Aquinas for Dummies - Third Way - The Baloon…

Have you ever blown up a balloon at a birthday party? For a little while, it's round and bouncy and full of air. Then, a few days later, you find it shriveled up in the corner, all the air gone. The balloon didn't have to exist. Before the party, there was no balloon — just a little rubber pouch in a bag. And after a while, it won't be a balloon anymore either — just a floppy piece of rubber in the trash.

Thomas Aquinas noticed that almost everything in the world is like that balloon: it comes into existence for a while, and then it goes out of existence. Ice pops melt. Flowers bloom and wilt. Puppies are born and, someday, a long time from now, they die. None of these things HAD to exist. They popped into being, hung around for a while, and then popped out again.

Aquinas had a fancy word for things like this: "contingent," which just means "doesn't have to be here." A contingent thing is any thing that COULD exist or COULD NOT exist — nothing about it demands that it must be here.

What If EVERYTHING Was Like That?

Here's Aquinas's big question: what if literally everything in the whole universe was like the balloon — here for a while, then gone, not having to exist at all?

Well, think about it this way. If every single thing is the "pop in, pop out" kind of thing, then there was a point — maybe a really, really long time ago — when NONE of it existed yet. Zero balloons. Zero anything.

But here's the catch: nothing can pop into existence out of absolutely nothing, all by itself, with no help. Try it — stare really hard at an empty table and see if a cookie appears. It won't. Cookies need bakers, remember?

So if there was ever a time when nothing at all existed, then nothing would exist right now either — because there'd be nobody around to get the popping started!

But things obviously DO exist right now (you're reading this, aren't you?). So it CAN'T be true that everything is the "doesn't have to exist" kind of thing.

But Wait — Don't Tiny Particles Pop Out of Nothing?

You might have heard something surprising from science class or a science show: scientists who study super tiny things — this is called "quantum mechanics" — talk about tiny particles popping into existence out of empty space, seemingly out of nowhere, and then disappearing again. Doesn't that break the balloon rule? Doesn't that mean something CAN come from absolutely nothing?

Here's the catch: that "empty space" isn't actually nothing. Scientists call it a "quantum field," and it's more like a full ocean than an empty box — it has real energy, real properties, and real rules it always follows (the laws of quantum physics). Think of it like a trampoline. You might not notice the stretchy rubber mat just sitting there, but the bounces happening on it aren't coming from nothing — they're coming from the trampoline that's already there.

So when a tiny particle "pops up" in a science experiment, it's popping up out of that busy quantum field, not out of true nothingness — the same way a bounce doesn't come from nothing, it comes from a trampoline that's already stretched out and ready.

And here's the deeper point: that quantum field itself is exactly the kind of thing Aquinas was talking about. It's a real thing that exists, but it didn't HAVE to exist — it could have not existed, or worked by completely different rules. It's still "contingent," still balloon-like, even though it's invisible and behaves in surprising, wobbly ways. So quantum physics doesn't get Aquinas off the hook — it just adds one more layer to the question. Something had to make the quantum field itself exist, and keep those trampoline-rules running instead of no rules at all.

Even the wobbliest, most surprising science in the world still needs a "floor to bounce on." And Aquinas would say that floor, and the floor under THAT floor, eventually rests on the one Being who doesn't need a floor at all.

Something Has to Be the Steady One

That means there has to be at least one thing that isn't like the balloon — something that doesn't pop in and out of existence, something that just IS, always, without needing anything else to make it exist or keep it around. Aquinas called this a "necessary being" — necessary meaning it HAS to exist, it can't NOT exist.

Everything else — balloons, ice pops, puppies, planets, even you and me — depends on that one steady, necessary thing to get us started and keep us here.

Even Simpler

1. Lots of things in the world could exist or could not exist, like balloons, ice pops, and puppies — they're "contingent."

2. If EVERYTHING were like that, there would have been a time when nothing existed at all.

3. But nothing comes from absolute nothing, so if there was ever truly nothing, there would still be nothing now.

4. Since things clearly do exist now, something must exist that doesn't depend on anything else — something necessary.

That necessary being is God: the one steady, always-existing "IS" underneath every balloon, ice pop, and puppy that pops in and out of the world.

Stay tuned for next episode…