Something can't come from nothing

[nobspeople]

Recently I saw someone elsewhere make the comment, in regards to how 'the universe came to be', that you can't get something (the universe as it is today) from nothing (from before the universe existed), only to go on and say something similar to 'god is the beginning and the end', in reference to creating the universe.
I found it hypocritical to say one believes 'something can't come from nothing' and, at the same time, say 'god created the universe', appearing to mean god was here before anything and thus, came from nothing (as the person making this statement seemed to believe god was here before anything else - seemingly 'coming from nothing').

For discussion:
Where did god come from?
How can god 'come from nothing' but not anything else?
For those that claim 'god has always existed': how? And how can one make such a claim without understanding 'always' and 'eternity', as those aren't concepts humanity can understand fully, in regards to any deity, with their limited minds?

[William]

To your first question, if a Being exists (regardless of whether or not that Being is subject to any natural laws), what makes you think that Being created something (like the universe) from nothing... rather than that He created something (like the universe) from Himself, from His own dynamic energy?

If your being was the substance that existed and made everything else from itself, why couldn't something have always existed that wasn't this actual being?

Taking that idea into consideration, what is your [supported] explanation for conscious intelligence coming from something that is not itself consciously intelligent?

The idea seems to be as illogical as believing that everything comes from nothing.

We tend to assume that it requires a thoughtful process to accomplish such changes, but there may well be mechanisms and laws that allow for all that without any sentient being behind it.

Even given that such mechanisms and laws allow for conscious intelligence to emerge from mindless matter, one cannot explain unknown mechanisms and laws as products of mindlessness, when we know that the universe has mathematical basis, is not at all chaotic or random and thus - just as we find encoding in all that we poke and prod with our sciences, we can only say that the "mechanisms and laws" must have been coded that way, and coding requires intelligent consciousness = "A Mind Behind Creation"

[bjs1]

Why? If something cannot come from nothing within the natural world why must there "therefore exist Something outside of time and space which is not subject to natural laws and capable of creating something from nothing?" Why can't there be NOTHING outside of time and space which is not subject to natural laws and capable of creating something from nothing?

If this NOTHING is capable of creating something then the NOTHING is, by definition, something.

As a note. If you're going to assert the existence of a Something, either inside or outside time and space, you best have credible evidence for it. Whatcha got?

You exist.

[Diagoras]

There is an equivocation going one between the absolute philosophical nothingness(non-existence, nothing at all) and nothing(apparent nothingness but still having the existence of something->quantum vacuum(quantum state with the lowest possible energy)).

Always useful to be reminded of that distinction, thanks.

While scientists' knowledge of the very early state of the universe is incomplete (and is likely to remain so), we must be careful not to switch from the 'apparent nothingness' for which we have extant theories and observations, to the 'philosophical nothingness' for which experiment and observation is impossible.

The fluctuations in energy that (apparently) spontaneously create mass may have an unknown cause.

Agreed - what you say here sounds very much like the Higgs field. Asking "why did the Higgs field turn on?", "Why do some particles interact more with the Higgs field than others?"

Science doesn't yet have any clear answers to these questions, but will assuredly keep working on it. To simply stop now and instead say, "Goddidit" isn't in the purview of science.

[Miles]

Why? If something cannot come from nothing within the natural world why must there "therefore exist Something outside of time and space which is not subject to natural laws and capable of creating something from nothing?" Why can't there be NOTHING outside of time and space, which is not subject to natural laws and capable of creating something from nothing?

If this NOTHING is capable of creating something then the NOTHING is, by definition, something.

First of all, my apologies for inadvertently omitting the comma after "space." Perhaps it would have helped.

Secondly, I said "NOTHING is not . . . capable . . . . (although another "not" before "capable" might have made it clearer---sorry.) . . . . I only asked "if something cannot come from nothing within the natural world why must there "therefore [be] Something outside of time and space which is not subject to natural laws and capable of creating something from nothing?"..... It's a matter of not understanding your asserted obligation, "MUST."

As a note. If you're going to assert the existence of a Something, either inside or outside time and space, you best have credible evidence for it. Whatcha got?

You exist.

Thank you for capitalizing me as if I was the Big Kahuna: however, I took your "Something" as representing god. Was I mistaken?


.

[tam]

Peace again to you,

To your first question, if a Being exists (regardless of whether or not that Being is subject to any natural laws), what makes you think that Being created something (like the universe) from nothing... rather than that He created something (like the universe) from Himself, from His own dynamic energy?

If your being was the substance that existed and made everything else from itself, why couldn't something have always existed that wasn't this actual being? We tend to assume that it requires a thoughtful process to accomplish such changes, but there may well be mechanisms and laws that allow for all that without any sentient being behind it.

Yes, I don't make that assumption (see the second part of my previous post to you). I (personally) don't know enough about such things to make that assumption.

[brunumb]

Even given that such mechanisms and laws allow for conscious intelligence to emerge from mindless matter, one cannot explain unknown mechanisms and laws as products of mindlessness, when we know that the universe has mathematical basis, is not at all chaotic or random and thus - just as we find encoding in all that we poke and prod with our sciences, we can only say that the "mechanisms and laws" must have been coded that way, and coding requires intelligent consciousness = "A Mind Behind Creation"

You might conclude that it all must have been coded in order to prop up your notion of a cosmic intelligence, but that has yet to be demonstrated.

[William]

It is being demonstrated.

What notion are you trying to prop up?

That the universe is the result of a mindless prossess?

My arguement is fair and deserves more than hand-waving and ad hominem as response.

[brunumb]

It is being demonstrated.

What notion are you trying to prop up?

That the universe is the result of a mindless prossess?

My arguement is fair and deserves more than hand-waving and ad hominem as response.

What exactly does "is being demonstrated" mean? Do you have some evidence supporting the claim that the universe is conscious? Your argument is no more fair than a magical deity poofed everything into existence 6000 years ago. By the way, what part of my response was an ad hominem?

[William]

[Replying to brunumb in post #58]

What notion are you trying to prop up?

That the universe is the result of a mindless process?

[Sherlock Holmes]

[Replying to nobspeople in post #1]

If I understand it correctly, the argument is that something cannot come from nothing within the natural world. Therefore, there must exist Something outside of time and space which is not subject to natural laws and capable of creating something from nothing. The title we give to this creative Something that is outside of time and space is “God.”

That may be; it would be the first time I've heard that caveat made.
Seems to me, if this was the case, there's a distinction between natural and supernatural world. This would seem to indicate that the two worlds are 'too different' to exist together (simply by making such a grand distinction). Yet, we have the supernatural seeming to correlate, in some fashion, with the natural.
I wonder if this 'distinction' is another means of excusing the unknown ('well, for god, it doesn't work that way') without even knowing how exactly it works? Not to mention defining 'god' as it relates to this scenario.
That said, if god is supernatural and created the natural world, then something (natural world) did, indeed, come from nothing natural (god aka supernatural). So the natural world did come from something: the supernatural world. So, to make a statement of something can't come from nothing is incorrect.
And what did god come from?
I suppose this is 'Monday circular reasoning' at its best ....

The way I express this is that there cannot be a material (scientific) explanation for the presence of the material, that's it - you cannot use matter, energy, fields, laws to explain how these things arose.

If you really want to explain how, why these things even exist you must abandon science, it cannot be used, you must adopt some other explanatory means and that is why "God" comes up.

Only a thing that is no material can give rise to material, only a thing that is not subject to laws can give rise to laws.

A thing that can do things yet is not subject to laws is non deterministic, will, we can all understand will because we all have it.

God does tend to 'fill in the gaps', but the gaps only exist because people haven't been able to test and fill them with experiences and data yet IMO.

What are these "gaps" you speak of?

Historically, things science hasn't yet been able to prove, according to some people:
How the universe was created and when, for example. Some would point to aspects of science that shows how this or that came about but, for some, that's not enough. And for those people, the 'god did it' is good enough.
There was debate long ago, I remember, where believers claimed 'evolution doesn't show how the eye came about and, as the eye is so complex, only god could have done it'. Then, later, science showed how the eye evolved to how it is now. Up to the point science showed how that was possible, the adage 'god did it' worked for many.
Now, rather or not these examples are 'good enough' for some is immaterial as these are legit examples in which many used the 'god did it' concept.

I see, well I don't agree with some of that but I must point out that even if a great many things attributed to God can be said to be explained without a God (which I actually do not accept), that does not prove that all claims to God are false.

Furthermore in actuality nothing is explained by science at all, every theory always relies on unexplained things, there is always something not explained and the only way to avoid infinite regress is to postulate a supreme underlying cause.

Scientific explanations (theories) are exercises in reductionism where we reduce until we reach a point where we cannot reduce and those irreducible things are basically unexplained.

It's a huge intellectual mistake to believe that any scientific explanation eliminates God as a cause, they do not.

The belief like "there were a million things unexplained, all were once attributed to God but today only 42 are left to be explained" is illogical, everything even "already explained" things, still rely in some way on other unexplained things.

This kind of reasoning always reminds me how poor actual science education is, completely misunderstanding what science is, until they start teaching philosophy in the US people will continue to misunderstand the limitations of science.

The only way to truly remove "God" from an explanation is to construct an explanation that does not refer to anything that is not explained and reductionism can never do that.