The Universe Couldn't Come From Nothing

[truthman]

From "Reason To Believe In God" an unpublished paper by Stephen W. Swires

THE UNIVERSE COULDN'T COME FROM NOTHING
For some almost inexplicable reason, there are many people today who say they believe the universe just happened by chance, and that it came from nothing! Now, I'm not sure if they really mean nothing or if they really know what “nothing” is, because I think that it is totally absurd to believe that everything came from nothing, and that the most simple minded would naturally agree with me. However, there are brilliant minds, such as renowned physicist and co-author of the theory of black holes, Stephen Hawking, who are saying it:
"Speaking to a sold out crowd at the Berkeley Physics Oppenheimer Lecture, Hawking said yesterday that he now believes the universe spontaneously popped into existence from nothing. He said more work is needed to prove this but we have time because 'Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end.'." - March 13, 20071
It has been said that Christians believe in creation “ex nihilo” (out of nothing). They have even long been mocked and laughed at for such a belief, but do the Judeo/Christian writings actually teach it?
What Is Nothing?
“Nothing is a concept that describes the absence of anything at all. Colloquially, the concept is often used to indicate the lack of anything relevant or significant, or to describe a particularly unimpressive thing, event, or object. It is contrasted with something and everything. Nothingness is used more specifically as the state of nonexistence of everything.”2
One of the great advances in mathematics was made by introducing the 0 (zero) to represent nothing. All real numbers are just 1's (ones) and therefore all mathematical functions, equations, etc. are just relationships of 1's and 0's. That is why in digital computers, everything is able to function in a binary system of 1's and 0's. The programs we use, the letters and emails we write, books and encyclopaedias, the music and videos we record and listen to, and the pictures we take and view are all recorded as 1's and 0's.
Now, we should all remember from basic arithmetic that 0 times anything is still 0. If you were to multiply 0 by infinity you would still get 0. That is a fact that is indisputable. It is basic arithmetic.
In other words, if nothing was to explode an infinite number of times, you would still have nothing: no universe, no energy, no matter, nothing! For example, since I began writing this, nothing has exploded every fraction of every day in my home, which is more times than I can count, but no universe, no new energy, no new matter, or anything else has suddenly appeared.
So, how could physicists such as Stephen Hawking imagine such a thing? Did he truly mean that he believes the universe could come from absolute nothing? Well, there is no way I can know for sure what he meant or is thinking, but I seriously doubt it. However, a lot of ignorant people take it to mean just that.
Space, Time, Relativity, And Physics.
“In physics, the word nothing is not used in any technical sense. A region of space is called a vacuum if it does not contain any matter. But it can contain physical fields. In fact, it is practically impossible to construct a region of space which contains no matter or fields, since gravity cannot be blocked and all objects at a non-zero temperature radiate electromagnetically. However, supposing such a region existed, it would still not be "nothing", since it has properties and a measurable existence as part of the quantum-mechanical vacuum.”3
Although the special theory of relativity has been around for about an hundred years, it is still hard for many to understand or believe to be true. I will try and explain it as simply as I can. Experiments showed that the speed of light measured the same whether you were moving towards it at the speed of the rotation of the earth (which supposedly should have increased it), or away from it at the same speed (which supposedly should have decreased it). This was a serious violation of the laws of physics as described by Isaac Newton which were quite generally accepted at the time. Albert Einstein developed the special theory of relativity to explain this observed discrepancy.
The theory states that the speed of light is a constant, and that time and distance through space increase or decrease relative to the speed of light, depending on the speed of the point of reference. So, for a particle traveling near the speed of light, time would almost stop and distance would become very large compared to what a person standing on earth would observe. From the equations he used to describe this phenomenon, he also was able to work out the famous conclusion that E=mc2. In other words, the mass (or the weight we measure) of material objects and the matter that makes them up is equal to a quantity of energy. From that theory, men were able to test it and apply it to develop the atomic bomb and atomic energy.
However, it meant that mans' understanding of matter and energy from the beginning of time was not correct. Matter was not made out of tiny solid particles, or “atoms” as the Greeks and Romans had long thought. It was literally made out of energy. The theory of special relativity combined with the later theory of quantum mechanics (the branch of physics that works well in explaining much of reality at the subatomic level) led to the conclusion that the smallest particles that make up the atoms, leptons and quarks, are not material particles with physical dimensions, but simply “quanta” or quantities of energy. These particles could be converted from one type to another by adding or removing energy. This understanding has proven to be quite accurate through experiments with particle accelerators and the collisions of particles researchers are able to observe.
A very interesting fact soon came to light. For every particle formed of the kind we observe making up our world in nature, an “antiparticle”, or a particle that is a mirror image of our kind of particle, must be formed. It is then believed that matching particle/antiparticle pairs are able to arise spontaneously in the vacuum of space from energy stored in the curvature of space and survive for a brief moment. These are called “virtual particles”. However, this is not creation from nothing. First, it requires all-encompassing or universal laws of mathematics and physics to be the same and apply everywhere in space, plus, as stated it draws from the energy stored in the curvature of space. This is a very important point. I have read some who have insisted that this is matter arising out of nothing, but it is not.
The Quantum Cosmology of Stephen Hawking.
After developing the special theory of relativity, Albert Einstein developed the general theory of relativity. Gravity, a force which affects objects as far apart as the sun and Pluto, seemed to be instantaneous but it couldn't be if nothing could travel faster than the speed of light. Plus, if the mass of matter is actually energy, and time and space are changed by adding energy and travelling faster (acceleration), time could be thought of as a 4th dimension of matter. Then gravity, rather than being a force travelling through space, could be the change or lengthening of space-time the closer an object was to a concentration of energy such as the sun or earth (called a “warping” of space-time). A small object at rest in space would move closer towards a more massive object at an increasing rate as the space and time it was occupying were increasingly warped.
In the late 1960's Stephen Hawking and his partner Roger Penrose building on the general theory of relativity worked out the physics equations of what would happen in a region of space if there was enough of a concentration of matter and energy in a small space that space and time would stop, and no energy or light would escape. They called such a phenomenon a singularity or a “black hole”.
Also, back in the 1960's before Hawking and Penrose's theory of black holes, another physicist developed a theory of how the universe began, dubbed the “Big Bang theory”, by working backwards through time and evaluating what the universe would look like if all the matter and energy in the universe were increasingly concentrated in space, and then playing it back in normal time. Although he didn't describe the original state as a singularity, Hawking and Penrose did. But, in doing so they ran into a real snag: the space-time of general relativity and the laws of physics including those described by quantum mechanics, which itself runs into contradictions and incompatibility with general relativity, collapse in a singularity (black hole). They desperately needed a new “unified theory” as well as a theory of how the original singularity could have originated and how it behaved when it first exploded.
Stephen Hawking along with his new partner Neil Turok have been trying to develop a quantum-gravity theory. Similar to the Coleman-Deluccia theory of quantum gravity, they hypothesize an “instanton” (rather than a singularity) derived from a 4 spatial dimensional path integral when a false vacuum which decays into “bubbles” in which matter arises that tunnels to a true vacuum in which inflation occurs giving rise to an open universe.
Now, they have not been able to work out their ideas as a fully functioning theory, and I seriously doubt that they ever could or will, even if they were to try for eternity, because they would need to understand and work with the underlying “super-law” that applies before the beginning of space-time and superior to the laws of physics we can observe. However, if they ever were able to, it must be noted that this is not a universe arising out of nothing. It is totally grounded in the assumption of pre-existing energy and of universal “super-law” or law that is superior to the universe rather than arising from the way the universe happens to be, since the laws of physics we observe in the universe today collapse (as in don't work) in a singularity.
Energy, Super-law, And A “Super-Mind”.
Energy is generally defined as the “work” or change that a system can cause upon another system. Such work or change is only possible if there is a potential difference. If there is no potential difference, the systems have reached a state of entropy and no work is possible.
So, where could all of the energy (ability to do work on a system, or potential difference) have come from if there was no system to contain it as potential energy? It had to have been contained in a “super-system” with greater potential energy than the original state of the universe. We will look at this further in the next chapter, but the easiest, obvious, and ultimately only workable answer is the omnipotent God described in the Bible.
Next question, how could “super-law” exist? Where did it come from? How could it be applied? How could it be sustained? Because such a super-law would be complicated and orderly, a “Super-Mind” would have to plan it. Then, a “Super-Mind” would have to apply it or implement it, and a “Super-Mind” would have to keep it (sustain it). It could be conjectured that there might be other factors or characteristics contributing to its origin, but reducing it to its most basic requirements, it must absolutely require a “Super-Mind”. The infinite person God described in the Bible as the Creator of the universe is just that. He is a Super-Mind.
What would we call the units of thought that describe the super-law? Well, today we call our units of thought “words”. In other words, the universe could have arisen from the Word of God. What does the Bible say about the laws of physics and the origin of the universe?
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. 2 For by it the elders obtained a good report. 3 Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” (Hebrews 11:1)
“God spake once a word, twice have I heard the same, that power belongeth unto God.” (Psalms 62:11)
“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” (Genesis 1:3)
“And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:” (Genesis 1:14)
How To Know For Sure How It All Began.
We cannot know by scientific observation, because we have no way to observe it. Not by measuring the background microwave radiation in space, because there are alternative explanations for the radiation, and what we observe is many years since the beginning. Not by developing mathematical formulae that actually worked in theory (none to date have), because that would only be proof that it might have been done that way, but that would still not be proof that that was the way it was actually done.
The only way to know for sure is by supernatural revelation from a “Super-Mind” who observed and recorded it and then communicated it to us. Supernatural revelation from such a “Super-Mind” is quite possible. We can conceive of how we might be able to communicate by mental telepathy. A “Super-Mind” could most certainly do it.
My faith is in what the Holy Bible that claims to be that supernatural revelation from the Super-Mind, the Infinite Personal God, tells us.

[Gman]

From "Reason To Believe In God" an unpublished paper by Stephen W. Swires

THE UNIVERSE COULDN'T COME FROM NOTHING
For some almost inexplicable reason, there are many people today who say they believe the universe just happened by chance, and that it came from nothing! Now, I'm not sure if they really mean nothing or if they really know what “nothing” is, because I think that it is totally absurd to believe that everything came from nothing, and that the most simple minded would naturally agree with me.

I fully agree that "chance" is non-scientific... And frankly, it's stupid. In fact I believe it requires more faith to believe in... I have big problems with certain naturalistic scientists that apparently are called, intellectual or critical thinkers. In essence they are neither but are actually succumbing to a philosophical view and not a scientific one.. They are not true intellectuals in my book if they beieve "nothing created everything." That's just being dumb....

Sorry for being so direct.

[Kristoffer]

God could create ex nihilo(from nothing) What a bigger mystery is that than saying something can't come from nothing?

[jlay]

God could create ex nihilo(from nothing) What a bigger mystery is that than saying something can't come from nothing?

God could. Yes, we invoke the supernatural. That there is a force at work beyond our natural explanations. Do you not see how arrogant it is for you to invoke the supernatural. You truly must to claim something from nothing. Because there is no natural explanation for such.

[truthman]

God could create ex nihilo(from nothing) What a bigger mystery is that than saying something can't come from nothing?

I know the post is a terribly long read, but if you read the whole thing, it shows that the existence of the universe is a proof for the existence of God. Then, there is nothing difficult at all about the INFINITE God creating from nothing. Actually, Stephen Hawking is trying to come up with the equation to show how He did it. He says that he is trying to prove the universe could have come from nothing, but he is not starting with nothing: he is starting with the infinite God.

[Gman]

God could create ex nihilo(from nothing) What a bigger mystery is that than saying something can't come from nothing?

I know the post is a terribly long read, but if you read the whole thing, it shows that the existence of the universe is a proof for the existence of God. Then, there is nothing difficult at all about the INFINITE God creating from nothing. Actually, Stephen Hawking is trying to come up with the equation to show how He did it. He says that he is trying to prove the universe could have come from nothing, but he is not starting with nothing: he is starting with the infinite God.

That's interesting... Because in Hawking's "Theory of Everything" he is proposing the exact opposite..

"So how did life begin? Answer. The most plausible answer is we are an "accident... So is there a grand designer who lined up all this good fortune? In my opinion, not necessarily. Look at it this way.. What if there other universes, ones not as lucky as ours, each of these universes could have come from it's own big bang with different laws of physics and different conditions.. For any number of reason's, universes could have come and gone without producing anything at all. So perhaps we should not be too surprised to find ourselves in a perfect universe, orbiting a perfect sun, on a perfect planet because such perfect places are the only ones where life like us can exist. We are one of many products of the universe, the result of an ancient elegant mechanism, but even this remarkable discovery is only just the beginning of what physics can tell us." -Stephen Hawking

The Story of Everything - Stephen Hawking

[Gman]

God could create ex nihilo(from nothing) What a bigger mystery is that than saying something can't come from nothing?

Yes God could but nature, by itself can't.. It's just not possible to formulate.. It's just a belief..

[truthman]

Gman
I did not say that Stephen Hawking says that he is trying to prove that the universe was created by God. He says the opposite.

My point is that if you look at his work, he does not start with nothing like he claims. Although he does NOT acknowledge it, he starts with an infinite source of energy and laws of mathematics and physics that allow for his equations which must have originated in a "super-mind" and been contained and implemented in a super-mind, which would be the infinite Creator God.

[coldblood]

Perhaps we do not understand the nature of origins, time, or how to ask the questions.

If the universe began, and all possible first causes are eliminated, then nothing is all that remains.

Something from nothing certainly defies our intuition, if not our logic and Dr. Hawking's math.

An infinite succession of causes (i.e., no beginning) just flat-out defies our smarts.

Yet we are here, we think.

[truthman]

An infinite succession of causes would be an infinite regression.
What that does is lead us to the concept of infinity. An infinite number of causes leads to the conclusion of one infinite cause. Also an infinite source of energy would be required.
Finally it leads to the conclusion of an infinite reality.
Of course, infinity is impossible for a finite being to comprehend, but we are still able to study infinity and know certain elemental characteristics of infinity. We can do that by observing reality: everything real is a subset of infinity, therefore everything real that is irreducible is a characteristic of infinity.

[Gman]

Gman
I did not say that Stephen Hawking says that he is trying to prove that the universe was created by God. He says the opposite.

My point is that if you look at his work, he does not start with nothing like he claims. Although he does NOT acknowledge it, he starts with an infinite source of energy and laws of mathematics and physics that allow for his equations which must have originated in a "super-mind" and been contained and implemented in a super-mind, which would be the infinite Creator God.

I would say that Hawkings waffles on the subject.. He goes back an forth on the issue greatly in his book "The Theory of Everything" shown here..

"The idea that space and time may form a closed surface without
boundary also has profound implications for the role of God in the
affairs of the universe. With the success of scientific theories in
describing events, most people have come to believe that God
allows the universe to evolve according to a set of laws. He does not
seem to intervene in the universe to break these laws. However, the
laws do not tell us what the universe should have looked like when
it started. It would still be up to God to wind up the clockwork and
choose how to start it off. So long as the universe had a beginning
that was a singularity, one could suppose that it was created by an
outside agency. But if the universe is really completely self-
contained, having no boundary or edge, it would be neither
created nor destroyed. It would simply be. What place, then, for
a creator?" - Stephen Hawking, The Theory of Everything, pg. 94

"Einstein once asked a question: "How much choice did God have
in constructing the universe?" If the no boundary proposal is
correct, He had no freedom at all to choose initial conditions. He
would, of course, still have had the freedom to choose the laws that
the universe obeyed. This, however, may not really have been all
that much of a choice. There may well be only one or a small
number of complete unified theories that are self-consistent and
which allow the existence of intelligent beings.
We can ask about the nature of God even if there is only one
possible unified theory that is just a set of rules and equations. What
is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a
universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of
constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the question of
why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does
the universe go to all the bother of existing? Is the unified theory so
compelling that it brings about its own existence? Or does it need a
creator, and, if so, does He have any effect on the universe other
than being responsible for its existence? And who created Him? "
- Stephen Hawking, The Theory of Everything, pg. 122

However, in the last part of his book, he states that if we do discover a complete theory or even why the universe exists, to understand the answer to that we would know the mind of God. It seems pretty clear that whenever we touch on origins, whether it's the origins or life or the universe, we are always going to touch on the philosophical... It's the exact same thing Darwin did in his books.

What Hawking's and Darwin beautifully demonstrate for us is that one cannot truly separate philosophical beliefs from the scientific ones. Again, at some point they will collide...

[coldblood]

Truthman

An infinite succession of causes would be an infinite regression.

True, a ladder goes both up and down.

What that does is lead us to the concept of infinity.

No, the concept of infinite causes is a “beginning” assumption. A contrasting assumption is that the number of causes is finite.

An infinite number of causes leads to the conclusion of one infinite cause.

No, infinity is a concept. Infinity is not a place that can be reached; it cannot be bound into a singularity.

Also an infinite source of energy would be required.

And/or space-time, and/or their constituent building blocks, but this requires at least two other assumptions. The one discussed here is that the creation of something from nothing is not possible.

Finally it leads to the conclusion of an infinite reality.

No, again, that would be the very “beginning” assumption, not the conclusion. The contrasting hypothesis supposes that the number of causes for the universe's existence is finite.

Of course, infinity is impossible for a finite being to comprehend, but we are still able to study infinity and know certain elemental characteristics of infinity. We can do that by observing reality: everything real is a subset of infinity, therefore everything real that is irreducible is a characteristic of infinity.

Infinite as used here is a concept of quantity. It is not a landscape, a place you can visit, see from a tall-tall hill, nor is it a really-really big number like a godzillion. No subset of infinity (even an “infinite” subset!) could match up one-to-one. If you are sidetracking to say that having seen one rose you have seen them all, I am not sure that would work if the set of roses were infinitely large. But it does bring up an interesting thought. What number of samples, exactly, is representative of infinity?

. . . everything real is a subset of infinity . . .

To what “infinite” set are you referring that is larger than “everything real”?

- - -

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” -- Albert Einstein

[truthman]

Coldman
Thank you for your reply. I was looking for someone to discuss these things with.
I think it would be best to be sure we are using the same definitions and following each others line of thinking rather than blatantly saying "no, you're wrong".
Of course, it requires much more thorough delineation of thought.

[truthman]

1. the concept of an infinite regression of causes exists.
2. we could describe the infinite regression as a set: {1st cause, 2nd cause, 3rd cause, ....}
3. there are many other infinite sets: ie. {1,2,3,4,5...}, {2,4,6,8,...} {energy in the universe, energy of any previous universe if it existed, energy to conceive and implement laws allowing for a universe, ...} and so on.
4. a set can be described that contains all real infinite sets: {real infinite set 1, real infinite set 2, real infinite set 3, ...} which would be the ultimate infinite set that I believe could be called "infinity".

[coldblood]

truthman

I was looking for someone to discuss these things with

LOL, I don't think you can get much help from me.

My imagination is blown away by any of these choices . . .

A. Something has always existed,
B. Or, there was a beginning to existence,
C. Or, there is an alternative to A & B

2. we could describe the infinite regression as a set: {1st cause, 2nd cause, 3rd cause, ....}

To begin an infinite regression sequence we need to start with the latest cause, and regress: {latest cause, the next to latest cause, the cause before that, … etc.}. We could “never” reach a first cause. This idea fits with Option A. Also, this option may be the preferable choice for Christians. Christians have a name for the infinite something that was always here “without” a first cause.


Option B, if there was a beginning then questions about “before” the beginning make no sense. Still, we are compelled to ask; if existence itself had a beginning then what was its cause? (From where did it come?)

.