Part 4 of The Argument. Last time: why is there something rather than nothing. This time: everything you can point to depends on something else for its existence — where does that chain actually end?
Question Two: The Dependent Universe
Everything you can see, touch, or measure shares one fundamental characteristic. It depends on something else for its existence. The chair depends on the tree. The tree on the soil. The soil on conditions that produced it. Every link in the chain is contingent. It exists, but it didn't have to.
Follow that chain honestly to its end. You find that there are really only a handful of possible explanations, and every one of them is extraordinary.
Option one: infinite regress
The chain goes back forever, with no first cause, an endless series of dependent things. But an infinite chain of dependent things never actually explains existence. It only postpones the question. It is like a chain suspended in midair with no ceiling to hang from. Every link is supported. The chain as a whole hangs from nothing.
Option two: self-creation
The dependent universe created itself. But for something to create itself it would have to exist before it existed. That is not a difficult idea. It is simply incoherent. A thing cannot be the author of its own beginning.
Option three: an independent creator
Something exists outside the dependent chain, uncaused, independent, not contingent but necessary. Something that exists by its own nature, not by the permission of anything else. This is a breathtaking claim. But the alternatives ask just as much of you, and offer far less coherence in return.
Again, we are not saying that one is right and another is wrong. We are simply examining the options, and being honest about the choice we make, and its implications. And, make no mistake, the choice cannot be avoided. We all choose one of those three options, whether explicitly or implicitly.
We can choose to believe any of the answers. What we can't do is claim that our answer does not require faith.
But again, only one of those answers requires faith, and fits coherently with the rest of our observations. All the others require just as much faith in the answer, as well as faith in the incoherence of the answer.
Next: a claim that isn't religious at all — it's a number physicists themselves keep calling too precise to be an accident.