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Why is there something rather than nothing?

you must have come in late! if you read the entire thread you'd know we covered this already. You can't have something and nothing. You have one or the other. But not both. You can't be going up and down at the same time. A device is either on or off. The universe is full of many things. For there to be nothing means we would not be here. Nothing would be here. But it isnt.

Max Power said:
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.
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AfterGlow said:
you must have come in late! if you read the entire thread you'd know we covered this already. You can't have something and nothing. You have one or the other. But not both. You can't be going up and down at the same time. A device is either on or off. The universe is full of many things. For there to be nothing means we would not be here. Nothing would be here. But it isnt.
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Why can't there be a realm of infinity and a realm of of infinite nothingness? Why does the fact that our plane of existence has something, mean that a realm completely outside of our universe/multiverse couldn't exist in a state of nothingness?
 
whether you call it a universe or a multiverse.... it is all that there is. Nothing is, by definition, the absence of everything and anything. Since we see lots of things all around us, we have already precluded that nothing cannot exist in the presence of anything that is not nothing.
 
I disagree. Nothing is everywhere. It's the space between two things touching, the silence within one continuous note, the time between two consecutive moments.
 
i think some of us are flickering with the bright light of the original question. "why is there something instead of nothing". i hav to asume in my ignorance that the question master was reffering to nothing as in no-thing at all, not nothing in one dimension and something in another. not asking can something co-exist with nothing. but instead maybe he was infurring that something if it may or may not co-exist with nothing =something? as something + nothing even though separate(or joined) it still includes something and does not therefore make nothing?if there is something with nothing there does exist nothing but it is cancelled by the something because it cannot be denyed that there is still something involved. yet we cannot say with the co-existanstance of nothing with something there is therefore entirely nothing at all because there is something wheather seperate or joined. the fine simplicity of the question is starting to get lost. the question in laymans may be:Why is there something instead of nothing at all?
nothing? do any of you truelly understand nothing and all its complexities?

soz bout me spelling.:) peaceloveharmoney
 
JMT said:
"why is there something instead of nothing". i hav to asume in my ignorance that the question master was reffering to nothing as in no-thing at all, not nothing in one dimension and something in another. not asking can something co-exist with nothing. but instead maybe he was infurring that something if it may or may not co-exist with nothing =something? as something + nothing even though separate(or joined) it still includes something and does not therefore make nothing?if there is something with nothing there does exist nothing but it is cancelled by the something because it cannot be denyed that there is still something involved. yet we cannot say with the co-existanstance of nothing with something there is therefore entirely nothing at all because there is something wheather seperate or joined. the fine simplicity of the question is starting to get lost. the question in laymans may be:Why is there something instead of nothing at all?
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I don't know about the other people here but I have been trying to say that if logic is real in all possible worlds then everything exists by definition, because the property of non-exitance cannot exist.

JMT said:
do any of you truelly understand nothing and all its complexities?
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Nope! :D
 
Yerg said:
Existence isn't a property either though.
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You are going to have to explain that to me, sorry. My thinking is that non-existence is a property that is only ascribed to things that do not exist, therefore those things do not exist and neither does the property. I'm sure I'm going wrong here. But can someone explain why (I've been thinking too much for today).

But explain why existance is not a property. Can I not ascribe the property of existence to something. I do remember something about this from my undergrad, but can't quite bring it to mind.
 
Well yeah, Aristotle gave a lot of heavy forethought into the attributes of being. I don't know if you're implying there's something wrong with me referring to his ideas in my response. If so, why?
 
I disagree. Nothing is everywhere. It's the space between two things touching, the silence within one continuous note, the time between two consecutive moments.
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An actual "nothingness" can't exist as the nothing has no attributes of being (no place, no volume, no substance, etc.). This is basically the argument that Aristotle gave to the proponents of the Void. Consider reality as a full plenum, where there is always something there wherever you are pointing, even though it may seem like there is nothing there, like deep space between galaxies. What is there is a question for science, but from a rational philosophic perspective there is something there. Even in the deepest vacuum of a vacuum chamber, there is something there. It's devoid of air, let's say, and any big particles, but because the nothing does not exist, there is something there in that vacuum chamber (i.e. distance/space which is a relationship of entities).

Here's a quote by Albert Einstein from the fifteenth edition of Relativity:
"In this edition I have added, as a fifth appendix, a presentation of my views on the problem of space in general and on the gradual modifications of our ideas on space resulting from the influence of the relativistic view-point. I wished to show that space-time is not necessarily something to which one can ascribe a separate existence, independently of the actual objects of physical reality. Physical objects are not in space, but these objects are spatially extended. In this way the concept "empty space" loses its meaning."
 
So is everyone here taking an agnostic view to this question? It doesn't seem we have found any answers to why there is something. Would our lack of answers imply that maybe there is a force of creation behind everything? If you don't think so I'd love to know why.

I am spiritual but at heart I am an open-minded agnostic. I don't think that because we don't have an answer for why there is something that there necessarily is a divine source of creation, but that seems to be the only possible explanation we have found thus far.

Anyone have any ideas why anything would exist without a divine source of creation being involved?
 
I cant tell you why because I do not believe there is a reason why. I believe the only relevant question is what. I am spiritual too, but I believe spirituality is a natural human characteristic like love and compassion are. It's our feeling of being connected to the universe and wanting to have a positive influence.
 
The universe was never created as there is nothing that suggests it ever began. Even the big-bang does not prove the finitude of the universe, as it was just an occurrence of which aligned and structured the cosmos. Something still obviously had to exist prior to the event such as some type of compacted concentration of energy, otherwise nothing would have sparked the explosion. Spirituality or the reverence towards some divine entity is self-deception in many ways.
 
There is something because we experience something. I do believe that intelligence caused the "something".
 
Philoscybin said:
An actual "nothingness" can't exist as the nothing has no attributes of being (no place, no volume, no substance, etc.). This is basically the argument that Aristotle gave to the proponents of the Void. Consider reality as a full plenum, where there is always something there wherever you are pointing, even though it may seem like there is nothing there, like deep space between galaxies. What is there is a question for science, but from a rational philosophic perspective there is something there. Even in the deepest vacuum of a vacuum chamber, there is something there. It's devoid of air, let's say, and any big particles, but because the nothing does not exist, there is something there in that vacuum chamber (i.e. distance/space which is a relationship of entities).

Here's a quote by Albert Einstein from the fifteenth edition of Relativity:
"In this edition I have added, as a fifth appendix, a presentation of my views on the problem of space in general and on the gradual modifications of our ideas on space resulting from the influence of the relativistic view-point. I wished to show that space-time is not necessarily something to which one can ascribe a separate existence, independently of the actual objects of physical reality. Physical objects are not in space, but these objects are spatially extended. In this way the concept "empty space" loses its meaning."
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That was kind of my point. None of the things I listed exist. There is no space between two things touching (I mean there really is, but not conceptually, and that's what I'm talking about); that's why it's nothing. There is no silence within a continuous note.
 
Portillo said:
There is something because we experience something. I do believe that intelligence caused the "something".
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This is a pretty interesting, and surprisingly satisfying, answer to this: there's something rather than nothing because our sentient minds are here to shed light on the nothingness and make it into 'something'.

I'm definitely willing to entertain philosophical idealism too: the idea that the only things that can be said to 'exist' are mental events, and that what we take as external entities only exist as we perceive they do, because we're there to behold them. In a universe devoid of sentient forms, an eternity passes as quickly as an instant.
 
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