Why is there somehing instead of npthing?

[Toontown]

If you ask a question like that, we have license to answer any way we choose. It's not like any of us can definitively and falsifiably answer the question. So I'm answering it like this:

Fundamental reality is different from spacetime reality. Spacetime emerges from fundamental reality, but isn't much like fundamental reality, just as a tree is not much like the ground from which it grows or the seed from which it sprouts.

Which means that the logic of fundamental reality is not much like spacetime logic. You all being spacetime critters, fundamental logic is just naturally going to be counterintuitive to you.

At the fundamental level, the question "Why is there something instead of nothing?" is a false dichotomy. Why wouldn't there be both something and nothing? What prevents either one? Why can't an acausal quantum fluctuation happen in the midst of nothingness? What's to stop it?

That which is not prohibited is mandatory. Or at least probable.

The Void is nothingness, but it is not absolute nothingness. The Void fluctuates acausally. Positive and negative energy spikes in the Void all sum to zero energy, and yet the energy spikes exist. So the Void is both something and nothing. It is something that sums to nothing.

But the part that really ties a spacetime critter's brain up in a knot is the fact that our pocket universe is arbitrary. Everything about it is arbitrary. All it's components are arbitrary. The thing started out as an acausal quantum fluctuation in a Void. Hell, it could have been a teapot, or Yosemite Sam. But it had to be something. And the only reason we, specifically are in this specific pocket universe is because this is the one we, specifically, would be in. We wouldn't be in a Yosemite Sam universe, now would we. No. We would be in a universe like this.

But the really scary part is, our identities are also arbitrary. We didn't have to be the fine young monkeys we are now at all. We could have been a bunch of dumbass YosemiteSamverse critters, and may yet find ourselves in some such predicament, and, hypothetically, numerous other less than ideal predicaments. I don't hope to end up in any such predicament, but think about it. It was a damn wooish quantum fluctuation. In a freakish Void.

[Robert_S]

Looks like I picked the wrong decade to stop dropping acid!

Hey Toontown! Long time no see, hows things going?

[Toontown]

Looks like I picked the wrong decade to stop dropping acid!

Hey Toontown! Long time no see, hows things going?

Hey Robert. There is no wrong decade to stop dropping acid. You don''t need no freaking wierd pills. Reality is wierd enough.

For me, things are going well, thank you. For the rest of the world, not so much.

[Audley Strange]

Because we invented the words "is" "nothing" and "something"

[Mysturji]

As you read the words upon this screen, you realise that the message you are receiving is not an attribute of the letters of the words themselves: The printed line does not contain information, it transmits information.
Where, then, is the information you are receiving, if it is not upon the screen?

[mistermack]

It's a false choice.
Why should there be something INSTEAD of nothing.
There is in fact plenty of both. But there is a lot more of nothing, than there is of something.
Infinitely more.

[Drewish]

There is nothing. PROVE ME WRONG!!!!

[Schneibster]

Uncertainty. Nothing might not actually be nothing all the time, just nothing on average.

[Drewish]

[Animavore]

Isn't this just one of those questions theists ask followed by a load of waffle ending in, "Because God"?
At which point the clever-clogs asks, "Why is there God rather than nothing"?

[Schneibster]

Well, they used to get away with that. Until we found out that nothing isn't really nothing.

[Animavore]

Someone should tell them.

[Schneibster]

Everyone did. They don't believe it because it means their super magic sky daddy doesn't exist.

[Animavore]

Only if they insist on trying to use abuse science to make it seem like scientists are only coming to realise what they knew all along ( ). The more prudent theist, like Georges Lemaître, would say that God is a matter for the heart and not embarrass themselves by trying to use science to prove God.
Of course he had the advantage of being a scientist, unlike other theologians like WLC.

[Drewish]