Nothingness and the rise of something

[Charlemagne_II]

crowonsnow

The ability to fantasize, maybe call it wonder, has been selected for in humans because it’s good exercise for the brain. But it doesn’t give credence to any so called “perfection.

I don’t think fantasizing is merely “good exercise for the brain” is a viable statement. There are too many other ways to exercise the brain. Fantasizing is searching for the truth down all possible roads. Fantasizing leads now and then to reality, now and then to escape from reality. It is the road we might venture down when mere intellect is stumped by the difficulties of an insoluble problem. How did Einstein come up with relativity but by some sort of fantasizing that got him to some sort of truth that seemed unbelievable on the level of pure intellect? Likewise with quantum mechanics. Great leaps over logical incredulity are required to grasp it, as Einstein himself complained. Religion is full of fantasizing, not because it leads nowhere (though sometimes it might), but because it leads to somewhere that the merely logical people of the world refuse to go.

Perfection is like the concept of infinity in mathematics. You can posit it, but you can never grasp it. We should not disbelieve in perfection just because we cannot grasp it. Even the atheist wants the universe to be “perfectly” infinite, so that he doesn’t have to posit the “perfect” infinity of God.

 

[crowonsnow]

If you don’t believe in perfection how do you explain beauty? Or do you also regard that as an illusion?

I didn’t say that some part of the universe is an illusion. I can consider an electron or a flower to be perfect if I choose, or beautiful.

 

[crowonsnow]

What, hypothetically, would give it credence?

It would have to be real.

 

[mario_grgic]

“the property of perfect symmetry is simply the same as absence of all things”.
This is the one of the most absurd statements I have ever read! If one doubts the possibility of perfect symmetry it is more reasonable just to deny it exists rather than equate it with the absence of everything.

The problem is that the more absurd a statement is the more difficult it is to falsify. How would you deal with “Everything is the cause of nothing”?

No wonder metaphysics has fallen into disrepute. uch:

I don’t find it that absurd. Perfect symmetry means that there is no motion, since motion would be breaking the symmetry of matter, there is no time, you can not measure it and there is nothing to measure it, for if there existed something, symmetry would be broken.

So equating perfect symmetry with nothingness is reasonable. The whole point of the theory is to show that this perfect symmetry is not stable and that it will eventually be broken all by itself.

 

[warpspeedpetey]

I have recently read a few articles by physicist Victor Stenger and about his book The Comprehensible Cosmos: Where Do the Laws of Physics Come From? and it seems he has a fascinating answer to the ancient question of “Why is there something rather than nothing?”.

Stenger equates nothingness with a state of perfect symmetry. One might object that nothingness cannot have a property but it seems that the property of perfect symmetry is simply the same as absence of all things: no thing can exist in the state of perfect symmetry because the thing would be differentiated from the rest of reality and thus would break the perfect symmetry. This state of nothingness has no measurable matter/energy, space or time.

Interestingly though, it seems that from the property of perfect symmetry result all laws of physics - conservation laws, general relativity, quantum mechanics. The mathematics behind this monumental claim is beyond me. But it was already shown a century ago by Emmy Noether that conservation laws such as conservation of energy, momentum and angular momentum are the result of invariance of physical laws with respect to translation in time, translation in space and direction in space, respectively. That is, no point in time or space or direction in space is special. Now Stenger shows that other, more abstract symmetries are the source of other laws of physics. Including the source of quantum mechanical laws, which enable the state of nothingness (perfect symmetry) to transform randomly into the state of thingness (broken symmetry) with measurable space, time and matter/energy. In one article Stenger calculates that the probability of moving from nothingness to thingness is 68.7%! So nothingness is unstable and can turn into something. Nothingness contains, inherently and necessarily, the possibility to turn spontaneously into something. The problem is that I can’t imagine how this can be done and I don’t understand the quantum-mechanical mathematics behind it. If there is somebody who understands this and can explain it or at least give an idea to the layperson, I would be very interested.

Here are some links I got these ideas from:

www.csicop.org/sb/2006-06/reality-check.html

colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/nothing.html

colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/Godless/Origin.pdf

as the vacuum fluctuations, virtual particles, etc, that which they claim pops from nothing are dependent on a vacuum or a monochromatic electromagnetic field, already existing, they are dependent on a universe already existing. so they cant qualify as springing from nothingness, because they are contingent on the pre-existence of something else.

so it sounds great to a physicist but the flaw is immediately clear to metaphysics. which is funny because in the last url the guy states in the prologue that theists “run out of arguments”. so its obviously an attempt to avoid theism with a scientific explanation, a scientific explanation which i can prove is impossible, which you will find here

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=336721

 

[warpspeedpetey]

“the property of perfect symmetry is simply the same as absence of all things”.
This is the one of the most absurd statements I have ever read! If one doubts the possibility of perfect symmetry it is more reasonable just to deny it exists rather than equate it with the absence of everything.

The problem is that the more absurd a statement is the more difficult it is to falsify. How would you deal with “Everything is the cause of nothing”?

No wonder metaphysics has fallen into disrepute. uch:

its not important, but thats not metaphysics, its theoretical physics. or at least thats how i would see it.

 

[Benadam]

I don’t find it that absurd. Perfect symmetry means that there is no motion, since motion would be breaking the symmetry of matter, there is no time, you can not measure it and there is nothing to measure it, for if there existed something, symmetry would be broken.

So equating perfect symmetry with nothingness is reasonable. The whole point of the theory is to show that this perfect symmetry is not stable and that it will eventually be broken all by itself.

I don’t understand the reason if based on motion as an example. Unless it is shown that motion can happen without a mover. Or that the existence of time is dependent on perception that can measure it.