I’ve been thinking on and off about the question “why is there something rather than nothing?” before falling asleep for the past few months. Not much has come from thinking about it. I’m considering actually reading a philosophy book on it, I heard there’s a recent good one about the question but you know, that’s cheating.
Anyway, all I really have gotten to is that in some ways I do think the question is confused but even there I don’t think I really escape it by examining it. So then I started thinking about why I find the question so fascinating and I think it’s because I ask “why” and then look for intent. I mean I don’t feel like when I ask it i’m looking for a causal story. And that’s about it, I don’t think I can get to a place from which to see an explanation and I can’t think of a satisfying one and answers seem to beg the same question again in alternate form.
The biggest way I think it’s confused is that, you know, we don’t experience ‘nothing’ so it seems like a false comparison. Or if you rephrase it to ‘why does the universe exist at all’ or whatever then well, maybe if we could see some non-existing universes then we could compare and understand the difference.
But like I said, I take the “intent” turn when I think of it more and I guess the best answer I come up with is derived from a dream I had some time ago. In the dream I’m talking with God and we’re present in space together observing the universe more clearly than the clearest starry night you’ve ever seen and we’re conversing (non-audibly, why would that be necessary?) with each other. He knows I have these questions and want to know the secrets of the universe. But what he tells me is this — the universe is essentially information and if I knew the answer the universe would implode upon itself. So this particular not-knowing is a necessary condition. If I’d persist he’d communicate something like, “there’s no cause for concern” and then he passed along some sort of infinite peace.
I assume the God I ran into in my dream was the God of the Skeptics because who else returns unending inquiry with peace?
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