Watching the debacle that was promoted as a debate between George Pell and Richard Dawkins on Q&A, it struck me that being an atheist could be harder than I thought. I always thought theists had it tough trying to convey the concept of God to non-believers but I now realise it’s also hard being an atheist trying to define the concept of ‘nothing.’ Mr Dawkins didn’t do that on Q&A but George was delighted at the thought that he might actually try to. That was when I decided to walk in the shoes of an atheist and have a go at defining ‘nothing.’
I started by considering the quote attributed to Albert Einstein, who was supposed to be an atheist, that everything is relative. It seemed logical to me that if everything is relative, then ‘nothing’ would be the absence of relativity. That thought led me to believe I had solved the problem in quick time, but then I realised I had defined ‘sameness’ rather than ‘nothing’ because ‘nothing’ would have to be absolute, or infinite, and include the absence of place. Sameness would appear to be nothing because it can only be compared to itself, due to the absence of anything else, but sameness would also have to be absolute, or infinite. That led me to the thought that sameness, the absence of relativity, could be anything at all, even pure energy.
It all started from Richard Dawkins referring to ‘nothing’ when he said that the Big Bang occurred from nothing. However, that would be impossible since there would be no ‘place’ for it to occur in. If there is ‘nothing,’ there is no ‘where.’ Not only would ‘somewhere’ have to come into existence, according to Frank’s statement, but then a ‘something’ would also have to miraculously appear, containing sufficient energy to burst apart and produce the universe. Maybe it all came out of a hole in nothing. This seemed more unbelievable than the God theory and made my head spin, so I decided my attempt to help Richard define ‘nothing’ was doomed to failure unless he could accept my original thought of a sameness (oneness) of infinite power and energy existing. Maybe he could then accept that, somehow, some of the energy that just ‘was’ bunched up to become our universe through a process we call the Big Bang.
I would not dare to ask him to accept that the ‘aliveness’ of the energy was what theists refer to as awareness, consciousness, or intelligence, but it seems to me that it’s easier being a theist than it is being an atheist. I had some fun trying to define nothing and would be pleased to hear from anyone who could offer another definition.
Bob Myers.
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