Isn't dragging in a Creator because the world is complicated a stretch?

🔥A child asks: “Maybe the universe was just always there?”

🛡️The answer: “The universe is extremely old” and “the universe exists on its own, for no reason” are not the same claim. Even if you assume it had no beginning, you can still ask why it exists and why it has these laws.

Everything we know inside the world comes to be, changes, and leans on something else. A tree depends on sunlight and water; we depend on air and food. Catholic philosophy holds that beings which have received their existence cannot, by themselves, complete the explanation, and that there must be a source which leans on nothing and gives existence to everything else. That source is what we call God.

🎨An analogy — a lamp that has been on a long time

A lamp may have been burning for a very long time, but that does not mean it needs no electricity right now. “When was it switched on?” and “what is holding it lit at this moment?” are different questions. This analogy means that we think of God not as the universe's first event but as the source that holds everything in existence even now.

🔎A little deeper: However far back science explains the universe, the question “why does the universe exist?” remains. God is not an answer dropped for a moment into the blanks science has yet to fill, but the ultimate source that lets everything exist at this very moment.

✨Briefly: “Even if the universe is old, or has no beginning, why it exists and what it rests on are separate questions. Christians call the source of existence that rests on nothing else God.”