Something Instead of Nothing. Why?
Apparently the ultimate unanswerable question of all time is “why is there something rather than nothing!”
*Now my definition of “nothing” is the total and absolute absence of any force (i.e. – photon) particles or matter (i.e. – electron) particles. The immaterial can’t exist since the immaterial requires something (like a mind-in-the-brain) to conceive of anything immaterial.
*So why something rather than nothing? Because if a state of absolute nothingness existed then we wouldn’t be here to answer the question.
*Because there are trillions of ways to have a something but only one way to have a state of pure nothingness so the odds favor something over nothing.
*Because if you had a state of absolute nothingness then time couldn’t, or wouldn’t exist. No stuff, no motion; no motion, no change; no change, no time. But would there exist space (immaterial though it may be) to contain a state of absolute nothingness? Probably not.
*Invoking a god who created something from nothing (an impossibility IMHO) solves nothing since a god would have to be a something.
*Since we have something rather than nothing and since you can’t create something from nothing, something has therefore always existed. But why should something be eternal rather than or instead of nothing being eternal?
*You also can’t create an absolute state of nothingness from an absolute state of something.
*There is both a state of something and a state of nothingness because if everything, all there is, is a something, then nothing could move since something is always in the way blocking that motion. Again, no motion, no change; no change means no time.
Anything else that can be said with regards to this unanswerable question?
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.you may wish to explore the concepts of antimatter and dark matter (which are not the same thing). you may also wish to avoid buying into the kind of verbal tricks my college philosopher teacher used to play (except as far as i could tell he believed in them, which did not endear him to me one bit). he said "god exists because the word god implies existence and therefore god exists." i thought him then, and think him now, an idiot.
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genessa
Level 8
Sep 8, 2018
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) hopefully he is retired... probably dead considering how old i am now lol. i'm not wishing him dead; i am wishing him out of the teaching business and out of the philosophy business!I think the answer lies in the structure of language. We exist, the universe exists, 'nothing' does not exist and it is impossible to think of it as existing, as by definition it can not be, but still we can talk about it as if it exists. Non-being as Plato suggests is not non-being per se, but rather difference.
cava
Level 7
Sep 8, 2018
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cava:
@johnprytz "If space is a something then space must be composed of something. What is that something? What is space composed of? "
Objects.
As I stated..."it is described by the relations of objects within it."
Einstein's General Relativity equations have been empirically tested and they hold.
cava:
@johnprytz Inky water describes a mixture, if you boil the mixture sufficiently only the ink remains.
I said that space is described by the relationship of objects (macro or micro) within it. If there were no objects there could be no space. Relationships are functional. So while nominally there is no zoo you can point to, as a system of relationships zoos can be defined as an establishment that maintains a collection of wild animals, typically in a park or gardens, for study, conservation, or display to the public. Zoos exist.
Einstein's equations suggest that space is curved and 'nothing' cannot be curved.
Some of your arguments(?) are circular and some make no sense at all. "Why is there something rather than nothing?" is a meaningless question. Don't bother thinking too much about it for there is no answer. What does make sense and could turn out to be fruitful is changing the question to a scientific one like Lawrence Krauss did in his book "A Universe from Nothing". He does not discuss "nothing" in the same sense you mean, but as I said, there is no point to that.
Dietl
Level 7
Sep 8, 2018
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Some sentences have no meaning at all (in a certain language) like 'Ug is a pflaa'. It refers to nothing and makes no statement about nothing. On the other hand there are sentences that are meaningless because they carry no information like 'If I exist then I exist". It seems like it says that "I exist" but actually it doesn't. So there are sentences (and questions) that look like they carry a meaning but they don't. That doesn't mean that those sentences can't be useful in some way, which is what I think you mean when you say your question isn't meaningless, for it does make you think and gives you a sense of wonder. But either way it makes no difference, because there can't be an answer to this question no matter how great of a genius exists. Any answer leads to the same why question again "Why is it that that certain answer is true?". You basically say that our existance is necessary for our existence, "we exist because we exist". That for me is meaningless. You can disagree but then it would be obvious that we don't mean the same thing with 'meaningless'. So think about that 'meaningless' really means to you and if your definition is useful.
(I hope this is not too convoluted)
Excellent. We tend to put what we know in this sort of category when we are only just starting to know about the universe. It may turn out that the universe has always existed even when we thought it was nothing.
DenoPenno
Level 9
Sep 8, 2018
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