How do you know? Have you ever examined a “nothing” to see what its properties are? If you’re talking about the philosopher’s “nothing” where there is no time, space, or matter, or even any properties at all, we don’t even know whether it’s possible for that state to exist, let alone if it did, how it might behave.
Your statement above seems to me to be devoid of meaning.
From what I see, there are only two possibilities: There has been nothing that eventually became something, or there always has been something. Both are equally irrational to me. This is not a question that will ever have an answer. It doesn’t make any sense that anything is here.
Somebody had to say it!
“A mighty hot dog is our Lord!” </Firesign>
I’m old too.
Wait. God is the serious answer and anything else is just an uneducated guess?
We’re in GQ. Witnessing is for GD. We have no need of that hypothesis.
The answer that seems to fit the known facts better, and is the definition of an educated guess, is that there cannot be “nothing.” We know that virtual particles exist, we know that quantum rules describe the universe to great precision, we know that “something” is created out of “nothing” on a regular basis (at the event horizon of black holes for one example). Ridding ourselves of the uneducated concept of “nothing” would seem to be a major advance in the history of human thought. Why should that cause any more anguish than ridding ourselves of the uneducated notion that the sun revolves around the earth?
I’m not sure if anyone who understands this concept disagrees that this is possible, given that these rules exist and that there is a place for these to play out. But this isn’t nothing, and there’s no reason for these rules to be set up this way which makes something necessary.
As far back as we are able to observe - there has always been something. There was never a ‘time’ that we could point to that there was ‘nothing’. The only reason people as ‘what happened before we existed’ is to give a wedge to their deity/creation myth of choice.
And then - lets just posit that the one in Genesis is correct - if we use that as our point of reference - SOMETHING still existed at that point in order to create the rest - so there was still no point that nothing existed.
SUre, my assumption is that “this” always “was,” “has been,” “is,” and “will be” but it seems equally incomprehensible to me.
It always amazes me that people find the concept of an eternal God capable of creating a whole universe out of nothing as the thing they can wrap their head around as comprehensible in all this.
We have a very very long history of talking about gods, so it isn’t really surprising to me.
And at some level, attributing things to God (or a deity in a pantheistic religion) is a lot more comforting existentially.
We exist in a universe so it is necessary for a universe to exist. We cannot say that the current result was a necessary one. However, it is permissible to say that the stated process is a reasonable conclusion given known facts. That’s very different from saying we know it happened in this way. But I didn’t say that: I called it an “educated guess.” Not remotely in the same league as “godditit”.
There are things that lie far beyond the scope of our parochial minds to even imagine. We simply do not, in the limited scope of our intellects, possess the concepts necessary to venture beyond our tribal customs of time and space, which were created a posteriori from looking around at what our tiny senses can perceive. Time and space are obvious to us, so we try to explain everything in those terms, which hits a wall.
It’s like trying to explain biology when you have nothing to observe but a tree and a cat.
All our observations here on Earth follow the pattern that every effect has a cause and the cause must precede the effect. But that pattern might not hold for the universe itself. All our observations here on Earth follow the pattern that every object was created by something else or it grew from something else. But that pattern might not hold for the universe itself. All our observations here on Earth follow the pattern that knowing the present helps you predict the future. Therefore, knowing the past helps you understand the present. But that pattern might not hold for the universe itself.
We observe that the universe is expanding and has been expanding for a long time. That’s rather similar to making the observation that Earth is wide at the equator but it gets smaller as you head towards the north pole. The Big Bang is the point where “time” itself started. So talking about “before” the Big Bang is asking a question using words that don’t really apply to the situation. It’s like asking, “What’s north of the North Pole?”.
Forging ahead with our inadequate vocabulary, I see at least 3 possibilities*: #1 The universe created itself, violating causality. #2 The universe was created by something else. #3 The universe was not created at all, it just is what it is. But if #2 is true, then what created the thing that created the universe? Well… either that thing created itself, or it was created by something else, or it was not created at all. So that doesn’t really get us anywhere. One can imagine that the universe was created by something that was not created. But it’s rather ludicrous to suggest that this contorted answer is the only possible answer. And if you’re willing to imagine something that was not created, why not just imagine that the universe itself was not created?
*And, of course, there are bound to be more possibilities other than the three that I listed. My inability to think of alternatives doesn’t prove there are no alternatives.
This might be a little too pedantic, but I don’t think one can reasonably use Hawking radiation as an example of creating something from nothing, inasmuch as a black hole isn’t obviously “nothing.”
More pedantic yet, I don’t know that I would agree that “we know that virtual particles exist.”
When one writes down a problem in quantum field theory, one gets a set of equations which cannot in general be exactly solved. One way of generating usefully accurate approximate solutions is to use a mathematical technique known as perturbation theory, and in doing so one introduces virtual particles and Feynman diagrams and so on. But other equally valid mathematical approximations exist, not all of which require virtual particles; to the best of my knowledge, for example, there are no virtual particles in lattice gauge theory. As such, I’m not sure it’s entirely correct to describe virtual particles as “existing.”
This is not to say that predictions made using virtual particles are in any way wrong. But one should perhaps be careful about ascribing reality to a mathematical construct that is not an essential component of our physical theories.
And for that matter, what is the universe expanding into?
Is the gross structure of spacetime flat? It appears to be average flat around here, but what is its really large scale shape?
Saying “godditit” would be postulating an entity which we have no evidence of and which has certain characteristics, and would obviously not solve the “first mover” issue. I suspect that we do not have the ability to comprehend the entire stack of whatever was in place to enable the Universe. But the answer is certainly not the Abrahamic God, whose superficial comprehensibility is one reason people flock to it, but whose existence or nonexistence doesn’t actually tell us anything about the origins of everything.
or you could have simply said —
“we don’t know”…
Yes. I agree. I in fact said that.
You seem to be assuming I’m postulating a god. I am utterly rejecting that as an answer.
One or both of us is very confused. I certainly am. Could you explain you?