Adapted from Creation Answer Book by Hank Hanegraaff 

When people face the compelling evidence that the universe began to exist at a definite point in time, a favorite fallback position is that it sprang into existence from nothing at all. This, however, stretches credulity beyond the breaking point.

First, simple logic dictates that nothing comes from nothing. “Nothing” is nonexistent and therefore lacks the power to do. Indeed, this “power to do” logically presupposes the existence of a thing that possesses that power.

Furthermore, something produced by nothing from nothing would, logically, have had to create itself. But if it created itself, it would have had to exist prior to its own creation, which means it must both exist and not exist at the same time and in the same way—an obvious contradiction and an utterly illogical conclusion. When the laws of logic are violated like this, reason and communication become meaningless.

Finally, in order for something to exist without being the result of a prior cause, that something must be eternal (i.e., something that did not come into being, but has always existed). As such, the universe could not emerge out of nothing, but it can exist as an effect of an uncaused eternal First Cause—which is precisely what God is.

Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
Psalm 90:2

 


Source (and for further study), see Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 399–401.