Mystery of existence eludes both religion and science

"Why is there something rather than nothing?" This is the ultimate question. So ultimate'y, it shouldn't be viewed as a question, because questions imply answers.

I prefer, "There is something rather than nothing."

Leave out the "why." Embrace the stark, unarguable reality of existence. Forget God. Something must exist or God couldn't exist. So my awe is directed toward existence, not God.

Existence is everlasting, eternal, omnipresent, unfathomable. Wild! If I want to feel a tingle up my psyche's spine before I fall into sleep, I ponder there is something rather than nothing as I doze off.

(Some reflections of my ponderings are here, here, here, here, and here.)

Last week a fresh New Scientist issue arrived in the mail. Glancing at the cover I was excited to read:

The Existential Issue
The staggering mysteries of being
(and how to cope with them)

Appropriately, the first mystery tackled in the existential issue was "Why is there something rather than nothing?" After all, without something, there'd be no other mysteries.

I liked the mixture of science and philosophy in the article by Amanda Gefter. In less than three minutes you can get the gist of how modern cosmology looks upon this question in the following New Scientist video.

(My favorite part: "something and nothing may well be the same thing." The universe is just a form of nothing. Ooh! So Zen!

Still, this doesn't really answer the question of why anything exists at all. Gefter acknowledges the untouched mystery of existence in her final paragraph.

None of this really gets us off the hook, however. Our understanding of creation relies on the validity of the laws of physics, particularly quantum uncertainty.

But that implies that the laws of physics were somehow encoded into the fabric of our universe before it existed. How can physical laws exist outside of space and time and without a cause of their own?

Or, to put it another way, why is there something rather than nothing?

Religious believers will seize upon this admission of science's inability to peek behind the curtain of why existence exists and exclaim, "God is the only answer!" To which I reply, "Wrong!"

God, whether viewed as a personal or impersonal power, fills precisely the same role in theology as do the laws of physics in science.

That is, a given. Something for which no cause is offered. A brute fact, wihout which no other facts are possible.

OK. To me, it's a tie. Both religion and science are clueless about the ultimate question: why is there something rather than nothing? Each offers up an answer that doesn't satisfy.

"God created the universe." Fine. So tell me, what created God?

"The universe was created by a quantum fluctuation." Fine. So tell me, what created the quantum fluctuation?

What is simply is. There is something rather than nothing. I find this eminently satisfying. More than that, actually, much more. It's awesome. Mindblowing. Astoundingly meaningful.

Why? LIke existence itself, there's no why.

Comments

[Marina]

Another good thread.

First, 'I don't know' and now 'why is there something rather than nothing, why existence?

We can ask why's until the cows come home and all we usually get is a lot of theory and guesswork at best.

One thing for sure for sure.... I don't know! Brain stumping.

Marina

[tucson]

Proposing that the universe began in some great cosmic event and one day will end is a product of our collective consciousness or the syntax of a way of thnking that we agree upon. Our language dictates how we think and how we think constructs our language.

There are languages that do not share the same syntax as English. For example, some languages do not have words that indicate the concept of ownership.

There is a syntax that does not contain the concepts of beginnings and endings. In that syntax nothing begins and nothing ends. Rather, there are simply fluctuations in an apparent time continuum created by objectifying the process rather than being the process.

In the immediacy of being there is no room for time or beginnings or endings or anything at all. Something never came out of nothing because absolutely there is nothing.

To say there is something is merely a construct, a syntax upon which we agree in a feeble attempt to give order to the infinite mystery of being.

[Willie R]

The reason why there is such confusion about existential matters is that there is, in a manner of speaking only, SUPPOSED TO BE confusion about the same, witnessed by the fact that such confusion is ubiquitous among human beings.

It makes no difference, whatsoever, if you happen to be confused about Reality or not.
Or, if you happen to believe that you are or are not confused about same.

Something, anything, everything is exactly equivalent to NOTHING. That is why there is no answer to questions such as "why is there something rather than nothing?".

Annoyingly (to be sure), I always point to the obvious transient nature of all that exists. That means, among other things, that what is, once was not, and at some point will cease to be. This fact confers the status of irrelevance upon any particular point of fixation.

This astounding revelation takes no detectable period of time to verify. And so, it is summarily dismissed as irrelevant. Of course, it IS irrelevant.

AS is anything you might have thought I said (wrote).

[Julian]

"why is there something rather than nothing?

What is simply is. There is something rather than nothing. I find this eminently satisfying. More than that, actually, much more. It's awesome. Mindblowing. Astoundingly meaningful.

Why? LIke existence itself, there's no why."

I look at it this way bt looking at the question being asked itself:

Why is there something rather than nothing?

well first off 'somthing' and 'nothing' are words. And the asking OF the question gives the hidden premise there is ONLY something and not nothing--meaning .....?

OK, what is 'light' and what is 'dark' they also are words, but it is easier to see what we are talking about. Using our trained--to--be--left-brains we often conceptualize abstracted terms to be the reality. So we will say 'light' and then IMAGINE that you can have light with out 'dark' and vice versa, and of course you cant. there is no such THING as JUST-light or JUST-dark. Light&dark is more a living interwoven process.

Same is so for something&nothing. hetting it where we can see this. When we look at reality do we just see 'someTHING'--like errrm a BIG BOX amd 'nothing' (ohh there's that word again) else...? No, we see somethings with with nothings around them. LOOK at that tree, look at the space/nothing around it. We NEED them both. They are BOTH interwoven. You cannot have one without the other.

[Mardee]

Exactly! Religious people like to say there has to be a god to have made the "something" and think they have won the arguement when scientists can't answer your question. But, you're right they are hypocrites if they can't then explain how a god came to be something had to have made him. And for some reason made a invisible single guy in the sky who can make stuff and see all and be all , who is jealous and mean but also "loving" and who decided to make billions of planets and then put people and living stuff on only one of them , who requires people to pray to him if they want to live in in a nice fancy world after they die on the planet. Oh and he likes his people ( though not his animals) to sing to him and he apparently likes some people more than others cause some are born to starving parents in Africa and some to billionaire parents. Yeah, all that makes a lot of sence

[Blogger Brian]

tucson, and others with a similar view of syntax/language/human concepts...

Yes. Words can't accurately reflect reality. Especially the reality of existence. We try to make it into a "something," whereas actually it is "everything." Or, equally, "nothing."

[George]

Interesting post Tucson, but if there really is nothing, why do our senses have the illusion of somehting? why the illusion at all?

If there truly is nothing, there should be no illusion, no senses, no mind, nothing.

[Dogribb]

Look...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37EyJRi63Yk

[Blogger Brian]

Dogribb, thanks. That Dpnovan song explains everything. Except who Juanita is.

[John Grunwell]

If I am to believe what I read in popular science magazines (being a big rube, I usually do), "increasing numbers" of astrophysicists are touting the notion of a multi-verse full of "bubble universes." A recent article suggested that we might find circumstantial or trace evidence for such in fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background radiation. Awesome!

I suspect that the difference between the Ultimate Great Unknown in science and theology is that the theological perspective can never be drawn directly from information and scientific data. It will always be an un-testable assumption. The scientific perspective can, however, make reasonable inferences from actual physical/energetic information, and when a tapestry of information presents itself that is relatively self-consistent, greater conclusions can be drawn, and one can make testable predictions from those ideas. As such, scientists will perhaps one day be in a MUCH better position to make declarations concerning the nature of the Ultimate Great Unknown.

I suspect that we eventually realize - that is, have scientific information suggesting as such - that Nature itself is literally the eternal force, with no beginning/creation or ultimate end/destruction, only forms of energy converting to other forms of energy. That its inherent qualities are its inherent qualities because they are its inherent qualities (akin to your 'there is something because there is something'). If and when we come to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt, the premise of a divine creator being or "intelligent designer" will be exposed as the most limited of anthro-centric notions. How could the notion of an eternally sentient being with a decidedly demanding and jealous personality ever compete in the meme marketplace with a blind Force of Nature that has always existed and will always exist? It’s not even a competition!

You write that “both religion and science are clueless about the ultimate question.” While that might be the case now, that’s not to say it will always be the case. The very same idea could have been expressed centuries ago by saying “both science and religion are clueless as to why the moon exists, or we find seashells in mountainous rock, or why we orbit the sun, or why aurora occur,” but of course science ultimately trumps religious explanations time and time again, because science ultimately deals with cosmic reality, rather than mental fantasies. Religious answers require a belief based upon a baseless assumption guided by faith, whereas scientific answers have a rather consistent track record of being based on ever more nuanced and accurate understandings of Actual Reality, not the one we wish for in our minds.

[Roger]

" There is something rather than nothing. I find this eminently satisfying."

- True, I can find this statement satisfying too. However, what absolutely, exactly is a something? Same for a nothing? What exactly are these two words? If we don't absolutely(exactly) know, then we could embrace the mystery supposedly surrounding such. Maybe and maybe not.

and

John,

The religion/science debate has been hashed out many times within this blog. Yes, within our subject/object realm, there are unknowns(today) that science will bring to a known, one day. This is nothing new.

[Betty]

Can a cucumber smell a rose?

[cc]

Asking why there is something rather than nothing presumes the eternality of the asker. If there was nothing, there would be no one to ask anything and no one to answer. Likewise, asking how everything got here, or how everything came to be as it is, is presuming the possibility of finding out, but evolution and the big bang are just the most reasonable explanations we can come up with. We really don't know anything. All we know is that under certain conditions, certain things usually happen, that there is a degree of predictability, but that there are too many imponderables to be sure of anything.

[Malcolm]

Trying to imagine what the world would be/look like if there was no consciousness to experience it produces a very weird feeling in me. This feeling seems to say "nothing would exist." If that is accepted, then the world exists because there is consciousness, and that might mean that consciousness creates the world, otherwise there would be nothing to be conscious of.
The very word "exist" seems meaningless if there is no consciousness to experience existence. It seems that the whole concept of "existence" depends upon consciousness.