Can something come from nothing?

Great Debates
21

Yeah, turtles on top of turtles on top of turtles. The concept is quite ancient. Unfortunately, phrases like “Hawking believes” do nothing to solve the paradox. Either you need to explain how there is still energy available to do work, or else you need to describe the mechanism by which the singularity arose from nothing.

Note that substituting “quantum flux” for “singularity” or “multiple universes” for “universe” doesn’t help you. As to the former, whatever is the first event is without precedent existence, and thus precludes any mechanism; and as to the latter, whatever is the totality is the UNI-verse, and if eternal it should be dead.

22

To clarify, what is precluded is any natural mechanism. A supernatural mechanism is not precluded.

23

The current state of the universe is not dead. That is not to say that it did not exist in some other form before the 12 billion years or so this one has been around. When Entropy finally kills this one off, it could be just as likely that when the last molocule stops moving, it could trigger somehow the birth of another universe.

24

This happens all the time at a subatomic level, although, as Libertarian said it’s not creating something out of nothing. Energy is still something.

(And isn’t it not that Matter can be converted to energy, but that matter and energy are equivalent?)

25

That’s not really true. Virtual particles don’t come from nothing. It still requires energy to create them.

Their creation is the result of weird quantum events, but they do not come from mere nothingness.

26

In addition, there are the philosophical problems with having an actual, quantitative infinity – that is, a quantitative physical property numerically equal to infinity. Dr. William Lane Craig has discussed this matter in depth.

27

The philosophical problems are indeed overwhelming. There is no known logic system, including the scientific method, that can account for a universe that is either naturally temporal or naturally eternal.

Furthermore, when it becomes so conjectural that people talk about the last particle ceasing to move, even more problems are introduced. If a particle is still, then both its position and momentum may be measured with one-hundred percent certainty.

28

But who’d be around to measure it? :wink:

[sub]Since tracer is being all serious-like in this thread, someone has to make a wisecrack.[/sub]

29

—To clarify, what is precluded is any natural mechanism. A supernatural mechanism is not precluded.—

Ah. So you’re saying that it’s impossible, except that it’s not?

—Despite what Voyager said, “nothing” implies the absence of any mechanism by which something can arise.—

Why would this arising necessarily require a mechanism?

Craig posits that whatever begins to existence must have a cause. Unfortunately, it’s not in the least clear that this is true, especially in regards to the "beggining’ of the universe (if its even rightly called that), which we know nothing about and would certainly be distinctly different in character from any other conceptual “beginning” we are accustomed with.

What a tragic selective lack of imagination: to scoff at “here be dragons” and “fantasy” and then to neatly solve the whole mess with the exact same. The same stunning lack of curiosity seems to affect the idea of a “personal being” somehow being a solution to the problems of an eternal medium giving rise to a temporal one. What is a personal being? When and from whence does its particular creative impetus come in the midst of eternity? Never shall we tell, or inquire. “Personal” is far too often used in philosophy as a synonym for “here be dragons.”

—It is important to understand here that, if you are a materialist, you must posit that the universe is eternal. And if you do that, then you must be prepared to explain why entropy is not already complete.—

You’re going to have to explain this claim further, since it isn’t by any means philosophically or scientifically agreed upon. It’s certainly not compelling if you think that time is a fucntion of existence as well.

Further, if a hotel has infinate rooms, that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible that you, or anyone, should be in room #3. Especially since, in terms of the entropy idea, there wouldn’t be anyone around in rooms 6x10^23 to infinity to observe the condition of the room’s upkeep. If there are observers, we would EXPECT their observations to take place in rooms that actually have people in them.

As Hawking pointed out, the question “Why is there something instead of nothing?” is a little, and suspiciously, odd: how can we reasonably posit that "nothing’ is any sort of alternative to “something,” let alone the ground state it is implied as being, when all our exeperiences relate to there being “something” and indeed the idea that we cannot get rid of “something” no matter how hard we try? Something is what there is: the question is “can there be nothing?”

30

Sorry, that’s incorrect. The sums of the energys of the particle and antiparticle created in this matter sum to 0. I believe what is happening is a strange sort of borrowing - but I’ve never seen the equations, so I don’t really understand it deeply.

You can see that this is true, since if there was energy used in the creation of virtual particles, where does it come from, and why haven’t we run out of it?

31

Apos sums things up quite well, I think. Nothing is a bit of a subtle concept. There is really no such thing as nothing, according to Heisenberg. That is the “explanation” of quantum foam - you can’t look at a point in space and say that nothing is there.

Because of this, as Apos pointed out, you need no “mechanism” for the first cause. If the energy in our universe sums to 0, the universe can indeed spring out of nothingness (there’s that word again) with no cause. Time may not be involved in this, only being “created” after the event. So, I do not accept that the universe must be eternal.

Evolving universes (see Baxter’s Manifold:Time) is an interesting concept, but I don’t think there is evidence for or against now.

I think a lot of people assume that causality is a natural law, since it looks like it is in the macrouniverse. This is understandable, but it isn’t so at the quantum level. This accounts for a lot of the problems in understanding this stuff.

32

Which still means that energy (positive or negative) was required to create each particle. Moreover, a process or mechanism is still needed to create the particles, so even if the net energy expenditure is zero, they still did not come from mere nothingness.

33

Apos wrote:

Ah. No.

I’m saying that it is impossible by any natural means, unless you can provide either the logic or the experiment to demonstrate nothing’s mechanism. In fact, you must first get around the linguistic problem of using “nothing” genitively.

I am not talking about a cause, here. A subatomic particle can arise without a cause. But the mechanism is describable with statistical theories. That is because statistics can be applied to activity at the subatomic level. There is no activity in nothing.

Your hotel analogy does not address my point. I’m not asking why there is something instead of nothing. I’m not talking about any anthropic principle. I’m merely talking about natural law.

It is exactly in matters of cosmology that materialism reveals itself as among the most mystical of philosophies.

As a materialist, I might hold that the universe is temporal, and yet I cannot give you any deduction, nor any induction, nor any statistical formula, nor any falsifiable experiment, nor even a coherent train of thought that might explain how it can be temporal.

If there was nothing before time, then there was nothing before time, including any mechanism by which time could begin or even be conceivable.

Likewise, as a materialist, I might hold that the universe is eternal, and yet I cannot explain to you how entropy has been kept at bay without introducing untestable entities that do nothing but multiply when the same question is asked about each.

Voyager wrote:

:slight_smile:

Yes, but you must posit that the quantum foam is eternal, then. And in doing so, you must explain how the universe, after an eternity of time (whatever that is), might still have energy that does work.

Merely changing the names of things, or pushing things back into additional layers of context by introducing new entities, does nothing to address the philosophical problems I’ve outlined. And before you might consider bashing philosophy, it was a philosopher, Karl Popper, who introduced the notion of falsifiability, thereby launching modern scientific inquiry and the scientific method.

You cannot falsify an hypothesis that the universe is eternal.

34

—Which still means that energy (positive or negative) was required to create each particle.—

No, not really. Particle and anti-particle.

—Moreover, a process or mechanism is still needed to create the particles, so even if the net energy expenditure is zero, they still did not come from mere nothingness.—

Not necessarily. Indeed, its something that always seems an open possibility. I mean, it’s not like there could be any mechanism to preclude it either.

35

You miss the point. EACH particle requires energy. The net energy expenditure may be zero, but EACH particle still needs energy. Ergo, the virtual particles do not come from mere nothingness.

The fact that their creation is an “open possibility” does not imply that there is no mechanism or process behind their creation. One must answer, after all, the question of why a particular virtual pair was created at a given point in space, at a given moment in time.

36

Apos wrote:

There is nothing TO preclude. It isn’t even predicative. There is nothing. NO-thing. No mechanism of any kind. No existence. No potential.

JT wrote:

Nothing mystical there, JT. Such particles arise in zero-point energy fields in accordance with statistical principles.

37

If I understand you correctly, Libertarian, you are saying that either the universe must have existed eternally (which appears to conflict with observations) or it must have come into being through a prior mechanism. I do not accept this.

All of our experiences come from within the universe. I do not see how one can know, either a posteriori or a priori, that the universe itself requires a mechanism for its existence. You say

I agree with this, but I do not see why you consider it a problem with the materialist viewpoint.

38

—I’m saying that it is impossible by any natural means, unless you can provide either the logic or the experiment to demonstrate nothing’s mechanism.—

I was reffering to your use of “supernatural mechanism.” Which is, what, exactly? what does this have to do with “nothing’s mechanism”?

Everytime we’ve have an interchange on this “natural/supernatural” bussiness, you’ve complained of a double standard, asked me to define what “is” is, and that pretty much ended things. You’ve never stuck around to explain that charge. Is this going to be different?

The only useful sense I can think of is if we use them to distinguish our universe vs. what might exist that is not of our universe (i.e., our universe has a nature, and other things aside from the universehave a different nature). But then, of course, we are getting into very dangerous terrority with our use of “supernatural” because of it’s connotations (both of “better/higher” and “a personal god”), none of which are similarly privaleged in the new usage.

—In fact, you must first get around the linguistic problem of using “nothing” genitively. —

I’m not sure why it has to be got around: it’s usage seems superflous to begin with. Things aren’t coming “from” nothing. That’s indeed nonsense. They’re just coming. It doesn’t add anything to say that they come “out of nowhere,” but most people feel more comfortable adding that bit on. You’re exploiting that linguistic indulgence as an easy means to trip up the unaware for the time being, but I don’t think its a fundamental problem.

—Likewise, as a materialist, I might hold that the universe is eternal, and yet I cannot explain to you how entropy has been kept at bay without introducing untestable entities that do nothing but multiply when the same question is asked about each.—

I’m not sure what you mean by “kept at bay.” Observing intelligence of our sort is, apparently, only viable in those times when entropy is at a certain level, so it makes sense that if there is ever any point at which entropy is not total, then observers could only ever concievably be around then.

I don’t think these are easy problems: they are probably the hardest imaginable, and we may never have good answers to them. I’m sure many people will rush in to fill those gaps from time to time, and maybe someone will come up with something plausible. I’ve found nothing yet, but I’m not exactly impressed by people like Craig who selectively snuff out their imagination and wonder over the possibilities whenever a god isn’t in play, or those people, like Victor Stenger, who do likewise whenever a god is.

The real problem is, I don’t see how any alternatives, which you call “supernatural,” as if that distinguished them from natural explanations, solve the problems you raise.

—There is nothing TO preclude. It isn’t even predicative. There is nothing. NO-thing. No mechanism of any kind. No existence. No potential.—

Until there just IS something, causelessly. Not exactly the hardest thing to concieve, considering that there is nothing that needs to be concieved.

Would it help if I tossed in “God” or “supernatural” somewhere?

39

—You miss the point. EACH particle requires energy. The net energy expenditure may be zero, but EACH particle still needs energy. Ergo, the virtual particles do not come from mere nothingness.—

You miss the point. EACH particle is matched by an anti-particle. They don’t “get” their energy from somewhere else. The event does not require impetus. They are like seeing 0=0 as 1-1 = 0.

And again, if they are causeless (and I’m not sure they even plausibly are in this case), they don’t come “from” nothing. They just come.

—The fact that their creation is an “open possibility” does not imply that there is no mechanism or process behind their creation.—

True, but irrelevant. If there is a causeless event, we can probably NEVER rule out the possibity that there is a cause there we might just have missed. However, neither can we rule out the possibility of an uncaused event ever happening. Why couldn’t it?

That’s the whole point of axioms like the one found in the caricatured first cause: instead of worrying about whether the axiom is actually true, we just declare it to be a universal rule. The problem with that simple formulation is that it captures too much: including god. The axiom Craig uses is a more honest refinement, limiting it only to beings that have beginnings (which may or may not make the axiom a tautology, depending on who you ask). But it still ultimately suffers the same problem: it’s a simplification that is basically unproveable, and especially suspect in respect to things we know almost nothing about, like “the universe.”

—One must answer, after all, the question of why a particular virtual pair was created at a given point in space, at a given moment in time.—

No, one musn’t if there IS no reason.

The reason science avoids this question is not becaues we know for sure that it couldn’t be true. It’s because if it were true, there would be nothing more to say about it: no explaining to be done. And worse, it would be an enticing way to save effort: instead of finding reasons for things, we could simply declare that they have no cause and play golf the rest of the day. However, in the interests of science, if there is to be any science (which is not the rhetorical question it’s often presented as), we keep looking. Most things do eventually seem to have causes, and its been worth finding out if a particular event does, and what that cause is. But that doesn’t rule out uncaused events by any means.

Of course, once we admit to uncaused causes, then basically all bets are off. But, I argue, that’s exactly what the “supernatural” represents anyway, so where is the grounds for complaint?

40

Libertarian:
What do you think about Platonia then, which I mentioned in my last post…?
In that theory there is an eternal entity that describes all the possible histories steming out from a big bang. This entity just sits there and doesn’t change.

I guess you believe that an infinite God created our universe… but I think that there are the same problems with that as there are with having a mother universe. (The mother universe idea is a separate one to Platonia - I’m not sure what the technical term for it is) The mother universe could have had an eternally long history of creating and recycling universes… or maybe this is one of the first… or maybe its history is a loop… it creates different combinations of universes and keeps on repeating… the same would happen with God… did he just spend an eternity doing nothing then suddenly decide to make the universe? I guess time didn’t exist before the universe came into being so it is as if God couldn’t remember what was happening before the universe… (assuming this is his first creation). After humans living on earth for a few thousand years there is apparently going to be a second coming and God with live with his people forever and forever while some others such as the devil burn in a fire for ever and ever. It doesn’t sound like God is going to be doing very much considering he would be an eternal infinite being.