@RW Standing,
Quote:Why Does Any Thing Exist
Because it has to
Quote:But, if God is another thing that exists, what created or what is the cause of God?
Easy, She has always existed; while creation is an ongoing process
Quote:The term God is only useful as a term signifying The cause of existence.
Well put. However for "cause" my No. 2 Son and I as apodictical existential pantheists might substitute "reality"
Quote:The cause is the reason for existence and requires no cause of itself.
Seems very reasonable conclusion. However intuition can't help speculating that there's something more to the Megillah than the simple random meaningless bouncing of particles off one another
Quote:It is as if we assume there a condition of nothingness into which things were inserted, or within which they suddenly appeared as if by accident.
One recent speculation is, as you imply, that the Big Bang suddenly appeared out of nothingness though we don't (yet) have the necessary mental equipment to deal with the idea
My suggestion is that a moment of "nothing" separates sequential Big-Bang/dispersal/big-crunches but to skirt certain paradox and contradiction its "duration" is zero
Quote:The reality must surely be that there is no 'thing' that can be called nothingness, or absolute void.
Of course nothingness isn't a "thing" nor does it have duration. If the Universe is finite, it is often thought of as a ball or donut with the "void" outside. But of course there simply isn't an outside
Quote:There is the entirety of existence with complementary and contrasting 'values' as in ethics.
RW you'll have to elaborate on that for the benefit of the Average Clod (me)
Quote:Perhaps this is what Einstein had tapped into, but in a much more sophisticated language.
Ditto
Quote:It may be suggested that the primal universe included related 'values' that were the fount of intelligence.
The very "something" we can't yet account for