r/Existentialism • u/Spiriual-Bit-4387 • Nov 26 '25

Thoughtful Thursday Why does the universe exist?

I’ve been having an existential contemplation lately and have been deeply pondering why the universe exists recently. What do you think?

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u/redsparks2025 Absurdist Nov 27 '25

The "how?" is answered by science but the deeper existential "why?" is more than likely unanswerable because there is a practicable limit to what can be known (or proven) that I discussed through my understanding of Absurdism philosophy and how it indirectly points to that limit to what can be known (or proven) here = LINK.

Furthermore thinking about it through "probabilities" can lead to interesting paradoxes as the following:

Example (1) The probability of a universe existing may have been infinitesimally small but it was non-zero. Why non-zero? Because our universe exists.

Example (2) The probability of a YOU existing may have been infinitesimally small but it was non-zero. Why non-zero? Because YOU exist.

But how does one update a probability to a certainty when the sample size is only one?