When I think about gravity I find I keep coming to the question: If it is not a force, but just the result of a distortion of spacetime, would there not have to be a force that distorted spacetime, and maintained the distortion? If so, what is that force, and where does its energy come from?

In another thread we, sort of, traced this back to the Big Bang, but if that line of reasoning is right it seems no more than a semantic nicety to say that gravity is not a force, but a force is required to create and maintain it.

There never was nothing.