Something rather than Nothing

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Watching TCR with my son, Colbert made a reference to his interview about this: Why there's something rather than nothing? I know Aggie has made this comment before and we had discussed it to a degree but the reference left me thinking: why is this argument The Argument? Am I particularly dense because I don't see what is the big deal about the argument, I mean, there is something and we don't really know if at some point there was nothing or if something has always been there, but unless I'm missing something, the main metaphysical question basically implies that at some point there was nothing, to which I reply How do you know?

My son was saying that the argument was empty on principle: does it matter? The point is based on a metaphysical conjecture therefore as valid as asking, do aliens like strawberry ice cream?, and going further could basically say that metaphysics in itself are as valid as futurology, in that they are nice as conjecture goes but fundamentally don't add much to our understanding.

Obviously a demiurge can have profound consequences on various belief systems and for those who believe in them so an answer to the question isn't a trivial matter, at least for believers, still my question remains, why is the question significant?

Aggie, I'm looking at you buddie,

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

If there were only nothing, then there'd be nobody around to ask.

So for the question to even exist, there must be something.   The question answers itself.

[The Meromorph]

IMHO, both exist. However, it seems to me that the history of all Cosmology has been an increasingly desperate attempt to prove that nothing is nothing (e.g. string theory).
I view that as strongly akin to the religious yearning.

[Griffin NoName]

I think the question is significant because at some point in their lives people ask it, or at least some form of it, whether religious or not.

I don't see how the question can be answered, unlike Bob. It's like where is the edge of the Universe? Personally I always think there is a limit to our consciousness and also our intelligence which means we can't know these things.

IMHO, both exist.

Certainly this accords with quantum theory, yes I like this answer. :-)

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I think the question is significant because at some point in their lives people ask it, or at least some form of it, whether religious or not.

You can make the question both from the physical and metaphysical perspectives, but that in itself is not what I'm questioning, I'll rephrase, why is the question meaningful from a religious/metaphysical point of view?

I guess my point is that if there is no way to infer a prior state how can you derive meaningful conclusions from the question?

[Swatopluk]

Our worldview is based on the idea of a chain of cause and effect with each effect having a cause and being a cause for the next effect. No problem following it into the future (some models even define the direction of time by this chain). But in the other direction the chain hangs in the air. Either there is a first cause/effect that was not the effect of an earlier one which breaks the rule of 'no effect without a cause' or we have a regressum ad infinitum, i.e. no foundation or firm base from where the chain could start. So our understanding of the chain must have a serious flaw somewhere. God is no solution since the deity would be subject to the same discussion ('where did the deity come from?').
Modern cosmology evades the question by looking for an origin of time itself but the question 'what precedes time?' is a pradox in itself.

[Griffin NoName]

............. why is the question meaningful from a religious/metaphysical point of view?

I guess my point is that if there is no way to infer a prior state how can you derive meaningful conclusions from the question?

Maybe it is not meaningful from a religious point of view as a religion just always takes the view "there was this" or "there was no this" and tells people to believe it, whichever it is. So not a lot meaningful there.

I don't know.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

According to the current model of Quantum theory, there are sometimes events who's cause is in the future, that is something happens, which affects something else in the past/prior.

Or so I've read.

If this is true, then that effect is all you need to bootstrap the universe into existence:  some future effect, caused backwards in time, the initial starting event(s).

Do I understand this?  Not even.

I read somewhere or other, if you think you have a grasp of quantum theory-- then you really don't understand it at all...

[Swatopluk]

Relativity is no easy case either.

Iirc Eddington got asked by a reporter whether it was true that there were only three people in the world who fully understood it.
He fell silent for a while and then answered: 'I wonder who could be the third one'

[Griffin NoName]

[Opsa]

Because of the way we're wired, I think it is very hard to imagine that all stuff didn't come from somewhere. Science tells us to look backward through time for the source. Religion tells us that the source is The Creator.

I try to imagine eternity as being always there, a mobius strip. The surface of the mobius strip is space, and time is the measure of the universe traveling along it. Whatever is here was always here, but it changes. It's just our conscious minds that have a problem trying to figure out the start of it all.

[Aggie]

You can make the question both from the physical and metaphysical perspectives, but that in itself is not what I'm questioning, I'll rephrase, why is the question meaningful from a religious/metaphysical point of view?

I guess my point is that if there is no way to infer a prior state how can you derive meaningful conclusions from the question?

It's most fittingly The Question when taken in the context of apophatic theology. However, it's not the answer that's important, it's the process of wrestling with it that matters.  Lawrence Krauss missed the point of this in his lecture/book A Universe From Nothing, by thinking that a mathematical grasp of how something is created from nothing voids pondering this question as a metaphysical technique. He got the how, but it's not quite the why.

The process of the technique classically has been to attempt to reach a wordless and unexplainable understanding of God by stating what God is not, i.e. God is not a man with a white beard in the sky.  God is not physically present. God is not kind. God is not cruel. God is not a tree. God is not good.  I've heard that in some cases, one is supposed to double-negative each of these statements to contradict them.  God is not not cruel.  The function of it is to beat into the practitioner's head that God can't be understood in terms of human language and logical constructs, and to put one's mind in a state that perceives beyond the easily-described physical world. It's intended to provoke doubt and open the mind to the fact that trying to understand God logically is utterly pointless. As for meaningful conclusions, they can apparently be drawn both metaphysically (although they are meaningless in terms of verbal communication) and mathematically, as per Dr. Krauss. Even the mathematics have great possibilities for some profound metaphysical conclusions.


While the current religious bent is to use The Question as an argument which allows one to assign attributes to God (God exists because He must have been here to make Something from Nothing) to support literalist descriptions of Creation, that's IMHO missing the point.  I doubt that your average fundamentalist has the theological background and intellectual flexibility to derive any meaningful insight about God from The Question. I personally am comfortable with shorthanding things by declaring God is Nothing, but that still leaves one to ponder on what exactly Nothing is.

For the record, The Answer that I've personally come to in response to The Question is "Time is F*cking With Us". I understand it as more of a koan than a factual answer. The meaning to me is that our perspectives are bound to space-time and our approach to The Question is shaped and limited by that. I agree with Mero that both Something and Nothing are and IMHO there's no room for 'rather than' in the argument.  If one approaches the big picture as a whole, outside of the framework of time, the concept of eternity (non-time as opposed to infinite time) becomes a little clearer, and looking at Something in terms of an event that occupies time and space but may be bounded by and pervaded with not-Something becomes a little more comfortable.

I do tend to quibble with the word 'exist' when applied to Nothing. IMHO, Nothing doesn't exist as the word 'exist' is neither correct nor applicable; since God is Nothing, God doesn't exist. God Is works better for my way of thinking.  Once you work through all the permutations of God Isn't _______, you are left with God Is, but nothing to follow those two words with.

[Griffin NoName]

I do think time is a big issue. At the end of the day, ( ) , it is just a construct. Isn't it?

[The Meromorph]

Naturally, humans believe in cause and effect, because for several million years, those who did so believe survived. It was a huge selection pressure in the course of human evolution.
Then, during the time of the almost universal Bicameral Mind, a fifteen thousand year stage in human evolution, when gods were real (just not what the 'conscious' 'modern' almost universal human mind [another stage in human evolution] thinks they were [itself a side effect of the invention of the external semiotic field]) there emerged the concept of an 'ineffable' underlying cause for all things.
This concept so justifies, or is so copacetic with, the natural human belief in 'cause and effect', that it is accepted by virtually all humans without question.
This is what poisons all attempts to 'understand' both sub nuclear physics (Microcosmos) and Cosmology (Macrocosmos). The human mind is not equipped with mechanisms to handle either of these.


This is, perhaps, what Godel, Escher, Bach is all about... 

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

It's most fittingly The Question when taken in the context of apophatic theology. However, it's not the answer that's important, it's the process of wrestling with it that matters.  

Mmm... Apophatic theology sounds like fancy conjecture but conjecture nonetheless.

I'm finding a problem in your reasoning, your starting point seems to be the abstract concept of a deity, and then you use the question to sustain/pickle the concept. From a strict philosophical and scientific perspective it is quite awkward to take the gnostic approach and say "I internally know X is and my job is to start from that point to it's proof".

Worse of all we start from nothing, but not as a certainty of nothing in an abstract "beginning" or "outside of time", etc, but nothing in the sense of information, we have absolutely no knowledge prior to the Big Bang, that is, something or nothing are equally plausible as prior points, so if I go by the process of elimination (it can't be an elephant in the box because it is too small for an elephant) I can't make any meaningful conclusions because I don't know the box, much less if there was actually one.

I'm not trying to criticize gnosticism, only the pretense that you can mix it with logic and get meaningful answers from it, much less that those conclusions are supposed to convince anyone but you.