Why is there anything? If so, was it created and when?

David777

David777

Well-known Member
Location
Silicon Valley
Well maybe a god without limitations or an ultimate intelligent entity with limitations created it? But then what created god or whatever the creative process was and when? An illogical infinite regression. Some might suggest just like stuff, maybe god always existed however due to the complexities of a god versus elementary stuff that is vastly less logical. No to my simple logic, stuff at least at elementary matter/force space/time levels has always existed eternally in the past. Either stuff and space always existed or nothing existed and since we absolutely know stuff and space exists, it has always existed thus never needed to be created. Such noted, that does not demand that stuff is everywhere or the same stuff is everywhere though that may be true or that what is now has always been this way.

Posing this simple philosophical question as a test in order to gauge whether those on this board can discuss such issues civilly.
 

The theory is that the big bang happened because of a small bit of high energy matter in space exploded causing the universe to expand. This in turn started the creation of neurtrinos, atoms, matter, and of all the planets. And the scientists still can't pinpoint when this might have happened. But...where did this small bit of high energy matter come from? Something had to create it, right? Who knows.
 

Somehow the Big Crunch seems plausible. An expanding and contracting universe, not unlike a yoyo. How many times has that possibly taken place? In any case it works for my weird earth brain and explains that feeling of being jerked around and being toyed with.

Any concept must begin with nothingness, imo and an understanding of nothingness.
 
Some scientists believe that quantum mechanics suggests that nothing is inherently “unstable,” that it’s possible for little bubbles of space-time (something) to form spontaneously (out of nothing), and that if a thing is not forbidden by the laws of quantum physics, it is guaranteed to happen. Therefore, say quantum physicists, the arising of “something” was inevitable.
 
Last edited:
In my opinion the answer to those questions are at the moment beyond our comprehension. It is basically the same as which came first the chicken or the egg. It seems nothing is truly solid so maybe anything and everything do not exist. Maybe we and everything we call reality is a figment of our own imagination. Just about anything anyone can come up with as an answer is a possibility. I wonder if we have created a universe every time we have split an atom? My answer to your question is I do not have any tangible answer.
 
My contribution will be a related question. Given that our understanding is at best partial what do we make of the universe or at least that part of it that we have studied, measured and explored?

It the universe and everything in it simply an accident of physics and chemistry?
Alternately, is there meaning in what is, and does that meaning imply some purpose for what is? Would it matter is the universe, or our corner of it, ceased to exist?
 
Hypothesis : We all experience absolute nothingness everyday when we enter dreamless sleep. (We are virtually dead.) Then something starts happening as we awake. Our mind begins to remember our surroundings and then we begin to imagine how we feel, and the ways we want to go about our day. It is all for survival. If we never experienced nothingness we would never experience somethingness.
 
Paco Dennis said:
We all experience absolute nothingness everyday when we enter dreamless sleep. (We are virtually dead.)
Click to expand...
Is drool involved?
I think I died a virtual death last night
Drooled a river
Paco Dennis said:
If we never experienced nothingness we would never experience somethingness.
Click to expand...

I think I remember a song like that several decades ago
'Course I was loaded

I need another drink
 
An ancient question without answers. We can know how existence occured but not why.
See "Why Does The World Exist?" by Jim Holt. Interviews with notable philosophers who cannot agree
or think the question is not important.
 
Something happened, about 13 billion years ago, which cooled, merged, and coalesced into stuff. That stuff is the universe. And the reason it happened- TA DA It happened. It's hard for the human mind to grapple with the enormous complexity, and vast scopes of the universe. We just don't know very much about it, yet.
 
Last edited:
We humans reason in terms of hierarchies. It's just what we do. Everything must have a beginning. It must start at nothing and expand from there. Maybe reality is a steady state of being and we can't see it as anything but little dots of beginnings and endings because we aren't equipped to understand it any other way.
 
I can’t explain why there is anything, the answer you seek is written on the subway wall.
 
Pleasant set of posts, thank you.

This is of course a question that has no as yet provable answers, only theories and hypothesis, and probably never will. Some people both from various positions of philosophy and science feel strongly about their views and historically such has led to rather unpleasant eras of discussion. For example in recent decades many physicists and cosmologists insisted time and all else began at the Big Bang and were critical of any attempt to state otherwise. Likewise criticized any hypothesis that is impossible to prove as though only those using mathematics and scientific methods within the known universe ought be allowed. Likewise that it is non-sense to state there is anything beyond the edge of the universe. But such positions did not stand long even among their own peers. There are a list of past historical ideas championed by elite dogmatic scientists that have eventually been discarded with Einstein arguably adding the most famous.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/th...erse-has-cosmologists-rethinking-the-big-bang

A cyclic model of the universe is designed to solve some of the seemingly unsolvable problems of the Big Bang and inflation models. “It allows us to go beyond the Big Bang, but without any kind of magical philosophical issues,” says Stephon Alexander, a professor of physics at Brown University, and the co-inventor of an inflation model of the universe based on string theory. “Because time has always existed in the past.”

Did the universe begin to exist or is eternal?- a brief survey

https://www.news24.com/news24/mynew...o-exist-or-is-eternal-a-brief-survey-20150718

The Universe Is Made of Tiny Bubbles Containing Mini-Universes

https://www.vice.com/en/article/j5y...bles-containing-mini-universes-scientists-say

My own leanings are as noted on my original post, that time and stuff whatever that is, is infinite eternally in the past though may not have always been as we now experience such. Since we through self evidence know it exists, it never needed to be created. The Big Bang may be but a cosmic moment within the infinite past. Or as some scientist theorize may have been the start of everything. Or as theological philosophers relate maybe an eternal God started it all. The only way we might ever know that truth is if he ever tells us so. :unsure:
 
The Earth is just part of the universe. A tree is just part of the universe. A dog is just part of the universe. Humans are just part of the universe. Reason is just part of the universe. I find it amazing that the universe has the apparent need to understand itself.
 
Paco Dennis said:
The Earth is just part of the universe. A tree is just part of the universe. A dog is just part of the universe. Humans are just part of the universe. Reason is just part of the universe. I find it amazing that the universe has the apparent need to understand itself.
Click to expand...
A conundrum and a paradox indeed.
 

You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top