I remember the first time I was challenged to respond: "Why is there something rather than nothing"

I was about 16, and started my answer with: "Why not?"; its been an interesting progression since then. I had just read Stephan Hawkings' Brief History of time, so I was repeating these very notions. Later on, discussing with my grandfather how the anthropic principal was just misguided reasoning. I guess conscious atheists go through this process of liberation and humanization; an emotional situation Andre Comte-Sponville refers to as Joyful Despair.