Gottfried Wilhehm Leibnitz thought it ever so profound to ask why is there somethint rather than nothing, and M artin Heidigger so agreed, but both fall into absurdity in that they pose thereby a pseudo-question that the former answers with a pseudo-explanation. Explanations should make sense and refer to reality.
As Jonathon Harrison points out in "God, Freedom and Immortality," we can refer from one case of measles to others but in the case of the Universe there is quite obviously no comparison for it is all [ Smolin- see the thread cosmoloigical issues.]
And RoyJackson notes;" However, to ask then what is the origin of the whole universe is to enter a totally different realm: we are no longer dealing with the raw material but 'something outside.' It is not that the scientist can't answer the question but that there isn't an answer to the question. That is, there is no raw material 'outside' the universe, therefore there is no answer,and, in fact, the question itself does not make sense. It is rather like asking 'how many sides does a circle have,' or 'how do humans grow wings? The response to this is there is no answer."
Therefore, Leibnitz in fact makes a big blunder! He also maintains that there is the principle of sufficient reason in that " a reason sufficient to determine why it is thus and not otherwise." Now, he violates the ignostic-Ockham challenge [ see the thread, that either God is redundant or else He is fatuous, nebulous, otiose, and vacuous. He ever wants to add God as a personal explanation in the manner of Richard Swinburne. That is mere pareidolia, like seeing Yeshua in a tortilla. That results from the mere feeling from angst that there is something beyond and behind the Universe, but as it is all [Smolin] there cannot be such!
Quentin Smith's atheistic cosmological argument ,while my friend Graham Rober Oppy [ "Arguments about Gods"] needs imporvement, is a beginning answer to how the Universe in his sense is self-caused. I show 2 cosmological issues the science involved.
Sorry for the typos, but I had to go away and when I got back, I couldn't edit the message.
Hans Reichenbach observes that cause is between two objects, and since Existence is only one, it cannot have a cause.The causes and explanations for each part are the sufficient reason.
As the unimformative, God is useless as an explanation anyway. And one begs the question in mainaining that God is exempt from the questions what caused Him and what desinged Him, contrary to William Sahakian. And faith , the we just say so of credulity, cannot overcome the fact that Existence is eternal.
Never is any energy absolutely out of existence as the law of conservation shows. It is a cycle of transformations.
Against Leibniz, Lee Smolin, Paul Steinhardt, Team Ashtekar and others are discovering the real questions and answers as Clifford Richard Dawkins would so note!
As the unimformative, God is useless as an explanation anyway. And one begs the question in mainaining that God is exempt from the questions what caused Him and what desinged Him, contrary to William Sahakian. And faith , the we just say so of credulity, cannot overcome the fact that Existence is eternal.
Never is any energy absolutely out of existence as the law of conservation shows. It is a cycle of transformations.
Against Leibniz, Lee Smolin, Paul Steinhardt, Team Ashtekar and others are discovering the real questions and answers as Clifford Richard Dawkins would so note!
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Were there God, then there could be nothing other than He. People obfuscate by postulating Him as the explainer, creator and sustainer of Existence. As that is everything, there can be nothing to cause it, other than its parts causing each other as Quintin Smith mantains. 
Were there God, then there could be nothing other than He. People obfuscate by postulating Him as the explainer, creator and sustainer of Existence. As that is everything, there can be nothing to cause it, other than its parts causing each other as Quintin Smith mantains.
What then would you seriously contend to this challenge that Existence is eternal ? How would you underpin Leibniz?
Nothingness is absurd as the ancient Greeks noted.
There can only be Existence. So, there can be no transcendent God. Dr. Reichenbach is,perforce, right.
But advanced theists then claim that nevertheless that He is playing a role in being the first cause as far as explanations go, but the ignostic-Ockham thread rebuts that.
Really, with their denial of the presumption of naturalism, they are, in effect, affirming Malebranche's occasionalism that when we hit the billiard ball, He causes the action. So, they're guilty of - obfuscation!
[U] What a blunder! As though He didn't need an explanation Himself as noted above where I shot down Dr. Sahakian's fallacy.
This is part of the cosmological arguments, which I discuss at Arguments about Him, so one can answer it there or we can continue on it separately as it seems to be the ultimate reason for theism, other than the problem of dread.
Nothingness is absurd as the ancient Greeks noted.
There can only be Existence. So, there can be no transcendent God. Dr. Reichenbach is,perforce, right.
But advanced theists then claim that nevertheless that He is playing a role in being the first cause as far as explanations go, but the ignostic-Ockham thread rebuts that.
Really, with their denial of the presumption of naturalism, they are, in effect, affirming Malebranche's occasionalism that when we hit the billiard ball, He causes the action. So, they're guilty of - obfuscation!
[U] What a blunder! As though He didn't need an explanation Himself as noted above where I shot down Dr. Sahakian's fallacy.
This is part of the cosmological arguments, which I discuss at Arguments about Him, so one can answer it there or we can continue on it separately as it seems to be the ultimate reason for theism, other than the problem of dread.