creatio ex nihilo

[Jayhawker_Soule]

Are there Christians here who reject creatio ex nihilo?

[botsgotme]

Well, if you believe in the “Big Bang”, it is the same thing.

[GIGObuster]

Not quite, if we look at the latest evidence and theories, there is indeed something where once was assumed was nothing.

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2011/02/02/can-you-get-something-for-noth/

One of the oldest adages in existence is you can’t get something for nothing, as over a million websites will tell you, including not-so-subtly, cartoonstock.

And, most often when people bring this up to me, it’s in an attempt to prove the existence of God — and the insufficiency of the Big Bang — by pointing to the Universe.

Well, let’s take this question as seriously as our knowledge allows us to. (And by that, I mean physically, rather than philosophically or theologically.) In physics, can you get something for nothing? And if so, what can you and can’t you get?

In many ways, yes, you can. In fact, in many ways, getting something when you have nothing is unavoidable! (Although you can’t necessarily get anything you want.)

For example, take a box and empty it, so that all you’ve got is some totally empty space, like above. An ideal, perfect, empty vacuum. Now, what’s in that box?

Did you guess nothing? Well, it turns out that empty space isn’t so empty.

One of the consequences of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle — that you can’t know a quantum state’s energy exactly for a finite duration of time — means that when you’re talking about very short time intervals, there are large uncertainties in the energy of a system. Over short enough timescales, the energies are large enough that particle-antiparticle pairs wink in-and-out of existence all the time!

“That’s crazy talk,” you say. Prove it!

And they did.

Take two identical, uncharged, parallel metal plates, and put them close to one another. The vacuum fluctuations in between the plates cause there to be a pressure pushing the plates together. This isn’t the gravitational force or an electromagnetic force, but a force due to empty space itself.

This experiment — first done in 1948 but repeated many times (under many conditions) — was a rousing success, and has many immediate, far-reaching and fantastic consequences.

Now, that’s what we know we can get, even from nothing. But there are many things we can’t do, either practically or theoretically: violate charge or energy conservation, decrease the total entropy of the Universe, or figure out where our initially inflating Universe came from. (Yet!) But we definitely can get something for nothing; quantum field theory not only allows it, it demands it. But it remains to be seen whether we can get everything for nothing. If we ever figure it out, I’ll make sure you’re among the first to know!

If you have more time here is Lawrence Krauss explaining it too:

Lawrence Krauss: A Universe From Nothing

This is the “Universe From Nothing” talk given by Lawrence Krauss in 2009 on the accelerating expansion of the universe and how we know its fate.

[Rune]

@GIGObuster

Not quite, if we look at the latest evidence and theories, there is indeed something where once was assumed was nothing.

Doesn’t really make much of a difference. If correct, it’ll just push the question one step back. There remains the question wherefrom did the (seemingly wholly arbitrary) rules of the Universe come from, in this case the quantum mechanics. There can really be only one of two answers: either they’ve been here always, for eternity. Or ex nihilo. Both answers are outside the capacity of the human mind to comprehend.

[Czarcasm]

@Rune

Both answers are outside the capacity of the human mind to comprehend.

I hear this often, but:

1. What does it mean, and
2. Who gets to determine it?

I mean, once someone makes a proclamation like this, are we all suppose to say, “Yup, Billy Bob Philosopher sure has a point there. We might as well quit seeking answers about that question!” ?

[Alessan]

Creating matter is easy. All you have to do is create an equal amount of antimatter.

[PlaceboTarget]

@botsgotme

Well, if you believe in the “Big Bang”, it is the same thing.

No, it’s not. The so called ‘Big Bang’ refers to the expansion of the universe from the initial singularity. The nature of this singularity may not be clear, but that hardly qualifies it as ‘nihilo’.

[DrFidelius]

@Jayhawker_Soule

Are there Christians here who reject creatio ex nihilo?

Reject is a rather strong term. Personally I find questions of origins mostly irrelevant to my relationship with God.

But I am a terrible Christian, at least according to the folks at the last five churches I’ve attended.

[Icerigger]

Yes, it is my understanding that absolute nothing is impossible, quantum mechanics will not allow it, there is always potential energy and matter.

[Jayhawker_Soule]

@DrFidelius

Reject is a rather strong term. Personally I find questions of origins mostly irrelevant to my relationship with God.

Thanks for the answer.

[Rune]

@Czarcasm

I hear this often, but:

1. What does it mean, and
2. Who gets to determine it?

I mean, once someone makes a proclamation like this, are we all suppose to say, “Yup, Billy Bob Philosopher sure has a point there. We might as well quit seeking answers about that question!” ?

It means that I don’t really think the human mind is capable of understanding eternity, although we can make mathematical and philosophical models that describe it. It also means both eternity and ex nihilo are extremely unsatisfying answers. Like if a boy had suddenly discovered zebras have stripes, and goes Whoa! Why? When did they come? And the teacher goes either: 1) oh, they’ve always been there; 2) oh, they came 14:33 August 3 1984. Out of nowhere for no reason. I’d be less that impressed by either explanation.

[T.M]

@DrFidelius

Reject is a rather strong term. Personally I find questions of origins mostly irrelevant to my relationship with God.

But I am a terrible Christian, at least according to the folks at the last five churches I’ve attended.

I am a Christian who believes in a creator God but I am not dogmatic about the big bang theory it is a very interesting subject, my relationship with God is a separate issue

I am happy at my present church, I get a few dark looks from the Sunday Christians

[Robert163]

I agree with the comments that both propositions seem hard to comprehend

[Saintly_Loser]

@T.M

I am a Christian who believes in a creator God but I am not dogmatic about the big bang theory it is a very interesting subject, my relationship with God is a separate issue

Yes. Same here. I believe in a created universe. I also believe what science tells me about that universe. The big bang (first proposed by a Catholic priest who was also a scientist, by the way)? Sure. Is that the same as creation ex nihilo? No, it’s not. Not a problem for me.

[lalaith]

I was raised Catholic and we were taught, actually taught in CCD which is the Catholic version of Sunday school, that the Bible’s just stories.

Even the conservative Bill O’Reilly has said the Bible’s just stories. (Maybe because he’s also Catholic.)

So creation ex nihilo…does that include the Big Bang to you?

[Lemur866]

Right. The big bang isn’t creation out of nothing. It’s creation out of the singularity. OK then. Where did the singularity come from? It might be that we could never know the answer to this question, since all evidence about the previous state of the singularity was erased in the transformation of the singularity into our current universe.

In other words, we can trace our universe back to this singularity, but there wasn’t anything before the singularity since there was no before. To have a “before” you have to have time, and there was no time before time existed.

As for the conundrum that you can’t have something from nothing, therefore God must have created the universe, surely everyone has heard the question of where did God come from then? Did God come from nothing? No? Then God always existed? How could God have always existed if everything has a cause? God is the one thing that doesn’t require a cause? OK, but if God doesn’t require a cause then why couldn’t there be other things that don’t require a cause? Like universes?

The only reason we say that events must have a cause is because that’s the way physical law works in our universe. Before time was created then how can we say what physical laws applied when there was no universe? If the cause of our universe is outside our universe then from the perspective of our universe it was uncaused.

Maybe someday we’ll figure out some way to get information about the state of the universe before there was a universe, but as far as we know that’s not possible. Adding “God” into the argument just inserts an unneeded hypothesis that confuses rather than explains.