The argument of something from nothing

Antizealot

Science AND logic both dictate that we deal with what we know through observation and testing.

Science has observed phenominon(sic) that indicates this universe had a specific starting point.

Science has indicated that, before that starting point, there was nothing - absolute nothing.

Science has observed that the universe started from a singularity.

EVERY test to date has confirmed the "Big Bang" theory, NOTHING has ever provided evidence to counter it (to date).

It is a universal constant and a logical dictate that anything that has a start or beginning MUST have a cause.

It is also a universal constant and logical dictate that it is impossible for something to come from nothing.

By definition, a singularity is NOTHING.

This means that the universe started or came from NOTHING.

Thus, science has already suggested that the creation of the universe was a miracle as it violated BOTH the universal constants of something from nothing and first cause.

Logic also dictates that, for something to come from nothing, there must be a Creator.


Can someone with a greater understanding of cosmology and physics refute this for me in laymen's terms? If not, then why not? This was brought up in a debate over proof of God's existence.

chiro

I guess in a way its the chicken and the egg problem. Did the chicken come first out of nowhere or perhaps the egg with no prior chicken.

I guess you could ask yourself another question assuming that there universe had no beginning or an end, then how did it come into existence? Logically for most people, this thinking that the universe has always existed also presents a problem.

I myself had a few spiritual books of which some give theories behind the creation of the universe and how it happened, but I guess attempting to answer something like this will take new investigations, paradigms of thought, and insight like we have seen in our modern history including that of science and its development.

NobodySpecial

Yes - while philosophy just involves saying things are so because philosophers says so

Almost - we observe that the observable universe started from an initial hot dense state. Observationally we can't say what happened before a certain temperature/density.

That's one interpretation

No we haven't observed it - it's part of some standard models of the big bang

We have observational evidence back to the time at which the microwave background formed - roughly when the universe became cool enough for matter and energy to separate.

No. It was to Thomas Aquinas, it's not to modern (after about 1920) physics

See above

True - but we don't know if a singularity can exist, we haven't observed any

Possibly but there is nothing in modern physics to prevent this.

Only in the same sense that it's a miracle that an electron can get tunnel through a diode junction

Now we see the problem.
Personally I think microsoft exchange server is unfathomable by a rational mind but it's quite a leap from this to a belief in Krishna.

Ivan Seeking

Care to try that one again.

Causality is absolutely a fundamental concept in physics.

granpa

everything came from everything not from nothing

time itself has a beginning.
you can only go so far back in time just like you can only go so far north.
eventually you reach a point where you simply cant go any further north.

in the beginning everything was a singularity but it wasnt nothing.

nonexistence does not now nor has it ever existed.

the 'event' is the indivisible atom of existence.

at a deep quantum level events are not caused.
rather they are 'influenced' by previous events.
the first event was not influenced by any previous event.
it didnt need to be.

NobodySpecial

Not in the quantum world

chiro

Our perspectives for thinking and for generalizing have undergone a dramatic change in the last one to two centuries. Let me give you an analogy of how this is done.

Lets say that you have a number line. Traditionally the line has an origin and extends in two directions where every value is considered unique and the domain is essentially unbounded.

This is basically a euclidean type of system.

But what if took that line and transformed it into a circle where there uniqueness no longer exists, and that now there exists periodicity in value.

In the new example we could travel on a line in both directions and given some interval of traversal, end up back where we started.

An example of this kind of system is a sphere in two dimensions. You might define north/south and east/west but with the geometry of a sphere these things create chaos because lets say you are at the equator and go north, up until you reach the north pole you are going 'north' but when you pass the north pole you are now going south and not north.

So in the above example, a person may have gone north for millions of miles but due to the periodicity, they have not discovered one million unique miles but rather a much smaller figure.

The generalization of geometry has given us insights of how to think about systems like this, and they are found in nature which gives us more of a reason to think about them.

ThomasT

Science deals with testing and observation, and quantification, ie., arithmetization, thereof, according to certain, logical, rules. Those rules have been developed via certain logical processes. The results of scientific experiments are interpreted via certain logical processes. And future experimental designs are developed via certain logical processes.

Science, the logical quantification of human experience, is simply the least ambiguous method for communicating our collective apprehensions of our shared sensory reality that mankind has so far developed, in the realization that numerical accounts are less ambiguous, even as they might be less conceptually understandable, than pictorial accounts of evolutions and events.

No. Science has observed that the universe is expanding. That's all.

No. Science is able to exrapolate back to a certain point. That's all.

No. A singularity is a point at which scientific/mathematical extrapolation becomes meaningless.

OK

Science can't apply this to what it can say about our universe. There's simply a point beyond which scientific extrapolation is meaningless.

Not necessarily. Consider a structureless fundamental medium. Perfectly seamless and contiguous. Perfectly homogeneous and isotropic. As far as we might be concerned, such a medium would be utterly undetectable in its native unperturbed state -- ie., effectively, nothing.

By definition, a singularity refers to a point at which scientific/mathematical extrapolation is meaningless.

Wherever science purports to have something to say about where our universe came from, it's always referring to something. Some process or other.

No. See above.

Is the proposed Creator something, or nothing? If something, then where did it come from? Anyway, logic doesn't require a creator, it requires us to, at some point, simply say that we don't know.

See above.

What does the term, God, mean?