Even God can’t create something from nothing — period. Fine-tuning? More like fine-nonsense.

Apologists often throw around phrases like “Creatio ex nihilo” (creation from nothing) and “Ex nihilo nihil fit” (nothing comes from nothing) with the kind of confidence that suggests these are unshakable truths. And yet, they seem to forget that these same principles, when applied logically, lead to an even bigger conundrum for their argument. It’s like trying to argue you can bake a cake without ingredients — and pretending you’ve done it, even though no one’s ever seen the cake.

In this chapter, we’re going to destroy two of the most celebrated arguments in religious apologetics: the First Mover argument (aka creation out of nothing) and the fine-tuning argument (aka “Look at all these dials!”). Spoiler alert: it doesn’t hold up to basic logic. Like a boomerang these arguments will hit especially the ones who delivered them in the first place.

Creatio ex nihilo? Not so fast.

Let’s start with the idea of Creatio ex nihilo — the notion that God created the universe out of nothing. Seems plausible, right? A powerful being, eternal and intelligent, with the power to just summon matter and energy out of thin air (or rather, out of thin nothing). After all, if there’s no creator, where DID everything come from?

But there’s a problem. How does being eternal and intelligent give you the ability to create something from nothing? Intelligence isn’t the same as conjuring powers. No matter how smart you are, you can’t just think bricks into existence if there’s no clay, no furnace, and no materials to work with.

This is where the religious argument falls flat. Apologists love to handwave this part and pretend that if a creator exists, then of course it can create something from nothing. But… why? Why should eternal existence automatically grant this power? Being eternal doesn’t mean you can perform magic tricks — it just means you’ve been around for a long time. A builder still needs bricks and mortar. A cook still needs flour and sugar. So where did the “materials” for the universe come from?

Even if (and it’s a huge “if”) such a being existed, where would it get the energy and matter to create stars, galaxies, and all the heavier elements? Matter doesn’t just spring into existence because a god wills it. And if apologists want to argue that God could create this energy and matter from nothing, they are back at square one: something from nothing. Ex nihilo nihil fit.

Let’s not gloss over this point too hastily. In the mind of the believer, God just ‘speaks’ and things appear. Sun, moon, stars, and of course, the earth… just like that. Now, physicists actually know how matter forms and behaves, but this understanding has been centuries in the making. The idea of the ‘atom’ is as old as ancient Greece, where it was conceived as an ‘indivisible unit’ of matter. They got that bit right by deduction, figuring it just had to be that way, but they had no idea of its true scale or structure. Today we know that atoms are made of protons and neutrons (in the nucleus) and electrons (orbiting the nucleus). The number of protons and electrons determines the actual element in question. Neutrons? They act as the glue holding the protons together, counteracting the repulsion between the positively charged protons.

Now, let’s create a simple atom — the most basic atom we know: hydrogen. One proton, one electron, no neutrons. How much energy do we need? A tiny 0.16 billionths of a joule. To put that into perspective, one joule is the amount of energy needed to lift an apple or tomato one meter. Not much, really. So, with one joule, you could lift that apple 0.16 billionths of a meter. Hmmm.

Hydrogen is abundant in the universe. Everywhere we point our telescopes (thanks to the truly brilliant minds who have studied these phenomena), we see massive amounts of hydrogen and the second simplest element, helium, which has two protons and two electrons per atom. But what about the other elements? The ones we know from the periodic table, like carbon, iron, gold, and lead? How do they form? Scientists have discovered that these elements are forged in the heart of stars. The immense gravity within stars generates pressures and temperatures so high that lighter elements fuse to form heavier ones, up to iron. Beyond iron, heavier elements like gold, lead, plutonium, and uranium require even more extreme conditions to form — events so powerful and cataclysmic that they defy the imagination. Supernovae and neutron star collisions, for example. These cosmic phenomena unleash energy levels so immense that if a supernova occurred within 30–50 light-years of Earth, we’d be doomed.

Why is this significant? Because it takes an extraordinary amount of energy to force so many protons together. Now, consider one atom of uranium-235, the heaviest naturally occurring element. Its nucleus contains 92 protons and 143 neutrons — a complex assembly held together by the strong nuclear force. To give you an idea of scale, only 6.8 kilograms of uranium-235 were needed to create the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Now, let’s talk numbers: the energy needed to create one atom of uranium-235. According to Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc², the energy contained in one atom’s mass is immense. The mass of a single atom of uranium-235 is approximately 3.92 x 10^-25 kilograms. Plug that into the equation:

E = (3.92 x 10^-25 kg) * (3 x 1⁰⁸ m/s)²

E ≈ 3.53 x 10^-8 joules per atom.

To put that in perspective, creating just one atom of uranium-235 requires about 35.3 billionths of a joule. Now, compare this to the energy needed for one hydrogen atom, which is about 0.16 billionths of a joule. The energy required to create one atom of uranium-235 is approximately 220 times greater than that needed to create a single hydrogen atom.

Now imagine the staggering energy required to create kilograms or tons of it. The sheer scale of energy involved in forming even one atom — let alone an entire universe — is beyond comprehension. This isn’t a simple feat of ‘willing’ matter into existence; it’s a testament to the powerful forces at play in the cosmos, forces far beyond any deity’s whispered command.

Science provides a perfect explanation for how gravity acts as the driving force — the ‘creator,’ so to speak — behind the formation of all matter heavier than hydrogen and helium. Gravity’s relentless pull enables the birth of stars, where nuclear fusion forges new elements, and later, cataclysmic events like supernovae and neutron star collisions create even heavier elements. It’s an elegant, well-understood process backed by observational evidence. The notion that some being could possess the power, the raw energy, to mass-produce everything — all the stars, including our sun (which, by the way, is just another star, a fact unknown to the writers of ancient creation myths) — and all the planets made of elements formed by these cosmic forges, simply by speaking, is not only improbable but unimaginable. It trivializes the immense, complex, and violent processes that are intrinsic to the fabric of the universe itself.

So, believers actually want us to take the idea seriously that this divine being supposedly “pulled” all matter out of nothing. Where is this being getting the energy? We know how stars form: collapsing gas clouds, heat, and nuclear fusion. In the universe, energy is required to build anything, even a single hydrogen atom. So, are we supposed to believe that some god conjured this energy, then used it to create every element in the periodic table, by hand, without the well-known processes we observe in stars?

The math doesn’t add up. Creating energy and matter out of thin air, without an observable process, isn’t divine — it’s nonsense. Apologists shoot themselves in the foot when they are stressing that ‘nothing comes from nothing’ because they have to use a smokescreen to mask that their God is faced with exactly the same challenge. Even a child can tell you that. The only reason people believe this nonsense is because of ‘storytelling’, the same trickery used in marketing to make you think you need stuff you actually don’t need at all.

The fine-tuning argument: Tweaking the dials or letting time work?

Next up, let’s tackle the fine-tuning argument. You’ve heard this one before: “The universe is so finely tuned! There are so many dials and knobs that have to be just right for life to exist. Only a designer could have adjusted them perfectly!”

Really? Let’s think about that for a second. Apologists are arguing that some divine being walked into the cosmic control room, saw a million dials — gravity, atomic forces, energy densities, particle masses — and managed to nail every single one of them on the first try.

The irony here is that apologists always love to turn arguments around that actually show the Achilles’ heel of their beliefs. They use analogies like, “Imagine a man standing in front of a firing squad, ready to be executed. Then, as the shots ring out, the man is still standing. All the marksmen have missed him! What are the odds? And that is how improbable it is for the universe to just happen to be as it is now!” This is a beautiful example of storytelling designed to invoke awe and wonder, but it’s really a smokescreen that conceals the actual problem — the elephant in the room. Because if it truly is this improbable, how do they explain a being that just speaks a universe into existence and gets it right on the first try? No trial and error, no adjustments, no fine-tuning the dials until they’re perfect. If there really are countless dials to tweak to create a stable universe that supports life, how is it even remotely plausible that one being could just nail it in one go? They want you to believe how improbable it is for it to just have evolved over aeons of time but instead propose it is far more plausible some being just happened to be extremely lucky in the cosmic lottery?

But let’s apply some basic logic here. Isn’t it far more plausible that the universe evolved those constants over eons of time, and that stable elements arose because they naturally work under those conditions?

Why are there only a fixed number of particles in the standard model? Why do they have specific charges, spins, masses, etc.? Because other particles simply don’t work; they are not stable and decay into stable particles. They function within the ‘degrees of freedom’ allowed by the laws of physics. This means only the particles that can actually exist do exist — basic logic.

Imagine two particles in empty space. What fundamental forces can they apply on each other? Simply put, they can either attract or repel one another. There are no other fundamental interactions possible. Sideways force? It doesn’t work — there’s no mechanism to mediate such a force. So, in any conceivable universe, particles would either attract or repel each other. This highlights that many aspects of matter and energy are bound by an elegant, logical structure. Even concepts we have yet to fully understand are likely governed by this same intrinsic coherence.

Take Pi as an example: no matter what universe you’re in, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter is always going to be Pi. That’s not “fine-tuning.” That’s just how math works. Similarly, some constants in physics could be fixed because they’re mathematically inevitable, not because someone twiddled the cosmic dials with a magic screwdriver.

So instead of some designer miraculously getting everything perfect, what we have is a universe that had infinite time to work out what combinations naturally lead to stability. The things that didn’t work — unstable particles, collapsing atoms — didn’t survive. And the universe evolved into the laws we see today.

Let’s not forget about what we see in particle colliders. In these high-energy environments, we literally create matter from energy, right here on Earth. No divine intervention required. It’s a process dictated by the laws of physics — energy transforms into particles following predictable, consistent patterns.

Every proton that is created — wherever, whenever — is exactly the same as every other proton. Protons are formed in various high-energy environments, such as during the early moments after the Big Bang or in particle accelerators on Earth. In these instances, energy transforms into matter following the laws of quantum physics. Additionally, neutrons, which are slightly more massive than protons, can decay into protons through a process called beta decay. This decay occurs when a neutron transforms into a proton, an electron, and an antineutrino, further showcasing the consistency of particle behavior under natural laws. This means that when energy creates a proton or a neutron decays into one, it adheres to a set of universal principles. Not a single exception, no divine hand tweaking the process — just raw, physical laws at work. This means that when energy creates a proton, it follows a set of natural laws. The universe doesn’t need a lawgiver because these laws are baked into the nature of reality. The idea that a god is somehow communicating these laws to each particle is as absurd as believing a referee whispers the rules of soccer into every player’s ear every time they kick the ball.

Here’s another fun thought: If a divine being created the universe and all its laws, how are those laws being enforced? After all, laws without enforcement are just suggestions. And if humans can sin and disobey God, why don’t protons? Why aren’t there any rebellious protons out there deciding they’d like to have a charge of +2 instead of +1?

The reason is simple: natural laws aren’t commandments — they’re just fixed properties of the universe. Protons behave the way they do because they have no choice. There’s no room for disobedience or error because these laws aren’t given by a god — they’re intrinsic to the structure of the universe itself.

Conclusion: Logic blows the trump cards out of the water

Both the First Mover argument and the fine-tuning argument fail spectacularly when faced with simple logic. Not only is the idea of creating something from nothing impossible, but the notion that some being could have fine-tuned the universe is laughably improbable. The universe is the way it is because it had eons of time to figure out which laws and elements were stable, not because someone tweaked a bunch of cosmic dials.

In the end, the argument that God created the universe doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. No being can create something from nothing, and the universe itself — following natural laws — doesn’t need a designer or a lawgiver to function. It just does, and that’s far more elegant and plausible than any divine explanation.

If God — as envisioned by believers — was free to establish and override the rules He created whenever He wished for miracles (such as walking on water, raising the dead, turning water into wine, or making the sun stand still), how would He communicate these exceptions to the natural world? How would He command particles to behave in an extraordinary way while ensuring that, in every other instance, they continue to adhere to the natural laws, maintaining stability and predictability? How does He ensure that gravity, for example, pulls objects down as expected, except during rare, miraculous interventions?

On the other hand, if God has embedded these laws into the fabric of reality as fixed and immutable — as we observe — how would He override billions of particles in a body to act against their nature for a miracle without unraveling the consistent behavior of reality itself? This raises a significant paradox: how can an omnipotent being suspend the very laws He set without introducing chaos or inconsistency into the natural world?

There is no way that reason can defend the idea of the christian God without shooting in it’s own foot… over and over again.