Why Something Rather Than Nothing?

[Surgenator]

I ask: Why is there something rather than nothing?

The question is befuddling. Why should there be nothing rather than what we have around us? Why privilege either "nothing" or "something"? Why cannot this world be everything that has ever been and will be?
[...]
Let possible world Empty be defined as follows: ForAll(X I can think of)[X does not exist in Empty]. Then

(1) Nothing = ThereExists[Empty]. We are dealing with "universes," uni = "one," so any possible world is a maximally consistent state of affairs. As a result, Empty swallows up every other reality, so it is not necessary to say "there exists only Empty."

Let our actual world be called Earth. Then

(2) Something = ThereExists[Earth].

Neither is privileged.

In this case, it does not matter that Earth may have existed forever and will continue to do so indefinitely. We are not looking for a physical cause prior in time to Earth. Moreover, once Earth exists, I grant that it may be forever imperishable. First, there are no "predators" outside it that may kill it. Second, material objects, though they can in the course of their lives change from one form into another and even into energy, nevertheless seem imperishable. We might say that they "follow the law" so faithfully that they are granted immortality. They fear disobedience so much as to persevere in being forever.

I really hope you mean universe and not Earth, because the Earth has a beginning after our previous sun went nova. Plus, Earth does have predators: black holes, wandering planets and stars, and also our own sun.

But we are seeking an explanation of why (1) is false and (2) is true.

For (2) is a contingent proposition. The question is not what, if anything, preceded Earth in time in the actual world, but why the non-necessary situation prevails.

If it is not explicitly forbitten, then a possible situation will prevail eventually. That is what quantum mechanics tells us.

We ask for an explanation why (2) which is contingent and certainly need not be true is in fact true. But to explain something is to reduce it to a cause.

The requirement of a cause is unjustified. In fact, we know of plenty of things in nature that are uncaused. For example, nuclear decays are uncaussed. Nothing makes the nucleus decay; it decays on its own. Another example is an electron dropping to a lower energy state and releasing a photon. There is no force causing it. The electron just has another energy state it can be at, and it has some probability of ending up there.

We certainly do not explain why "2 + 2 = 4" is true, because it's a necessary truth, if there was one. If pressed, we say that it is true due to the logical and arithmetical structure of the human mind. The opposite is neither conceivable nor possible, because possible worlds are imagined by human minds, and their ideal content is unavoidably constrained by the structure of these minds.

You clearly never spend time with a group of drunken mathematicians. There are certain axioms you must take to get to 2+2=4. However, you can create another set of axioms that give an internally consistent view.

And the rest of your argument about "goodness" is crap that I'll leave to someone to dispute.