Why should there be anything at all? Why, in particular, should a
material world exist? Bede Rundle advances clear, non-technical
answers to these perplexing questions. If, as the theist maintains,
God is a being who cannot but exist, his existence explains why
there is something rather than nothing. However, this can also be
explained on the basis of a weaker claim. Not that there is some
particular being that has to be, but simply that there has to be
something or other. Rundle proffers arguments for thinking that
that is indeed how the question is to be put to rest.
Traditionally, the existence of the physical universe is held to
depend on God, but the theist faces a major difficulty in making
clear how a being outside space and time, as God is customarily
conceived to be, could stand in an intelligible relation to the
world, whether as its creator or as the author of events within it.
Rundle argues that a creator of physical reality is not required,
since there is no alternative to its existence. There has to be
something, and a physical universe is the only real possibility. He
supports this claim by eliminating rival contenders; he dismisses
the supernatural, and argues that, while other forms of being,
notably the abstract and the mental, are not reducible to the
physical, they presuppose its existence. The question whether
ultimate explanations can ever be given is forever in the
background, and the book concludes with an investigation of this
issue and of the possibility that the universe could have existed
for an infinite time. Other topics discussed include causality,
space, verifiability, essence, existence, necessity, spirit, fine
tuning, and laws of Nature. Why There Is Something Rather Than
Nothing offers an explanation of fundamental facts of existence in
purely philosophical terms, without appeal either to theology or
cosmology. It will provoke and intrigue anyone who wonders about
these questions.
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