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> [i]George: Trying to discuss this primordial state as if it existed within some extended Newtonian universe where time and space still exist seems to be where you are both going wrong. There is no "before" or "outside" to the primordial state.-DT: Again agreed. But something caused the primordial state.[/i]-Why did something have to cause the primordial state?  I am calling it that because it doesn&apos;t have a cause. -[i]George: Furthermore the primordial state has no mass or energy, or more precisely it has zero energy. However energy can exist in both positive and negative forms. So zero energy can be a balance of positive and negative energies.    DT: This is where we part ways. I follow the reasoning of Ed Feser, a philosophy professor,  one of his books: The Last Superstition is on this subject of ours, which is really a discussion of cause and effect. He is a former atheist who is now a Catholic and closely follows the reasoning of Aristotle and St. Thomas.-Nothingness is the key point. Pure nothingness is an absolute void. And the discussion has to start there. Pure nothingness is an acceptable concept. There can be such a non-existent nothing.[/i]-To be is to exist, so you are saying here: "There can exist such a non-existent nothing" which is clearly a self-contradiction.-[i]DT: On the other hand, as Leibniz pointed asked, why is there anything?[/i] -Perhaps because pure nothing cannot exist. Only a physical nothing - a void - can be said to exist. -[i]Each effect must have a cause, but as stated by Aquinas: What does not have existence on its own must have a cause. Hume&apos;s attack on this principle of causality is entirely refuted in Feser&apos;s book.[/i]-In that case I&apos;m with Hume on this. Allow me to doubt Feser&apos;s reasoning.-[i]DT: Your description of equal amounts of positive and negative energy equalling zero is correct, but it is zero, not absolutely nothing and the whole equation is something. It represents two types of existing energy, not nothingness.[/i]-But the point is that the two types of energy do not exist until they separate out. They break the symmetry.-[i]DT: I am saying there must be the total absence of energy to get rid of my insistence that something eternal has to exist.[/i] -Once again "eternal" means "for all time", and we are discussing a state where time does not exist. So your introduction of this concept is invalid.