Why is there anything? (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, March 29, 2012, 14:26 (4623 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Welcome back, Tony. If, as I suspect, you agree with David and are thinking of "God" as your answer, do you consider God to be nothing (= a total void)? If you don't, you still have the same problem: i.e. why is there God (something) rather than nothing? My honest suggestion ... though made, I must confess, with a smile on my face ... leaves the answer perfectly, agnostically neutral. Can you find fault with it?-DAVID: Is your theory that first was total void, then God appeared, or God existed always in that void before He made anything appear? If there is no First Cause there is nothing, and there would be nothing today. BUT, there is something. WHY? HOW and WHY can never be separate magisteria, a la Gould. Only atheists want that separation.-My answer to the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?" is: "Because that's how things are." "Why" can have two meanings: what is the purpose ("why are you telling me this?") and what is the cause ("why did the bridge collapse?"). I assume that the original question relates to cause, since purpose already presupposes a creator. -I do not have a theory. Your alternatives are equally meaningless to me. I find it impossible to believe that ANYTHING can come from a total void, so in your first option, God (Universal Intelligence) could not "appear" from a void. In your second, if there was a god, it could not be "in" a void, because the void would then not be a void unless, as I said before, God IS nothing (which I find just as meaningless). I will grant you that there has to be a first cause, but no-one can possibly know what it is. There seem to be three favourites, each of which is as inexplicable and as inconceivable as the other: 1) nothing, 2) God, and 3) the ever-changing universe. I've explained why I object to 1). If the theist asks, "Why is there God (something) rather than nothing?" or the atheist asks, "Why is there the ever-changing universe (something) rather than nothing?" the respective answers will still be the same: God/the universe is the first cause. Or "because that's how things are."