Something

This is a follow-up to Was There Ever Nothing?

If there ever was Absolutely Nothing, there would still be Absolutely Nothing today. Since something exists—you, for example—that means Absolutely Nothing never existed. If it ever did, you wouldn't be reading this right now. Absolutely Nothing would still be here.

So there was never a time when Absolutely Nothing existed. Therefore, there has always been Something. But what? If we go back to the very beginning, what was this Something? Was it one or many? And what was it like, judging by what exists today?

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Let's explore quantity first. Imagine our large, pitch-black, sealed room again. Suppose there are ten tennis balls inside. As far back in time as we can imagine, there is only this: ten tennis balls.

Now we wait an entire year. What's in the room? Still ten tennis balls. No other force exists, no mechanism to produce anything new. Ten tennis balls—no matter how long they sit—cannot create more balls, or anything else.

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What if there were six balls? Or a million? Quantity doesn't matter. If all you have is tennis balls, then nothing changes. The issue is not how many there are, but what they are capable of doing.

Now remove the tennis balls and place a chicken inside the room. Wait a year. You still have one chicken. But if you start with a hen and a rooster, then, given the right environment, more chickens can appear.

Here we see the key point: quantity matters only if the existing things can produce something new. Tennis balls cannot; living things like chickens can—but only if they have the necessary environment.

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In the very beginning, the room is completely empty—no environment, no air, no sustenance. Living creatures cannot exist or reproduce without an environment. Chickens are out.

Non-living things, like tennis balls or molecules, can exist without an environment—but they cannot produce something new on their own. A trillion hydrogen molecules remain a trillion hydrogen molecules. Nothing else emerges spontaneously.

Even creating the tiniest particle artificially requires enormous energy. Consider experiments in particle accelerators, where miles of tunnel and immense energy produce only a tiny particle. Producing matter is not trivial—even from something, let alone from Absolutely Nothing.

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From this, we can conclude two things about the Something that existed at the beginning:

1. It must be self-sufficient, able to exist without any environment or support. It cannot depend on anything else for its existence.

2. It must have the ability to produce other things. Something exists today besides this original Something, so it must have produced at least one other thing.

3. It must have great power. To bring something into existence from nothing—even a single particle—requires enormous energy. The original Something must be supremely powerful.

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Returning to our analogy: imagine a special tennis ball that can produce other tennis balls. It is completely self-sufficient—it needs nothing else to exist. This is the Eternal Something.

Suppose it produces another tennis ball. Which is greater with respect to time? The first one—the Eternal Something—has always existed. The second came into existence later. One is infinite; the other is finite.

Which is greater with respect to power? Again, the first. It can produce and destroy the second. The second depends entirely on the first. The first is uncaused, eternal, and self-sufficient.

You might ask: what if the first shared some power with the second, enough to destroy itself? That's impossible. To use its power, the first must exist—and it cannot cease to exist. Its power is inherent, unlimited, and cannot be overcome by anything else.

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In short: the Eternal Something is greater than anything it produces. It exists on its own. Everything else depends on it. Anything produced may resemble it in some ways, but will always differ in others. Nothing can equal the Eternal Something, for it alone is uncaused, infinite, and fully self-sufficient.

Want to explore more about the Eternal Something? See Part 3: Who.

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