Reality is what is left when all other possibilities have failed to exist.
We know this for a fact with the process of natural selection and it appears this way with other natural processes. What is possible in this universe is constrained at the creation to a subset of what could be. Now I think that a creation by a creator is a restriction to what could be and that a creation from nothing is the maximum of what could be. So how can nothing be greater than something ? Well it looks like an odd claim but it goes like this;
If reality is what left from a larger set of possibilities then the largest set of possibilities has an infinity of possibilities if you start from nothing. This is because anything less than nothing constrains what is possible to a subset of what can be. If it was not-nothing then it ceases to be an infinity of what is possible.
Thus to me a creation by a creator is actually starting with a restriction of the possible universes whereas a creation from nothing has an infinity of possible universes. Sure it is not a defeater of a creator but the argument that creation from nothing is unreasonable has a hollow ring.
The start of this universe meant that of the infinitely vast possible worlds a particular subset of what could be was selected for. Now you have to be careful here because you have the Illusion of Design in which us humans see a pattern in what is mindless noise and presume a designer.
We do not know what happened before the Big Bang. It is presumptuous to even think there was a before. Without space there is no time. But we know there was a Big Bang and this resulted in subset of what is possible. It wasn’t all created then but started a process that has continued to this day and will continue for many billions of years.
We don’t know what is possible and so we also do not know what can exist. When we find novel systems that persist then we call the process of that system an emergence. It is a weak emergence in that nothing that was impossible has become possible. Living things and our consciousness are considered as emergent but I’ve come to not like using the word “emergent” as it hides the idea that what is possible is far greater and more fantastic than we can ever discover.
There are many things that can exist and will in time exist. The creation from the Big Bang is not over. There are many discoveries for us to make and even if we could ever get close to discovering all there is to know the universe will be selecting new things as we are doing this and so the same process starts all over for us. These natural things will be never ending because they come from the vast set of what is possible.
And that is just the naturally evolved things. We also have the designed things that we make. These will also be never ending because they too come from the same vast set of what is possible.
Whilst Religions like to look at their holy books and claim that all around us was created and from that they believe the creation has ended, the naturalistic worldview isn’t so depressed but can show that the Big Bang was not the creation of all there is but the start of a part of all there could be. This universe has only just got started and there is a long way to go yet.
Picture credit: I’ve used the image of the isotopes from Wikipedia here. It is public domain but I’ve used this before in arguments as it shows the messy underlying nature of the reality of matter. As a naturally occurring table of isotopes then it has that just-so disorder.