“The transition of nothing-to-something is a natural one, not requiring any agent.”
Source: God: The Failed Hypothesis (2007), Chapter 4: 'Cosmic Evidence', p.133
Context: The transition of nothing-to-something is a natural one, not requiring any agent. As Nobel laureate physicist Frank Wilczek has put it, "The answer to the ancient question 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' would then be that 'nothing' is unstable." [... ] In short, the natural state of affairs is something rather than nothing. An empty universe requires supernatural intervention--not a full one. Only by the constant action of an agent outside the universe, such as God, could a state of nothingness be maintained. The fact that we have something is just what we would expect if there is no God.
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Victor J. Stenger 13
American philosopher 1935–2014Related quotes

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Book I, On Production, Chapter II, p. 65
Introduction: an evolutionary riddle, p. 15
In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (2002)

Edward Snowden

“From the very nature of progress, all ages must be transitional.”
"Form and Intelligibility," from The Radcliffe Manuscripts (1949); written in 1894 as an undergraduate at Radcliffe College
Context: From the very nature of progress, all ages must be transitional. If they were not, the world would be at a stand-still and death would speedily ensue. It is one of the tamest of platitudes but it is always introduced by a flourish of trumpets.

Source: Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes (1824), Chapter 4, p. 68

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), In London, p. 60

“Each natural agent works but to this end,—
To render that it works on like itself.”
Act III, scene i.
Bussy D'Ambois (1607)