It’s entirely possible for the universe to be eternal and yet have a beginning and an end.
I’m referring, of course, to the oscillitaing universe hypothesis. The idea may not be as glamourous as the “colliding branes” that everyone’s been talking about lately, but it hasn’t been entirely abandoned, either.
Many people can’t accept the concept of an eternal universe, yet have no problem in embracing the idea of an eternal God.
I suppose it’s because an eternal universe doesn’t need a creator.
BTW, the fact that the law of Conservation of Mass-Energy can be temporarily violated is a consequence of the uncertainty principle.
Just as there’s an uncertainty principle which says that you cannot know both the position and momentum of a particle at any given instant with arbitrary accuracy, there’s another uncertainty principle which says that you cannot know both the mass-energy of a particle and the time at which your measurement of its mass-energy took place with arbitrary accuracy. The more accurate your measure of the mass-energy of a particle, the less accurate your ability to tell when you made this measurement will become. The more accurate your ability to tell when your mass-energy measurements are taking place becomes, the more uncertain those mass-energy measurements will be.
Let’s call the uncertainty in your mass-energy measurement “delta-m”, and the uncertainty in your time measurement “delta-t”. The lower limit of delta-m and delta-t are set, as you might suspect, as follows:
delta-m * delta-t >= *h*
… where h is Planck’s constant, 6.626 x 10[sup]-34[/sup] Joule-second.
This uncertainty in the amount of mass-energy present isn’t just a limitation as to an observer’s ability to measure it. It’s an actual fundamental property of the universe. The amount of mass-energy present at any given time is uncertain to an extent depending on how short the “given time” is.
In other words, mass-energy is only conserved to the extent of its ability to be measured.
First of all you have to realize that most physicists don’t consider virtual particles to be real particles. They appear as terms in a perturbation expansion when you use a particular method to solve the relativistic equivalent of the Schroedinger equation. They gained whatever semblance of reality they have strictly from the visualization images provided by Feynman diagrams.
In any case there is, in principle, absolutely no way a virtual particle can ever be detected. So there is no way they can violate the conservation of energy.
For it to be impossible for something to come from nothing, then there would have to be a rule or mechanism in place to prevent it. But then it wouldn’t be nothing. Therefore, it is not impossible for something to come from nothing.
Ring wrote:
Well, you can’t measure nothing. There is no attribute TO measure. That’s why it can’t be (reasonably) used in a genitive case: there isn’t anything that comes from nothing. This is not sophism any more than saying that division by zero is undefined rather than saying that its quotient is infinity.
What would be sophistry would be the application of properties to nothing.
BlackKnight wrote:
There is nothing TO prevent. No rule and no mechanism is required.
Libertarian:
What does statistical probability have to do with the two slit experiment? (Forget about quantum computers for now) In the two slit experiment, some believe that photons are interacting with other versions of themselves from alternate histories. These different histories are different from our own so since it is outside of our universe isn’t it “supernatural”? I mean you said Platonia is supernatural because it is outside of our universe.
There is no reason to guess. If you’re alive, then there is energy available to do work.
God still is eternally aware of his ultimate decisions. He cannot deviate from that predestined path or his knowledge of the future (which is also the present) would be mistaken. Therefore God has freewill. Doesn’t freewill mean that God can choose totally freely? It seems that he is locked in to a single scenario made up of a beginning, middle and end with absolutely no room for deviation. (i.e. no alternate courses of action)
Libertarian:
My last paragraph should read:
God still is eternally aware of his ultimate decisions. He cannot deviate from that predestined path or his knowledge of the future (which is also the present) would be mistaken. Therefore God has NO freewill. Doesn’t freewill mean that God can choose totally freely? It seems that he is locked in to a single scenario made up of a beginning, middle and end with absolutely no room for deviation. (i.e. no alternate courses of action)
JohnClay wrote:
No. If you do not want to speak of a UNI-verse, then don’t. Speak instead of a MULTI-verse. If there is more than one probability field in existence, then it is the set of all probability fields that is the universe.
A materialist doesn’t help his cause by splitting his bet. It merely gives him an additional thing to explain.
It is entirely possible that I misunderstood the premise of the Platonia believers. I thought they were saying that Platonia was infinite and eternal.
God may be defined as “necessary existence” in the modal logic sense. A more common paraphrase of this would be “supreme being”. Necessary = Supreme. Existence = Being. Necessary Existence. Supreme Being.
Necessary existence is true in every possible world. Therefore, there is available to God not only alternate courses, but an infinite number of them.
It is true that the universe is already ended from His eternal perspective, but it is equally true that, from His perspective, the universe is still ongoing. Therefore, the number of endings is unbounded.
Slip wrote:
If entropy were applicable to God, then I would have a problem embracing the idea of an eternal God. But why should an entropy principle apply to a nonmaterial entity?
An eternally oscillating universe is, by definition, immune to entropy.
Entropy is only seen during the expansion phase of our universe.
Come the Big Crunch, followed by the “bounce”, and the whole magilla starts over again.
No one knows if this happens or not, but no one is saying it can’t, either.
You"ll have to abandon the entropy argument unless you “know” that the universe does not behave this way.
So, I’m compelled to ask, how do you “know” this, Lib?
That’s certainly the materialist’s best bet.
But if you’re going to posit an oscillating universe, you need to deal with two observations: (1) COBE project data that indicate the anisotropic structure of galaxy superclusters; and (2) CMB data that indicate an accelerating expansion of the universe.
The problem with the former is that you need a mechanism for all particles to return to the origin at the same instant, and the problem with the latter is that it counterindicates the whole idea.
It’s true that the universe is expanding, and it’s accelerating to boot. And observations indicate that there is not nearly enough mass to close the universe, which is why the oscillating model has fallen out of favour. Nevertheless, the mass may be there in the form of cold, dark matter, which is very difficult to detect. Ans there are still quite a few cosmologists looking for this “missing” matter.
A proposal that has caught the fancy of many workers in the field is the Baby Universes idea. Our universe got pinched off from an eternal metaunivere, and the laws of physics that we see are local.
Nobody knows, Lib, and I’m not promoting either idea. I’m merely saying that, from the big picture perspective, your entropy argument is not valid.
Of course there isn’t anything to prevent (yet). There’s nothing. Which is why there can suddenly be something.
The only way it is impossible for something to come from nothing is if there is a reason, a mechanism, or a rule (or whatever you want to call it) preventing it. But that thing is something. Therefore, the idea that something cannot come from nothing is contradictory.
The idea of multiple histories has a lot of support as far as experimental evidence goes. It would also explain how things that seem near impossible - like the emergence of life and consciousness - can happen. What could the specific alternate history we exist in be called? I think a reasonable term is “our universe”.
It is meant to be a static tree like structure that describes all of the possible histories beginning from the big bang. It is eternal and either infinite or near-infinite. (I’m not sure what the official theory says about that)
Hmmm… so you believe in multiple histories as well? But can God do something that isn’t totally just or can he lie, etc? Can God make a mistake or make or do something sub-optimal? It seems that there would be a limited number of choices that God could make if he was doomed to always make the optimal choice… there might be many times where choices are equally optimal (like the appearance of his creation) but perhaps that isn’t infinite… is there any evidence in the Bible that God participates in multiple histories? It is the first time I’ve heard that idea.
Libertarian:
It sounds like this is pretty identical to the Platonia idea - with all possible histories existing statically and eternally - except that at the origin of Platonia (the start of the history tree) is the big bang and in your theory God is present everywhere in the different histories intervening in things and causing the big bang. (Perhaps through spoken words, like in the Genesis story) The main difference seems to be that your idea has a changeless super-intelligent being thrown in there. I think the first part of Platonia starts off a lot neater - with everything emerging from a point and diverging into many different histories.
This is going to be long, but bear with me. I’m going to try (and probably fail) to explain an unconventional way of looking at the universe, from which its beginning can be explained fairly simply in a materialist context. Some of these ideas are from Huw Price’s Time’s Arrow and Archimedes’ Point, a book about the nature of time that I highly recommend.
It is not truly a law of physics that entropy must necessarily increase over time. As far as we know (with one known exception involving certain mesons) all of the fundamental interactions of the universe are temporally asymmetric. This may at first seem inconsistent with the obvious temporal asymmetry of thermodynamics, and I will attempt to explain why this is not so.
Consider the notion of cause and effect. It is known that the laws of mechanics are completely asymmetric in time. In a mechanical interaction between several particles, it is as easy to determine what the initial conditions were given the final conditions as it is to determine what the final conditions will be given the initial conditions. If one does not define the cause as the first in a pair of linked events, as some philosophers do, then there is no objective reason that follows from the laws themselves to claim that the initial conditions caused the final in a way that the final did not cause the initial.
This state of affairs does not exist in interactions involving thermodynamics, or so it seems. The initial and final states of a thermodynamic system contain objectively different bulk properties–In our experience, the final state always has greater entropy than the initial. However, thermodynamics is merely a statistical description that applies to large numbers of mechanical interactions between the components of complex systems. It seems unreasonable that an asymmetry should exist in the aggregate when it does not exist in any individual part.
The most popular explanation among cosmologists for the fact that entropy increases unidirectionally in time, given the fact that the laws of physics contain no preferred time direction, is that the universe began in a state of enormously, extraordinarily low entropy. I can vaguely recall one calculation that immediately following the big bang the universe was perfectly smooth to about one part in 10[sup]10[sup]70[/sup][/sup]. The miniscule degree of lumpiness remaining is what allowed galaxies and stars to form through gravitational clumping. If it had been significantly greater, all the mass in the universe would have collected in black holes almost immediately. Because most states are, by definition, high entropy, the vast majority of possible futures for the universe at that early smooth stage would then have evolved onward from that point with continually increasing entropy.
Consider a simple apparatus in which a chamber full of gas and a chamber in vacuum are connected by a sliding door. This system is isolated from the environment. Assume the gas particles are large enough that quantum indeterminacy can be ignored (I do not think this changes things since the Schrödinger equation itself is temporally asymmetric, but it simplifies matters). When the door is opened, the gas will quickly expand to fill the chamber with vacuum, which results in a greater entropy for the system. Now, consider a state an hour after the door has been opened, when gas particles evenly fill both chambers and move with apparently random velocities. Now, consider another set of two chambers which at that moment is exactly identical except that the velocity of every gas particle is reversed. Entropy in a gas is a bulk property of state, so both sets of chambers will have identical entropy. If time continues forwards, then the particles in this second set of chambers will reverse all the collisions in the first set of chambers. One hour later, all the particles will end up in a single chamber, and the door can be shut, locking in the system at a lower entropy than it began.
This demonstrates that the second law of thermodynamics is not a true law of nature, but a statistical principle that can be violated in situations that do not require physical impossibilities. It is true that the initial arrangement of gas particles is extremely unlikely in the second system in the sense that a mathematically random arrangement of gas particles will almost certainly not show a dramatic reduction in entropy into the future. The final arrangement of gas particles in the first system is also extremely unlikely in that a mathematically random arrangement of gas particles will almost certainly not show a dramatic reduction of entropy into the past. In this case, this unlikeliness can be explained by the astoundingly unlikely initial conditions of the universe. All later system that has evolved from this initial state retain most of this unlikeliness, but it is continuously dissipated through random interactions between particles that allow them to take on more likely states. This is the substance of the second law of thermodynamics.
The point of this is that an asymmetric notion of cause and effect does not have any natural existence in fundamental physical law, but is rather a consequence at the human scale of the peculiar initial conditions of the universe. If the universe were constrained to end in a state of high entropy rather than begin with one, we would see entropy increase into the past rather than the future. We would remember the future rather than the past, and we would see our present actions as having consequences in the past rather than the future. In fact, we would call the future “the past” and the past “the future”. Surely in that case we would not believe that the end of the universe required a supernatural explanation. Such a state of affairs could conceivably exist even in distant regions of our own universe. The observable universe seems homogeneous overall, but the theory of inflation tells us that all we can see of the universe might be an infinitesimal part of a vastly larger whole. On such a grand scale there is no reason to believe the universe could not contain regions which began in initial states vastly different than our own.
In order to explain the existence of time, we must think from a perspective in which the concept of time does not exist. Imagine the universe as a god might see it: all reality laid out before you as a finished whole; time simply a dimension akin to space, both of which separate events. From such a vantage point, the universe exists in an eternal moment. I don’t believe any being can truly see the world from that perspective, but it gives a hint towards the type of explanation that is required.
The universe cannot have a prior cause, because nothing prior to it can exist. I propose instead to look for a cause in the present. Imagine today’s universe from a time-reversed perspective. One sees galaxies moving towards one another and the density of space increasing. One concludes that if present trends continue, the universe will end in a singularity in which space and time will cease to exist. In causative terms, the inward motion of matter will cause the universe to end. From an atemporal viewpoint, one can see that this reversed accounting of events cannot be objectively preferable to our own. From our perspective, one can say that the present and future outward motion of galaxies caused the universe to begin in the past. The future explains the past and the past explains the future. The universe is a self-contained whole that justifies its own existence.
Seems like we’ve been here before…
JasonFin is correct that entropy is irrelevant to the debate. So is energy.
The problem is in the question. “Can something come from nothing?” The words “come from” assume the existence of time. In the BB model, time begins at the BB. There is no “coming from” because there is no such thing as “before the BB”.
Draw a line on a piece of paper. Look at one end. The line begins at that end. So in GR, the time since the BB is finite. There are 2 possibilities:
The point t=0 is included as part of the universe. In this case the point t=0 is uncaused.
The point t=0 is not part of the universe. In this case time has no beginning. But nothing has to come from nothing, since each moment comes from (is caused by) the preceding moment of the universe’s existence. (Argument due to Quentin Smith - thanks to Libertarian for pointing it out.)
So, the universe doesn’t come from nothing. It either has an uncaused beginning, or it has no beginning (but a finite history).
BlackKnight wrote
Well, there’s no “yet” either.
“Nothing” is a touchy topic philosophically because there is precious little that is safe to say about it. In fact, you really can’t say anything about it directly. It’s neither predicative nor nominative. It’s neither genitive nor ablative. You can’t even really say there “was” nothing, since “to be” implies existence.
We speak of it the way we do really only as a shortcut convenience. The correct way to speak would be to negate everything. All concepts, properties, potentials, or phenomena are to be excluded. A future? (For your “yet”). Nope. A change in state? (For your “suddenly”). Nada. An existence? (For your “be”). Certainly not.
The materialists with a good grasp of nothing (see, there’s that shorthand again — “of nothing” — nothing can’t be genitive) are they who most dispair at the notion of a temporal universe. They have to have an eternal one, and that’s why the oscillating one (or variants where the universe is infinitely recycled) is their best bet.
I think you might have a contradiction confused with a tautology. Remember that neither possibility not impossibility are attributable to nothing.
It is the “come” part of “come from” that is impossible; the “from” part is merely nonsense. The “come” part is on this side of […sigh…] nothing.
FriendRob
You might enjoy reading the transcript of a debate between Quentin Smith and William Lane Craig about the existence of God, held on the campus of Southern Methodist University in 1996. These are two heavyweight philosophers, and reading their ad hoc rebuttals and responses to audience questions was a true delight.
“”""""""“BTW, the fact that the law of Conservation of Mass-Energy can be temporarily violated is a consequence of the uncertainty principle.”"""""""
Do that hand crack out where you live? The law of conservation is the proof for the law of existence - you cannot collapse the law of conservation without collapsing the reality with which you are denouncing it. That’s why they’re called axioms !!
If nothing is an existent state, there are two ways to veiw it…
It can be interacted with (which is silly)
It cannot be interacted with (which makes it completely pointless as a concept – the perfect condition to which occams razor was designed)
Ideas like ‘nothing’ and ‘zero’ depend upon a lack of perceptual acuity in order to observe; it is however the basis of all rationality that these states are not absolutes - for then all axioms become acausal; and all meaning collapses.
It’s one thing to ‘speculate’ upon the universe collapsing because of this state or that state – however; we as rational, logical beings are expected to aknowledge when an argument collapses the purpose of us stating it; even metaphorically speaking.
One we can’t be sure of, the other one, we can.
Nothing does exist; yet only as irrationality - for an individual to believe in nothing - or the existence of nothing as an existent and/or motivating factor of nature; and be alive is the definition of contradiction ---- Nothing collapses everything in motion, over the course of eternity, unless something comes from nothing –
Our existence is evidence that nothing does not exist at times’ twilight; and our ability to reason is evidence that it does not exist at times’ dawn (how anyone could concieve of a purpose to type a reply about the capacity of something to come from nothing without realizing that the concept negates the purpose for typing the message – is beyond my feeble mind.)
The only rational conclusion that can be drawn from the belief of nothing is that everything and/or anything already is nothing.
This conclusion renders only one logical action from the perspective of efficiency:
“Something already is nothing, therefor something is a waste of time ; a delusion to escape”
-Justhink
