5 ms·

Why is there something rather than nothing?

• coldtea 12y ago
  >Their admittedly controversial answer is that the entire universe, from the fireball of the Big Bang to the star-studded cosmos we now inhabit, popped into existence from nothing at all. It had to happen, they say, because "nothing" is inherently unstable. The real headline should be "Astonishing naivety shown by journalists and/or physicists". Of the philosophical kind, I mean. Saying that ""nothing" is inherently unstable" just moves the goalposts, and is not an answer as to why "there is something rather than nothing" at all. This "inherently unstable" nothing, with its quantum flunctuations etc, is not the absolute nothing people talk about when they make this question. This distinction is philosophy (or epistemology, if you will) 101.