Difference between 'nothing' and a 'vacuum'

[warpspeedpetey]

The existence of the universe is simply a chance event (as are most things on a quantum scale)

quantum ‘virtual particles’ require a vacuum in which to occur, the existence of that vacuum, cannot be accounted for by particle interactions, i.e., the idea that a chance particle event occured causing the universe is dependent on the pre existence of that vacuum. making virtual particle interactions impossible as a cause for the universe.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Could you explain how is a vacuum just “a dimensionally defined space?” If there is nothing within a vacuum, it is a nothing place. (“Place” being defined as the innermost surface of a surrounding body.)

jd

sure, 'empty space, is still a thing, in fact it is expanding continuously as a matter of scientific observation, from the big bang.

it therefore has dimension. prior to the big bang there is no reason to believe that space existed at all.

there would seem to be no physical reason that anything, vacuum or particles should exist, leaving only non-physical causes as the first cause.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

There is no explanation for the most basic “plane”, if you will, of existence. It simply exists as a brute fact.

Just because a space is recognized and defined does not mean that it is something.

sure it does, if it was nothing we couldn’t define it, or recognize it, because it would literally be ‘nothing’. further, scientic observation shows that it is expanding, i dont think many in science would agree with you that space is ‘nothing’

Whatever the root node of existence is, I say that it came to be the same way that your Yahweh came to be.

the physical universe must necessarily have a non-physical cause, as nothing physical is capable of causing itself, first cause then, being non-physical, is not under those rules of physical determinism. logic would seem then to deny that the physical and non-physical could have the szme cause. but these arguments are well documented in previous threads, before i would repeat the regular stream of refutations, please review those arguments under the title non-physical. it will save time.

The circumstances prior to the beginning of the universe may not have been observable by today’s science in practice, but it is still an issue concerning reality, and has a concrete answer.

sure, our previous arguments have led to the idea of the non-physical as that concrete answer, it can be no other way

Just because a particular way of thinking can offer an explanation does not necessarily mean that it is correct.

true, which is exactly why i think it important that the usual reasons for atheism are debunked as the discovery channel science that they are. i.e. virtual particles

The dimensions that we may attribute to it do not exist in reality - they are abstractions.

units expressed are unimportant, but the mere fact that we can assign them, and science does, means that a vacuum is something

there is no physical reason that anything should exist at all, not space, not a vacuum, nothing.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

sure it does, if it was nothing we couldn’t define it, or recognize it, because it would literally be ‘nothing’. further, scientic observation shows that it is expanding, i dont think many in science would agree with you that space is ‘nothing’

further, the brute fact of existence seems to be an insufficient answer for the scientific world, thats what all the colliders are about, at the core.

the physical universe must necessarily have a non-physical cause, as nothing physical is capable of causing itself, first cause then, being non-physical, is not under those rules of physical determinism. logic would seem then to deny that the physical and non-physical could have the szme cause. but these arguments are well documented in previous threads, before i would repeat the regular stream of refutations, please review those arguments under the title non-physical. it will save time.

sure, our previous arguments have led to the idea of the non-physical as that concrete answer, it can be no other way

true, which is exactly why i think it important that the usual reasons for atheism are debunked as the discovery channel science that they are. i.e. virtual particles

units expressed are unimportant, but the mere fact that we can assign them, and science does, means that a vacuum is something

there is no physical reason that anything should exist at all, not space, not a vacuum, nothing.

 

[JDaniel]

True, nothingness is not empty space. Empty space can be described or imagined but nothingness cannot. When you try to describe or imagine nothingness you automatically make it something.

I’m not so sure I would agree. I can describe and imagine “nothingness”, and, I think others have, too.

So nothingness is undefined and that’s why we cannot know why it produces something. To us observers something emerges as unpredictable (random) energy fluctuations out of nothing. As if there was a reservoir of undefined energy which becomes defined as it unpredictably “shoots out” along with space and time.

But nothingness is defined. It is: “no thing(s)”. No thing(s) includes particles of any kind including virtual particles. It appears that one can postulate almost anything, especially when one invokes the word “virtual”. Since the word has so many connotations and denotations it becomes an indispensable variable to postulation.

An interesting thing is that it seems that in the process of creation of defined energy (the energy that makes up our universe), no energy is actually created in total.

But, it is, in fact. The authors simply relagate it to being so small that it is not important, in the larger scheme of things. I contend that, where there is nothing, even something that small, if their schema is real, is of incredible significance and importance.

That is, the total energy of the universe seems to be zero, because the positive energy of matter (E=mc^2) is compensated by the negative potential energy of gravity that pulls matter together. Here is an article about it:

A Universe From Nothing

One final observation: if there is a somewhere where there is really nothing, there canot be anything - even energy, static or kinetic. If something came to be in such an environment, once again something external would to have to be invoked as its cause.

jd

 

[JDaniel]

sure, 'empty space, is still a thing, in fact it is expanding continuously as a matter of scientific observation, from the big bang.

it therefore has dimension. prior to the big bang there is no reason to believe that space existed at all.

there would seem to be no physical reason that anything, vacuum or particles should exist, leaving only non-physical causes as the first cause.

But, isn’t it understood that even in a vacuum there exist sub-atomic particles, separated by ever increasing distance between them, but, which nevertheless can intersect with any and all areas of empty space and most likely have?

jd

 

[Shredderbeam]

sure, 'empty space, is still a thing, in fact it is expanding continuously as a matter of scientific observation, from the big bang.

Space isn’t empty. Even a vacuum isn’t perfectly empty.

sure it does, if it was nothing we couldn’t define it, or recognize it, because it would literally be ‘nothing’. further, scientic observation shows that it is expanding, i dont think many in science would agree with you that space is ‘nothing’

Why can’t we define nothingness?

warpspeedpetey:

true, which is exactly why i think it important that the usual reasons for atheism are debunked as the discovery channel science that they are. i.e. virtual particles

I didn’t realize that this was a religious debate…

warpspeedpetey:

units expressed are unimportant, but the mere fact that we can assign them, and science does, means that a vacuum is something

A vacuum is not the same thing as nothingness.

warpspeedpetey:

there is no physical reason that anything should exist at all, not space, not a vacuum, nothing.

Which brings us to “Why does existence exist?” - a question without an answer.

 

[Handsome_Danger]

All right, but then how do you know that theology is correct and true?

I heard about the LHC being used to re-create the Big Bang, or the conditions leading to it…sounds a bit unrealistic, though.

Well that’s the thing…science is used to prove the truth, or correctness (so much as possible) in the natural world. Theology is used for things in the supernatural world. But they don’t play by the same set of rules, because the rules for one (physics, chemistry, the scientific principal, etc.) don’t necessarily play well in the other (faith, miracles, God, etc.) and vice versa. So when people try and use one to justify or prove (or disprove) another, it is just futile. They are two different tools, used for two different things. At some point, we will have some cause for our natural world that cannot be broken down anymore (right now, that’s the Big Bang…might change to something else later, but that’s science’s realm to figure it out). The Church believes that what comes before that first, irreducible event happens in the *supernatural world *and is caused by God. This is where theology comes in. So, asking “well how do you know it is correct” while looking at it from the same perspective of knowing something is correct in the natural world doesn’t make sense.

The LHC hopes to recreate the conditions immediately after the Big Bang…to try and see a Higgs Boson particle before it evaporates (among other particles).

HD

 

[Shredderbeam]

Well that’s the thing…science is used to prove the truth, or correctness (so much as possible) in the natural world. Theology is used for things in the supernatural world. But they don’t play by the same set of rules, because the rules for one (physics, chemistry, the scientific principal, etc.) don’t necessarily play well in the other (faith, miracles, God, etc.) and vice versa. So when people try and use one to justify or prove (or disprove) another, it is just futile. They are two different tools, used for two different things. At some point, we will have some cause for our natural world that cannot be broken down anymore (right now, that’s the Big Bang…might change to something else later, but that’s science’s realm to figure it out). The Church believes that what comes before that first, irreducible event happens in the *supernatural world *and is caused by God. This is where theology comes in. So, asking “well how do you know it is correct” while looking at it from the same perspective of knowing something is correct in the natural world doesn’t make sense.

If you can’t use the scientific method to validate it, how do you, then? How do you know that theology is right and other ways of going about it are wrong?
Handsome Danger:

The LHC hopes to recreate the conditions immediately after the Big Bang…to try and see a Higgs Boson particle before it evaporates (among other particles).

HD

Ah, ok.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

Space isn’t empty. Even a vacuum isn’t perfectly empty.

for our purposes here, it doesnt matter whether we have a perfect vacuum or not, virtual particles are dependent on a pre existing vacuum.

Why can’t we define nothingness?

i dont understand the question here, nothing simply means no thing, space, or vacuum is a thing defined scientifically by dimensions, it is expanding. we can measure it…

I didn’t realize that this was a religious debate…

ok

A vacuum is not the same thing as nothingness.

thats right

Which brings us to “Why does existence exist?” - a question without an answer.

if you happened to research the previous arguments you will see that a non-physical cause is the only logical answer to our existence, as to its theological purpose of existence, thats outside the bounds of our current discussion

let me stress that the previous argumentation concerning non-physical is the basis of my argumentation.

 

[Shredderbeam]

for our purposes here, it doesnt matter whether we have a perfect vacuum or not, virtual particles are dependent on a pre existing vacuum.

i dont understand the question here, nothing simply means no thing, space, or vacuum is a thing defined scientifically by dimensions, it is expanding. we can measure it…

But the empty reaches of space are not nothingness, so nothingness is not expanding.

warpspeedpetey:

if you happened to research the previous arguments you will see that a non-physical cause is the only logical answer to our existence, as to its theological purpose of existence, thats outside the bounds of our current discussion

let me stress that the previous argumentation concerning non-physical is the basis of my argumentation.

I’m not talking about physical existence, I’m talking about existence in general. There must always be some root node of existence, or else something must have come into existence from nothing at all - I am sure that we can agree that the latter is impossible.

 

[RobbyS]

Well to be able to use theology with confidence we need to be able to ascertain that it produces results that line up with reality. With science, it’s easy - a theory is used to make a prediction which is later verified - but can theology do the same thing?

A scientific theory also depends on premises. And predictive power is an indicator. Ptolemy’s astronomy better explained the data long after Galileo’s time. Newton’s physics joined to the heliocentric hypothesis finally produced a more accurate cosmotology. THAT of course has been superceded.

As for theology, I don’t accept your primise that it is separate from science. Both it and science are looking at the same reality. Both assume a reality. Theology, of at least Christian theology assumes a “creator.” Science may not, but the question then becomes, "Ought it not in order to avoid falsification? If the Big Bang theory is right, then science --following the Greeks, by the way, assumed an eternal universe, intersected at a point predicted by theology. No one doubts that one can lives as an atheist–as if God did not exist. But if he does then we are bound, in time, to face the consequences of denial.

 

[Shredderbeam]

A scientific theory also depends on premises. And predictive power is an indicator. Ptolemy’s astronomy better explained the data long after Galileo’s time. Newton’s physics joined to the heliocentric hypothesis finally produced a more accurate cosmotology. THAT of course has been superceded.

As for theology, I don’t accept your primise that it is separate from science. Both it and science are looking at the same reality. Both assume a reality. Theology, of at least Christian theology assumes a “creator.” Science may not, but the question then becomes, "Ought it not in order to avoid falsification? If the Big Bang theory is right, then science --following the Greeks, by the way, assumed an eternal universe, intersected at a point predicted by theology. No one doubts that one can lives as an atheist–as if God did not exist. But if he does then we are bound, in time, to face the consequences of denial.

I’m not necessarily claiming that science and theology are separate, I’m just asking Handsome Danger how he/she knows that theology is valid.

 

[Handsome_Danger]

If you can’t use the scientific method to validate it, how do you, then? How do you know that theology is right and other ways of going about it are wrong?

Faith! Haha…but seriously, I know how unsatisfying an answer that is to see…and in all honesty, it’s an unsatisfying answer to give too, in some respects. Not because I don’t believe it to be right, but because it’s so hard to explain, as we as creatures are so dependent on our relationship with the natural world in order to undersand everything that we understand. Let me try to explain, with the caveat that I am by no means the best person to do so.

Faith is, in theology, our validating method. It is how we know that what we do know about the supernatural world is right (it gets more complex than that, but let me start there). Now, we only experience the supernatural imperfectly right now…because we live in the natural world. We believe that our souls are part of the supernatural world, but until we die, we won’t be able to experience that fully. So, the same way that at any given moment, we can only experience a 3 dimentional cross section of the 4th dimension in the natural world…at any given moment, our experience with the supernatural world is incomplete, at the least. However, we do our best to understand. So how do we know that we got it right? Well, for one, we believe that, in the order of things, the supernatural is above the natural…that the natural world came about because of God, who is supernatural. So the supernatural can influence the natural, through whatever means it may have. Things like miracles, like God becoming man are all ways in which the supernatural have affected the natural (the question of “how do you know the natural events were really supernatural things influencing the natural world” is really a question for another thread that i’m sure exists out there…for the purposes of saving myself a lot of typing, we as Catholics do believe that, and we truly do have reasons that we do). It is these things, in the person of Jesus, in the natural law that is intrinsic to each human, and in miracles that we have some idea of where we stand in the supernatural world.

There are many people through the centuries that have arguments as to why we can say there is historical evidence about this, and it’s really too much to get into here, so I won’t rehash it all. Karl Keating is pretty good to read as an author that comes to mind. But also, one cannot deny that there are many many scientists out there that believed as well. One could argue that their belief was just a product of their time. But to say that would be to deny that these were people that KNEW how to ask the hard questions, and they belived regardless. There is something to that, whether we know why or not.

So yeah, faith, in whatever religion you practice, is ONE thing that gives us insight into the supernatural world…where we will not ever have total understanding of until we are better part of it.

HD

 

[warpspeedpetey]

But the empty reaches of space are not nothingness, so nothingness is not expanding.

? i must be missing the point here, space is expanding at an accelerating rate from the big bang. the expansion of the space time from the big bang is what im talking about here.

I’m not talking about physical existence, I’m talking about existence in general. There must always be some root node of existence, or else something must have come into existence from nothing at all - I am sure that we can agree that the latter is impossible.

sure for physical things that is called first cause. if you are suggesting that the non-physical needs a a ‘first cause’ itself in the same way that causality works within the physical universe, then you may be assuming, as is commonly done, that the non-physical must behave by the same laws of physics as the physical, however, lacking any of the normal physical qualities, i.e. mass, dimension, etc i dont know of any reason to make that assumption, indeed the lack of those qualities would seem to exclude the non-physical from conforming to the laws of physics from which we dram the observed physical causality.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

I’m not necessarily claiming that science and theology are separate, I’m just asking Handsome Danger how he/she knows that theology is valid.

if you are curious as to how we know Christain theology is correct in the mathematical sense, you may search for “converegent prophecy” on the forums.

 

[MindOverMatter]

Which brings us to “Why does existence exist?” - a question without an answer.

No. “Why does physical reality exist”. That can have an answer. The answer is that Existence eternally willed it into being.

 

[bpuharic]

“Handsome Danger” says that atheists don’t care about explanations. In a sense that’s true. We don’t care about ANY explanation; we care about the RIGHT explanation.

First, it’s may not be true that science can ‘only see’ back to the Big Bang. A recent “Scientific American” article explored this question and it’s possible that the method by which our universe was formed left imprints on the universe. So we MAY be able to ‘see’ before the BB.

As to not having God, well, “God” has been used throughout history to ‘explain’ unknown causes. Those explanations have always been wrong. The idea even has a name: “God of the gaps”, the gaps being the gaps in our knowledge.

So, try not to generalize about atheists. There are as many reasons to be an atheist as there are to be a Christian.

 

[TeresaofRoses]

I.m just an average woman from nowhere of any significance, experiencing a spritual meltdown. I obey the Ten Commandments, try to stay away from the Seven Deadly Sins however in my lifetime I have discovered that Dante was wrong there are not only nine levels of hell. As for the ‘nothing’ and ‘vacuum’ thing. Nothing is something that does not exist. Vacuum is a void. Nothing can also be used as a relative term ie. “She is nothing”, “Nothing to worry about”, “I had something, now I have nothing”. It could be said that a vacuum is a void that can possibly be filled. Unless you are going for the NASA version of vacuum. They are both philisophical and scientific. Here’s a good one. Do angels set on pin heads?

 

[champam]

Does anyone know why light will transmit through a vacume? Doesn’t energy need some medium to be conducted through, like electricity through water or sound through air? What are light vibrations? Vibrations of what?

Is it Luminiferous Aether?

Has anyone noticed that the bulk of academics and pseudo academics that are persuaded by movies like “What the Bleep do we know” that tout quantum mechanics as proof of the folly of religion b/c clearly the Universe created itself, are mostly not real scientists? By that I mean they are in branches of academia that do not employ the Scientific method, which involves not just postulating a theory, but actually conducting experiments, formulating solid quantifiable conclusions and sharing that entire process with peers openly and globally so they can reproduce your experiment and see if they come to the same conclusion.

In real “Hard Sciences”, “Natural Sciences” that employ the scientific method, an unproven Theory is worthless, and anyone makes assumptions and goes forward based on unproven theory is a fool.

Why do the Social Sciences i.e. Sociology, Political Science and to a lesser degree psychology, anthropology dare to associate themselves with Science when the refuse to ever use the scientific method?

They make theories about human beings either on the micro or macro level that either cannot ethically or practically be experimented on, and then go forward assuming that an untested theory is worth something when it absolutely is not.

What I’m saying is that most of the academics who foolishly are sucked into atheistic points of view are statistically less likely to be involved in the Hard Sciences like Chemistry, Physics, Biology or even Mathematics and Logic. But we have been convinces by the media that exactly the opposite is the case.

I really like that Jewish guys movie about evolution, No intelligence required or something like that, it really shows what I have suspected for a very long time, that academia has been utterly hijacked.

For the guy that said that the root node of the universe is comparable to what we call God, i.e. if we claim that God is uncreated which means eternal then the atheist simply claims that the universe is uncreated and therefore eternal, this is my thought.

If you say that the Universe is uncreated and therefore eternal then the universe cannot be changing because you can not be both eternal and changing. But the universe clearly is changing. It is moving and nothing can move unless it changes from one position to another, in both time or space or both.

Time and change are intrinsically linked, like love and life. Change is measured by time, and there would be no way to recognize time if we didn’t observe things changing, like the position of stars in the sky or the angle of the sun to the earth.

If an apple is eternally red then there was never and isn’t and never will be a time when it is green, that aspect of it is eternal.

God is eternal and unchanging, the same yesterday today and tomorrow.

If God does something to you tomorrow, he’s always done it for you, tomorrow.

Just my thoughts.