[Vision2020] Heidegger? I'd Rather Cite Leibniz...Did God Will The Big Bang?

[Ted Moffett]

A great essay on the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?"

http://cosmicvariance.com/2007/08/30/why-is-there-something-rather-than-nothing/

Quotes from essay at URL above:

"The question can be traced at least back to Leibniz in his 1697 essay "On
the Ultimate Origin of Things,"..."

"...Leibniz's original claim was that nothingness was "spontaneous," whereas
an existing universe required a bit of work to achieve.  Swinburne has
sharpened this a bit, claiming that nothingness is uniquely "natural,"
because it is necessarily simpler than any particular universe.  Both of
them use this sort of logic to undergird an argument for this existence of
God: if nothingness is somehow more likely or natural than existence, and
yet we are here, it must be because God willed it to be so."
-------------------
Occam's Razor, and possible universes with different natural laws, which
I mentioned in my post on the subject "*No Predictive Power In Belief in
God?*," are included in the essay quoted above.  My post on these issues at
URL below:

http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/2008-July/054753.html

I did not read the essay quoted above before my previous posts to Vision2020
on these issues... I just looked it up tonight.

Ted Moffett
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