something from nothing...in depth!

Fr0st2k · #1 20th November 2003, 08:00 PM

my friend has this book called "the science of god" by gerald L schroeder. He said id find it interesting, so i started reading it...personnally, so far(only on page 40) i dont agree with anything he states, but it is interesting, and he has some good information.

anyway i found out that aristotle shared very simiar ideas as the one i presented...he observed(qoute outta the book) "that nothing comes from nothing, [and he] assumed that nothing ever will, or did. there for he defined the universe as eternal" --- however, the way i see it, there are only 2 conclusions that can be deduced from that statement...what aristotle said, the universe is eternal, or what i said, the universe was not created, and we are simply not real in the way we believe we are.
the book goes on to talk about einstein's biggest blunder; Einstien's mindset for the concept of an eternal universe was too strong. Though a man named Slipher used Einsteins own theory of relativity to find that the universe is expanding. (quote from book/-->
-->
"As data accumulated indicating that indeed the universe was expanding, Einstein wrote to his colleague and fellow Nobel Laureate, Max Born, that his denial of his own theory was the "biggest blunder of my life"
Why the biggest blunder? Einstein reaized that if day by day the universe was expanding, getting ever larger, then what about yesterday, a year ago, a millennium ago, and ever backward until billions of years ago there was only a point, a point that marked the begginning. Einstein could have folllowed his own discoveries and predicted the most important statement ever made relative to man and the universe:there was a creation."
<---
However this is written by a theist, who would go directly to creation. Any person who does not believe in god would then have to assume, after hearing that nothing comes from nothing, and that the universe is not eternal, that we can't possibly have come to be... So shortening the arguments...
...the universe is not eternal
...nothing can come from nothing___>>>
<<<___with that being said, as stated above there are now only 2 options left to expain creation.
#1 is Schroeders idea, of creation, or God
#2 is the idea that we never could have been created

now however, we can eliminate idea #1 because as stated above, nothing can come from nothing, and so god could never have come into existance...therefore the only possibiity left is that we were never created.... and do not exist in the way we believe we do

Any comments?

TrueCreation · #2 20th November 2003, 09:34 PM

Originally Posted by Fr0st2k

now however, we can eliminate idea #1 because as stated above, nothing can come from nothing, and so god could never have come into existance...

--This does not apply to something which, by definition, is not physical.

Cheers,
-Chris Grose

Philosoft · #3 20th November 2003, 09:56 PM

Well, before we go any further, I'd like to have a better definition of "something... not physical." Other than abstractions, I am not aware of any thinkable examples of these alleged somethings.

lucaspa · #4 20th November 2003, 10:12 PM

Originally Posted by Fr0st2k

he observed(qoute outta the book) "that nothing comes from nothing, [and he] assumed that nothing ever will, or did. there for he defined the universe as eternal"

That's not an "observation" as a fact. Rather, it's a theory or the premise for an argument.

however, the way i see it, there are only 2 conclusions that can be deduced from that statement...what aristotle said, the universe is eternal, or what i said, the universe was not created, and we are simply not real in the way we believe we are.

Your second conclusion does not follow. However, the problem with both conclusions is that the premise is in question.

the book goes on to talk about einstein's biggest blunder; Einstien's mindset for the concept of an eternal universe was too strong. Though a man named Slipher used Einsteins own theory of relativity to find that the universe is expanding. (quote from book/-->
-->
"As data accumulated indicating that indeed the universe was expanding, Einstein wrote to his colleague and fellow Nobel Laureate, Max Born, that his denial of his own theory was the "biggest blunder of my life"
Why the biggest blunder? Einstein reaized that if day by day the universe was expanding, getting ever larger, then what about yesterday, a year ago, a millennium ago, and ever backward until billions of years ago there was only a point, a point that marked the begginning. Einstein could have folllowed his own discoveries and predicted the most important statement ever made relative to man and the universe:there was a creation."

Schroeder is playing with history and the philosophy of science here.

1. Notice that in the quote Schroeder says "as data accumulated". Einstein included the cosmological constant in his relativity equations before the data was there. Because gravity is always attractive, the relativity equations would have caused the universe to collapse. Einstein inserted a "fudge factor" into the equations to counter the force of gravity and keep the universe the same size. The data at the time was that the universe was static. It had nothing to do with Einstein's philosophy.

Nor did anyone use relativity to get an expanding universe. The data gathered by Hubble gave an expanding universe.

However this is written by a theist, who would go directly to creation. Any person who does not believe in god would then have to assume, after hearing that nothing comes from nothing, and that the universe is not eternal, that we can't possibly have come to be... So shortening the arguments...
...the universe is not eternal
...nothing can come from nothing___>>>
<<<___with that being said, as stated above there are now only 2 options left to expain creation.
#1 is Schroeders idea, of creation, or God
#2 is the idea that we never could have been created

now however, we can eliminate idea #1 because as stated above, nothing can come from nothing, and so god could never have come into existance...therefore the only possibiity left is that we were never created.... and do not exist in the way we believe we do

Any comments?

Bad logic and bad science. The logical problem is that premise "nothing can come from nothing". There is no data to support that. In fact, there is data against that. In terms of both energy and matter, virtual particles do come from "nothing". They "borrow" energy from the vacuum (absence of particles) to come into existence. But since they pay back the energy, they don't come from energy, either. Yet they exist for their short lifetime -- about 10^-23 seconds -- and exert effects on other matter. It's called the Casimir effect.

The scientific problem is to try to apply observations of a physical universe to a non-physical entity -- deity. It also violates the rule in science that you can't use unanswered questions on one level to invalidate an answer on the level above.

Whenever you answer a question, 3 or 4 new questions pop up out of the answer. The question we are dealing with is: "What caused the universe to exist?" One possible answer is: "A deity or deities created it." Now the next question comes up: "Where did the deity come from?" Not having an answer to that one doesn't mean you can say a deity did not create the universe. Understand?

Let's take this out of this particular situation and look at Darwin and evolution. Darwin proposed natural selection as the cause of the modification to populations of organisms. NS depends upon having characteristics be inherited. But Darwin didn't know how inheritance worked. In fact, the theory of inheritance in his day wouldn't support NS.

So, the first question was: "How do characteristics of populations change?" Answer: "by natural selection working on inherited characteristics." New question: "how does inheritance work?" Answer: "we don't know". Not having the answer to inheritance did not invalidate NS.

Shimmerstar · #5 21st November 2003, 10:06 AM

This does not apply to something which, by definition, is not physical

Not physical, yet can interact with the physical world. Somehow

Fr0st2k · #6 21st November 2003, 03:36 PM

ok ... im gonna TRY and argue your points now luca...will see how i do

you said

"1. Notice that in the quote Schroeder says "as data accumulated". Einstein included the cosmological constant in his relativity equations before the data was there. Because gravity is always attractive, the relativity equations would have caused the universe to collapse. Einstein inserted a "fudge factor" into the equations to counter the force of gravity and keep the universe the same size. The data at the time was that the universe was static. It had nothing to do with Einstein's philosophy."

i didnt say that einstein was the one that discovered the expanding universe. i said that slipher used einsteins theory to prove that the universe was expanding, im sure he used other methods as well. the reason why it was einstiens blunder as the book describes... is "using the lasw of general relativity he had published two years ealier, Einstein deveoped a series of equations describing the condition of the universe. They shoed something seemingly illogical, that the universe was dynamic." Now becuase Einstein was "mindset" was unwavering he regarded it as a miscalculation of sort. Slipher however went back and proved that einstien was indeed correct, which is why it was his biggest blunder. So it did have something to do with einsteins philosophy.

now about virtual particles. this is all based the fact they are appearing in a world where matter, energy, and life, already exists. Despite the tests being made in a vacuum, or even something that is closer to nothing then a vacuum, it still exists in a word where something exists. The mathimatics, physics, chemistry and every other thing that can be applied to virtual particles, would be totally different in a world where NOTHING exists, or pre-universe.
So hopefully that makes my "bad logic" a little more logical. or at least it will create more discussion, and of course, more learning for me =D

AlHailThePowerOfJesusName · #7 22nd November 2003, 04:17 PM

“ now however, we can eliminate idea #1 because as stated above, nothing can come from nothing, and so god could never have come into existance... “

Right you are, but God did not come from nothing, or anything, He always was. God did not Come into existence, he was in existence, he always was, and he always has been. He is the Self existing one. That is who he is.

MartinM · #8 22nd November 2003, 04:24 PM

Originally Posted by Fr0st2k

now about virtual particles. this is all based the fact they are appearing in a world where matter, energy, and life, already exists. Despite the tests being made in a vacuum, or even something that is closer to nothing then a vacuum, it still exists in a word where something exists. The mathimatics, physics, chemistry and every other thing that can be applied to virtual particles, would be totally different in a world where NOTHING exists, or pre-universe

But if something truly can come from nothing, how are we to show you this nothing? We would have to somehow arrange for something to stop coming from nothing, else the nothing we showed you would have something in it. But then nothing would be coming from nothing, which would rather defeat the purpose, no?

lucaspa · #9 22nd November 2003, 04:31 PM

Originally Posted by Fr0st2k

i didnt say that einstein was the one that discovered the expanding universe. i said that slipher used einsteins theory to prove that the universe was expanding, im sure he used other methods as well.

Can you give us a reference to this "Slipher"? The Relativity equations do not "prove" that the universe was expanding. Equations can't do that. Only data can "prove" something in science.

the reason why it was einstiens blunder as the book describes... is "using the lasw of general relativity he had published two years ealier, Einstein deveoped a series of equations describing the condition of the universe. They shoed something seemingly illogical, that the universe was dynamic."

Einstein's equations never showed that. At least as far as this partial quote is saying: that the universe was expanding and contracting as a whole. As I said, gravity is solely attractive. To keep the universe at the same size (which was the observation at the time) Einstein inserted the cosmological constant into the equations as a repulsive force to counter gravity.

Now becuase Einstein was "mindset" was unwavering he regarded it as a miscalculation of sort.

When the universe was found to be expanding, the cosmological constant was no longer needed and was set at = 0. The expansion was thought to come from the initial impulse of the Big Bang, not the cosmological constant. Because it was unnecessary and a fudge factor, Einstein considered it his greatest blunder.

Slipher however went back and proved that einstien was indeed correct, which is why it was his biggest blunder. So it did have something to do with einsteins philosophy.

Within the last 3 years new observations have showed that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. The initial theories associated with the Big Bang would have the expansion slowing down. The only question was whether it would stop or whether the gravity of the matter was insufficient to bring it to a complete stop. But, with the expansion accelerating, that showed that the cosmological constant was NOT = 0 but did indeed exist. Thus Einstein's "greatest blunder" turns out to be correct after all. Not on any math, but on observation.

11. LM Krauss, Cosmological antigravity. Scientific American, 280: 52-61, Jan. 1999. discusses cosmological constant to explain accelerating expansion.

now about virtual particles. this is all based the fact they are appearing in a world where matter, energy, and life, already exists. Despite the tests being made in a vacuum, or even something that is closer to nothing then a vacuum, it still exists in a word where something exists.

Doesn't matter for the principle. Yes, spacetime exists but the virtual particles still pop into existence form "nothing" -- the absence of matter and energy. And those are the only relevant entities for this discussion

Now, if you are talking about getting a universe from quantum fluctuation, you have to get spacetime also as a quantum fluctuation. The mathematics of M Theory show that this is also possible. Spacetime itself can be a quantum fluctuation from "nothing". In this case the absence of spacetime. That takes care of getting the entire universe -- matter/energy/spacetime -- from "nothing".

The mathimatics, physics, chemistry and every other thing that can be applied to virtual particles, would be totally different in a world where NOTHING exists, or pre-universe.

Actually, in M Theory, no. The math is the same.
1. http://superstringtheory.com/
http://superstringtheory.com/basics/basic3a.html
2. MJ Duff, The theory formerly known as strings. Scientific American, 278: 64-71, 1998 (Feb.).
3. AN Arkani-Hamed, S Dimopoulos, G Dvali, The universe's unseen dimensions. Scientific American 283: 62-69, Aug 2000.

lucaspa · #10 22nd November 2003, 04:35 PM

Originally Posted by AlHailThePowerOfJesusName

Right you are, but God did not come from nothing, or anything, He always was. God did not Come into existence, he was in existence, he always was, and he always has been. He is the Self existing one. That is who he is.

This doesn't work. It is merely asserting something to get out of the difficulty Frost articulated. You don't know this. There is no empirical data to support it. The Bible doesn't help because Yahweh never discussed its origins with people. All we know about God is when it is interacting with humans. So the assertion that God always existed is simply a human theory without any backing. All God says is that He existed before humans or the stars.

Frost's logic has other problems.