The way I look at it, there would have been two possibilities: Possibility A is that there would never be anything anywhere at any time. It would just be absolute nothingness everywhere forever. Possibility B is that there would, at some time, be something. It doesn't matter to me what the something is; it could be a speck of dust, or something more elaborate.
I don't know which, Possibility A or Possibility B, is the more likely to occur. I _feel_ like I know, and will proceed to argue the point, but it might be a question that we are incapable of fully answering. And that's ok. (There are two possibilities there also: Possibility X is that we are capable of answering all conceivable questions. Possibility Y is that someday there will be some question that we are incapable of answering.)
Scholars (and not just religious ones) have already written about this. Here's a book I found about it:
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/a-universe-from-nothing-why-there-is-something-rather-than-nothing_richard-dawkins_lawrence-m-krauss/279762/item/4860998/?mkwid=%7cdc&pcrid=77515727468767&pkw=&pmt=be&slid=&product=4860998&plc=&pgrid=1240249359902158&ptaid=pla-4581115209376248&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Bing+Shopping+%7c+Science+and+Math+%7c+HIGH&utm_term=&utm_content=%7cdc%7cpcrid%7c77515727468767%7cpkw%7c%7cpmt%7cbe%7cproduct%7c4860998%7cslid%7c%7cpgrid%7c1240249359902158%7cptaid%7cpla-4581115209376248%7c&msclkid=5feefe0209a11b78f7689ff6c7b8f59a#idiq=4860998&edition=7010740I started to read this book, a few years ago. After about the first quarter of it, I found it tedious because it goes on and on longer than I have patience for. However, if I remember correctly, this or some other author wrote that space is never completely empty: an empty space has infinitessimally small periods of time when it develops a negative charge and an equivalent positive charge, and these pairs wink in and out of existence very rapidly. This is not conclusive; but: I imagine that this could lead to "something" eventually appearing in what was empty space. It could happen by random accident: a couple of similar charges get close together at the same time, and thereby, suddenly, there's a little area of space which is not perfectly balanced; and so, voila', there is a thing there, like a tiny bit of energy or a speck of dust that remains in the space. So I imagine. Given an infinity of opportunities, it seems likely to me that something of the sort would eventually happen.
But set that book aside, and let's get back to my mainline argument. I find Possibility B (that there is eventually a "something" somewhere at some time) more likely or plausible, than Possibility A (the idea that there would never be anything anywhere at any time: just nothingness everywhere eternally). Possibility A requires perfection; if there were a speck of dust or an imperfection or the tiniest bit of stray energy -- or even a stray thought -- then that would be a Something. Who are we to suppose that such perfection (perfect nothingness for all space and all time) must be the case everywhere for all time? Who are we to say that just that particular kind of perfection is the most plausible scenario -- or, yet more extremely, the only possible scenario?
I settle on Possibility B (Something) as the more likely scenario.
Upon allowing that Possibility B can happen, the rest is a piece of cake. The entire universe as we know it would easily develop, as easily as falling off a log. All it takes is similar reasoning: step by step, we find that imperfections can occur and eventually lead to other imperfections. (The way I first imagined it, the first Something couldn't perfectly hold together for all of infinite eternity, and finally accidentally started to disintegrate into two or more Somethings; and so on. But now I just think a variety of Somethings arise out of empty space.) So a variety of Somethings arise. And physical laws arise, just because they're more likely to occur than a perfect lawlessness everywhere for all time; to wit:
Given that a Something occasionally exists, we can easily suppose that it is extremely likely that there will be many Somethings; and then we can easily suppose that (Rule 1) some Things last, or tend to last, longer than other things. The alternative to Rule 1 is that all things last exactly the same amount of time, or that they all behave in the same exact way; and that would be a perfection, but I think an occasional imperfection is more likely than absolute perfection for all time and all space. So I settle on Rule 1.
Given Rule 1, there is physical evolution.
(By the way, the game of Conway's Life illustrates how order can arise from chaos. I find that similar to my thoughts about Rule 1 and physical evolution.)
With all that, I'm satisfied that I have created our universe, conceptually.
(By the way, G-d could arise out of that physical evolution, or could arise out of some other kind of evolution, such as an evolution of thoughts.)
There's an additional idea -- or maybe it's an alternative idea: that universes pop in and out of existence all the time (and I suppose there's an infinite number of them). (This too (many universes popping in and out of existence) has been written about by some author or authors.). I feel that all possible universes exist, and maybe the vast majority of them fizzle out and don't amount to anything. At least one of them is a universe of complete nothingness, but some of them have Somethings in them. In all the vast infinity of possible universes, one of them happened to turn out like the one we're in: That one has a vast amount of empty space (or what looks empty to us), with some widely dispersed specks in it, so many specks that it boggles the mind to try to imagine how many there are. The vast majority of those specks don't amount to anything; they are barren as rocks -- or more barren than rocks. But they're not all perfectly barren; some of them got contaminated; and among all _those_ contaminated specks, a few of them got some physical evolution going, just by random chance (matching the concepts described above); and one of _those_ kind is Earth, and we happen to be a kind of Thing that can exist on Earth, and since it's the only world we're familiar with, we think it's the Greatest Thing Since Sliced Cheese, and that G-d must love us a lot to have created such a perfect world, but the only reason we think it's perfect is that this is the world that we happen to be on. Some other odd creature on some entirely different world in some entirely different universe would think the same about its world.
And in this particular universe, some of us laud how wonderfully fertile it is to have produced _us_, while a few of us glance out into the vast barrenness and wonder why the vast majority of the universe is so inhospitable to us -- could it be that G-d h**es us so he made vastly more area hostile to us than favorable to us? But no, I say, G-d doesn't h**e us; rather, mere randomness and physical evolution produce us, and produce G-d if there is a G-d or G-ds.
The way I look at it, there would have been two po... (