>>12718869
Some atheists say that the existence of "something" is a brute fact. After all, no one, no matter what they think, can deny that something exists. So, these people say, let's ignore the problem of "nothing". They say that time, space, matter and energy began with the Big Bang and nothing can be said about what happened before that event. (Oddly, some then claim that the Big Bang was the result of a "vacuum fluctuation", thus demonstrating that something did in fact happen prior to the Big Bang.
In the 18th century, Laplace stated the Principle of Determinism: "If at one time, we knew the positions and motion of all the particles in the universe, then we could calculate their behavior at any other time, in the past of future." This is the basis of classical physics. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of quantum physics destroyed Laplace's aspiration since it tells us that we cannot simultaneously know the precise position and momentum of even one particle never mind all the particles in the universe. This isn't an experimental limitation, but a fundamental aspect of the quantum world. It accords with Max Born's insight that in the quantum world there are no exact answers, only probabilities.
If a particle has no definite position and momentum and can be described only probabilistically then it simply doesn't exist as "something" in the classical sense. The world we live in on a day-to-day basis may seem solid, predictable and full of "somethings", but it is underpinned by a weird, shadowy foundation that gives way as soon as we touch it. There is simply nothing tangible there.
The Superposition Principle of quantum theory tells us that quantum particles can exist in a probabilistic cloud of different states that in classical terms would be mutually exclusive of each other. Only if and when the "wavefunction collapses" (to use the jargon) is one of the potential states definitely selected.
An atom consists of a nucleus surrounded by electrons. The nucleus is tiny and carries a positive charge. The domain of the negatively charged electrons is vast in comparison (about a billion times larger than that of the nucleus). In other words, between the nucleus and the surrounding electrons is an enormous space that is neither something nor nothing – but is a strange probabilistic cloud, a superposition of all the different states that the electron can possess.
The reason that human beings do not get pushed into the ground by gravity is that the negatively charged electron "cloud" surrounding the nuclei of the atoms of the ground repels the negatively charged electron clouds surrounding the nuclei of human feet (or those of shoes), and this effect is much more powerful than gravity. In other words, our way of life is dependent on the strange clouds of electron probability surrounding nuclei. The solidity of atoms, of matter in general, is an illusion.