Part I
~~~~
I like to make a few remarks on this, contributing to the discussion of 'creation', or better said: How did it all start?
Let us first examine and determine the issue, of what is being stated.
Within the material world, and the laws describing them, when can always say that everything (individual) thing has a cause, as determined by the laws of physics. This is not a total deterministic thing as one might thing, cause at all kind of levels some sort of chaos and randomness rules, that make processes non-deterministic.
Althoug this causality is thought of to hold for every individual thing, the more fascinate question is if this is true for the "totality of things" (the whole universe in terms of everything that exists).
Let us first examine if such gigantic extrapolation of this causality thing is beyond reasonable doubt. I will make an illustration of what I mean here.
Take for example a football team. We might for instance ask ourselves, where does the team come from. Now, we obiously know that the team consists of individual members. All of them have ancestors. That is beyond any doubt or suspicion. But the same does not hold true for the team as a whole. It doesn't necessarily have an ancestor.
For the world as a whole. the complete universe, we reason in a bit in this fashion. Everything within the universe, is determined by the laws of causality. For everything there is a cause. And for most of the existing things, we have found reasonable explenations for how things got there.
We know how stars form more or less out of gassy clouds in galaxies, we have a reasonable theory about the formation of the solar system, etc.
Yet we are left with this one question as to "where all this comes from", in terms of the universe (all the material substance that is in existence, the laws of physics, etc).
It was previously thought that, to circumvade this question, that the universe existed on an eternal basis. It would not have come into existence, but have been there for all time. In a way, this assumption does hold true, but in a different way as was thought.
The current scientific observations have indicated that indeed the universe, as we see it to expand now, was in the earlier times much smaller. And that raises the issue very firmly as how it started.
Before looking into this, let us first ask the question of what the world, the universe, in fact is. The materialistic sciences explain to us that all there is, all that has existence, is to be considered to be matter. The term matter is to be understood here anything material, which includes all physical descriptions of particles, waves, energies, fields, etc. The way of existence of matter, of all material substances, is that they have motion. On every scale, matter is in motion all the time. The mode of existence of matter therefore implies that space and time exist, else there could be no motion at all.
The question one might ask oneself about this is: Why is there this universe, this material world, fitting this description, in the first place?
This is a very tricky question, and has some property of circularity, or tautologicality. Since we define existence in terms of moving matter in space/time, then all there is is this moving matter. And nothing besides of beyond that.
One could think of a broader definition of existence, when coming up with all kinds of mathematical constructs, logical constructs and ontological constructs. Like a cube in a mathematical defined space. Clearly, our more reasoning and consciousness, tells us, that this is also some kind of "existence". An existence not defined or constrained to our previous definition of moving matter. These mathematical constructs for example, can be seen as more abstractions of reality. There are boxes, which are more or less cubic formed. Now, mathematics abstracts from this physical object (which has real existence) its geometrical properties (the shape and dimensions). The "cubicness" as a geometrical object, in this way relates to real things. But "cubicnes" is in no way a real thing, that has existence of its own. It does not exist in a material form in space/time.
This same kind of reasoning holds true for every possible "thought construct". These kind of things are said to belong to the mind, and not to the physical world as such. We must clearly distinguish between them, or else our reasoning becomes on loose grounds.
Having understood that, now let us go the the issue on what the existence of the world, the universe, is all about.
Let us first try to imagine the unimaginable, namely what would it be if there was not a world at all. If nothing would be in existence. Just try to think about that for a few moments.
Well some people do come up in fact with things like they could imagine of a "universe" being in existence in a way our previous mentioned mathematical constructs or abstractions exist. But since all of that has no existence of its own, not material based or determined, this is no good answer.
So, the fact somehow shows up, that being or existence, does not have an alternative. The existence of a "nothingness" is just a bad thought construct. So, the reasoning about the existence of the world, as if it was somehow a creation, where everything came out of nothing, is just simply wrong reasoning. There could not have been a time in which from nothing existence came into being. Clearly, existence means that change takes place in time, and for something to change, it needs to be there in the first place. It's impossible to reason beyond that, it does not bring us anywhere.
There was nothing before the existing world. So the only way to bring a thought construct into place as "something created the existence of the world" is by giving "nothingness" the meaning of alternative for being or existence. Its this fact, that does not permit us to reason in such a way.
It's not saying as that such a thought construct is not permitted by physical law or by human law. It's just meant to say that the reasoning is unfounded and ungrounded.
The implication is that we can not state reasonably that there was something "before" the existence of the universe. There was no before.
To state otherwise is beyond the ordinary.
Yet, some people find that such reasoning holds true somehow, as they can't escape from reasoning about the unreasonable.
The things is, and as stated also by scientists, it is a fact of science also that the universe did have a begin. A point in time where there was no before. This does in no way contradict the things I just said, but it is clear that because of this phenomenon people do say: "See, so there was a beginning!". Let me try to explain this, from scientific facts.
Since Einstein, we do have a better understanding of this phenomena, because of his theoretical models about the cosmos, based on special relativity. What in short the understanding of the cosmos in terms of special relativity comes about is this. We can imagine the whole universe to be a spacetime frame of 4-dimensions (3 space dimensions, 1 time dimension). In your imagination, think of this 4-dimensional space as a balloon like object, the surface (which in the model is 2-d curved space) portraying the 3-dimensional space, the other dimension portraying time.
In our model of the cosmos, what happens is that the balloon starts infinitely small, and starts to expand. We don't know yet if this expansion is ever compensated somehow and micht contract again, or if it will expand forever.
Another way of seeing this, is as follows. Instead of a dynamic object that expands in time, let us leave out another dimension in the model, and think of a parabolic form (a 2-d parabole turned around its vertical axis), with its top above. Now time is being visualized from going from the top downwards, and the round surface horizontally is what we can visualize as 3-d space. Every point within this paraboloid is a point in space and time. On the outer side of the paraboloid there is nothing.
Well I hope this model makes it easier to understand this.
The thing is, which I think can understand is, that it is very temptative of thinking and reasoning, and argue that "something or someone" must have put it there, in order for it to come into being. It's understandable that our mind thinks this way, and assume things for causing this first event. The reasoning isn't good though, cause at t=0 there wasn't causality. There wasn't a time before t=0. The matter that started to "rolling off the hill" was not created somehow, it did not come from somewhere. It simply was there and was moving when time began.
At any time thereafter, one can talk about causal history, but at the point t=0 this reasoning breaks down.
It's quite understandable our own reasoning does break down there too, cause no matter how hard we try, we still are tempted to adress causality and think in causal terms of this.
We can all make kind of reasoning as to even saying that it could not have been that way at all. It seems a contradiction we cannot get around. If matter was there restless at t=0, why would it move, why would time begin? What caused it (apart from what or who put it there) to move?
(to be continued)
~~~~
I like to make a few remarks on this, contributing to the discussion of 'creation', or better said: How did it all start?
Let us first examine and determine the issue, of what is being stated.
Within the material world, and the laws describing them, when can always say that everything (individual) thing has a cause, as determined by the laws of physics. This is not a total deterministic thing as one might thing, cause at all kind of levels some sort of chaos and randomness rules, that make processes non-deterministic.
Althoug this causality is thought of to hold for every individual thing, the more fascinate question is if this is true for the "totality of things" (the whole universe in terms of everything that exists).
Let us first examine if such gigantic extrapolation of this causality thing is beyond reasonable doubt. I will make an illustration of what I mean here.
Take for example a football team. We might for instance ask ourselves, where does the team come from. Now, we obiously know that the team consists of individual members. All of them have ancestors. That is beyond any doubt or suspicion. But the same does not hold true for the team as a whole. It doesn't necessarily have an ancestor.
For the world as a whole. the complete universe, we reason in a bit in this fashion. Everything within the universe, is determined by the laws of causality. For everything there is a cause. And for most of the existing things, we have found reasonable explenations for how things got there.
We know how stars form more or less out of gassy clouds in galaxies, we have a reasonable theory about the formation of the solar system, etc.
Yet we are left with this one question as to "where all this comes from", in terms of the universe (all the material substance that is in existence, the laws of physics, etc).
It was previously thought that, to circumvade this question, that the universe existed on an eternal basis. It would not have come into existence, but have been there for all time. In a way, this assumption does hold true, but in a different way as was thought.
The current scientific observations have indicated that indeed the universe, as we see it to expand now, was in the earlier times much smaller. And that raises the issue very firmly as how it started.
Before looking into this, let us first ask the question of what the world, the universe, in fact is. The materialistic sciences explain to us that all there is, all that has existence, is to be considered to be matter. The term matter is to be understood here anything material, which includes all physical descriptions of particles, waves, energies, fields, etc. The way of existence of matter, of all material substances, is that they have motion. On every scale, matter is in motion all the time. The mode of existence of matter therefore implies that space and time exist, else there could be no motion at all.
The question one might ask oneself about this is: Why is there this universe, this material world, fitting this description, in the first place?
This is a very tricky question, and has some property of circularity, or tautologicality. Since we define existence in terms of moving matter in space/time, then all there is is this moving matter. And nothing besides of beyond that.
One could think of a broader definition of existence, when coming up with all kinds of mathematical constructs, logical constructs and ontological constructs. Like a cube in a mathematical defined space. Clearly, our more reasoning and consciousness, tells us, that this is also some kind of "existence". An existence not defined or constrained to our previous definition of moving matter. These mathematical constructs for example, can be seen as more abstractions of reality. There are boxes, which are more or less cubic formed. Now, mathematics abstracts from this physical object (which has real existence) its geometrical properties (the shape and dimensions). The "cubicness" as a geometrical object, in this way relates to real things. But "cubicnes" is in no way a real thing, that has existence of its own. It does not exist in a material form in space/time.
This same kind of reasoning holds true for every possible "thought construct". These kind of things are said to belong to the mind, and not to the physical world as such. We must clearly distinguish between them, or else our reasoning becomes on loose grounds.
Having understood that, now let us go the the issue on what the existence of the world, the universe, is all about.
Let us first try to imagine the unimaginable, namely what would it be if there was not a world at all. If nothing would be in existence. Just try to think about that for a few moments.
Well some people do come up in fact with things like they could imagine of a "universe" being in existence in a way our previous mentioned mathematical constructs or abstractions exist. But since all of that has no existence of its own, not material based or determined, this is no good answer.
So, the fact somehow shows up, that being or existence, does not have an alternative. The existence of a "nothingness" is just a bad thought construct. So, the reasoning about the existence of the world, as if it was somehow a creation, where everything came out of nothing, is just simply wrong reasoning. There could not have been a time in which from nothing existence came into being. Clearly, existence means that change takes place in time, and for something to change, it needs to be there in the first place. It's impossible to reason beyond that, it does not bring us anywhere.
There was nothing before the existing world. So the only way to bring a thought construct into place as "something created the existence of the world" is by giving "nothingness" the meaning of alternative for being or existence. Its this fact, that does not permit us to reason in such a way.
It's not saying as that such a thought construct is not permitted by physical law or by human law. It's just meant to say that the reasoning is unfounded and ungrounded.
The implication is that we can not state reasonably that there was something "before" the existence of the universe. There was no before.
To state otherwise is beyond the ordinary.
Yet, some people find that such reasoning holds true somehow, as they can't escape from reasoning about the unreasonable.
The things is, and as stated also by scientists, it is a fact of science also that the universe did have a begin. A point in time where there was no before. This does in no way contradict the things I just said, but it is clear that because of this phenomenon people do say: "See, so there was a beginning!". Let me try to explain this, from scientific facts.
Since Einstein, we do have a better understanding of this phenomena, because of his theoretical models about the cosmos, based on special relativity. What in short the understanding of the cosmos in terms of special relativity comes about is this. We can imagine the whole universe to be a spacetime frame of 4-dimensions (3 space dimensions, 1 time dimension). In your imagination, think of this 4-dimensional space as a balloon like object, the surface (which in the model is 2-d curved space) portraying the 3-dimensional space, the other dimension portraying time.
In our model of the cosmos, what happens is that the balloon starts infinitely small, and starts to expand. We don't know yet if this expansion is ever compensated somehow and micht contract again, or if it will expand forever.
Another way of seeing this, is as follows. Instead of a dynamic object that expands in time, let us leave out another dimension in the model, and think of a parabolic form (a 2-d parabole turned around its vertical axis), with its top above. Now time is being visualized from going from the top downwards, and the round surface horizontally is what we can visualize as 3-d space. Every point within this paraboloid is a point in space and time. On the outer side of the paraboloid there is nothing.
Well I hope this model makes it easier to understand this.
The thing is, which I think can understand is, that it is very temptative of thinking and reasoning, and argue that "something or someone" must have put it there, in order for it to come into being. It's understandable that our mind thinks this way, and assume things for causing this first event. The reasoning isn't good though, cause at t=0 there wasn't causality. There wasn't a time before t=0. The matter that started to "rolling off the hill" was not created somehow, it did not come from somewhere. It simply was there and was moving when time began.
At any time thereafter, one can talk about causal history, but at the point t=0 this reasoning breaks down.
It's quite understandable our own reasoning does break down there too, cause no matter how hard we try, we still are tempted to adress causality and think in causal terms of this.
We can all make kind of reasoning as to even saying that it could not have been that way at all. It seems a contradiction we cannot get around. If matter was there restless at t=0, why would it move, why would time begin? What caused it (apart from what or who put it there) to move?
(to be continued)
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