet answered a question is a guaranteed losing strategy.
God or Delusion? 