I wanted to write an essay about “nothing” because this is one subject to which I instinctively feel a kinship. In that there is little to know about nothing, my storehouse of available knowledge on the issue may be comprehensive.

 

Of course, it isn’t true that there is nothing to know about the concept of nothing. The abstraction has been a brain teaser for millennia and has short-fused the minds of philosophers and thinkers for the whole time humans have been attempting to think about nothing whatsoever. Aristotle may have offered a reasonable attempt: "'Nothing' is what rocks dream about." 

 

Since nothing isn't anything, there are no physical facts or measurements to worry about. An expert on the subject of “nothing” is pretty much in the same place as the rest of us: nowhere. 

 

If you ask humans, even "experts," to think about "nothing,” they won't do that. They won’t because they can’t, even if they sincerely want to. Sincerity will not help: the human brain cannot think about nothing because the concept is such a pure abstraction that even thinking about it is contradictory, in that “it" is a noun, and nothing has no nouns. If you want someone to think about nothing, the request is just as accurately put this way: “Don’t think about anything!... all right, quick,.. what do you see?”

 

The request to “think about nothing” is an oxymoron: you can’t form word pictures of nothing since any attributes your mind uses to attempt to define nothing are gleaned from the world of somethings: the only way to discuss nothing is to name things that aren't there. In other words, you cannot conceive of what is there, namely nothing, but only of what isn't there: all somethings. Nothing isn't a thing or an entity; it is nonexistence of things on an infinite scale. Just as "darkness" isn't a thing, but the absence of a thing: light; so "nothing" isn't a thing, but the absence of a thing: a thing." 

 

This can give one an headache: trying to think about nothing and instead, conjuring up a big fat something. What is a real nothing? Let’s think about that: get out some aspirin.  This question could be paraphrased to resemble that credit card commercial: “What’s in your (existential) wallet?” If you open that wallet and see empty space, you’re already wrong.

 

In trying to conceive of where the universe came from, I have no problem with the concept of nothing, since it isn’t anything.  I don’t have to know the answer to the Two Great Questions about a nothing: One: is it eternal, and therefore has never not existed?.. or, two, was there a time when nothing didn’t exist and therefore, it came from… nothing.  No, I don’t have to wonder if nothing came from nothing.  I also don’t have to worry about nothing having the eternal attributes of God: infinity. It’s only “something” that bodes trouble. If there’s something, and clearly there is, so says Descartes, then the Two Great Questions must be asked. Nothing, however, is fine as long as it stays that way. But nothing incessantly eludes us as a concept because it ultimately morphs into something.

 

But “something” gets no such free pass. If there is something, I want to know where it came from. Namely, I want to know which of the Two Great Questions accounts for its existence: Is this something eternal, and therefore, never came into existence, in that it has always existed? Or was there a time when this something did not exist, that is, nothing existed, therefore the something came from the nothing?        

 

We now should piece together the definition of “nothing,” by naming all the somethings that are not in it, namely, everything. We start with a large something:

 

"Space: the final frontier..." it’s actually the first frontier; it is the initial something we have to subtract on our journey to arrive at a quality, unadulterated, pure nothing. The reason “space” is the jumping off point is, once you have eliminated space from your nothing — not easy to do, thinking-wise — you have eliminated every something that threatens to pollute the purity of your nothing. The reason is: one of the unbreakable laws of “somethings” is that they need space to exist. The lowborn definition of “something” is something that takes up space. Get rid of space and all the pesky somethings disappear in the bargain, and make no mistake, this striving-for-nothing battle is a war against all somethings.

 

Jill, the very nice admonishing voice from my GPS, often talks about space to me. She says to turn into that space on the right, or turn into the left hand space. Sometimes, however, I mess up my spatial maneuverings so badly that there is no more space available either to the right or left. This happens after I have imprudently ignored Jill’s sage advice again and again, and she has intoned a series of “recalculating…” course corrections to try to get me back to civilization. The time (we’ll soon talk about time) comes, alas, when there are no more recalculations due me, such is my buffoonery, and Jill withdraws her offers of space to the right and left. In this situation, Jill, with an obvious pique in her annoyed but foxy voice then says, “At your first opportunity, make a U-turn!”

 

Going back to a previous position offers me this kind of salvation: the space I used to occupy, since I ran out of space up ahead on my clueless route to oblivion. For Jill to rescue me, I must reuse the space I once occupied to have any options to the right or left. 

 

Now, think of “nothing” in terms of your GPS: it has no right or left, plus, ayeeii!.. you also can’t make a U-turn, because you were never back there in the first place, because “back there” doesn’t exist. You can’t go anywhere because there isn’t anywhere. In this nothingness and spatial nonexistence, Jill would have to say: “At your first opportunity cease existing, because you are no longer going anyplace since “places” are nonexistent… and your satellite has disappeared from outer space, since that kind of space is also gone.” In this present universe, Jill would never say anything like that because we are not trapped in a pure nothing, and Jill always has a solution, even if it’s “Go back the way you came, you moron!”

 

Got that? A pure nothing, from a spatial perspective, has no rights, lefts, U-turns, forwards, backwards, sideways, or up or down. Buying a GPS a millisecond before the Big Bang invented space would have been a waste of money. Spatial nothingness has no loci, no coordinates, no directions, no perspective, and no N, S, E or W. The reason “you can’t get there from here,” as the Iowan farmer is wont to say to the lost motorist is, “There ain't no here and there ain't no there.” And the reason for that is, there is no space. You cannot move in it, because there is no “it.” There are no distances to traverse, because there is no space to travel in. Think about that and tell me what you see.

 

What do people think of when they are asked to think of “nothing”? What is that something that they bring to mind and try feloniously to pass it off as a bona fide nothing? Most people, even those with trained minds in existential theory and abstract thinking, come up basically with a black vacuum for their nothing. Of course, “nothing” also has no colors and no vacuum, which requires space. This, however, is the best the mind can do, and don’t let any pointy-headed guy from Switzerland, who works in the Large Hadron, try to dupe you into believing that he has a much fuller picture of “nothing” than a “black vacuum.” He doesn’t. That’s the limit of the human brain, no matter its I.Q., or if he’s bosom buddies with bosons. When it comes to conceptualizing “nothing,” the mind does not compute past a certain roadblock to what the human brain can see in its brain’s eye, and the human brain cannot see a pure nothing.

 

The Hadron dude is in the same leaky boat of somethings with us civilians when trying to think on nothing: it will always be a something-nothing, and his would-be nothing will always be filled to the brim with pesky, can't-get-rid-of-'em somethings, just like your and my gunked-up-with- (expletive deleted) -something nothings.

 

It’s refreshing to realize that there is a subject which becomes the great equalizer between so-called great thinkers of science and philosophy and us unwashed single-brain-cell nobodys: the intellectual elite and we proletariat can do nothing with nothing.  Now, admittedly, the brainiacs can explain their nothing in fancier words, but it all bakes down to this: the human brain cannot conceive of a pure nothing because we humans have no frame of reference. All of our words we use to express our thoughts are based on the stuff of existence, and not one thought can be the stuff of complete nonexistence, which is what “nothing” is. Therefore, all are welcome to this conclave of experts in thinking about nothing. Every one of us has equal credentials and access to the free bar.

 

The Big Bang’s first logistical nightmare is finding a place to go boom, given that there are no places. At least, there were no places to park the Big Bang a billionth of a second before it happened. Now when it happened, it instantaneously created the space it needed to happen in. That suddenly available bang place was indeed somewhere, “somewhere” having come into existence along with space, and all of it from nowhere, that is, from nothing, from infinite nonexistence. 

 

The Big Bang came from nothing. It also necessarily had no reason to happen, in that part of nothingness is the absence of reason, purpose, tendencies, yens, urges, desires, leanings, expectations, maybes, potentialities, and possibilities. The Big Bang came from impossibility. Yet it did. I believe there may well have been a Big Bang, but I reserve room in my Big Bang theory for the Big Banger. At least, if God was there, I don’t have to burn up my brainstem trying to think about a Big Bang springing from nowhere for no reason, defying the infinite number of impossibilities that constrict a pure nothing to do absolutely nothing forever, except “forever,” isn’t a valid term because there is no time.

 

To the unconvinced critic who points out that, with God being the instigator of the Big Bang, I may have saved myself from the impossible task of explaining how the universe came from nothing, but I then weigh myself back down with the equally heavy albatross of explaining where God came from. This is very true; inevitably, I must have something come from nothing: either the universe or God. But in the choice between a God with a brain doing all these wonderfully impossible things, and an inanimate, but somehow creative universe with no brain, and not even a beneficent wizard, I go with the authentic Wizard, not that man behind the curtain. 

 

I also quickly deny the request to explain where God came from. In fact, I don’t believe God “came” from anywhere. I believe God never did not exist… another tough concept in the thinking game: an infinite, eternal intelligent entity. But at least God isn’t the brainless scarecrow that the Big Bang is. I’ll side with the most brains every time.

 

Since God and a godless universe (that can spring from nothing for no reason) are both imponderable concepts, I choose to ponder the first, which should make Pascal rest serenely in his grave. Furthermore, since both God and non-God are statistically even in odds, given the evidences for both, I also choose God over non-God, and could do no worse with a coin toss. In addition, since I am in agreement with the atheist on at least one tenet: that this universe has a giant baffling mystery attached to it, I choose the mystery that appeals to me, since all possible mysteries are even in odds, so said my agnostic logic professor at the University of Miami. I further choose to answer that mystery with... God, and logically I am on solid ground in the choice, since all other options are equally preposterous and equally unfathomable.

 

If the Big Bang did not create everything from scratch, and something existed before the Big Bang, we then enter the night-sweaty realm of thinking about eternal somethings. If you think thinking about nothing gave you a throb in your temples, eternal space and mass is a bigger doozy. One of these two statements is true: either something has always existed, or something has not always existed. If something has always existed, saving us from something-from-nothing nonsense, then “something” is eternal. But if something has not always existed, we are defaulted back to something-from-nothing, saving us from the eternal nonsense. These two equally imponderable options are the only two that can save the atheist from the God nonsense. There is no option that saves us from all nonsense. You simply choose your preferred nonsense based on…well, that’s another essay. See “On the Divine Question.”

 

This eternal option, by the way, is not available to the atheistic Big Bang theorist. There is no pre-eternity. Before the Big Bang, there was a pure nothing: no space, no time, no mass (therefore no gravity), no energy, no tendencies, no color (no black, which is all the colors mixed up into a goo), no texture, not even a single hydrogen atom, therefore, no proton and electron in that not-there hydrogen atom, and no space for that nonexistent electron to move around in. The cumulative weight of mass in the pre-Bang nonexistent universe was zero.

 

In nothingness, there would also be no reason for nothing not to continue, and I use the word “continue” with a profound sadness, having no viable verbs to describe the ongoing and nonstop existence of nothing. Therefore, the Big Bang could not have happened in a pure nothing, since in a pure nonexistence, nothing will always continue to happen, and nothing will never arise to something. 

 

I once posed this to an atheist online in a discussion chat room. I said, “Hey, what happened to cause and effect?  What caused the Big Bang?”  He said, and I kid you not, “the Big Bang was an uncaused event.” If it wasn’t caused, why did it happen then?.. because nature abhors a vacuum? Wait! — there’s no nature and no vacuum!  A nothing also has no causes, no effects, and no uncaused events. Why? Because it’s nothing — it doesn’t exist.

 

If there were an actual reason for the Big Bang, and that Reason, pre-Bang, was floating around free in the non-space of nothingness, bumping occasionally into nothing else, I want to know where this Reason came from.  I also want to know whether this Big Bang Reason has eternal, infinite qualities, having never not existed, or whether there was a time when the Reason didn’t exist.  If there was a time when the Reason didn’t exist, what brought it into existence — and when?  But mostly, and this is the seminal question of the universe: why? This question is so important, it outweighs any query, including issues regarding the Scotsman’s kilt.

 

Who, what, when and where take a backseat to the big boss W-word of all time and existence: why?  I care less where the Big Bang happened. There weren’t any wheres in the first place. If God does not exist to work the Big Bang control lever, then there isn’t any “Who.” I’m not concerned about what the Big Bang is, so “what” is uninteresting in comparison to why. I’ve been told when the Big Bang happened, give or take an aeon, but a pox on when. Time didn’t exist until the Big Moment, so “when” is irrelevant to me. I want to know why. If God is missing, why is there anything?

 

If the Big Bang happened 13.8 billion years ago, that fact just overloads me with whys. Why didn't it happen sooner? Like 27.4 billion years ago? What (which in this case, is another "why") was keeping it from happening?  Since there was a previous nothing, why did it wait until 13.8 billion years ago?  Or why did it not wait longer and happen just 6.9 billions years ago? Why did something change in an infinite nonexistence of nothingness?  If the Big Bang was an "uncaused event," why was it one?  Why was it not uncaused sooner or later than the theorized date? What (a why, remember) determined that there was a moment when its time was due? Why was it caused or un-caused to happen at all? Why wasn't it a Big Fizzle instead of a Big Bang? Why didn't it short-circuit and only create a city block of space, with a single malfunctioning hydrogen atom that maybe had a proton, but only half of a factory-second electron that didn't work? Why is there anything? And why is there time?

 

This “time” thing has kept philosophers and scientists busy for all human history, although, Moses probably spent little time on the subject. Einstein did, however, and I cannot think on that exalted plane, but thankfully, I don’t have to. I know the working definition of time. It’s only a “working” definition, in that time is so elusive a concept for human thought, we are defaulted to working definitions in the absence of omniscience. “Time” is the lapsing between events.

 

Time is the stuff that happens between happenings. Thus, if you don’t have any events, as in the case of nothing, you cannot have time. If you have one event, time theoretically starts, but can only be measured and defined if there is a second event, thus creating a measurable lapse between the two. The measured interval between those two events is time.

 

If only one event were to happen, and there is never a corresponding event to measure that lapsing, then time is defined as an open-ended eternity. If no events ever happen, then time remains nonexistent. A quite basic event might be: a hydrogen atom popping into existence. That would be a huge, gala event even bigger than a Rolling Stones concert. The sudden emergence of one basic, wet hydrogen atom, for no reason from nothing, complete with its two working parts, would be an event on a universal scale, even biblical. That hydrogen atom pop-up would start time. If then, when the electron moved at all in an orbit around the proton,.. even a quadrillionth of a millimeter, that would constitute a second event, and time would then be measurable and definable. Two events have happened and time is the measured lapse between them.

 

Einstein, need I say, never wasted thoughts in those lowly layman’s terms, but he agreed with that definition. Time can only exist if, one: there is space for events to happen in, and two: if there are things in that space to create events. No space, no time. Also, no space, no things. And no things, no time. That’s “nothing”: no space, no things, and in the words of the classic rock song by The Guess Who,.. “No time….I got, got, got, got, got no time.”

 

Coming up with a pure nothing is necessary to avoid the morass of trying to explain and conceive of eternal things. Take your pick: a nothing, so we can artfully dodge explaining how regular brainless stuff managed to become godlike and eternal in nature, or eternal somethings, which saves us from the impossibility of something-from-nothing. You must choose one or the other, and you can’t have both, and whichever one you choose, the other will bite you on your existential bottom. This is because, again: one of these statements, and only one, is true, making the other untrue: There has always been something, or there has not always been something. If there has not always been something, then there was once nothing, and since there is something now, it came from that nothing.

 

Once more: what is in your nothingness wallet? Empty space? Hardly, since space does not exist. The time it takes for you to check? There's none of that lapsing stuff. Is it your wallet? There’s no “you.” And there is no wallet, nor any other nouns or verbs in the universe, and no universe. A pure nothing has no persons, places or things, and no actions happening, not even an electron moving. The purposes, reasons, and possibilities to become something? All missing. Uncaused events? They do not happen either in nothing or something. If ever there was a pure nothing, it would still be that way, but remember, there is no “it.” 

 

If God does not create the universe, because God is not, there would always be a pure infinitely nonexistent nothing, and even the verb “to be” is nonexistent. Was there a Big Bang? Science seems to have a viable theory. But ignore that Godless man behind the curtain with the Big Bang switch. He’s a fake and it won’t work. In the beginning was God, and if that was the Big Bang, then so be it.

 

Michael Roy