‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’.

Most of us, I think, have been challenged with this question, usually as a preface to an attempt to convert us or to to convince us of the truth of one belief system or another.

But I’ve wondered for quite some time why so many consider this a compelling question. Why assume that ‘nothing’ is the default state in a universe that’s chock-full of ‘somethings’: objects with mass, properties, forces, the space-time continuum, subatomic particles, and so on?

It seems to me that ‘nothing’, unaccompanied by the existence of somethings, is the hypothetical state in need of explanation.

What do you think?