Is answering God to "Why anything instead of nothing?" an evasion?

 
The question, "Why is there anything when there might have been nothing at all?" seems to make you want to answer, "God the creator is the answer." But it in fact is a lookalike answer. It is saying something to give the misleading impression that there is an answer. It is a trick.

 

The question poses as the most important question of all.  But for believers what they really want is the answer they want: God.  No honest person values the answer more than the question.  And nobody should be convinced that the answer is the right one when there is such desperation.

Are un-answered questions more important than answered ones?  They can be.   You never know how important an answer is until you get it.  You will never know if it is important at all.  The question could be unanswerable.  Being unanswerable would show that God is doing nothing to help and thus wants it to be unanswerable if he exists.
 
The miracle
 
 
The notion of something coming from nothing is the ultimate miracle. Some think it is the only acceptable understanding of a miracle. They say that only God can do this for only God has the unlimited power to bring anything out of nothing.
 
The other notion of a miracle is when the supernatural works on what already has been made from nothing. This is obviously less magical. If it happens, then you are less sure that the doer of the miracle is God. If a limb appears on an amputee out of nowhere, it is not possible to prove that it really came from nowhere. Perhaps some evil angel created an illusion that the man had a missing limb.
 
You might call anything you can't think of an explanation for, a miracle. But you will only end up a fool.
 
Why do religious people refer to some things they cannot account for as miracles? Why those and not other things? Because they use miracles as advertising and not as evidence for the work of God.

The view that all things need a cause and God is the cause that has no cause or the mover that doesn’t move is contradictory. It says nothing causes itself and then has a God who causes himself. It says nothing moves by itself so God doesn’t move and moves things. The only answer the Christians can give is that it is a miracle. But you would need to prove that miracles are possible before you can assume that creation can be explained by a miracle. There is no use in saying creation is a miracle or existence is a literal miracle unless there is proof that miracles are possible. No such proof can be had. You only see the results of a miracle if miracles happen not the miracle or the cause. For example, benevolent aliens going about in an invisible spaceship could be curing people all over the world including some at the Marian Shrine of Lourdes with their super-science. Miracles are only guesses and if we have to guess then we are wasting our time saying we have an explanation for the universe. And to use miracles to resolve contradictions isn’t fair. If a record says John cycled from Paris to Lyon in 24 hours this contradicts our knowledge and it will not help to say it must have been a miracle. That is just trying to obscure the contradiction and propound an absurdity. It is trying to make a non-explanation pose as an explanation. It is too much like dressing up a contradiction as a non-contradiction. Even if it were okay to do that in principle, it would not be right for human beings are prone to confusion and can adopt self-refuting concepts.
 
Miracles are not merely outside the realm of scientific study. They undermine the very need for science. It is fatal to science if it does experiments and discovers something if there could be a chance that some demon is tampering secretly with the results. Science would have to eliminate the work of the demon before it could trust its results and it cannot eliminate that. Science is based on the assumption that magic and top magic is getting nothing to turn into something does not happen.
 
Is God even possibly the answer?
 
"Why is there something rather than nothing?” Is God even a possible answer?
 
Bertrand Russell would have answered the question by saying that that there is just something, the universe and us. It just is and we just are so there is nothing more to be said.
 
He held that if nothing made God, nothing could have made us too. So it could be that nothing made us and there is no God. He was right. The universe and our existence is just a brute fact.
 
Religion says his is a stupid answer to the question. They say God answers the question. But if God is their answer to the why we must ask then why God exists? Why is there a God rather than no God? So it doesn’t help and religion knows it but always seeks to try and look clever. Religion says God cannot be understood so we cannot understand how there could be a God rather than no God.
 
"Why is there something rather than nothing?" is used dishonestly by religion. The question should be, "Why is there a God rather than no God?" Religion does not like to admit this for "Why is there something rather than nothing?" works well at fooling some believers into thinking religion makes sense.
 
"Why is there something rather than nothing?" Does the question even make sense?
 
Perhaps the question does not make sense because existence is a brute fact. It would be as silly as asking why breathing creatures breathe. They just do.
 
Possibilities actually do not count. Suppose God was a possible answer. But if he is then a billion of other things we cannot even think of could be the answer too. Why pick one? Probabilities matter not possibilities.
 
There are logical possibilities. There are possibilities that are indicated by evidence. There are relevant possibilities - ones that matter and help us to know and discover things. God is none of these.
 
There is no reason to think that God really is a possible answer. You have to show that magic and beings who can bring things from nothing make sense and that cannot be done. All you can do is guess that they make sense but that is no use to anybody. Nobody has any reason to agree with you. And isn't faith about giving reasons? If you assume that God is possible that does not mean he really is.
 
The caring aspect
 
The believers want only one response to the question, "Why something rather than nothing?"  They want it to be a creator that works for our wellbeing.  But that means that if you see clear proof that it does not care - it only takes one incident to do that - that you will not let yourself see it.  The wife does not need her husband to cheat on her a thousand times before she realises he is bad for her!  The believers want to override proof with their version of logic! 
 
Spirit

To say God is the source of the universe is to make him the source of matter and energy. It is to say he is not matter and he is not energy. He is spirit - or non-material. Spirit is what is real but what is not material. It is an entity with no parts or material components.

People think they experience themselves as spirit. They think their thoughts are spirit because nobody can measure a thought. But they only think it. We cannot measure or weigh a thought but that does not mean they cannot be measured or weighed. It only means we cannot do it. There is no evidence at all that spirit exists.

 

Agnostics should start with the question if spirit is real or if it exists. It should not be first and foremost concerned about God's existence but the existence of spirit. That is because God cannot exist if spirit is impossible or absurd. Belief in spirit ticks all the boxes for reification. Reification is when abstract concepts are mistaken for something real and substantial.

 

The likes of Alister McGrath have no reason to say God is spirit and the spirit source of all things.

 

When believers in God ask why there is something rather than nothing, they in fact assume spirit could be an answer. They think God is the creator spirit.

 

But they have no right to assume that for there is no evidence that the idea of spirit makes sense. It is only in their heads.

 

The question hides the real and embarrassing question!!

 

If you believe morality has no foundation unless there is a God you are creating a God of the Gap. He is just there to fill a vacuum that is there or that you think is there.

 

Christians use God to explain the start of the universe, how the universe continues to exist, how evil is really a blessing when the full picture is completed, how morality can be justified. But which of these gaps is the most important to them? It will be the morality one. They admit that. They argue that God is to be promoted for the sake of having a relationship with him and not just as a theory or doctrine or explanation for the universe.  God being love means that it is more important to know that than to think or know he created all things. It is the essential if there is a choice.

 

The Christians usually say that the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?  The answer is God" is the only one that matters but they don't really think that at all.  The question does not look so good when you realise that the God of the Morality gap is the real question and makes no sense.

FINALLY

 

We are conditioned not to notice but as we cannot understand how God can lift nothing into something any more than he can create a stone that is too heavy for him to lift and lift it God is not a clear explanation at all.  If that is true something so strange that we cannot imagine it or guess at it could be true as well.  Other problems are how God is described as incomprehensible as well.  It is so abstract and difficult that you wonder why believers are so hooked on it.  One suspects they invent what they want God to be and invest that invention as creator.  It is about pleasing themselves.

Imagine there is nothing. If there should be something and the question would be, "Why is there nothing rather than something?" Or to paraphrase, “Why is there nothing when there should be something or why is there nothing rather than something?” This question is absurd for we see that it is logically possible for there to have been nothing at all and we see that something cannot really appear without appearing from anything. The point this makes so far is that existence can't be explained and so we shouldn't even try. This would imply that the creator God concept is denying this and is therefore evil and bigoted and narrow.

 

But there is a simple answer.  Something always existed and became all things.  That is all we need to know and that is what we should content ourselves with.  Nothing ever came from nothing.