WAS THERE EVER NOTHING?

A thought journey on the beginning of time and the
origin of the universe
Have you ever thought
about the beginning ?
What is that, you say?
You know -- whatever
it was that showed up
first. Or whatever it
was that was here
first, at the earliest
moment in time. Have
you ever strained your
brain to think about that?
Wait a minute, you say, isn't it possible that in the
beginning there was nothing ? Isn't it possible that
kazillions of years ago, there wasn't anything at all?
That's certainly a theory to consider. So let's consider
it -- but first by way of analogy.
Let's say you have a large room. It's fully enclosed
and is about the size of a football field. The room is
locked, permanently, and has no doors or windows,
and no holes in its walls.
Inside the room there is...nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Not a particle of anything. No air at all. No dust at
all. No light at all. It's a sealed room that's pitch
black inside. Then what happens?
Well, let's say your goal is to get something --
anything at all -- into the room. But the rules are: you
can't use anything from outside the room to do that.
So what do you do?
Well, you think, what if I try to create a spark inside
the room? Then the room would have light in it, even
for just a moment. That would qualify as something.
Yes, but you are outside the room. So that's not
allowed.
But, you say, what if I could teleport something into
the room, like in Star Trek? Again, that's not
allowable, because you'd be using things from outside
the room.
Here again is the dilemma: you have to get
something inside the room using only what's in the
room. And, in this case, what's in the room is
nothing.
Well, you say, maybe a tiny particle of something will
just show up inside the room if given enough time.
There's three problems with this theory. First, time by
itself doesn't do anything. Things happen over time,
but it's not time that makes them happen. For
example, if you wait 15 minutes for cookies to bake,
it's not the 15 minutes that bakes them, it's the heat
in the oven. If you set them on the counter for 15
minutes, they're not going to bake.
In our analogy, we've got a fully enclosed room with
absolutely nothing in it. Waiting 15 minutes will not,
in and of itself, change the situation. Well, you say,
what if we wait eons? An eon is merely a bunch of
15-minute segments all pressed together. If you
waited an eon with your cookies on the counter,
would the eon bake them?
The second problem is this: why would anything just
"show up" in the empty room? It would need a reason
why it came to be. But there is nothing inside the
room at all. So what's to stop that from remaining
the case? There would be nothing inside the room to
cause something to show up (and yet the reason
must come from inside the room).
Well, you say, what about a tiny particle of
something? Wouldn't that have a greater chance of
materializing in the room than something larger like,
for example, a football?
That brings up the third problem: size. Like time, size
is an abstract. It's relative. Let's say you have three
baseballs, all ranging in size. One is ten feet wide,
one is five feet wide, one is normal size. Which one is
more likely to materialize in the room?
The normal-size baseball? No! It would be the same
likelihood for all three. The size wouldn't matter. It's
not the issue. The issue is whether or not any
baseball of any size could just "show up" in our
sealed, empty room.
If you don't think the smallest baseball could just
show up in the room, no matter how much time
passed, then you must conclude the same thing even
for an atom. Size is not an issue. The likelihood of a
small particle materializing without cause is no
different than a refrigerator materializing without
cause!
Now let's stretch our analogy further, literally. Let's
take our large, pitch-black room and remove its walls.
And let's extend the room so that it goes on infinitely
in all directions. Now there is nothing outside the
room, because the room is all there is. Period.
This black infinite room has no light, no dust, no
particles of any kind, no air, no elements, no
molecules. It's absolute nothingness. In fact, we can
call it Absolutely Nothing .
So here's the question: if originally -- bazillions of
years ago -- there was Absolutely Nothing, wouldn't
there be Absolutely Nothing now?
Yes. For something -- no matter how small -- cannot
come from Absolutely Nothing. We would still have
Absolutely Nothing.
What does that tell us? That Absolutely Nothing never
existed. Why? Because, if Absolutely Nothing ever
existed, there would still be Absolutely Nothing!
If Absolutely Nothing ever existed, there would not be
anything outside it to cause the existence of
anything.
Again, if Absolutely Nothing ever existed, there would
still be Absolutely Nothing.
However, something exists. Actually, many things
exist. You, for example, are something that exists, a
very important something. Therefore, you are proof
that Absolutely Nothing never existed.
Now, if Absolutely Nothing never existed, that means
there was always a time when there was at least
Something in existence. What was it?
Was it one thing or many things? Was it an atom? A
particle? A molecule? A football? A mutant baseball?
A refrigerator? Some cookies?