Something or Nothing

It’s hard to imagine an easier question. Either it is…or it is not! But it turns out not to be so simple after all. Where to begin? How about with the opening verses of Genesis:

“In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth – and the earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters…”

Something? Or nothing? The ancient Hebrew uses Tohu and Bohu, Chaos and Void, to describe the primal condition. Is that something…or nothing? Chaos is the absence of order; void is the absence of substance (matter/energy). Is the absence of something something…or nothing?

Parmenides, the father of Western philosophy, is clear: “What is, is ungenerated and imperishable…Nor was it once, nor will it be, since it is now…”

So is Genesis: “Then God said, let there be light and there  was light…God then separated the light from the darkness.”

What darkness? Presumably, the darkness that was over the abyss (above). God created the light and separated this light from darkness. Now is there something? You bet! Science tells us that light is waves and particles, substance and order.  

Creation is the creation of something. Whatever we imagine precedes the creative moment can reasonably be labeled ‘nothing’. According to Genesis, ‘something’ is walled off from all else, i.e. from darkness, Tohu and Bohu, Chaos and Void. 

It can’t be any plainer. Darkness and abyss, chaos and void, are not created by God; they are simply a way of saying “nothing”. But why does this matter? We are bedeviled by ‘dualism’, the idea that opposites are ontological parallels: hot and cold, wise and foolish, good and bad, being and nothingness. 

But there is no cold, nothing is foolish, nothing bad, and, it should go without saying, nothing that is ‘nothing’. Nemo is not Odysseus’ name…or that of a fish. What we call ‘cold’ is the absence of heat, ‘foolishness’ is the absence of wisdom, ‘bad’ the absence of good, ‘nothing’ the absence of something; ‘nemo’ is the absence of anyone. 

Christians believe that God created the Universe ex nihilo, out of nothing. Notice I don’t say post nihilo, ‘after nothing’, because there is nothing that precedes being, not even ‘nothingness’ per se. ‘Nothing’ is not ‘something in disguise’; it is nothing, no thing. ‘Nothing’ is not the potentiality of something; it is nothing. 

Some have suggested that the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo contradicts the account of creation in Genesis. Nothing precedes creation. Tohu and Bohu, Chaos and Void, are metaphors for ‘nothing’ – the absence of any ‘thing’ (substance, matter/energy) and the absence of any ‘order’. 

We have built a whole cosmology around the ‘fake’ idea of nothing. We say, “Before Big Bang, there was nothing; after death, there is nothing.” But ‘there is nothing’ is not a well-formed English sentence; it’s meaningless gibberish. 

There is only one thing that can be said with absolute certainty: “It is!” Descartes notwithstanding, it’s not cogito or even sum, though these are important ideas; it’s est. 

You don’t need to have read philosophy at Cambridge (UK) or studied it in Cambridge (US). It was evident to Parmenides (above), and it was evident to the authors of Exodus: “I am who/what/that am.” (3: 14) It was evident to Jesus and John: “I am”. It was evident to a medieval Irish poet (possibly St. Dallan): “Naught is all else to me save that Thou art.” 

Now you may be noting that Jesus and Dallan are ‘personalizing’ being. Rightly so. What they call ‘God’, we are accustomed to call ‘Being’; God is Being, per se.  BTW, defining God this way should eliminate any need for atheism or agnosticism. God is not a being among beings. God is Being, per se, through whom all that exist exist. Est, it is, he is. 

We have fallen in love with Real Numbers…and rightly so! They have taken us to the Moon and back. But the set of Real Numbers includes Zero and ‘0’ is a mathematical construct, useful, but a construct, nonetheless. Zero per se does not exist. How could it? It’s zero! Zero represents what does not exist! ‘Zero’ represents ‘nothing’ and ‘nothing’ is not something; ‘nothing’ does not exist. 

The Science of Probability fetishizes nothing. When something is impossible, we say its P = 0. ‘P = 0’ rolls off our tongues as if there is some sort of continuum between what is infinitesimally probable and what is absolutely impossible. 

Calculus notwithstanding, there is an infinite gap (filled with hyperreal numbers) between zero and ‘the smallest possible positive Real Number’. There is an infinite difference between what is unlikely (no matter how unlikely) and what is truly impossible. Proton decay is unlikely; a squared circle is impossible. Not the same thing!

We are indebted to Jacques Derrida for the contemporary realization the being per se is quantized. Differánce is a quantum of difference, a quantum of est.

Where does that leave our post-Parmenidean philosopher class? Pascal, for example, developed a complex logic to demonstrate the efficacy of belief in God; he needn’t have. God (as we use the term here) is, period. It is impossible to say otherwise. God cannot not exist, nor can anyone sincerely or meaningfully say otherwise. Perhaps God might not have been, I don’t know that, but he is. There is something rather than nothing. Something exists; nothing does not. It is undeniable.

And Sartre? His Being and Nothingness (Etre et Neant) is the existentialist’s Bible, and justly so. But Sartre’s neant is ‘negation’; functionally, it’s a verb. It presupposes that there is something (etre en soi) to negate. The negation of something is still not nothing. 

In the Real World beyond the realm of Real Numbers, (~X) + X ≠ 0. Instead, Ι(~X) + XΙ = є. Or, in the words of my 5 year old grandson, “Everything exists!”

Keep the conversation going.

1. Click here to contact us on any matter. How did you like the post? How could we do better in the future? Suggestions welcome.

2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link.

3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers; click here to view out Writers’ Specs