If the universe was created from "nothing," where did the "nothing" come from?

Question

If the universe was created from "nothing," where did the "nothing" come from?

Answer 1

There never was "nothingness" because that would make it an existent. It would "reify the zero" as Ayn Rand put it, but other philosophers have used other phrases.

Since "nothingness" could never exist without being the sole existent, and since "nothingness" cannot be an existent without contradicting the meaning of the words, existence has always existed and the universe did not come from nothing.

Answer 2

The nothing came from God, who has always existed- that is what I've read...but I could be wrong.

Answer 3

Do you mean the cocktail of gases which started it off, maybe the great spirit is really a bartender experimenting with delicious universal cocktails. Maybe the earth is a harvey warbanger.

Answer 4

Gawddidit!*

* "Gawddidit" is a registered trademark of Argumentum Ad Ignorantiam Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of the religious right.

(For a serious answer, check out "The Inflationary Universe" by Alan Guth.)

Answer 5

created from nothing means created from 'there'.

Answer 6

The universe wasn't created from nothing or else there would be nothing.  It was created from something possibly the big bang, God's Deus Ex Machina.  After that?  I don't know, maybe higher or that is the highest creation form.  Maybe we're really the size of microbes to God and then maybe God the size of a microbe to the next higher stage.  Hm, what is this philosophy that intrigues me...

Answer 7

God has always been, always is, and always will be.

Answer 8

Time, and hence the universe, could not logically have a cause or "come from" anywhere.  If it did not come into existence at one point and has existed forever, then it has no cause because it always existed.  If time did come into existence at a certain point, then it could not have come from anywhere because a point in time before time started cannot exist.

Answer 9

The universe came from something, but where did something come from?

Answer 10

god! but then how did god come into being?

Answer 11

Normally, I hate to tackle these questions because I feel caught up in the mystery; my mystery of which my metaphysics/ontology is formed--a small bit of Philo101, and even less 'Social Philosophy' (I was being social, so I didn't hear where the 'nothing' comes from.)  Also, my best efforts at another muse, poetry, do not do my own inventions justice.

But the thing is, nothingness is only an idea, another invention and in the creation of the universe, there are no such simple  ideas before during or after. The ideas we have and use and the ideas we question, because we are very curious beings, ex post dios, we invent.  

Semantics is instrumental to change, in all serious arguments, since we, everyone of us, conjure up words and phrases of reference, for lack of a better term, and for our own enjoyment and appreciation of our selves.  During the Middle Ages, books, which had a larger participatory community than ever before, due to Gutenberg's success, had become fashionable to write in riddles about 'nothing' and something.  Was this possibly because of the Western world's resistance to the idea of the zero?  Almost certainly.