...trying to bring some sobriety into the whole discussion...
There's a basic problem with the word "Nothing". It obviously derives from "No Thing", so it is a description of the state of "Thing" and does not itself exist as an entity.
When one uses "nothing" in a sentence, where the use of "no thing" is inappropriate, one creates an artificial noun which was never intended to exist. There is no such thing as "nothing". "Nothing" is "no thing", and has no additional meaning.
When one tries to give "nothing" a meaning one is attempting to give the lack of something an individual existence which is doesn't have.
Imagine the word "house". There is no word "nohouse". If there were such a word, it would represent the lack of houses. "house" represents a solid, visible object that can be seen and interacted with, "nohouse" has no meaning other than its reference to the lack of house.
Similarly, "nothing" has no independant meaning. It relies entirely on the existence of "thing", and it merely states that there is no "thing".
All of the discussion here, centered around the possession, meaning, and existence, of "nothing", make no sense when one resolves the word "nothing" into its components, "no" and "thing". You cannot own "nothing" because when you say you have "nothing" you are saying that you have "no thing".
"Nothing" does not exist. "Thing" exists, and "No thing" is the absence of it.
Let's not get hung up in the structure of the English language. Try to translate "I have nothing" into other languages, and you immediately see why the problem exists.
The translation into French is "je n'ai rien", which literally means "I don't have anything".
In Dutch the translation would be "ik heeft niets", and that has the same problem, because "niets" means "niet iets", which is "not something". In all Germanic languages, which includes English, Dutch, Flemish, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, there is a word similar to "niets", or "nix", which means "nothing", whereas in Latin languages, such as French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Roumanian, there is no such word. In those languages you can only translate "I have nothing" to "I do not have anything".
The problem with the construction, in English, of "I have nothing" is that it suggests that you have something which is called "nothing", whereas the correct meaning is that you do not have any thing. The verb "to have" suggests ownership, and the correct usage of the verb "to have" would be to follow it with a noun describing what you have. To follow it with "nothing" actually negates the verb construction "I have." Since you do not have anything, you cannot logically say "I have" followed by anything at all. By concluding the sentence with "nothing" you are creating an abuse of the language. You are substituting "I do not have", or "I have not" with a positive object which is in fact a representative of the negative.
In other words, you have the positive statement, "I have x" or the negative statement "I do not have x", but instead of using the negative statement, to say, "I do not have any thing", you are using the positive statement, "I have nothing", which implies that there is something called "nothing."
Upon the illogical assumption, that there is a positive entity under the name of "nothing", this entire discussion evolves.
But then again it can't 'cause it don't exist.
