What is it with the creationists who as "do you believe nothing came from 
something?"

Why do they think there's evidence the universe ever didn't exist?

Often creationists will say "matter can neither be created nor destroyed, 
hence God must have created it."

If you don't accept that, but if you instead think there are natural 
situations under which matter can be created, then there's no need for God 
to answer the question "can everything come from nothing".

If you *do* accept that, then there's no reason to believe there was ever 
"nothing" to start with.

Think about the Big Bang, and how we know about it. Stars are spreading 
apart, and the farther away they are, the faster they're moving away. 
Logically following back in time, that means all the stars were squished 
together some billions of years in the past.

Now, if you believe the universe is closed (i.e., has enough matter that 
there's a bounded amount of space), then this means that all matter was 
squished into the minimum amount of space possible. If there were areas 
where it couldn't be squished further, gravity would quickly iron them out. 
  (Indeed, this is the cause for the interest in the details of the 
variations of the background radiation - why is it irregular, if everything 
started out uniformly?) It does *not* mean there was nothing. Instead, it 
means there was *everything*.  The entire universe was uniformly packed as 
absolutely chock full of matter as possible.

If you believe the universe is open (i.e., that space is flat and infinite), 
then following back in time just means that everything comes together into 
an infinitely large infinitely dense universe of matter and energy. Actually 
quite 100% opposite of "nothing". This may seem nonsensical unless you're 
used to dealing with infinitites, but if you imagine stars coming closer 
together and there's always more stars to replace the ones coming in from 
far away, it makes perfect sense, just like there's the same number of even 
integers as there are integers.

In neither case does the Big Bang imply "nothing," any more than a 
demolition of a building implies the rubble came out of "nothing." There's 
no "common sense" reason to believe there was ever a time when there was 
"nothing," and the very idea that there was "time" without "something" is 
nonsensical. After all, if you're going to argue religion based on the Big 
Bang, you ought to be accepting the rest of General Relativity too. As far 
as I know, there's no scientific reason to believe there was ever a time 
when there was "nothing" either.


-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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You start with questions. Are you looking for answers or do you only want
to preach. If the latter, have at it to your heart's content. If the 
former, though
this may be "off-topic", I and probably others may be able to suggest 
answers--
or maybe more questions. :)

David


Darren New wrote:
> What is it with the creationists who as "do you believe nothing came 
> from something?"
> 
> Why do they think there's evidence the universe ever didn't exist?
> 
> Often creationists will say "matter can neither be created nor 
> destroyed, hence God must have created it."
> 
> If you don't accept that, but if you instead think there are natural 
> situations under which matter can be created, then there's no need for 
> God to answer the question "can everything come from nothing".
> 
> If you *do* accept that, then there's no reason to believe there was 
> ever "nothing" to start with.
> 
> Think about the Big Bang, and how we know about it. Stars are spreading 
> apart, and the farther away they are, the faster they're moving away. 
> Logically following back in time, that means all the stars were squished 
> together some billions of years in the past.
> 
> Now, if you believe the universe is closed (i.e., has enough matter that 
> there's a bounded amount of space), then this means that all matter was 
> squished into the minimum amount of space possible. If there were areas 
> where it couldn't be squished further, gravity would quickly iron them 
> out.  (Indeed, this is the cause for the interest in the details of the 
> variations of the background radiation - why is it irregular, if 
> everything started out uniformly?) It does *not* mean there was nothing. 
> Instead, it means there was *everything*.  The entire universe was 
> uniformly packed as absolutely chock full of matter as possible.
> 
> If you believe the universe is open (i.e., that space is flat and 
> infinite), then following back in time just means that everything comes 
> together into an infinitely large infinitely dense universe of matter 
> and energy. Actually quite 100% opposite of "nothing". This may seem 
> nonsensical unless you're used to dealing with infinitites, but if you 
> imagine stars coming closer together and there's always more stars to 
> replace the ones coming in from far away, it makes perfect sense, just 
> like there's the same number of even integers as there are integers.
> 
> In neither case does the Big Bang imply "nothing," any more than a 
> demolition of a building implies the rubble came out of "nothing." 
> There's no "common sense" reason to believe there was ever a time when 
> there was "nothing," and the very idea that there was "time" without 
> "something" is nonsensical. After all, if you're going to argue religion 
> based on the Big Bang, you ought to be accepting the rest of General 
> Relativity too. As far as I know, there's no scientific reason to 
> believe there was ever a time when there was "nothing" either.
> 
>

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"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
news:4a6b8e2e$1@news.povray.org...

> What is it with the creationists who as "do you believe nothing came from
> something?"
>
> Why do they think there's evidence the universe ever didn't exist?
>
> Often creationists will say "matter can neither be created nor destroyed,
> hence God must have created it."

I think even creationists (most anyway) accept that matter and energy are
transmutable, or sides of the same coin, so I'm not sure if that's the
precise form of the statement, or if you are thinking more along the lines
of the first cause argument (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_cause_argument , also maybe
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theodore_schick/bigbang.html ).

[...]

> nonsensical. After all, if you're going to argue religion based on the Big
> Bang, you ought to be accepting the rest of General Relativity too. As far
> as I know, there's no scientific reason to believe there was ever a time
> when there was "nothing" either.

It used to be that time was considered strictly a product of Big Bang, so it
would be meaningless to even ask about such a time or cause. However, it
became more complex sometime recently.

Cause is also a nebulous concept: When you shoot two billiard balls towards
each other, what "causes" the collision? You? Inertia? Motion? At a
fundamental level, collapse of wavefunction is what comes closest to talking
about discrete causes, but even then, such can be seen as incomplete
understanding/modeling on our part. If we consider the combined wavefunction
of you and the billiard balls, there remains no deeper cause of any events
except the existence of the wavefunction itself - attributing discrete
causes to discrete events becomes an artifact of the model/interpretation,
and the non-unitariness of the operation one that of the observer/observed
dichotomy.

In any case, defining as god whatever remains when our understanding stops
back in time, although useless, is not in itself false or inconsistent. It's
when someone claims that that "god" is the same as Allah, God... etc which
assumes personality, wishes, demand, pettiness, vengefulness, caring... etc
that absurdness arises.

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somebody wrote:
> I think even creationists (most anyway) accept that matter and energy are
> transmutable, or sides of the same coin, so I'm not sure if that's the
> precise form of the statement,

What I usually hear is "how can something come from nothing?"

However, regardless of the precision of phrasing, it's still not true. And 
it's actually pretty easy to measure: small volumes of vacuum have less 
stuff in them than large volumes of vacuum.

> or if you are thinking more along the lines
> of the first cause argument (
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_cause_argument , also maybe
> http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theodore_schick/bigbang.html ).

No, more like
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_from_nothing

First cause is something different, that comes after you admit something 
can't come from nothing.  I'm also not talking about the question of "*Why* 
is there something instead of nothing?"

> It used to be that time was considered strictly a product of Big Bang, so it
> would be meaningless to even ask about such a time or cause.

That's one way of arguing about it.  Another way (which I put up here 
recently that nobody even commented on) was that perhaps time slowed due to 
the changes in physics (as in, infinite mass making infinite gravity making 
infinite redshift making ...) and the universe has always been around, even 
tho it only started four billion of *our* years ago.

> However, it became more complex sometime recently.

Sounds interesting! Have you a cite?

> In any case, defining as god whatever remains when our understanding stops
> back in time, although useless, is not in itself false or inconsistent.

I would say it's "false" because that's not what God means. I could define 
"apple" as what remains when our understanding stops back in time, but that 
wouldn't make me right. :-) Nobody calls it God if it stopped existing when 
the universe came into being, except maybe the Mayans.

> It's
> when someone claims that that "god" is the same as Allah, God... etc which
> assumes personality, wishes, demand, pettiness, vengefulness, caring... etc
> that absurdness arises.

Right. That comes after, tho.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
news:4a6c86f1$1@news.povray.org...
> somebody wrote:

> > However, it became more complex sometime recently.

> Sounds interesting! Have you a cite?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_quantum_gravity

And esp. Section 7 in:

http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2005-11/

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somebody wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_quantum_gravity
> http://relativity.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrr-2005-11/

Now my brain hurts. Thanks loads. ;-)

Seriously, cool stuff. I wish I understood it all.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> What is it with the creationists who as "do you believe nothing came from
> something?"
> ...
> Now, if you believe the universe is closed (i.e., has enough matter that
> there's a bounded amount of space), then this means that all matter was
> squished into the minimum amount of space possible.


Whoa.  I've listened to a whole year of Astronomy Cast, and I thought that the
Big Bang *was* about the creation of matter. It is precisely not, as once
described by Cal Thomas, a scenario you seem to agree with, "the explosion of
an eternally existent cosmic egg."

Big Bang = Gen 1:1 = in the beginning, the cosmos [sic] was created.

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gregjohn wrote:
> Whoa.  I've listened to a whole year of Astronomy Cast, and I thought that the
> Big Bang *was* about the creation of matter. 

The big bang is postulated because everything is moving apart. If you 
reverse time, everything is moving back together again. Much like people 
knew what temperature was "absolute zero" long before they could get 
anywhere close to making it in the lab.

 > It is precisely not, as once
> described by Cal Thomas, a scenario you seem to agree with, "the explosion of
> an eternally existent cosmic egg."

You can have an explosion of an eternally existent cosmic egg without 
creating matter. Indeed, if it's eternally existent, that's precisely the 
point I'm making.

> Big Bang = Gen 1:1 

Well, no. That's exactly my point. In the beginning was *everything*.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> gregjohn wrote:
> > Whoa.  I've listened to a whole year of Astronomy Cast, and I thought that the
> > Big Bang *was* about the creation of matter. 

> The big bang is postulated because everything is moving apart. If you 
> reverse time, everything is moving back together again. Much like people 
> knew what temperature was "absolute zero" long before they could get 
> anywhere close to making it in the lab.

  Of course it's not just that simple, as many of the features of the
observed universe don't conform to a simplistic Big Bang. This has prompted
refinements of the theory, including the cosmic inflation, which theorizes
that there was a time shortly after the Big Bang when the universe inflated
at an exponential rate. (And no, this doesn't go against general relativity.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   Of course it's not just that simple, as many of the features of the
> observed universe don't conform to a simplistic Big Bang.

Certainly. And it turns out that there's a fair amount of heat-like energy 
left in a substance at absolute zero, simply due to quantum exclusion and 
such. My point was that "everything was all together" was the original 
motivation of the "big bang", and not "something from nothing."

If we knew what happened in the first 10^-43 seconds, maybe we'd know where 
everything came from, but there's no reason I know of, outside genesis, to 
think there was nothing before there was something.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> If we knew what happened in the first 10^-43 seconds, maybe we'd know where 
> everything came from, but there's no reason I know of, outside genesis, to 
> think there was nothing before there was something.

  It just brings the (maybe a bit philosophical) question: How is it possible
that everything has always existed?

  (Of course this question becomes very complicated even in the physics
sense, as the concept of time "before" the Big Bang becomes a bit complex.
It's impossible for us to tell what, if anything, was before the Big Bang,
including time itself. It's one of those impassable horizons in the universe.
If time didn't "exist" before the Big Bang, then exactly what is it that
happened?)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   It just brings the (maybe a bit philosophical) question: How is it possible
> that everything has always existed?

Why not? Is it possible everything will always exist from here on?

Scientifically, I can see a problem (i.e., there might be scientific 
evidence suggesting there actually was a beginning to "everything"), but 
philosophically?

> It's one of those impassable horizons in the universe.

Well, so far...

> If time didn't "exist" before the Big Bang, then exactly what is it that
> happened?)

That's why I'm wondering if time didn't run asymptotically slower, or 
faster, or something. :-)  It's certainly one way of resolving the 
conundrum, even if it's not scientifically correct.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>   It just brings the (maybe a bit philosophical) question: How is it possible
> that everything has always existed?
>
>   (Of course this question becomes very complicated even in the physics
> sense, as the concept of time "before" the Big Bang becomes a bit complex.
> It's impossible for us to tell what, if anything, was before the Big Bang,
> including time itself. It's one of those impassable horizons in the universe.
> If time didn't "exist" before the Big Bang, then exactly what is it that
> happened?)

Hm, I like the idea someone brought up some posts ago:

Looking at the state of matter and the universe close to the Big Bang, isn't it
quite remniscient of a black hole?

Now near the singularity of a black hole, time slows down and approaches
standstill, from an outside observer's point of view.

So if we go back in time to the Big Bang, aren't we in a sense going back
*infinitely* long in time, making the question of what was *before* it a moot
one?

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clipka wrote:
> Hm, I like the idea someone brought up some posts ago:

/me raises hand.

Altho, thinking on it more, I'm pretty sure you're going the wrong way. If 
time slows down near the black hole, and *you* are near the black hole, 
everything else will seem to speed up. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Altho, thinking on it more, I'm pretty sure you're going the wrong way. If
> time slows down near the black hole, and *you* are near the black hole,
> everything else will seem to speed up. :-)

Yeah, but for "everything else" it will be like me slowing down, and nobody in
all the universe (or outside of it, for that matter) would be able to tell
which is the proper frame of reference.

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>
>   (Of course this question becomes very complicated even in the physics
> sense, as the concept of time "before" the Big Bang becomes a bit complex.
> It's impossible for us to tell what, if anything, was before the Big Bang,
> including time itself. It's one of those impassable horizons in the universe.
> If time didn't "exist" before the Big Bang, then exactly what is it that
> happened?)
>

But don't we know that matter as we know it didn't exist. Isn't it the case that
we even know that matter as we know it wasn't even there at 10^-42 seconds?


Off-topic rant: notice how none of you said pow(10,-43)?

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gregjohn <pte### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> But don't we know that matter as we know it didn't exist. Isn't it the case that
> we even know that matter as we know it wasn't even there at 10^-42 seconds?

  That's irrelevant. Matter is only a form of energy and can change form
(from and to other forms of energy).

  The relevant question is whether all the *energy* existing in the current
universe has always existed, or whether it appeared from nothing by an
unknown phenomenon.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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clipka wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Altho, thinking on it more, I'm pretty sure you're going the wrong way. If
>> time slows down near the black hole, and *you* are near the black hole,
>> everything else will seem to speed up. :-)
> 
> Yeah, but for "everything else" 

Yep. But if you're talking about the Big Bang, there *is* no "everything 
else". ;-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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gregjohn wrote:
> But don't we know that matter as we know it didn't exist. 

If by "matter" you mean atoms and stuff, yea, AFAIK, we're pretty sure. If 
you mean "matter" how physicists talk about it, as in the thing that's 
equivalent to energy and has inertial mass, I'm not so sure. I don't know 
that anyone thinks there wasn't enough "energy" type stuff around to form 
all the matter we see now.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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"gregjohn" <pte### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> But don't we know that matter as we know it didn't exist. Isn't it the case that
> we even know that matter as we know it wasn't even there at 10^-42 seconds?
>
>
> Off-topic rant: notice how none of you said pow(10,-43)?

That would be off-topic you know :P

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Darren New wrote:
> gregjohn wrote:
>> Whoa.  I've listened to a whole year of Astronomy Cast, and I thought 
>> that the
>> Big Bang *was* about the creation of matter. 
> 
> The big bang is postulated because everything is moving apart. If you 
> reverse time, everything is moving back together again. Much like people 
> knew what temperature was "absolute zero" long before they could get 
> anywhere close to making it in the lab.
> 
>  > It is precisely not, as once
>> described by Cal Thomas, a scenario you seem to agree with, "the 
>> explosion of
>> an eternally existent cosmic egg."
> 
> You can have an explosion of an eternally existent cosmic egg without 
> creating matter. Indeed, if it's eternally existent, that's precisely 
> the point I'm making.
> 
>> Big Bang = Gen 1:1 
> 
> Well, no. That's exactly my point. In the beginning was *everything*.
> 
Everything within the bounds of what we can test, based on a "time 
based" theory of events. Problems is, we have no way to be sure if the 
properties of this universe are "derivative" of earlier conditions, or 
what exactly. And... trying to shoehorn any part of Genesis onto the 
mess is absurd. Even more so since I am "pretty sure" his version of 1:1 
bears no resemblance to the original wording, and even if it did, the 
rest of it is all ***wrong*** from the standpoint of every damn thing 
that happened after.

Its like someone saying:

"A well, first I starting by breaking some eggs." - Ok, sure.

then following with:

"Then I pored the batter into a pan, followed by mixing in the flower, 
and then I put it in the oven. Oh, and after that, I added flavorings 
and baking powder, took it out to cool, and finally, turned the oven on."

The first line is *maybe* an OK starting point, but the rest just shows 
that the moron writing it neither knows anything about baking 
"anything", but didn't even bother to go about thinking to hard as to if 
any of the entire process even made any damn sense in the first place. 
But, this is what Bible believers think "correctly" describes the 
process, even if they are still arguing over if days are days, and if 
not, how many years, centuries, millennium or billions of years it 
happened in?

The closest Genesis 1:1 comes to getting the Big Bang is that they had 
to start with something, and some stoned sheep herder looked around at 
night, saw a huge, vast, something, with a bunch of dots on it, and 
went, "Hell, lets say that was the first bit. I mean, its just a big 
sheet with holes, or something, and god had to start with the real 
'simple' stuff first, just like people do, right?" Sadly.. Its the most 
frakking complicated thing that happened first, and everything else is 
matter trying to make **simple** order out of the resulting near 
infinite chaos.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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Darren New wrote:
> clipka wrote:
>> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>> Altho, thinking on it more, I'm pretty sure you're going the wrong 
>>> way. If
>>> time slows down near the black hole, and *you* are near the black hole,
>>> everything else will seem to speed up. :-)
>>
>> Yeah, but for "everything else" 
> 
> Yep. But if you're talking about the Big Bang, there *is* no "everything 
> else". ;-)
> 
Only from our perspective. It doesn't preclude other universes, one big 
one that fragmented, or even a mass of energy that reached *its* version 
of singularity, but lacking the far more limited constraints of our 
dimensionality, produced pocket universes, instead of black holes. Its 
one of the major problems that string theory has. How do you prove the 
math, when the math allows for trillions of possible configurations, but 
you are only interested in testing it against your *specific* one. 
Basically... You can't expect math that deals with "general" probability 
of any random game of chance, to *correctly* predict only the behavior 
of games using 3 dice. Why not? Because the equations are talking about 
everything from roulette wheels to games with 10,000 dice. All you can 
say with certainty is a) when you found the parameters that match *your 
game* well enough that you can use it to make solid predictions, and b) 
what the limits and constraints on those statistics are, such that some 
configuration cannot exist "outside" those bounds. For example, you 
might find that, in a chance game, for some odd reason, the math doesn't 
allow for 10,000 dice **and** a Roulette Wheel *at the same time*, or 
something to that effect.

This doesn't help you at all though to know the *correct* parameters for 
your game, automatically, nor to know what the result of every game that 
has 1 dice and wheel, or 3 wheels and 5,000 dice, or 1 wheel and 9,999 
dice. In other words, confusing as hell, unless you already know enough 
to figure out what variables *must* be plugged in to get the result, at 
which point, only then, can you start figuring out, "Why?".

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
> And... trying to shoehorn any part of Genesis onto the
> mess is absurd. Even more so since I am "pretty sure" his version of 1:1 
> bears no resemblance to the original wording, and even if it did, the 
> rest of it is all ***wrong*** from the standpoint of every damn thing 
> that happened after.
> 

I appologize in advance, but I just can't resist the overwhelming 
temptation to post a quick link to my favourite Bible reading where 
Ricky Gervais reads from Genesis:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_EXqdJ4L7I&feature=related

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Chris B <nom### [at] nomailcom> wrote:
> I appologize in advance, but I just can't resist the overwhelming 
> temptation to post a quick link to my favourite Bible reading where 
> Ricky Gervais reads from Genesis:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_EXqdJ4L7I&feature=related

  I honestly didn't understand what was supposed to be so funny. I suppose
I just didn't get the jokes.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Chris B <nom### [at] nomailcom> wrote:
>> I appologize in advance, but I just can't resist the overwhelming 
>> temptation to post a quick link to my favourite Bible reading where 
>> Ricky Gervais reads from Genesis:
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_EXqdJ4L7I&feature=related
> 
>   I honestly didn't understand what was supposed to be so funny. I suppose
> I just didn't get the jokes.
> 

Well it's not really joke-based humour. It's largely based on an ironic 
counterpoint to the sort of upbringing that was common here at one time; 
with the gospel being taught as if it were the gospel truth (beyond 
question) and with people being left in relative isolation to work out 
that there might be something about it that doesn't quite ring true. I 
suppose the humour does therefore derive from quite a particular set of 
experiences.

(Not that it ever really works to analyze or to try to explain humour)

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