A question that has plagued mankind throughout her existence can be phrased thusly   “Where does Everything come from?” This is especially vexing to a society that increasingly doubts the existence of God, because, if there is no one to create the Universe, then where did all this cool stuff like stars, planets and people come from?  There is the theory of the Big Bang but even that requires the pre-requisite of a primeval atom to get this whole mess started. So, the Great Mystery continues, where does stuff come from?

It should be quite evident to the casual observer what ‘Nothing’ is. For example: What do I have in my bank account? Nothing. The name says it all really, “No Thing”. The easiest and clearest way to define ‘Nothing’ is the way Merriam-Webster does “Not any thing” a complete lack of substance or matter. So to qualify ‘Nothing’, you therefore, must have ‘Something’ otherwise ‘Nothing’ ceases to have meaning and cannot possibly exist as a word, as a value, as anything or even as nothing.

That leads back to the Question of the Universe and the grand point of these musings. ‘Something’ must have always existed, otherwise ‘Nothing’ would have been the only thing to have existed, and since the previous paragraph states that as illogical, there has always been ‘Something’ throughout all the history of space/time up until this point. Which means that ‘Something’ has existed since the beginning of eternity and since eternity has no beginning, ‘Something’ has always been. That ‘Something’ may not necessarily have been this Universe, which, compared with eternity (and according to scientists), is pretty young.

This leads back to the question of “Where did this ‘Something’ derive from?” which again could lead to the answer of “God, of course of course” but that leaves the response “Where did this God derive from?” A good Christian/Muslim/Jew/Etc should probably answer “Because he willed it so” or “He has always been” Which are as good as any answers, but a skeptic will continue to be skeptical. Which means the answer is still not answered.

So, Nothing cannot exist without Something to qualify it, and maybe God did it, but he does not feel like answering any questions, so that leaves us with examining the evidence again. Something must have come from Somewhere, but where is Somewhere? Maybe another universe, perhaps our universe is but a single atom within another universe, which means that maybe each atom in our universe is another entire universe, which would have made Hiroshima and Nagasaki much more devastating. If our universe is but an atom amongst countless other atoms in another universe, then where did that other universe come from? Hah! Another question and one that expands exponentially in all directions.

Eternity, as stated above, is a long time. It would be hard for the human mind to comprehend the full scope of eternity. Maybe it goes on in every direction forever or maybe it’s cyclical and eventually this exact moment will be reproduced. Either way, it seems logical that there has always been ‘Something’ which does not necessarily stipulate that ‘Something’ will always exist, because now that we ‘Somethings’ have been around to qualify it, ’Nothing’ has no problem hanging around well after we are all gone. We probably will not have a chance, as a civilization, as a people, as a member of Earth, the Sol system, the Galaxy or the Universe to find out the truth and I doubt God will tell us anything either, that guy likes to play things close to the chest.
August 19th, 2009