Howard (2025, 128) poses a challenge regarding the two possibilities:
“Of the two possibilities . . . one may begin to feel more coherent with the shape of the world we inhabit. Not by proof, but by resonance. A universe in which freedom exists, in which meaning must be chosen, in which love is possible but never guaranteed—such a world feels less like an accident and more like a gift. . . .
The first possibility—emergence without intention—can account for complexity, consciousness, even ethical behavior. But it cannot explain why good and evil should matter beyond function or feeling. It leaves moral experience untethered: real to us, but contingent, evolving, ungrounded. In contrast, if the world was willed into being—not by force, but by a source that gives without commanding—then goodness is not a convention, and evil is not a failure of empathy. They become features of the structure itself. Not imposed, but made possible. In such a world, freedom is not an accident of evolution. It is a condition of the gift.
And if it was given, then the source of that gift cannot be part of the world it gave. It cannot arise from being, or from potential, or from any law it makes possible. It must stand not earlier, not elsewhere–but radically other. Beyond structure, beyond logic, beyond even the possibility of contrast. If intention exists, it must come not from within the system, but from what precedes the very conditions that make a system possible.”
Does this mean that there must be a Divine entity that created the universe and provides us with guidance regarding how to live in her/his creation? Or does it mean that we must invent and live with our own sense of purpose and creation of meaning, whether or not we can fully find an answer to the question with which we began this essay: Why is there something rather than nothing?
Conclusions
While this set of essays offer a secular treatise on the ways we can deal with nothingness and the void, it often takes on a mythic or even spiritual tone. As I mentioned when introducing the fourth essay, matters associated with nothingness must often be treated as sacred rather than secular (profane) (Eliade, 1959). It is hard to comprehend either the Big Bang or the Big Silence without bringing in some Divine presence or some very long-range spiritual perspective.
The matter of nothingness, as it interplays with something, aligns with the battle between order and chaos on a Mideast fertile crescent. I have suggested in offering these sometimes mythic and often sacred comments, that our frequent journeys from nothingness to something be engaged with other people. There is room for our thoughtful and creative colleagues on the boat in Tuonela, at the concert where the concerto is played, and in the frequent battles in our mid-21st Century between order and chaos. We don’t have to “go it alone.”
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