something from nothing

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thinkandmull

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I don’t think people who say something can come from nothing understand what our objection is. Set aside the idea of God as a substance or being, or anything you can think of. Just thinking of activity. If there is nothing, and there is no activity either, how can anything result? This seems so obvious to us, that I think opponents are just confusing the wonder of something coming from nothing with a philosophical idea. Comments please…
 
thinkandmull said:
I don’t think people who say something can come from nothing understand what our objection is. Set aside the idea of God as a substance or being, or anything you can think of. Just thinking of activity. If there is nothing, and there is no activity either, how can anything result? This seems so obvious to us, that I think opponents are just confusing the wonder of something coming from nothing with a philosophical idea. Comments please…
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Yes.

It simply seems incongruous with reason to propose that nothing could produce something.

I don’t see how folks can assert such nonsense with a straight face, and under the guise of intellectual and scholarly exercise, to boot!
 
Be forewarned:

Someone who actually embraces the “Yes, Nothing Actually Can Produce Something” paradigm is going to cite physicist Lawrence Krauss.

He claims to have created something from nothing in a laboratory environment.



As we’ve already discussed in a previous thread:

This is asserted by Krauss et al ONLY BECAUSE THEY RE-DEFINE “NOTHING” to mean “a low level energy field”.

Krauss’ claim is refuted by David Albert here:

nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/a-universe-from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-krauss.html?_r=1
 
Yes, when I hear about atheistic explanations for the beginning of the universe, I always think of a line from Act I, Scene 1 of Shakespeare’s tragedy King Lear when the King is speaking to his daughter Cordelia: “Nothing will come of nothing…”

May God bless you all! 🙂
 
I like what Dr. Craig says about the issue. He says to believe that the universe popped into existence out of nothing is worse than believing in magic. Because at least with magic you have the magician. 🙂

Next he says if things could pop into existence from nothing then why don’t we see this happening all the time? Why should nothing favor universes? Since nothing has no properties that should favor anything in particular coming into existence. Why not Beethoven or Einstein popping into existence? 🙂
 
thinkandmull said:
I don’t think people who say something can come from nothing understand what our objection is. Set aside the idea of God as a substance or being, or anything you can think of. Just thinking of activity. If there is nothing, and there is no activity either, how can anything result? This seems so obvious to us, that I think opponents are just confusing the wonder of something coming from nothing with a philosophical idea. Comments please.
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The reality could be so different from what you observe right now. For example believing in causality is the result of our observations of what surround us in our daily lives. Is causality is a part of reality or it is derived from something else? We simply don’t know.

The only fact that we have right now is that the universe exists. You can accept that the universe comes out of nothing or God created it. The question that arises next is that where God with all His powers come from? You could believe that God is eternal but at the end of the day you have no fact in your hand to show that your belief is true. So we are dealing with a dilemma which we cannot resolve because we have no fact.
 
Bahman said:
The question that arises next is that where God with all His powers come from? You could believe that God is eternal but at the end of the day you have no fact in your hand to show that your belief is true. So we are dealing with a dilemma which we cannot resolve because we have no fact.
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The fact in our hands is that Jesus gave us information about his Father. This is not ironclad evidence, to be sure. But if you know him, you know he is Truth.
We have not been given scientific evidence for our faith for a reason.

.
 
The universe still adds up to nothing, in the sense that it is a “sum zero energy” reality.

If something is “sum zero energy”, then it’s total energy is nothing, and therefore it adds up to nothing.

astrosociety.org/publications/a-universe-from-nothing/

livescience.com/33129-total-energy-universe-zero.html

icr.org/article/universe-from-nothing/

This makes sense if before the creation, the universe was “void”

Genesis 1:2 “…The earth was formless and** void.**…”

Funny how the ancient Jews seemed to know a thing or two, without the benefits of modern science.

Incidentally as someone who believes in Intelligent Design, I came across this quote in a book “Why the Universe is the Way it Is” by Hugh Ross, an Astronomer.

Chapter 2 - “… at certain early epochs in cosmic history, its (the universe’s) mass density must have been as finely tuned as one part in 10 to the 60 to allow for the possible existence of physical life at any time or place within the entirety of the universe. This degree of fine tuning is so great that it’s as if right after the universe’s beginning someone could have destroyed the possibility of life within it by subtracting a single dime’s mass from the whole of the observable universe, or adding a single dime’s mass to it…”

In the same chapter he mentioned “dark energy” which apparently opposes gravity and expands the universe while gravity works towards contraction. He commented …

“… Much in the same way as the mass density of the universe must be fine tuned to ensure that the universe expands in exactly the way life requires, the dark energy density also must be fine-tuned. However its fine tuning is orders of magnitude more stringent. If dark energy were changed by as little as one part in 10 to the 120, the universe would be unable to support life. A number this small can be hard to picture. If compared to the mass of the entire universe, it would be no bigger than a billionth of a trilliionth of an electron’s mass…”

That’s why I get cynical about the blatent dishonesty of atheists who talk blandly about “multiverses”. To beat the odds of this one existing from some sort of quantum explosion by blind chance and allowing life to exist, let alone intelligent life on a heavy element rich planet like the one we’re on, you’d have to win Lotto many billion times in a row without fail, buying a single ticket each time.
 
Viki63 said:
The fact in our hands is that Jesus gave us information about his Father.
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That is only a claim.
Viki63 said:
This is not ironclad evidence, to be sure.
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That I agree.
Viki63 said:
But if you know him, you know he is Truth.
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How we could know God?
Viki63 said:
We have not been given scientific evidence for our faith for a reason.
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What is that reason? Why we should be in state of ignorance? God by definition is the being who created the universe. How we can be sure that a person, Jesus for example, who claims that he is God is really God? The only solution to this problem is that the person who claim to be God should be able to provide enough facts to prove Himself.
 
Michael_Mayo said:
… That can’t be nothing. …
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Michael, you’ve got it.

I like to see things in terms of mathematical approximations.

There is the more causing and less caused.

And the more caused and less causing.

This isn’t the whole story. But at least it’s part of it that we can grasp, so it’s sad to hear so many people say so many times that we can’t. Aquinas has been critiqued on this point from his own time, we needn’t feel threatened by it.
 
PRmerger said:
Not sure what this means, in the context of this discussion?
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It means that what we once thought nothing can become something. As we develop more subtle and powerful instruments we are able to look deeper into the structure of reality. "That boundary between Something and Nothing is arbitrary.
 
Bahman said:
The reality could be so different from what you observe right now. For example believing in causality is the result of our observations of what surround us in our daily lives. Is causality is a part of reality or it is derived from something else? We simply don’t know.

The only fact that we have right now is that the universe exists. You can accept that the universe comes out of nothing or God created it. The question that arises next is that where God with all His powers come from? You could believe that God is eternal but at the end of the day you have no fact in your hand to show that your belief is true. So we are dealing with a dilemma which we cannot resolve because we have no fact.
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The only reason why you would want to believe the universe popped into existence from nothing is because you don’t like the alternative. There is no reason to postulate the universe comes from nothing unless you are backed into a philosophical corner where all the evidence points to the universe having a beginning, which implies it being created by something else. It seems many atheists agree with me. For Their alternative is to postulate impossible scenarios like multiverse machines. In other words they are willing to believe in anything except God.
 
thinkandmull said:
I don’t think people who say something can come from nothing understand what our objection is. Set aside the idea of God as a substance or being, or anything you can think of. Just thinking of activity. If there is nothing, and there is no activity either, how can anything result? This seems so obvious to us, that I think opponents are just confusing the wonder of something coming from nothing with a philosophical idea. Comments please…
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I have this same problem with atheists I come across. There answer is they don’t know.

If a singularity created the big bang and then what caused the singularity because a singularity is something and it is a something that has to have a cause. A singularity can’t come from nothing. It has to have some sort of cause. This leads me to God. However, atheists just say they don’t have the information that caused the singularity.
 
I believe in the vacuum of space there was a multitude of singularities that resulted in a multitude of big bangs. Meaning that this isn’t the only universe within this vacuum. I believe God intended to fill up this vacuum of space. I believe the vacuum is an infinite place. To fill up an infinite place God must have “planted more than one seed (singularity)” to fill up an infinite vacuum of space. That’s my idea of the model of the multiverse as it must exist.
 
fisherman_carl said:
The only reason why you would want to believe the universe popped into existence from nothing is because you don’t like the alternative.
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That is not true. I am open to both cases since I am constantly searching the truth. Are you open to accept the alternative too?
fisherman_carl said:
There is no reason to postulate the universe comes from nothing unless you are backed into a philosophical corner where all the evidence points to the universe having a beginning, which implies it being created by something else.
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Even if we accept that the universe has a beginning you also have no evidence to show that the universe is created by God.

We have to accept the fact that we cannot possibly resolve this dilemma since we have no evidence.

There is however two problems in my mind which the first is why God leaves people in state of doubt? The another problem which comes to my mind is why Jesus didn’t explain creation to people if He was God. God is simply defined as creator so if Jesus was God then it was necessary that He explain creation to people. How we could possibly differentiate God from not God otherwise!?
 
thinkandmull said:
I don’t think people who say something can come from nothing understand what our objection is. Set aside the idea of God as a substance or being, or anything you can think of. Just thinking of activity. If there is nothing, and there is no activity either, how can anything result? This seems so obvious to us, that I think opponents are just confusing the wonder of something coming from nothing with a philosophical idea. Comments please…
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One of the many logical issues is prove that nothing is the default state. After all, nothing can’t exist, only things can exist. Nothing is the absence of existence.

So if nothing can’t exist, something must always have existed. Even linguistically, we can’t understand the concept nothing without first understanding thing.

So according to this view, there’s something rather than nothing because logic requires it, and it couldn’t be any other way.

plato.stanford.edu/entries/nothingness/
 
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