God Or No God?

It is often said, “without God, there would be nothing.” Ehhh.....really? How would anybody know this to be true? Also, what is nothing? Possibly, thinking about the emptiness of space, one might be tempted to claim that empty space is nothing. However, empty space is not empty (for there is an almost endless supply of particles constantly coming in and out of existence in the vacuum of space) and space itself is not nothing. So it seems to come up short as to what might constitute nothingness. Furthermore, it seems any attempt to define what nothing might be becomes something in itself. Translation: the Universe is something in every conceivable way!

As such, how could anybody know what nothing is? So the argument can no longer be, “without God, there would be nothing.” It is now, “without God, there would be something else.” But once again, how would anybody know this? Could it be that nothingness is intrinsically impossible? Maybe if there ever was nothing, it decayed into something because nothingness is inherently unstable and unsustainable. Do I believe this? Not really, I’m simply posing it as an idea of what could be.

I don’t think one particular explanation of reality is any more likely than the next. If I had to guess, I would say nobody has the answer. It was attributed to J.B.S. Haldane as having said, “I have no doubt that in reality the future will be vastly more surprising than anything I can imagine. Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.”