If the thinker exists, then something exists. Which leads to the question of how something, how anything, got here in the first place. We can assume that either things came about from nothing, or that things have always been, or that things came about from something else. Lets look at these three possibilities.
The idea that things come about from nothing is at once contradictory. Because nothing, by definition, leads to more nothingness, and it cannot have something nor can it ever lead to something. A vacuum is the most physical example of nothingness we can perceive, yet that is not really true nothingness....a vacuum still exists in a space. However, it will suffice for an illustration. A vacuum has nothing in it. And no matter if you leave that vacuum for trillions of years, it will never produce anything. The same extends to true nothingness where even space does not exist. Here, we face the well known problem of ex nihilo, something from nothing. Which leads us to the next possibility.
Something has always been. There has never been a time when there was nothing. If we are willing to let go of the idea that there was a point when there was absolutely and totally nothing, then this is a plausible state of affairs. The next question is has the something we know now always been the same. Did it change? Or has it remained substantially the same throughout all time?
From our senses, we perceive that there are things that change and there are things that do not. The position of the planets relative to each other changes. The pattern of activity and behavior in people and animals changes every minute. Even a seemingly stable piece of metal consists of atoms and electrons that are constantly in a state of flux and motion. However, the forces that hold the planets together act in a predictable manner. The objective fact that people performed certained behaviors in the past remains unchanged, and is changed insofar as our subjective understanding is concerned. The fact that if you cool the metal to the point of 0 kelvins, all atomic motion stops, remains unchanged.
We see now that the issue becomes complex. We have both changing and unchanging situations. Let us first consider the easier case, which is ironically the case with change. This leads to the question, if something has been changing, then it must have had an initial state. In fact, everything that is changing now, must have had an initial state. And if there was an initial state, what made it change to the next state? Why did it not remain in the initial state?
More to come...