A little while ago, a friend of mine said, “You know what death is like?”
“Not having died,” I said. “No.”
“Nothing.”
“Come again?’
“It’ll just be one big nothing,” he said. “Do you remember what you were like before you were born?”
“Nope.”
“Death will be just like that. Going back to that nothing.”
“So,” I said, sitting back in my chair. “You believe you came from nothing?”
“Yes.”
“No previous lives? You weren’t the king of France or his scullery maid?”
“Reincarnation? That’s a fairy tale.”
“Well,” I said. “Lots of people would disagree with you, but let’s stick with the ‘from nothing part.'”
“Uh oh,” my friend said. “I’ve got you started.”
“Can you make something out of nothing?”
“I…..”
“You cannot,” I continued. “It’s impossible. The gulf beyond something and nothing is an infinite qualitative difference. To be fair, even ‘nothing’ is something. But you’re talking about a nothing that we can’t even comprehend. NO THING.”
“Are you going to talk about God now?”
“Not at all,” I said. “But if you were, as you say, nothing before you were born and, since the difference between nothing and something is an unbridgeable gap, then anything that emerges from that abyss, void, or whatever you want to call it, is different from nothing on an infinite qualitative level. So, even if all that remains of you after the universe has cooled to an soup of elementary particles a zillion years from now is the forgotten fact that you were once here – that tiny sliver of something would still be infinitely greater than the nothing from which you say you emerged.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Logic’s a bitch, my friend. If you came from nothing then it’s impossible for you to ever be nothing again.”
“You’re very strange.”
“So is making something out of nothing.” I said. “But we’re here anyway.”
For some reason I’m imagining this being delivered over a beer with a cigar used for emphasis!
“If you came from nothing then it’s impossible for you to ever be nothing again.”
That’s the part I never got. Once you allow something from nothing, there is no reason not to allow something to nothing. I suppose it’s a matter of faith that it can only work in one direction.
The Great Mystery.
Enjoyable reading. That guy was out of his league.
Excellent post, thanks for this one. My brother believed something similar shortly before he himself died.
I’m glad he’s wrong.
sorry, but if everything came from nothing (the big bang)… then it can revert back to nothing. including us.
still, i admire your effort.
The Big Bang doesn’t necessarily mean everything came from “Nothing”. Physicists can work their way back from the present to the Bang, but our mathematics breaks down at that last moment before the Bang. An “infinitely small” point is not the same as Nothing.
Yes, but where did that “infinitely small point” come from? Everything that exists has a cause. I once heard a guy talk about how universe just naturally arose out of a vaccuum like it was no big deal. Ok, then where did the vaccuum come from? All the things we’re talking about are SOMETHING. For that matter, even the concept of “nothing” is something. It is a head scratcher for sure.
Y’all doing ok?
All is well over here.Thanks for asking.
reconcile these viewpoint with the Big Bang when the universe was created from nothing
Huh?
Both are syllogistic fallacies.