Something Rather than Nothing

A Quick Proof That There Must Be Something Rather Than Nothing, for Modern People Who Lead Busy Lives

Suppose there were nothing. Then there would be no laws; for laws, after all, are something.
If there were no laws, then everything would be permitted. If everything were permitted, then nothing would be forbidden.
So if there were nothing, nothing would be forbidden. Thus nothing is self-forbidding.
Therefore, there must be something. QED.

This “proof” is incorrect and over simplified.  The author is conflating the scientific and socio-political definitions of “laws”. Scientific “laws” are descriptions of properties of observable phenomena. Socio-political “laws” are prescriptions for social order.

“If there were no law, then everything would be permitted.” It’s not like if there were no laws, physical phenomena would do whatever the hell it wanted. Things just do what they do, because of the properties contained in what they are. The physical world doesn’t follow laws because it has to. We apply scientific laws to describe what they do.

Scientific laws are applied posteriori, as descriptions of the physical-material universe, according to observable phenomena.

Socio-political laws are applied apriori, as prescriptions, to instantiate order and modify behavior.

So: If there were nothing, then there is nothing. Full stop. You can’t jump to “everything would be permitted” because that’s supposing a “thing” and the initial premise is to suppose there is “nothing”.

Because there is not “nothing” in the absolute sense, then there could have never been absolute nothing.

First law of thermodynamics: Energy cannot be created nor destroyed. Because there is something, there will never be nothing, because “something” (universe/energy) can neither be created nor destroyed: it just is, it always has been, and it will always be. Something will always exist in various forms.

The universe is an isolate system.

The universe is simply energy.

It was never created.

It always was.

The universe and energy simply change form across time.

So it’s not that something came from nothing.

There was always something. Full stop.

Also, there is nothing beyond the universe.

The universe is all there is. Thoughts about what is (ideas such as math and physics) only exist because of energy. Energy because there is a subject and object. A mind to perceive and an object to behold. So long as this is the case, we can never speak about “nothing”.

You see, so long there is a subject and an object, there is something, even if that object is referred to as “nothing”.

If I refer to “nothing”, then it is an object in my mind or in space, and that is something. Therefore, we can never speak about nothing.
Beyond that, defining nothing is simply semantics. What does nothing refer to? What can we exclude?

There are infinite things we can exclude from nothing, so it’s impossible to ever refer to nothing as an ontological possibility, or a nothing completely devoid of something, because there are infinite things it is not.