Could the universe cause itself to exist?

[coolduude]

I’ve heard this theory used as a cop-out from the first cause argument. I personally don’t understand much about it past the title, but maybe someone here does.

Here’s a link:
qsmithwmu.com/the_reason_the_universe_exists_is_because_it_caused_itself_to_exist.htm

What do you guys think of this? (from what I know, I don’t buy it. But like I said, I don’t understand it past the title).

Coolduude

 

[flyingfish]

I’ve heard this theory used as a cop-out from the first cause argument. I personally don’t understand much about it past the title, but maybe someone here does.

Here’s a link:
qsmithwmu.com/the_reason_the_universe_exists_is_because_it_caused_itself_to_exist.htm

What do you guys think of this? (from what I know, I don’t buy it. But like I said, I don’t understand it past the title).

Coolduude

You need a cop out to avoid the infinite regress. Either God causes itself, or the universe causes itself. “Causes” loosely, since something existing outside of time (example: time itself, and therefore spacetime since they are linked) would simply be, without needing to begin.

In this essay I propose to explore a third alternative, that the reason for the universe’s existence lies within the universe itself.

That’s essentially what believers say about God, that God’s reason for existence lies within itself. He is replacing the word “God” with the word “Universe”, and otherwise it is the same statement.

 

[Victorious]

For those who think the universe could cause itself to exists, I guess another way of putting this question would be: could nothing spontaneously make something out of its non-existent self?

 

[flyingfish]

For those who think the universe could cause itself to exists, I guess another way of putting this question would be: could nothing spontaneously make something out of its non-existent self?

You’re assuming the preexistence of time. The very idea of there being nothing, and then there being something implies that time already exist.

The only kind of time we know is spacetime. Time itself cannot be caused, because it would require for time to already exist. Time (and therefore spacetime) simply is, so it makes no sense to talk about something coming out of nothing.

 

[coolduude]

You’re assuming the preexistence of time. The very idea of there being nothing, and then there being something implies that time already exist.

The only kind of time we know is spacetime. Time itself cannot be caused, because it would require for time to already exist. Time (and therefore spacetime) simply is, so it makes no sense to talk about something coming out of nothing.

“The conclusion of this lecture is that the universe has not existed forever. Rather, the universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago.” Stephen Hawking The Beginning of Time

Mr. Hawking disagrees

 

[Victorious]

Time (and therefore spacetime) simply is, so it makes no sense to talk about something coming out of nothing.

What makes no sense is the idea of nothing turning its non-existent self into something. I don’t see how I am presupposing the existence of time (which is something and not nothing), or what that has to do with the discussion in hand anyway.

 

[coolduude]

What makes no sense is the idea of nothing turning its non-existent self into something. I don’t see how I am presupposing the existence of time (which is something and not nothing), or what that has to do with the discussion in hand anyway.

Maybe this analogy will help your argument:

Let’s say you have a large room. It’s fully enclosed and is about the size of a football field. The room is locked, permanently, and has no doors or windows, and no holes in its walls.

Inside the room there is…nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not a particle of anything. No air at all. No dust at all. No light at all. It’s a sealed room that’s pitch black inside. Then what happens?

Well, let’s say your goal is to get something – anything at all – into the room. But the rules are: you can’t use anything from outside the room to do that. So what do you do?

Well, you think, what if I try to create a spark inside the room? Then the room would have light in it, even for just a moment. That would qualify as something. Yes, but you are outside the room. So that’s not allowed.

But, you say, what if I could teleport something into the room, like in Star Trek? Again, that’s not allowable, because you’d be using things from outside the room.

Here again is the dilemma: you have to get something inside the room using only what’s in the room. And, in this case, what’s in the room is nothing.

Well, you say, maybe a tiny particle of something will just show up inside the room if given enough time.

There’s three problems with this theory. First, time by itself doesn’t do anything. Things happen over time, but it’s not time that makes them happen. For example, if you wait 15 minutes for cookies to bake, it’s not the 15 minutes that bakes them, it’s the heat in the oven. If you set them on the counter for 15 minutes, they’re not going to bake.

In our analogy, we’ve got a fully enclosed room with absolutely nothing in it. Waiting 15 minutes will not, in and of itself, change the situation. Well, you say, what if we wait eons? An eon is merely a bunch of 15-minute segments all pressed together. If you waited an eon with your cookies on the counter, would the eon bake them?

 

[coolduude]

Continued…

The second problem is this: why would anything just “show up” in the empty room? It would need a reason why it came to be. But there is nothing inside the room at all. So what’s to stop that from remaining the case? There would be nothing inside the room to cause something to show up (and yet the reason must come from inside the room).

Well, you say, what about a tiny particle of something? Wouldn’t that have a greater chance of materializing in the room than something larger like, for example, a football?

That brings up the third problem: size. Like time, size is an abstract. It’s relative. Let’s say you have three baseballs, all ranging in size. One is ten feet wide, one is five feet wide, one is normal size. Which one is more likely to materialize in the room?

The normal-size baseball? No! It would be the same likelihood for all three. The size wouldn’t matter. It’s not the issue. The issue is whether or not any baseball of any size could just “show up” in our sealed, empty room.

If you don’t think the smallest baseball could just show up in the room, no matter how much time passed, then you must conclude the same thing even for an atom. Size is not an issue. The likelihood of a small particle materializing without cause is no different than a refrigerator materializing without cause!

Now let’s stretch our analogy further, literally. Let’s take our large, pitch-black room and remove its walls. And let’s extend the room so that it goes on infinitely in all directions. Now there is nothing outside the room, because the room is all there is. Period.

This black infinite room has no light, no dust, no particles of any kind, no air, no elements, no molecules. It’s absolute nothingness. In fact, we can call it Absolutely Nothing.

So here’s the question: if originally – bazillions of years ago – there was Absolutely Nothing, wouldn’t there be Absolutely Nothing now?

Yes. For something – no matter how small – cannot come from Absolutely Nothing. We would still have Absolutely Nothing.

 

[flyingfish]

“The conclusion of this lecture is that the universe has not existed forever. Rather, the universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago.” Stephen Hawking The Beginning of Time

Mr. Hawking disagrees

A popular science book written for the average person, not something that Hawking would write for an educated audience.

Think about it, what does it mean to begin. It means at one moment in time you’re not there, and at the next moment in time you are there. If there is no flow of time, you cannot begin. For time itself to begin would require that time already exists. It’s logically impossible.

Hawking is talking about our perspective of existing within time, I’m talking about the perspective of time itself.

What makes no sense is the idea of nothing turning its non-existent self into something. I don’t see how I am presupposing the existence of time (which is something and not nothing), or what that has to do with the discussion in hand anyway.

I agree, it does not make sense. When you say “nothing turning into something” makes no sense, you’re assuming time already exists. Without the flow of time, it makes no sense for anything (or nothing) to turn into anything, because change would not be possible, and whatever is (or isn’t) would simply be (or not be).

So the very paradox of nothing becoming something makes sense only if time already exists.

 

[Call_Me_V]

I’ve heard this theory used as a cop-out from the first cause argument. I personally don’t understand much about it past the title, but maybe someone here does.

Here’s a link:
qsmithwmu.com/the_reason_the_universe_exists_is_because_it_caused_itself_to_exist.htm

What do you guys think of this? (from what I know, I don’t buy it. But like I said, I don’t understand it past the title).

Coolduude

I’m not sure about the Quentin Smith article you suggested, but the idea that something could come from nothing is, in fact, taken seriously by physicists as a result of investigation into quantum physics that show quantum particles can spontaneously appear from nothing. Here’s an (extremely bare bones) article on the subject (i’m not sure about the credibility of the person writing the article, I just know that it’s a good summary of what I’ve heard from many physicists).

Anyways, this theory is highly speculative, and I’m pretty sure that there are plenty of kinks to be worked out, but this is considered to be one possible way that the Universe could have arisen non-theistically. However, no theory of the origins of the universe has come even close to being universally accepted by cosmologists, so for now we simply don’t know where the Universe came from.

V

 

[TamM]

I like your analogy coolduude

 

[Poco]

Far be it from my humble little self to disagree with a “distinguished philosophy professor”!

However, each of his three theories seems to require the pre-existence of “something” in order for the universe to “create itself”.

In his first theory he states:

The universe at t = 0 is nothing other than the particles’ temporal parts a and b and c.

Am I missing something? Or does he already have something existing before the universe creates itself? Where do the temporal parts come from?

In his second theory:

If time is continuous, then there is no first instant that immediately follows the hypothetical ‘first instant’ t = 0.

I may be missing something here as well. The way I read it, he is assuming the existence of time before the beginning of the universe. Since there was “nothing” before the existence of the universe, there was no time.

In his third theory:

The rocket approaches the cylinder’s t = 0 state and just before the rocket reaches this state of the cylinder, a person in the rocket compresses a chunk of matter down to the size of a proton. This proton explodes out of the rocket and its explosion (heading in the future direction, according to the rocket’s time) comprises the initial big bang state t = 0 of the central cylinder. In this way, the initial cylinder state t = 0 is caused to exist by something that exists later than t = 0 (according to the cylinder time), namely, the compression of the proton on the rocket.

This is just plain loopy! It seems nothing more than one of those time travel conundrum/paradox issues of no more value than something fun to talk about over a few beers.

As to the article linked to by Call Me V about “quantum fluctuations”… After a brief internet search, it seems to me energy and time are required to have quantum fluctuation. If so, and if energy and time don’t exist yet, well… I could very well be wrong about this, though.

 

[Ace_of_Spades]

You need a cop out to avoid the infinite regress. Either God causes itself, or the universe causes itself. “Causes” loosely, since something existing outside of time (example: time itself, and therefore spacetime since they are linked) would simply be, without needing to begin.

That’s essentially what believers say about God, that God’s reason for existence lies within itself. He is replacing the word “God” with the word “Universe”, and otherwise it is the same statement.

Something has either necessary existence or contingent existence.
Since the Universe changes it does not have necessary existence and cannot therefore be its own reason for being.

As to your second statement try changing this sentence ‘The woman baked a cake’ to ‘The cake baked a woman’. You must assume both sentences say the same thing.

 

[flyingfish]

Something has either necessary existence or contingent existence.
Since the Universe changes it does not have necessary existence and cannot therefore be its own reason for being.

As to your second statement try changing this sentence ‘The woman baked a cake’ to ‘The cake baked a woman’. You must assume both sentences say the same thing.

Change implies time. If you look at the universe from “outside” rather than inside, it doesn’t experience the passage of time. Time itself does not experience the passage of time, and so does not change. Since time is part of space time, part of the universe, the whole universe does not exist in time. Time is one of its features. The universe itself just is.

 

[R_Daneel]

Even the title of the thread is wrong and meaningless. Causation is only defined within the universe, just like space and time cannot be defined for the universe. All those questions which are frequently brought up, like “what happened before the universe?”, “what exists outside the universe?”, “what caused the universe to exist?” are exactly as meaningless as to ask: “what exists to the north from the North Pole?”. It would be nice if these meaningless threads would die out, but there is no chance… too bad. There are many valid questions and problems to ponder, like “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”.

 

[Ace_of_Spades]

Change implies time. If you look at the universe from “outside” rather than inside, it doesn’t experience the passage of time. Time itself does not experience the passage of time, and so does not change. Since time is part of space time, part of the universe, the whole universe does not exist in time. Time is one of its features. The universe itself just is.

You seem to be under the impression that time is a thing in itself rather than a description of thing. What is time other than an ordered sequence of changes?

 

[Ace_of_Spades]

Change implies time. If you look at the universe from “outside” rather than inside, it doesn’t experience the passage of time. Time itself does not experience the passage of time, and so does not change. Since time is part of space time, part of the universe, the whole universe does not exist in time. Time is one of its features. The universe itself just is.

Either the universa changes or it doesn’t. It makes no difference where one imagines it from.

 

[flyingfish]

You seem to be under the impression that time is a thing in itself rather than a description of thing. What is time other than an ordered sequence of changes?

Here is our best understanding of time en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime

In relativistic contexts, however, time cannot be separated from the three dimensions of space, because the rate at which time passes depends on an object’s velocity relative to the speed of light and also on the strength of intense gravitational fields, which can slow the passage of time.

If you’re light, time stands still. Our intuitive perception of time is approximately accurate under normal conditions. Fundamentally, our intuition of time is wrong. Spacetime is a part of this universe, so it makes no sense to ask what came before it, or what will come after it. There is no before, and there is no after for spacetime itself. It just is.

 

[Ace_of_Spades]

wikipedia may or maynot be our best source of understand of time but the article does not seem to contradict what I have said. Time is a decription not an object.

 

[flyingfish]

wikipedia may or maynot be our best source of understand of time but the article does not seem to contradict what I have said. Time is a decription not an object.

Time is as much a description as space It is a “description” of this universe, if you will.