Nothing exists?

Fish14

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I read that it's possible for small amounts of matter and antimatter to come from nothing for a short period of time. The chance of our universe forming randomly is less than 1 divided by a googolplex.
But with infinite time, an infinite amount of these nearly infinitely rare universes will be created and destroyed!

Does the original nothing still need a first cause, God? I hope so, but fear it doesn't.

My doubts about God are increasing all the time... pls help me!
 
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Sanoy

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Nothing is being redefined here as a mathematical nothing. +2 and -2 are considered nothing even though the 2's exist. Some people will say the universe came from nothing but what they mean is that it came from a roiling sea of -999999999 and +999999999.

Don't be afraid of this stuff, the situation is quite the opposite. Logic still applies. Out of nothing comes nothing.
 
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Fish14

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Nothing is being redefined here as a mathematical nothing. +2 and -2 are considered nothing even though the 2's exist. Some people will say the universe came from nothing but what they mean is that it came from a roiling sea of -999999999 and +999999999.

Do you mean that the universe exists but in total, nothing exists?
 
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mukk_in

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I read that it's possible for small amounts of matter and antimatter to come from nothing for a short period of time. The chance of our universe forming randomly is less than 1 divided by a googolplex.
But with infinite time, an infinite amount of these nearly infinitely rare universes will be created and destroyed!

Does the original nothing still need a first cause, God? I hope so, but fear it doesn't.

My doubts about God are increasing all the time... pls help me!
Scientific evidence (credible as it is) not withstanding, simple faith does work wonders. Hebrews 11:3 instructs us how to. Christian faith is much easier when it's focused on the historical person, i.e., Jesus Christ, rather than the complex creation process and underlying Physics. Hope that helps :).
 
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Sanoy

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Do you mean that the universe exists but in total, nothing exists?

In this "nothing" state the universe already exists as energy it's just in a perfect equilibrium of unchanged timelessness.

Krauss is a proponent of this and this is what he defines nothing as. “Nothing is really a bubbling, boiling brew of virtual particles.” He calls it nothing with a purpose in mind, and that purpose is to get by the logical problem of nihilo nihil fit, out of nothing comes nothing. He gets by it through deceit not reality. Much of what you will find in cosmogeny is like this.

Science is the study of the natural world. It will not and cannot give God as it's explanation because God is not natural. They will give you all sorts of theories but remember that they aren't good theories just because science believes them. Science believes many of their theories not because they are good theories but because they are the only theories they can believe due to the definition of science. For example a 1 to a googolplex chance is a really bad theory but it's the best of available theory for science because they are not allowed, by definition, to consider God as an explanation.
 
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lesliedellow

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I read that it's possible for small amounts of matter and antimatter to come from nothing for a short period of time. The chance of our universe forming randomly is less than 1 divided by a googolplex.
But with infinite time, an infinite amount of these nearly infinitely rare universes will be created and destroyed!

Does the original nothing still need a first cause, God? I hope so, but fear it doesn't.

My doubts about God are increasing all the time... pls help me!

I cannot find the exact quote with a quick search, but to very loosely quote the physicist John Polkinghorne:

"Contrary to what is sometimes imagined, there is no such thing as a free lunch in cosmology. If the universe emerged from a quantum vacuum, the price of the lunch was the laws of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, graciously provided by the Creator."
 
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Justmeoverhere

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I love reading about science. In particular I find scientists who believe in God fascinating, because their profession is stacked against them.

What you are reading is a scientific, human article. I have so many questions about science when I get to Heaven...ultimately I accept that I am human and God is God. He has reasons for creating things the way He did, and I won't, and can't understand for now.

I would seek out books from scientists who have become Christian because of their discoveries. It's fascinating!
 
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Strathos

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I read that it's possible for small amounts of matter and antimatter to come from nothing for a short period of time. The chance of our universe forming randomly is less than 1 divided by a googolplex.
But with infinite time, an infinite amount of these nearly infinitely rare universes will be created and destroyed!

Does the original nothing still need a first cause, God? I hope so, but fear it doesn't.

My doubts about God are increasing all the time... pls help me!

There wasn't an infinite amount of time, though. The universe is only about 13.7 billion years old.
 
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timewerx

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I read that it's possible for small amounts of matter and antimatter to come from nothing for a short period of time. The chance of our universe forming randomly is less than 1 divided by a googolplex.
But with infinite time, an infinite amount of these nearly infinitely rare universes will be created and destroyed!

Does the original nothing still need a first cause, God? I hope so, but fear it doesn't.

My doubts about God are increasing all the time... pls help me!


You are probably correct to say that "nothing exists".

Elementary particles - the utmostly smallest unit of matter is surrounded by an energy barrier and we only know little of what's inside.

Black holes in the Universe assume properties like elementary particles and the vast majority of matter is empty space. If Elementary particles conversely, are also like Black Holes, then inside is virtually empty.

In such case, Matter does not exist. We are all simply energy. No matter-energy conversion ever occurs but simply a change in the state of energy.

Everything and I mean everything are simply energy-driven events all the way to the quantum level.

And this energy is being recycled with 100% efficiency. You have to wonder where all that energy is coming from or are we even real or just ordered electrical pulses in a computer :)

You have to wonder what would the Truth set us free from? Free from what?
 
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Chesterton

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I saw a show about this. A show about nothing.

9-Classic-Jerry.jpg
 
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John 1720

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I read that it's possible for small amounts of matter and antimatter to come from nothing for a short period of time. The chance of our universe forming randomly is less than 1 divided by a googolplex.
But with infinite time, an infinite amount of these nearly infinitely rare universes will be created and destroyed!

Does the original nothing still need a first cause, God? I hope so, but fear it doesn't.

My doubts about God are increasing all the time... pls help me!
A doubt no doubt fueled by the media that God is not as great as the cult of Hawking, who btw has yet to win a nobel prize for anything? I've never really quite understood the willingness to throw away the substantive blessing for a mere morsel but that is Esau's axiom I guess. They are just playing games with quantum fluctuations. All our physics, including quantum mechanics, is entirely based within the domain of space/time - anything that is physically testable. There simply is no spacetime prior to the beginning of the universe so quantum fluctuations are a moot point. Speculating that matter and antimatter pop into existence in empty space and then cancel within the framework of space/time is one thing but having it precede the created boundaries of physics, within the space/time domain, takes great faith. Faith in what? My guess is that it is faith in the cult of Hawking and the band of evangelical a-theist cheerleaders who have been waving that banner against their Creator since the fall. There really is nothing new under the sun nor is there anything new about naysayers attempting to eliminate God from the fabric of thought and reason. Do we honestly believe they are attempting to be objective? What they are asking you to do is not only throw away God but the law of causality as well. I'd add your common sense and reason to that as well. So my friend it always comes down to who or what you want to put your faith in.

God always gives us a choice and historically that has always been the case. I guess a new version of that case would be either the reality of Hawking's mind or the mind of God. What troubles me is that while I can see a Theist and a non Theist (whether an agnostic or an atheist) debating this I'm curious how a Christian could so easily be unraveled by it. I would infer though that if this truly has the potential to undermine your faith in God then it follows that your faith must have been very shaky and preliminary already. So I am at a quite a loss as a Christian to completely understand what foundations your faith must have been based on in the first place but perhaps I am not understanding your dilemma.

In Christ, John 17:20
 
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Monna

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Nothing is being redefined here as a mathematical nothing. +2 and -2 are considered nothing even though the 2's exist.

Actually, in hard reality, "2" doesn't exist. It is an adjective. It only exists (as an enitity in itself - if it is that) within the world of mathematics. If you think of the Roman numbering system, there was no "zero." There was no number for nothing...after all it was nothing. Yet the Romans had no problem doing relatively advanced engineering. Today, engineering without "nothing" is unthinkable. (Now how can unthnkable exist if it is unthinkable?)

The truly amazing thing is that this created language of adjectives has made some rather surprising and "true" predictions about the way things "are."
 
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Ygrene Imref

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I read that it's possible for small amounts of matter and antimatter to come from nothing for a short period of time. The chance of our universe forming randomly is less than 1 divided by a googolplex.
But with infinite time, an infinite amount of these nearly infinitely rare universes will be created and destroyed!

Does the original nothing still need a first cause, God? I hope so, but fear it doesn't.

My doubts about God are increasing all the time... pls help me!

EXIST is the original state of creation, not nothingness. EXIST exists without a need for time or parameters to measure it's change. It simply exists; EXISTS is a spontaneous state of free energy.

Some call this nothingness, but it is really "everythingness." They are two sides of the same coin. Infinite time means nothing, because time is not real. Time is a measure of your action per [free] energy available. Seriously. It is for our psychological convenience so that we don't experience everything at once.

God "ordered" that free energy vat (the first time was when He separated light from dark.) He put the energy into the system to move it from mathematical chaos to structure.

The nothingness people refer to is a state of NOT EXIST - which technically doesn't happen. Or, rather one must put in the work to make something NOT EXIST, because NOT EXIST is unnatural to creation.

As far as particles tunneling, or interdimensionally reacting to their antimatter - that is a physical reaction that comes from somewhere, even if it is the vacuum energy between dimensions. As a matter of fact, this actually likely DOES happen since there are fluctuations in the vacuum energies of the media.
 
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Michael

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I read that it's possible for small amounts of matter and antimatter to come from nothing for a short period of time. The chance of our universe forming randomly is less than 1 divided by a googolplex.
But with infinite time, an infinite amount of these nearly infinitely rare universes will be created and destroyed!

Does the original nothing still need a first cause, God? I hope so, but fear it doesn't.

My doubts about God are increasing all the time... pls help me!

While "virtual particles" can supposedly come into and go out of existence for short periods of time, it's only because the universe contains massive amounts of kinetic energy flowing through it in the forms of photons and neutrinos which simply interact with one another sometimes, producing "virtual particles".

It's complete nonsense however to suggest that the whole universe sprang out of "nothing". Most of those types of claims try to simply ignore the use of energy over time, and tend to defy the conservation of energy laws which insist that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, it can only change forms.

The LCDM model uses an inflaton field to provide the original "energy" of the universe but of course they have no explanation of where inflation comes from.

In short, the belief that anything came from nothing is simply preposterous. Something (presumably God) has *always* and eternally existed. *Nothing* has never existed. :)
 
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Obliquinaut

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Here's a nice explanation from Scientific American about "virtual particles"

Are virtual particles really constantly popping in and out of existence? Or are they merely a mathematical bookkeeping device for quantum mechanics?

That being said, there's not a lot of reason for this to undermine one's faith in God if one has that faith. The ultimate origins of the universe are still an unknown. It is a common argument for the existence of God as "The First Uncaused Cause" (assuming everything within our universe requires a cause, there must, according to some philosophers, be a first cause. And that Cause would be an uncaused case and that is how some define "God")

There may be arguments against this stance, but it is not necessarily incorrect as a concept.

Just because someone hypothesizes some quantum fluctuation wherein something-from-nothing seems to appear (but really isn't quite that simple as I understand it), does not ipso facto mean that that is how the universe began.
 
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Obliquinaut

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In short, the belief that anything came from nothing is simply preposterous. Something (presumably God) has *always* and eternally existed. *Nothing* has never existed. :)

As an aside, when you say that "anything came from nothing is simply preposterous" you are making a special pleading for "God". What is the difference between, say, God always existing and the Universe always existing (either in some sort of M-Theory or big bang/inflation/deflation cycle)?
 
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Michael

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As an aside, when you say that "anything came from nothing is simply preposterous" you are making a special pleading for "God". What is the difference between, say, God always existing and the Universe always existing (either in some sort of M-Theory or big bang/inflation/deflation cycle)?

Actually I'm not making any special pleading with respect to God, just energy. I'm simply noting that since energy cannot be created nor destroyed, *something*, some form of energy, must have existed eternally. Since I'm essentially a Panentheist, I don't care if you call it God or the "The Universe". It's six of one, a half dozen of the other from my perspective. :)
 
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Obliquinaut

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. I'm simply noting that since energy cannot be created nor destroyed, *something*, some form of energy, must have existed eternally. Since I'm essentially a Panentheist, I don't care if you call it God or the "The Universe". It's six of one, a half dozen of the other from my perspective. :)

Ahh, ok, got it.
 
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