Why is there anything? (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, December 26, 2011, 08:27 (4717 days ago) @ David Turell

MATT: The real question is thus, in my mind, not "Why is there something," but "Why isn't there nothing?"

DAVID: Excellent way of looking at it. To my way of thinking, something has to be eternal, either a multiverse (?) or a UI. If there was nothing there should be nothing now. I don't buy the stupid stuff that nature abhores nothing so there always will be something created. How, created from what if there is absolutely nothing to begin with?

I don’t see any difference between the two questions, since they both imply that there OUGHT to be nothing, and I don’t see why the choice is between a multiverse and a UI. I agree that something has to be eternal, but the idea of an Eternal Intelligence intelligently doing nothing in a complete vacuum for ever (retrospectively) until eventually it came up with the idea of creating a material universe seems pretty laughable to me. Ugh, what a boring (retrospective) eternity! At least an eternal, material and ever changing universe doesn’t strike me as ridiculous. I see no reason to opt for a multiverse if we take this one as being ever changing. If the big bang or the big bounce really happened, that would be one of the changes. (Of course if you’re going for a UI, nothing would stop it from creating multiple universes if it felt like it.)

As I see it, there is absolutely no way we can possibly find out how everything began (= why there is something, or why there isn’t nothing), and we can only speculate about how the universe as we now know it MIGHT have got into its current state. Neither science nor religion can EVER come up with ANY theory connected with eternity that is not pure conjecture. So let’s have some more Christmas turkey...I may not know how it got here, but I do know where it's going.