Why is there something rather than nothing?

[The Sum of Awe]

I don't think I've asked this on here before, I might've but if I did it's been a while.

This question applies to theists as much as it does atheists. Was it just chance that something started existing?

At one point there has to have been a chaotic action, the transition of nothingness to somethingness. Even if existence always existed, there requires a reason why existence exists, whether or not it had a beginning.

For some reason when I focus on this question for a while my trance-like thing that happens in deep contemplation, it starts drifting me off into existence being an illusion in a vat of nothingness, which makes no sense because the illusion would be something. That takes me in a circle and I can't really explain it, you can infinitely ask 'why' and perhaps, way down in the deepest of philosophical deep ends, there is a chaotic event that makes existence exist.

So I can't figure out an actual answer, it seems very paradoxical to me, what my idea is so far is that existence is simply the default. But even that leads me to asking "Default according to what? Then why does *insert what* exist instead of not exist".

Even for other theists, is it just a chance that God existed to make existence? Why did God exist instead of not exist?

For some reason this question is really getting to me.

 

[Aupmanyav]

It is yet not the time to ask this question. It should be asked after at least a Century when we will know more. If it was a chance, then the chance will happen again - for whatever reasons, it should. Or perhaps it is happening all the time and we are not aware of it. It is quite possible that existence itself is an illusion and that there is no difference between existence and non-existence. I won't repeat it here again, I think you may have come across the line from RigVeda pointing at it quoted by me. Even if existence is the default, we need to know why it is so. To not tackle the question now requires great patience rather than jumping to faulty conclusions.

 

[chinu]

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Because one find more peace in becoming nothing rather than something

 

[Quintessence]

May I ask why you feel that there was ever a point of non-existing?

Personally, I do not believe there was. Or if there was, given humans are completely incapable of comprehending true nothingness, I don't see the point of investing time in an exploration of that which can never be explored.

 

[Willamena]

Was it just chance that something started existing?

IMO, it was no more or less chance than not-chance.

At one point there has to have been a chaotic action, the transition of nothingness to somethingness. Even if existence always existed, there requires a reason why existence exists, whether or not it had a beginning.

The term for that is the principle of sufficient reason.

Principle of Sufficient Reason (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

For some reason when I focus on this question for a while my trance-like thing that happens in deep contemplation, it starts drifting me off into existence being an illusion in a vat of nothingness, which makes no sense because the illusion would be something. That takes me in a circle and I can't really explain it, you can infinitely ask 'why' and perhaps, way down in the deepest of philosophical deep ends, there is a chaotic event that makes existence exist.

So I can't figure out an actual answer, it seems very paradoxical to me, what my idea is so far is that existence is simply the default. But even that leads me to asking "Default according to what? Then why does *insert what* exist instead of not exist".

I think you'd enjoy reading Alan Watts.

Even for other theists, is it just a chance that God existed to make existence? Why did God exist instead of not exist?

For some reason this question is really getting to me.

Could it be sufficient that existence is? Particularly if nothing isn't?

 

[Willamena]

Nothing arises spontaneously with something--they are mutually realized, mutually contrasted. "When everyone recognizes beauty as beautiful, there is already ugliness. When everyone recognizes good as good, there is already evil." They are two sides of one and the same coin.

...To see this is to see that good without evil is like up without down, and that to make an ideal of pursuing the good is like trying to get rid of the left by turning constantly to the right. One is therefore compelled to go in circles.

The logic of this is so simple that one is tempted to think it over-simple. The temptation is all the stronger because it upsets the fondest illusion of the human mind, which is that in the course of time everything may be made better and better. For it is the general opinion that were this not possible the life of man would lack all meaning and incentive. The only alternative to a life of constant progress is felt to be a mere existence, static and dead, so joyless and inane that one might as well commit suicide. The very notion of this "only alternative" shows how firmly the mind is bound in a dualistic pattern, how hard it is to think in any other terms than good or bad, or muddy mixture of the two.

Yet Zen is a liberation from this pattern, and its apparently dismal starting point is to understand the absurdity of choosing, of the whole feeling that life may be significantly improved by a constant selection of the "good." One must start by "getting the feel" of relativity, and by knowing that life is not a situation from which there is anything to be grasped or gained--as if it were something which one approaches from outside, like a pie or a barrel of beer. To succeed is always to fail--in the sense that the more one succeeds in anything, the greater is the need to go on suceeding. To eat is to survive to be hungry.

The illusion of significant improvement arises in the moment of contrast, as when one turns from the left to the right on a hard bed. The position is "better" so long as the contrast remains, but before long the second position begins to feel like the first. So one acquires a more comfortable bed and, for a while, sleeps in peace. But the solution of the problem leaves a strange vacuum in one's consciousness, a vacuum soon filled by the sensation of another intolerable contrast, hitherto unnoticed, and just as urgent, just as frustrating as the problem of the hard bed. The vacuum arises because the sensation of comfort can be maintained only in relation to the sensation of discomfort, just as an image is visible to the eye by reason of a contrasting background. The good and the evil, the pleasant and the painful are so inseparable, so identical in their difference--like the two sides of a coin--that:

'Fair is foul, and foul is fair...'

Exerpt from The Way of Zen, by Alan Watts

Nothing is "visible to the eye" by its contrast to something, the eye here being that third one in your head that "sees" in the sense of understanding. As soon as "something" is recognized, nothing is there. Always--it's never not there, even if we prefer the something.

Eris an Aneris.

 

[Azihayya]

To think of either option, that everything always existed forever or that something appeared from nothing suggests no possible reason, and it's quite unfathomable to think that there could have been such a thing as a first flower or a first seashell within the limitations of infinite space and time.

I should note, as I could see someone addressing what I have to see with an explanation about how there was no space or time before the big bang, that I do not believe this to be a philosophically sound analysis, or that the definitions of space and time differ from what I consider to be the most authentic definition of either, which states merely that space and time are of no value, that space defines the area in which real things exist and that time expresses them in motion; to expand on the concept of time, there is no moment to moment, but rather only one moment which is the present, and cannot be manipulated except through perception. All things happen simultaneously, basically, and somehow, as unbelievable as it seems to conjure mentally, the present has always been happening.

 

[The Sum of Awe]

May I ask why you feel that there was ever a point of non-existing?

Personally, I do not believe there was. Or if there was, given humans are completely incapable of comprehending true nothingness, I don't see the point of investing time in an exploration of that which can never be explored.

In a way, there wasn't a point of non-existing. On the quantum level, there's no such thing as 'nothingness'.

But I subscribe to m-theory on a low basis, it makes sense to me that there was at one point a slip that made there be universe. If it were infinite, I would wonder: why is there expansion of galaxies? does the bending of space time (gravity according to relativity) extend infinitely? why aren't most stars seen by us, if there is a light source far beyond the stars we see, and the universe was infinite, then why hasn't light from that distance made its way over here yet? why is the universe homogeneous? etc etc

In any case, that's an entirely different debate. Even so, if the steady state model was accurate (and I prefer to use that term because I always feel uneasy talking about the universe as if there was a before), the question still applies. Though it had no origin, why is there something not nothing regardless of whether or not it was always there?

 

[The Sum of Awe]

IMO, it was no more or less chance than not-chance.


The term for that is the principle of sufficient reason.

Principle of Sufficient Reason (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Neat, thanks for sharing that!

I think you'd enjoy reading Alan Watts.

Why read when there is youtube

Could it be sufficient that existence is? Particularly if nothing isn't?

That's pretty much the only guess I can see that makes sense, but it leads to the question - why is there 'is'? Why isn't it is?

 

[029b10]

it's quite unfathomable to think that there could have been such a thing as a first flower or a first seashell within the limitations of infinite space and time.

I should note, as I could see someone addressing what I have to see with an explanation about how there was no space or time before the big bang, .

Limitations of infinite space? you mean finite space don't you since space would not be expanding.

As far a nothingness- what where you before you where born?

While the universe existed before our birth, which I based upon years of extensive research [lol] so reason itself has to conclude that there was something before the universe was formed.

That leads to a circular argument that there must have been before that, etc

But the primordial atom theory is actually just an Catholic Church interpretation of the Scriptures that was presented in scientific form by the Catholic priest back in the 30's.

If the primordial atom existed in nothingness, then what force was compressing it into that final state which result in its erupting forth. But until a better model is proposed then by examining by using principles then the errors can be identified and new models proposed.

When you get there tell Jesus I am the one who sent you.

 

[Azihayya]

Limitations of infinite space? you mean finite space don't you since space would not be expanding.

No, I quite believe in infinite space; I do not believe space, as a term relating to 'room' has any real value, and thus cannot expand. Philosophically, this would be implied by saying that, if you go forward in space, you will continue to go forward, but if you are obstructed, it is not by space, but rather by material. Space, in my mind, is an 'infinite amount of room' and there can be no warping that occurs to it; such concepts only apply to ideas that have real values, like energy/matter, of which, I believe fundamentally that there is only one. One real thing, whatever you want to call it - I prefer matter.

 

[Willamena]

Why read when there is youtube

Because some of those videos, while interesting for the times, are very corny today.

That's pretty much the only guess I can see that makes sense, but it leads to the question - why is there 'is'? Why isn't it is?

It's not a guess. Nothing just isn't... so something will have to suffice.

Imagine, if you will, coming to a first moment of consciousness. There was nothing, and then awareness. A sound, a thought, temperature, time passing... These things you're aware of are somethings, and arising with that awareness is their lack--the awareness that they can be like they were "before" you were consciousness. They can be somewhere else absent of awareness, or sometime else inaccessible to awareness. They can be negated. Negation is not something distinct from the thing, it's just the thing negated ("not the thing"). Every something has a nothing. There 'is' because we are aware; there 'is not' because we project time and space apart from awareness.

 

[Aupmanyav]

I don't see the point of investing time in an exploration of that which can never be explored.

That is belief, may not be the truth.