Yes, it is indeed. The most interesting thing about it to me is how easy it is to discern which of the scientists have a solid grounding in more general philosophy (especially ontology, epistemology, and metaphysics), and which do not. Those who are more erudite do, as do you, speak very “scientifically”, i.e., they understand the nature of their own epistemological context — falsifiability. They speak of reality as an interpretive thing. And they make no sweeping statements about the nature of existence and its origins, seeming to be keenly aware that that their own foundational grounding is tenuous. After all, the whole notion of falsifiability is itself not falsifiable.
With respect to a couple of points you’ve raised:
Actually, here it is quite simple. It would be represented mathematically as the empty set, and would be represented ontologically as the absence of the universe.
You’re right that there is a problem with diminishing scale, but that’s not the point of the temporal argument. The point is that the universe is a chronosynclasticinfundibulum. As such, its metaphysical nature is clear: once you reach the point of the cone, there is nothing beyond. Every line in a cone extends from its endpoint, the origin. And every plane is concentric to it.
If there was a process before the universe’s first event (the alleged fluctuation), then that process was supernatural. Please understand that labeling the process as “supernatural” does not in any way cast it as implausible.
Anyway, the question remains, and I’ll restate it for the convenience of those who don’t want to search backward: how can something arise out of nothing, when nothingness implies the absence of any natural mechanism by which something may arise?
Semantics! The concept of a universe of naught is very badly covered in our languages. Could be because it is very hard to imagine and usually pretty useless to deal with on an everyday basis. Christian scholars used to struggle with with it through interpretation of Genesis and concluded that at first there was God and nothing (it says so)…that didn’t hold the test of time very well. Modern scholars try to define it through mathematics astronomy and physics, that’s so far come up pretty dry as well.
The enigma of what was ‘before’ remains one of the BIG unsolved ones that doesn’t even have very compelling theories connected to it.
So we are left with faith.
My answer:
I believe it had nothing to do with an intelligent, sapient, thinking entity (I’d have to believe in God for that…which I don’t).
I surmise there was something before ‘the moment of creation’ (I have no clue what that could be).
Could I be wrong? - Who knows?
BTW are we talking about the creation of the universe or me? And what’s the difference?
I’ll just reiterate that our frail human understanding of nothingness may not be the entire story. Imagine some eternal uncreated something that via natural processes can spawn not just one, but perhaps many universes. Perhaps as Andrei Linde has suggested, chaotic inflation may create a never ending number of inflationary bubbles that create universives. Most would collapse, expand too fast into cold death, but a few may become something like our own universe that could support life. None of this denies a god. God could set up this mechanism and set it in motion at any point. But whether God is involved or not is a matter that we must consider within our own hearts.
OK, now I’ll be a bit more hard-headed and ask how we can know that what came before our universe is “nothing”. We can’t say that the non-existence of our universe is nothing because that presupposes that our universe is all that exists. We don’t know that and probably never will.
It seems to me that when many physicists speak of the universe as having possibly arisen from a quantum fluctuation in nothingness, they speak of a particular kind of nothingness. This physical nothingness is an absence of substance ; there is no matter, no energy, no space, no time. However, in this nothingness there remains something, and that something is Law.
For physicists who attempt to describe the origin of the universe, it is necessary to assume that physical law applied to the pre-universal state of affairs. We can hypothesize that, were we to possess a complete mathematical statement of the laws of physics, applying these laws to nothingness might describe how a universe bursts into existence.
What happens when we remove from physical nothingness this obedience to law, leaving nothing whatsoever? It is difficult even to guess. In the absence of rules that dictate either what cannot happen or what must, I don’t see any basis for logical argument. Perhaps all that we can say is that our universe might have had its origin in the application of Law to the absence of all things. Perhaps a true nothingness, completely unbounded by rules, could twist itself in such a way to produce a moment of law. Or perhaps not. Anyway, it’s an interesting possibility to consider.
Beautifully stated, and with scientific precision. You are exactly right.
Speaking now from my own philosophy… In fact, the universe doesn’t exist at all. Not in any real sense. The quantum farts and burps that, collectively, provide us with shapes and contexts that we can interpret are amoral, and therefore without significance. Assuming that God exists, and that He is spiritual rather than material, all that matters is morality, and that only as He defines it. Our brief lives within this material matrix is a moral journey. We make moral decisions with our spirit, and then direct our brain to carry them out. There is no morality in how we manipulate the atoms, but rather in what we decide they mean.
It is as you say, Rsa. We find that meaning inside ourselves.
Not quite right. Please see the quotation referenced above from the California Institute of Physics and Astrophysics.
Quick reply to the original question:
NO, I don’t think there is any kind of intelligence that created the universe.
I use think instead of believe, which is a major difference to me. I make it a point not to believe anything one way or the other. Nonetheless, I think as I do because I see no objective evidence of the existence of any intelligence of this sort. All of the accounts related to such an intelligence that I have ever encountered are full of holes. As such, I rely on my brain instead (not that I haven’t check for facts). My observation has demonstrated so far that it is a source upon which I can rely.
And to #3, NO, I don’t think there’s a chance that I am wrong. I’m more than willing to go on about it if asked.
I think you may be confusing apples and oranges here. The quote that you are referring to is discussing the “vacuum” of our universe with space and time firmly in place. It is not discussing what would occur absent space and time.
It seems to me that all three of these are equally mythological statements. The only advantage to (2) is that we might, some day way off, be able to make predictions about our observable universe based on it, and test those predictions.
I agree with what JasonFin said. If we think of (quantum vacuum plus physical law) as the condition/state from which our present spacetime arose by a natural process, then it is a matter of definition whether that condition/state is part of our “universe” or not. We would then have an explanation of how our spacetime arose, but would be left with the question of the origin, if any, of the preexistent condition/state.
Which is basically the same problem I have with option (3).
But then the horse walks right back 'round and into its stable. In this absolute absence of space and time, how can there be any but a supernatural mechanism?
Pigs can fly if we redefine fly to mean “wallow in mud”.
Libertarian: My point was that, even in the absence of space and time, it is not unreasonable to consider the application of natural law. Physical law applies within our universe, but it is not logically necessary that it be coextensive with our universe. It is possible that our universe might have come into being from nothing, naturally, through the application of physical law.
You may not consider “the laws of physics” to be a valid mechanism. To me, this implies a distinction between cause and explanation that applies in everyday life, but may not apply at the level of fundamental physics. Random events at the quantum level can be explained by the laws of physics. If they are considered to have a cause, it can be nothing but those selfsame laws.
I’ll admit that I can’t conceive of how law itself could come into being naturally. In fact, I can’t really conceive of how law could come into being at all.
With no law to assure that nothingness remains nothingness, why shouldn’t it just explode into everythingness? The absence of law is something I just can’t fit my mind around, philosophically.
How exactly is your “law” differentiated from “intelligence”? If I understand you correctly, your assertion is that the law itself precedes the universe and, as such, is not made of the universe’s stuff; i.e., it is not materialistic. From your description, the universe does not contain the law; rather, the law is a self-sustaining entity that was (and is) the mechanism by which the universe phenominates. It is not unlike the words in this post, wherein I may be viewed as the law by which they assemble into coherent (or incoherent) phrases.
By that reckoning, any and all fundamental natural laws would qualify as “intelligence”.
F= ma ? That’s intelligence.
F = GMm/R[sup]2[/sup] ? That’s intelligence.
Maxwell’s Equations? They’re intelligence.
Etc…
All natural laws would fall under this definition of “intelligence.” Which would pretty much render the distinction between “intelligence” and the laws of nature meaningless.
For those of you who are uncomfortable with the notion of the big bang arising from “nothing” (or “something” we don’t understand), perhaps this will be more to your liking.
N.B. this is not a definitive theory at this point by any means and some scientists are quite critical of it for now. But who’s to say that something similar, if not this, could occur?
For further reading, here is an introduction by the theorists which campares and contrasts the big bang model with their 5d cyclic colliding brane model.
The universe created inteligense and inteligense created this universe.
When you creat a partical i.e. photon it inhabits all possible posisions and interacts with all other particals possible untill observed by an intelligense. At witch time this waveform colaspes to the observed posision. This is basic to Quantum Reality. Take this and apply to all particals and all reactions. Untill the unique waveform in witch intelligense has arisen, witch observes the universe witch led to it and all alturnate waveforms colaspe leaveing just this one. At least for as far as we can observe.