Did Nothing Create Everything?

SetiAlpha6 said:
So are you willing to review more evidence, or am I starting to stress you guys out?
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Err... what?!!!

Did you read the six or seven posts I posted in response to the "evidence" you presented, and to your other arguments/points?

You haven't responded to anything I wrote. Why is that?

Don't complain that people aren't willing to look at what you post, when you can't/won't respond when they do directly address your arguments. That's troll behaviour.
 
James R said:
Err... what?!!!

Did you read the six or seven posts I posted in response to the "evidence" you presented, and to your other arguments/points?

You haven't responded to anything I wrote. Why is that?
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His typical response is to read the posts, thank the poster, say "good points, I've got to learning to do" and in his next posts to continue as if none of the prior conversation ever took place.
 
kx000 said:
Nothingness is the absence of both light and dark, neither good nor evil.
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I'm inclined to agree.

'Nothing' in the metaphysical sense isn't merely the absence of physical objects and energies, an empty stage around which all of the transcendent theoretical framework within which physics exists is still left intact: 'quantum field theory', the rest of the so-called 'laws of physics', logic and mathematics and whatever. (All of physics' beloved equations.)

That's just ancient Platonism warmed-over, where even if the illusory world of images on the wall of the cave in the Republic is eliminated, the ideal transcendent world of Plato's Forms that originally cast the image still exists.

'Nothing' in the metaphysical sense would imply the absence of laws of physics, logic and mathematics as well. If you lose everything, you lose the equations on the chalkboard too. So, contra Krause, theoretical physics is of no help at all in answering the 'Something from Nothing' question. The laws of physics, Plato's Forms, are among the things that need explaining.

Just as obviously, positing a "God" to account for the existence of everything fails in just the same way. God is presumably something. Maybe an idealized transcendent something, but something nevertheless. Certainly something that's used as an explanatory principle. Personifying Plato's transcendent Forms doesn't solve the logical difficulty that the 'Something from Nothing' problem presents. We would still need an account of why God exists.

So... does doing away with the possibility of any and all explanatory principles provide us with an explanatory principle accounting for the existence of everything? Obviously not. I don't think that the 'Something From Nothing' or 'Why Does Reality Exist?' problem has an answer. Certainly not a conventional one.

It's the ultimate and as yet unanswerable question.
 
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Yazata said:
I'm inclined to agree.

'Nothing' in the metaphysical sense isn't merely the absence of physical objects and energies, an empty stage around which all of the transcendent theoretical framework within which physics exists is still left intact: 'quantum field theory', the rest of the so-called 'laws of physics', logic and mathematics and whatever. (All of physics' beloved equations.)

That's just ancient Platonism warmed-over, where even if the illusory world of images on the wall of the cave in the Republic is eliminated, the ideal transcendent world of Plato's Forms that originally cast the image still exists.

'Nothing' in the metaphysical sense would imply the absence of laws of physics, logic and mathematics as well. If you lose everything, you lose the equations on the chalkboard too. So, contra Krause, theoretical physics is of no help at all in answering the 'Something from Nothing' question. The laws of physics, Plato's Forms, are among the things that need explaining.

Just as obviously, positing a "God" to account for the existence of everything fails in just the same way. God is presumably something. Maybe an idealized transcendent something, but something nevertheless. Certainly something that's used as an explanatory principle. Personifying Plato's transcendent Forms doesn't solve the logical difficulty that the 'Something from Nothing' problem presents. We would still need an account of why God exists.

So... does doing away with the possibility of any and all explanatory principles provide us with an explanatory principle accounting for the existence of everything? Obviously not. I don't think that the 'Something From Nothing' or 'Why Does Reality Exist?' problem has an answer. Certainly not a conventional one.

It's the ultimate and as yet unanswerable question.
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The something from nothing of Krauss wasn't meant in your metaphysical sense of course.

I don't think "why" questions, in this case, have meaning either as it presupposes that there is a "why".
 
Seattle said:
The something from nothing of Krauss wasn't meant in your metaphysical sense of course.
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Krauss certainly seemed to me (and many critics of his book) to believe that he was addressing the age-old traditional metaphysical question. Dawkins obviously thought that he did. It's right on the cover of Krauss' 'A Universe from Nothing' book, where the subtitle is "Why There is Something Rather than Nothing".

He addresses the traditional metaphysical issue (dismissively and rather tendentiously) in his preface.

"Nothing," they insist, is not any of the things I discuss. Nothing is "nonbeing," in some vague and ill-defined sense. This reminds me of my own efforts to define "intelligent design"... Similarly, some philosophers and many theologians define and redefine "nothing" as not being any of the versions of nothing that scientists currently describe.

But therein, in my opinion, lies the intellectual bankruptcy of much of theology and some modern philosophy. For surely "nothing" is every bit as physical as "something,"... (p. xiv)

I guess that I would define "nothing" as something like...

For all x, ~E(x). Where E is 'exists' and 'x' is allowed to range over all possible past, present or future objects of language or awareness, for any possible cognizer human, nonhuman or superhuman. That rules out everything that might be advanced as an explanatory principle.

But Krauss redefines "nothing" to mean quantum vacuum and quantum fields, along with the whole theoretical apparatus of theoretical physics in which these concepts reside. Then (insert smoke, mirrors and vigorous hand-waving here) pretends that he's still somehow addressing the age old question which he believes that science is now in position to answer (by showing how stupid and bankrupt the "philosophers and theologians" have been.

Maybe he's addressing a valuable question, spinning the observed universe out of minimal physical assumptions or something, but he's still basing his speculations on his physical assumptions. That's just as illegitimate in its own way as basing the existence of everything on the assumption of God. He no more accounts for the origin of his explanatory principles (the principles of quantum field theory) than the theologians do for the existence of theirs (God). Despite his habitually lumping "the philosophers" in with "the theologians", the agnostic view of these matters seems to be the only intellectually defensible one.

He certainly isn't casting light on the traditional ontological (and explanatory) problem of explaining why anything exists at all.

I don't think "why" questions, in this case, have meaning either as it presupposes that there is a "why".
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My philosophical intuition is that we should be looking at things a different way or asking the question differently. But it will take a better thinker than me to accomplish that.
 
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Yazata said:
Krauss certainly seemed to me (and many critics of his book) to believe that he was addressing the age-old traditional metaphysical question. Dawkins obviously thought that he did. It's right on the cover of Krauss' 'A Universe from Nothing' book, where the subtitle is "Why There is Something Rather than Nothing".

He addresses the traditional metaphysical issue (dismissively and rather tendentiously) in his preface.

"Nothing," they insist, is not any of the things I discuss. Nothing is "nonbeing," in some vague and ill-defined sense. This reminds me of my own efforts to define "intelligent design"... Similarly, some philosophers and many theologians define and redefine "nothing" as not being any of the versions of nothing that scientists currently describe.

But therein, in my opinion, lies the intellectual bankruptcy of much of theology and some modern philosophy. For surely "nothing" is every bit as physical as "something,"... (p. xiv)

I guess that I would define "nothing" as something like...

For all x, ~E(x). Where E is 'exists' and 'x' is allowed to range over all possible past, present or future objects of language or awareness, for any possible cognizer human, nonhuman or superhuman. That rules out everything that might be advanced as an explanatory principle.

But Krauss redefines "nothing" to mean quantum vacuum and quantum fields, along with the whole theoretical apparatus of theoretical physics in which these concepts reside. Then (insert smoke, mirrors and vigorous hand-waving here) pretends that he's still somehow addressing the age old question which he believes that science is now in position to answer (by showing how stupid and bankrupt the "philosophers and theologians" have been.

Maybe he's addressing a valuable question, spinning the observed universe out of minimal physical assumptions or something, but he's still basing his speculations on his physical assumptions. That's just as illegitimate in its own way as basing the existence of everything on the assumption of God. He no more accounts for the origin of his explanatory principles (the principles of quantum field theory) than the theologians do for the existence of theirs (God). Despite his habitually lumping "the philosophers" in with "the theologians", the agnostic view of these matters seems to be the only intellectually defensible one.

He certainly isn't casting light on the traditional ontological (and explanatory) problem of explaining why anything exists at all.



My philosophical intuition is that we should be looking at things a different way or asking the question differently. But it will take a better thinker than me to accomplish that.
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Agree about Krauss. I don't think he even sees the issue that, even if it is only physical that laws exist, i.e. with no matter or radiation for them to operate on, you do not have "nothing". But that is what comes of being so dismissive about philosophy, I suspect.

(As a matter of fact, in that scenario, what you have, it seems to me, is the "God" of Spinoza and Einstein!)

I regard it as telling that Krauss feels the need to drag in ID (in order to be contemptuous of it), in this passage. Seems to me it speaks of this shallow New Atheism agenda that he and Dawkins do so much to promote.
 
A criticism of the BB, by some, has always been how do you get something from nothing. My impression was that he was addressing that and wrote a book explaining that there are quantum fluctuations even where we would commonly consider there to be "nothing" (a vacuum) and it is the quantum fluctuations that could lead to the pre-conditions of the BB.
 
Seattle said:
A criticism of the BB, by some, has always been how do you get something from nothing. My impression was that he was addressing that and wrote a book explaining that there are quantum fluctuations even where we would commonly consider there to be "nothing" (a vacuum) and it is the quantum fluctuations that could lead to the pre-conditions of the BB.
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Yes but that is precisely what seems to my mind something of a non-explanation.

How can you have quantum fluctuations unless you have at least:

a) space in which these fluctuations can occur (if the universe started from a singularity then there is no such space at t=0) and

b) existing laws of physics, to determine the behaviour and properties of these fluctuations?

So he seems to be saying that before the universe began there were laws of physics. Einstein's God, in fact.
 
Xelasnave.1947 said:
The rock was probably a fountain in the garden of a lost civilization who were wiped out by the Younger Dryas flooding event often thought to be the basis for the flood myths written about in Sumeria and later incorporated by the Hebrews in their Bible.
It is thought this ancient civilization constructed many such fountains to beautify and irrigate their gardens. It is thought that they did not construct such fountains for agriculture where it clear systems were designed to minimise water evaporation unlike these mystical rock fountains. Many of their ancient fountains have been incorporated into local myths as locals were mystified as to how the water came up thru the rock but it is thought the original metallic piping was taken in the first few years after the impact event as mining and metal working was confined to coastal cities which were all of course wiped out. This rock is irrefutable evidence of the lost civilization.
Alex
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Alex, what are you basing this on?
Please prove your claims.
 
James R said:
Look at these:
Split_Rock_-_geograph.org.uk_-_25518.jpg

DxnI8CNWkAALvNv.jpg

45dfd34f586947d2a1c70ed99c569adf-large.jpg

Do you think maybe Moses led the Israelites to the UK, and New Zealand and Australia as well as Saudi Arabia?
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Thanks for the nice pics...

No. Not so far. But if you could please provide more evidence for your claim, I would be open to investigating it further. If you ever find another one in Saudi Arabia, please present that here, along with the Google Earth coordinates! There is probably a second one in that area someplace. That could possibly confirm the Bible events even more.
 
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Xelasnave.1947 said:
This artist impression is incorrect as there was considerable top soil gardens with many plants and life size gold statue s which of course have been removed..it is believed that although very technically advanced the lost civilization could only use gold and used to call free copper dirty gold and only used it for children's toys unfortunately none of these have survived proving these ancient folk did not think enough of them to bury them with their dead.
Alex
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Please provide more evidence for these claims.
 
James R said:
SetiAlpha6:

Somebody else corrected you on this error. I hope you now recognise your mistake. The early universe was in relatively low entropy state, and entropy has been increasing ever since then, just as the laws of thermodynamics say it should. There's nothing that needs "overcoming".

It sounds like you don't have a very good understanding of entropy. You know, for instance, that it only has to increase in a closed system? A person, for instance, is not a closed system. We eat food, like you say. We get energy from our environment, and we emit waste heat and other waste out to that environment. Fighting entropy in this case has nothing to do with intelligence.
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Ok, trying to understand, perhaps you can help me.

What is a better word?

I am simply trying to say that left unchecked, disorder increases over time. Energy disperses, and systems dissolve into chaos.

And that a pre-biology system would have to be able to keep that natural tendency in check, for perhaps millions of years, before a biological system could develop to keep this natural tendency in check by specified order, or design, in the same way that a single cell organism can.

What is a better word to describe this?
Thank You.
 
James R said:
Sure you do. You dismiss the big bang theory and evolution, for starters, for faith-based
reasons.
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I do not reject the Big Bang theory or Evolution.
I just think that Evolution is working in reverse of current thought.
That the genetic code is being corrupted over time at a higher rate than it is being improved.

James R said:
You have the onus of proof on the wrong person. The default is that nothing exists unless you have some evidence for its existence. That means that if you say God exists, or that the Rock of Moses exists, or whatever, it's up to you to persuade the rest of us that you're right.
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Will you allow me to post more evidence, in the form of presenting Bible account texts with corroborating on the ground photography, more of the puzzle pieces?

So it can be reviewed here at a more complex level?
 
SetiAlpha6 said:
I do not reject the Big Bang theory or Evolution.
I just think that Evolution is working in reverse of current thought.
That the genetic code is being corrupted over time at a higher rate than it is being improved.
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That's a common fallacy. "Improvement" is a human term, based on human values. If lower intelligence causes a higher birthrate, then evolution will select for lower intelligence. That is evolutionary progress, because all evolution cares about is propagation on an organism's genome. Even if you think smarter=improved.
I am simply trying to say that left unchecked, disorder increases over time. Energy disperses, and systems dissolve into chaos.
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Sure, in the long term. In the short term, disorder can markedly _decrease._ Examples are stellar formation, creation of planetary systems and life.
 
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