Why is there something rather than nothing? How the ontological question is misunderstood, and how it is reflected in the death of culture

The question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Is one that has got caught up in the apologetics squabbles of the era of new atheism. Naturally since most quarters of this public debate live in shallow waters it has tended to resolve into disputes that have little to do with the question at hand, and left us with the remains to clear up. Physicist Lawrence M Krauss wrote a book entitled “A Universe From Nothing”, featuring an afterward by Richard Dawkins who wrote “Even the last remaining trump card of the theologian, ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?,’ shrivels up before your eyes as you read these pages”

These views all reflect something that has become somewhat characteristic in an era where philosophy seems to have little influence and science seems to have an enormous influence, that is a view where science a) is actually the source of most of what we know and b) does not have epistemological limits, in other words can explain everything.

Yet the question ‘why is there something rather than nothing?’ Is by definition a question that science cannot answer, and the inability to recognise this essentially describes the problem with much of our current worldview…