Wednesday, June 30, 2010  Why is there everything instead of
only a few things?  Faced with the fundamental question: "Why is
there something rather than nothing?" atheists have faith that
science will tell us eventually. Most seem never to consider
that it may well be a philosophic, logical impossibility for
something to create itself from nothing. But the question
presents a fundamental mystery that has bedeviled (so to speak)
philosophers and theologians from Aristotle to Aquinas. Recently
scientists have tried to answer it with theories of
"multiverses" and "vacuums filled with quantum potentialities,"
none of which strikes me as persuasive. (For a review of the
centrality, and insolubility so far, of the something-from-
nothing question, I recommend this podcast interview with Jim
Holt, who is writing a book on the subject.)  -Ron Rosenbaum Oh,
well, okay, they don't strike you as convincing. Oh, that
settles it.  The question "why is there something rather than
nothing" is evidently meant to invoke some