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Why is there something rather than nothing?

A block universe still has time, it's just like another dimension rather than something with a flow.
 
I'll give you that. We don't know if the universe had a beginning or not. I am more comfortable thinking it never had a beginning and is just constantly in a state of change. We may only be able to perceive it back to a transition point.

How can the universe NOT be infinite? If it is finite, then it comes to an end. And if it ends, then what comes after that? That's something I have a difficult time comprehending.

capstone said:
^Fair enough. Just as long as you can see that the universe may or may not have had a beginning, if it truly is infinite, just as there may or may not have been something preceding it.

How can the universe go on forever if nothing is beyond that? Doesn't this imply that nothing as a something?
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Yerg said:
All our perceptions of reality are subjective. Including those of scientists. Mystics and scientist both assess their experiences rationally. We have no a posteriori access to knowledge about objective reality. Of course mysticism attempts to be relative to objective reality in the same way as science does, mystics are trying to get to truth about an external world as much as scientists are.
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But still, mystics attempt to disconnect axioms from the physical/external world and strengthen it. For instance, Kant, a Christian-mystic, threatened by Hume's influences in thought about empiricism, totally disregarded rationalism in relation to ethics by imposing the categorical imperative and duty. Freedom for Kant is that your moral choice is not tied to the object or the physical world. It is also cut off from yourself. You receive no benefit at all from doing your duty. This includes even a feeling of satisfaction or fulfillment. You will feel nothing.
 
How can the universe NOT be infinite? If it is finite, then it comes to an end. And if it ends, then what comes after that? That's something I have a difficult time comprehending.
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Yes there's no logic behind believing in the finitude of the universe, as it's an assumption that something outside of all that exists is the spark cause (and destroyer) of the sum total. A is A.
 
It also depends on how you define the universe. Is it what we perceive to exist all the way back to the big bang, or does it include whatever there was before that?
 
Yerg said:
If time doesn't exist, it's certainly a convincing illusion.
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Not quite sure what you mean by this? Conventional thought (Link) holds two interpretations of time: that it is a fundamental dimension, or that it is a psychological construct as I talked about. If it is a dimension as I presume you think, why doesn't it behave like the others? Sure, you can measure it using arbitrary units (including Planck time; considering that science continues to discover smaller and smaller units I can't call this anything but), but unlike the other three you can't traverse it in any way that would be considered spatial.

To me, speed as we think of it is more of a mastery of space than time. As far as time being convincing, I would argue that that is precisely the point: if you were using numbers to quantify (and in effect, control) every single moment of existence, wouldn't you want it to be convincing? I think sometimes people overlook the fact that all of what we consider scientific fact now was at one point invented by a person.
 
Right, I suppose mastery was the wrong word there, because we have absolutely zero mastery of time. Some people can move through space a lot better than others, though. That's what I meant.
 
capstone said:
"Nothing" is what we call something devoid of everything. If we did not have this term, we wouldn't have concept of this. Nothing is something in the sense that without nothing, we wouldn't have anything to compare and understand something with.

Just to get a little Taoist with it.

Just because there is nothing in a vacuum doesn't mean the universe isn't there in that space.
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Without everything there would be no concept of nothing. Maybe for nothing to exist, everything must exist simultaneously? This may explain why there is something rather than nothing. Both something and nothing may be happening simultaneously and may be dependent on one another.

Both nothing and something/everything are independent because they are both opposite of one another. But both are dependent because without the concept of one there wouldn't be the concept of the other.

Independently dependent.

Just to get a little Taoist with it.
 
Back to the original question... why is there something rather than nothing?

If the universe as we understand it consists of everything that there is and could ever possibly be, then we are left with nothing without the existence of the universe. And what does it mean for there to be nothing? It has no meaning. There cannot be nothing at all. Our very existence is proof of that.

The law of conservation of mass/matter states that the mass of a closed system (in the sense of a completely isolated system) will remain constant over time.
 
I thought that's what we have been discussing... your question is phrased to imply that there must be a meaning to "everything". The universe has no meaning though, it just is. A = A. Conceptions of an alternative "nothing" are the result of Structuralism.
 
I did not mean to imply that there is "meaning" to everything in terms of purpose or intent. I simply meant that the fact that we are here is proof that something does exist and therefore nothing, in its purest form, cannot exist.
 
AfterGlow said:
the fact that we are here is proof that something does exist and therefore nothing, in its purest form, cannot exist.
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It has to exist.

For every up there is a down. For every black there is a white. Yes/No. On/Off. Asleep/Awake. Dead/Alive. Something/Nothing.
 
"Nothing" can only be something in the sense that it is a term describing the absence of an observed thing.

This reminds me of a joke by Jean Paul Sartre where he walks into a cafe and the waitress asks him if he'd like to start out with something to drink. Sartre replies, "Yes, I'd like a cup of coffee with sugar, but no cream". The waitress goes to fill his order only to come back to the table a minute later and says, "I'm sorry Mr. Sartre we're all out of cream, would you like no milk instead?"
 
It has to exist.

For every up there is a down. For every black there is a white. Yes/No. On/Off. Asleep/Awake. Dead/Alive. Something/Nothing.

is that supposed to be based on Einstien equal,opposite action-reaction?
have u read wat honeyroastedpeanut has been saying? if not go through and read all his post. sure there are opposites but that dosn't mean that there is and opposite of being is not being.if the opposite of life iz death it dos'nt mean u cease to exist, the energy from your body is still in existance. we can't fully comprehend something without a beginning and an end that dosn't mean that there was a beginning or that at the beginning there was nothing.can we truelly understand nothing?we hav no concept of nothing as we hav never had the capacity to understand it.we know of dimensions ect but not of a "nothing" if there is such a "thing". imagine "nothing" as plato would propose. Is it not something? opposites are surely the laws of the "something"?Maybe:)
 
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