Since this appears what may be referred to as the king daddy of all questions, it seems important to note all first things must be viewed as a basis for determining the intrinsic value of whatever it may be (there are so many first things). In other words, was existence just there or was it created by something from nothing?
Of course this talk of nothing sounds like ordinary human gibberish. How can nothing even be worth pointing out, right? That’s the first question! Nothing is just as difficult to fathom as is something or everything. Without “things” involved, they are just different directions.
Nothing has always been assumed as zero, right? No one has ever attached a value on anything less than zero; only on zero plus. Sure, there is minus one, minus two etc., but those are only numbers and very difficult to transform into a minus ten boxes of apples or a minus rocketship lift off. How about eating a minus breakfast? Everything that happens, whether it is a wonderful occasion or a disaster, is something happening. It is a plus existence as compared to a nothing existence where nothing isn’t doing anything at all. Did you ever “see” a stage-play doing nothing?
All this nothingness may be termed as abstract, but remember, abstract art or abstract thinking in general almost always involves some form of object or direction which is something plus an object or something plus a direction. Nothingness has nothing of anything.
The logic of a human mind infers something is only a something because it was created or made somehow. It couldn’t just pop out of nowhere without something forming it.
The space of nothing is, indeed, very difficult to picture or conceive. Difficult, but not impossible; at least not impossible for a creator or creators of all the universes everywhere. Now, that word everywhere is easy to “say,” but everywhere is extremely difficult to describe or measure by ordinary and/or advanced minds of human beings on planet Earth. That does also involve smart minds of those representing conventional religious belief pertaining to one God.
Generally, understanding nothing is incomprehensible and since the dark spaces of nothing somewhere in the universe lingered forever in the past or wherever it was, there was obviously nothing to create. Who or what would ever want to create anything more of “that” kind of environment?
So, to deduct a few more inconceivables from the long list of questions that may allow us to arrive at what came first (inactive nothingness or God), plain ordinary logic infers a space of nothing is a place of nothing, so it had to be “put” there somehow, but by what method?
By virtue of entitling “nothing” as “it,” nothing becomes something because “it” is something and that means everything and nothing was created.
Being created didn’t happen per se. There had to be a creator of some kind. From a human standpoint of view, there had to be an intelligence of some kind since the whole universe and contents are quite intricately formed almost as though there had been a plan.
Human insecurity is understandable when they have driven themselves to believe in a “master of everything” while completely disregarding meaningful evidence of such a figure. How does that effect our ability to believe?
The end of space will never be understood; at least not by mortal beings with limited intelligence as we appear to have. By the same token, generally, we humans can only surmise all the universe and its contents were and are being created by some form of conscious intelligence we are all unaware of “because” of our limited scope. For instance, there may be intelligence in molecular substance, variable frequency, electrokinetics, electromagnetics, cosmic grandiosity and even celestial particles to say the very least or possibly all of them together.
Until mankind transforms their presently limited intelligence of belief into literally universal and cosmically oriented perception and approach, the remainder of evaluating as to which came first; existence or the more conventional manner of thinking and believing (God), will have to remain as only speculative conception.