Why does the universe exist at all?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by beingofone
If you push atheism to the extreem (and I do mean extreem) conclusion, you will arrive at the same place and you will find me sitting here grinning at you .

No. That just sounds Hobbe's extreme Skepticism or Solipsism.

[Boris Godunov]

Has anyone yet mentioned that the answer is because the Flying Spaghetti Monster willed it so?

[Jack_www]

Well if you believe in God, it was because God wanted to share life with others and he wanted to create the Universe and life, and that is why the Universe and life exist. If you believe in the big bang, which I know a lot of people here do, then there is no purpose or reason that the universe came into existance, and there is no bigger purpose to it all. Etheir way it seems pretty simple to me.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by ajbera
Why is there something instead of nothing? The only reason I can think of, though I don't know why, is that something must in some way be better than nothing. I don't know how "better" is quantified or qualified, however.

If that were true then Anslem's ontological 'proof' of gods existance would mean there really must be a God. Anselm's proof stumbles at least in part because it can't be proven that existence is inherently better than non existance.

[Geronimo]

A lot of people seem to accept that a realty of no existence whatsoever anywhere is something that could have been and expect that the observation that reality isn't like this requires some explaining.

I don't think it would have been possible even setting the athropic principle aside for nothing whatsoever anywhere to exist. The problem would be that such a total lack of existence would require something to prevent things from existing somewhere else, ie in other universes or realties whatever. Otherwise if you have nothing existing in just one universe then that universe itself doesn't really exist in the first place and so that 'universe' is at best irrelevant.


True lack of existence could only be meaningful as a default state if it is imposed in all possible universes and if it is imposed on all possible universes then we are no longer considering the set of all possible universes but only those in which nothing exists! The very nature of a universe as a causually closed system seems to make the notion of maintaining a single condition in all possible universes impossible.

I think the only valid way to ask this question is for the asker to ask themselves "how is it that I exist?" since only then can you escape the difficulty of imposing lack of existance on all possible realities and just consider why your own little observed reality exists.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Geronimo
If that were true then Anslem's ontological 'proof' of gods existance would mean there really must be a God. Anselm's proof stumbles at least in part because it can't be proven that existence is inherently better than non existance.

Yes, that's one of it's biggest flaws. The other one is it relies on a priori arguments, which doesn't seem possible wrt us.