When a theist asks,
“Why is there something rather than nothing?”
it is just a poor and unproductive way to ask “where did everything come from?”
The problem with the question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” is that it is presented in a way as though “nothing” is another something that could “be,” which is not what “nothing” defines.
Only “something” can “be.” There cannot “be” nothing, because “nothing” doesn’t exist, it isn’t something, and therefore there isn’t anything to nothing to “be.”
We can’t say “well, there is both something and nothing” because nothing “isn’t.” There isn’t an “is” to nothing. There can only be an “is” to “something.”
But the question asks for an “is” to nothing – “Why ‘is’ there something rather than nothing?”
They might as well ask “why are circles round but squares aren’t?” It is just as silly.
What they really want to lead you to is that we don’t know exactly how something (matter, or what have you) came to existence. This often leads to the question, “how can something come from nothing” The theist will argue that because we don’t have that answer, then therefore “god did it.” Of course with this they are committing a logical fallacy, particularly an “argument from ignorance.” And if you use there claim against them, that if “something cannot come from nothing” than their god couldn’t have come from nothing, they will say, “but god has always existed and is outside of time and space.” So they believe a supernatural all-powerful, all-knowing being, has always been, but they can’t believe that perhaps something natural has always been? Seems rather curious and self-serving.
Share
I see the something from nothing question to be important.. Everything we know has a cause and an effect. What things in our reality currently just “pop” into being such as the complex order of our universe?
How does science explain a reality based on causes and effects that came into existence from no first cause and the subsequent effects that followed suit? Seems ironic to me that a reality based on causes could come from no first cause.. Or that motion, as we understand it in physics, happens absent something to begin that motion. What is the formula for measuring motion without something to start motion?
Also.. We don’t go around making the assumptions for the “pop” theory.. Where things merely pop into existence for some easily defined intelligent purpose. Houses don’t just pop into existence, nor cars, nor complex technological devices yet somehow the order in which all these complex things exist came from no intelligent first cause… They just happened? That’s it? That’s a logical fallacy of the highest order..
It’s not self-serving to raise questions such as this.. Perhaps in the context of cheap rhetoric they may be but the deeper meanings if such questions have been raised for centuries.. And no real answers have come into being.. Save One being who claims to be the designer of this reality.. When looking for a list of logical, and reasonable, answers to the question, “From where do we come?” I think the idea of God has merit..