OK, so having dispelled some myths about science and cosmology, let's get philosophical. Why is there something rather than nothing? As shown earlier, science can't answer a "why" question, although that doesn't stop people who believe in Science™ from trying. People like Richard Dawkins will say that the laws of physics require that the universe spring from "nothing" - and then famously go on to define "nothing" as "something." If you haven't watched it yet, go back to part one and you'll find his ridiculous remark in the video.
"But Mike, didn't you just spend the last post talking about how the universe needs a creator? Isn't this the same thing?" The argument from existence isn't about how things came to be, but about why they exist. To use an analogy, the light in the room came on because I flipped the light switch, but the light exists in the room now because the power company is producing electricity. This question is not did things get created, but why do they exist, even now?
Or, more generally, if there is something, why is there something? There could as easily be nothing. If there was nothing, how is there something now?
There are only two possible answers to the question of "why something rather than nothing?" The first is that everything that could be, is. Sounds crazy, but this is a viable answer to the problem of existence. The second answer is that there is one thing that is existence itself, that gives rise to the universe. That second thing is the thing we call God, by definition. If you try to say there are two (or more) things that gave rise to the universe, then you have to ask how there could be two or more things. We don't have that problem with one thing, because there is nothing to distinguish that one thing from itself. If we have two or more things, then they have to be distinct from each other in some way (otherwise they'd be one thing). And that distinction is something that needed to exist apart from the two things. For instance, if there were a "male" and "female" god, then there would have to be such a thing as "maleness" and "femaleness" existing apart from these gods, and the issue of existence is not solved.
So, what is existence; one thing, or everything? Occam's razor states that if there are multiple hypotheses, the simplest one tends to be the correct one. One thing is infinitely simpler than everything... but Occam's razor isn't the only thing pointing to one thing. Saying "everything exists" leads to a number of problems. First it is another "turtles all the way down" kind of answer. Secondly, we have the self-contradictory notion that if everything that could be exists, since God could be, then God exists, and therefore not everything exists. But perhaps even more convincingly, if everything exists then we have an inescapable conclusion that God exists when we look at the argument from design (which is the topic of another post, for now take my word for it).
This is far from a rigorous treatment of the argument from existence, and I am not a philosopher, but I hope it gets you thinking about the issue, maybe enough to learn more about it.
In the next post, a retrospective and on to more evidence.
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