It is at this moment when something is created from nothing that the notion of nothingness becomes particularly elusive. While the nothingness we face in our personal life seems elusive, it is still something we experience in our “gut” (or in our head or heart). We know that nothingness is “something” because we can feel it and we take action to avoid this feeling or find ways to make “sense” of this “nothing/something” that seems “senseless.”
Howard offers his own attempt to capture something about the senselessness of a “reality” that existed before the universe was created (Howard, 2025, pp.7-8):
“One possibility is that nothingness was unstable—not in the physical sense, because physics doesn’t exist yet—but in a deeper way. That its very lack of constraint meant there was nothing to prevent being from erupting. That existence emerged not because it was pushed or chosen, but because there was nothing to stop it.
The other possibility is intention—that being was chosen rather than forced—conceived either impersonally, as intention without a subject, or on a theistic reading, as intention with a subject: someone who willed there to be being. In many traditions that ‘someone’ is called God, though not necessarily bound to that image and perhaps unlike anything theology or history has imagined. On this view, what exists came into existence because it was wanted. Not accidentally. Not mechanically. But freely. Being is not merely a fact—it is an act.”
Both versions hold up to a limited sense under critical scrutiny—and Howard offers this scrutiny. The first version is secular. It is attractive because it requires no external agency to bring about the creation of our universe. Furthermore, we observe instability operating in our daily life and can envision an unstable reality prior to the Big Bang. However, when there is nothing, then what is it that is unstable? And from what source does all the energy and matter of the universe come?
Biblical Beginnings: Howard’s second version is sacred and widely embraced in many religious traditions. It requires an external agency to create our universe. We of the Western World find this version in the biblical narrative of Genesis. Howard (2025, p. 16) comments on the Biblical version:
“In the Judea-Christian tradition, the doctrine of creation is ex nihilo—creation “out of nothing”-emerged gradually, becoming explicit in late Second Temple Judaism and early Christian sources. It affirmed divine sovereignty: God did not shape a pre-existing chaos but brought being into existence through will alone. In this view the universe is contingent—dependent on something beyond itself.”
The one fundamental question that drives many people, ultimately, to a more secular (and even atheistic) perspective concerns the presence of God: where does God come from? Who created God? Was it another God? Many religions do have multiple Gods, some of whom were creators of other gods. But where does it stop? And does the secular version offer anything better? There is still the question regarding the source of all the energy and matter. And what produced the instability of the reality that existed before anything existed?
The answer embraced by one ancient culture is that all things rest on the back of a turtle. And on what does this turtle stand? It stands on the back of another turtle. Ultimately, turtles stand on the backs of other turtles. And who created this infinite number of turtles, let alone everything residing on the back of the first turtle? A variant on multiple turtles is multiple universes. Our universe was created by or in another universe. Our Big Bang might have been the slipping of a new universe through some “wormhole” that leads from an already existing universe. But where did that universe come from? Are there universes standing on the backs of other universes? Or are they standing on the backs of turtles?
