creation ex nihilo

[dafydd]

I can't tell you where the universe really came from because that is a mystery.

But I can draw all these old primitive myths together. Each myth has a deity which is described along the lines of an almighty creator, the creator of the creators, the causeless cause personified. They are mythic characters, but they refer to something real. They are derived from early philosophical ponderings on the nature of existence and how this world came to be.

Simply, God is a cypher for the origin and meaning of our world, whatever that is.

Early philosophers on thinking about it realised that a creator which didn't create everything was only a bit part and must have been created by some other earlier bigger creator. Which would be a better candidate for being called God. So over time God came to be a deity who was so early, so all pervading in its creative act that it did literally create everything. Nothing came before and there was no larger world in which God was a bit player. Perhaps they found the idea of regression (turtles all the way down) and creation ex nihilo was the antidote for that.

Thus was born the omnipotent God. But all it is and ever was referring to was the ultimate origin of our world whatever that is, anthropomorphized into a person.

Creation ex nihilo = the origin of existence itself.

The human condition is impelled to think that all things had a cause, because thats how things work in our world. Therefore existence itself must have a cause. Whatever that cause is is God, Brahman etc etc...

Why would that be true? Why does there have to be a cause? Those mythic characters are just that, mythical, They have nothing to do with reality.

 

[keyfeatures]

There's no evidence that there ever was nothing and not something. Even Big Bang theory does not model something from nothing, it theorises how a past something some billions of years ago may have lead to the current something. Quantum fluctuations are not something from nothing - there's no such thing as a currently observable nothing due to there being something.

 

[shadron]

I'm sympathetic with Krauss's goal there but disappointed with his argument. He actually concludes with 'A Universe from Zero' not nothing. (Analogous to what every first-year computer science student learns about zero versus null.)

This is not a very good understanding of what he's saying. He says that when the positive energy (and mass) and the negative gravitic potential created during inflation are summed together the result is zero energy; this is not to say that nothing exists. Obviously it does, and there can be a great amount of interaction within the unbalanced equilibrium that is the universe, just as there can be whole planets evolving in solar systems while the overall entropy is increasing.

 

[the PC apeman]

This is not a very good understanding of what he's saying.

Perhaps. But this...

He says that when the positive energy (and mass) and the negative gravitic potential created during inflation are summed together the result is zero energy; this is not to say that nothing exists. Obviously it does, and there can be a great amount of interaction within the unbalanced equilibrium that is the universe, just as there can be whole planets evolving in solar systems while the overall entropy is increasing.

...is my understanding of what he is saying. He says it about 0:19:40 into this:

Empty space without particles, radiation, absolutely everything is not "nothing". He's telling us that it is something with a zero energy value and calling it "nothing". "Nothing" cannot have an energy value, not even a zero value. The energy value of "nothing" would have to be undefined. It would be an incoherent question to ask what is the energy value of nothing?

 

[laca]

I think we should quit while the going is good, don't you?

Why did you start it? Have you no desire to defend your "arguments"?

I guess not. See, punshhh, some might say that blurting out claims without ever intending to even try to back them up is dishonest. Your dishonest take on "argumentation" is shown once again. Carry on...

 

[shadron]

Empty space without particles, radiation, absolutely everything is not "nothing". He's telling us that it is something with a zero energy value and calling it "nothing". "Nothing" cannot have an energy value, not even a zero value. The energy value of "nothing" would have to be undefined. It would be an incoherent question to ask what is the energy value of nothing?

He is saying that all space (not just empty space, but that plus...) has energy (and thus matter, and mass) due to quantum fluctuations. Particle pairs keep popping into existance and then annihilating each other, but while they exist they have mass and that mass in aggregate can be detected. He gets a fair play off the word "nothing", but he is really saying that there is no such thing in reality.

 

[dafydd]

I guess not. See, punshhh, some might say that blurting out claims without ever intending to even try to back them up is dishonest. Your dishonest take on "argumentation" is shown once again. Carry on...

It is impossible to back up mystical claims, given that the mystics make it up as they go along

 

[laca]

It is impossible to back up mystical claims, given that the mystics make it up as they go along

Yeah, that's why I said try to back them up...

 

[the PC apeman]

He gets a fair play off the word "nothing",

I take this as a polite way of saying he equivocates.

but he is really saying that there is no such thing in reality.

I agree. Hence my complaint. That the universe came from nothing (when that term is used in an unequivocal manner) is not demonstrated by his argument. Further, his argument suggests that the universe cannot come from nothing (when that term is used in an unequivocal manner) because, as you say, 'there is no such thing in reality' for it to have come from.