Creation ex nihilo

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Fopp</i>
<br />Since there was no time before the Big Bang the universe has always existed; i.e. there is no point in time when the universe did not exist.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">While I appreciate the spirit of your "devil's advocate" posting, it seems to rely entirely on personal, unstated definitions for the key concepts. Inasmuch as the principles of reasoning are likely to be common to both of us (and to others reading this), I expect that we will agree on conclusions if we can agree on premises, which in this case means mainly definitions.

In Meta Science (also called "deep reality physics"), time is not a physical, tangible thing that can affect material entities in any way. It is simply a concept, specifically a dimension used to measure change. (Change exists because there is motion, and neither substance nor motion can be created or destroyed.)

With that definition of time, it is as impossible for time to "begin" as it is for substance or motion to begin because motion cannot arise from non-motion, just as substance cannot arise from non-substance. So a first moment of time implies a creation event of the miracle variety.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">I would like to address a claim that ... the Big Bang theory implies that the universe was created from nothing and that a miracle is needed to account for the creation.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I recommend checking the dictionary definition of "miracle". Mine says: "an event that appears to be contrary to the laws of nature and is regarded as an act of God." Unless you wish to propose that the universe started from something instead of nothing, the Big Bang begins with a miracle.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">The Big Bang theory therefore implies no creation at all and no miracles are needed to account for it.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Please describe the initial second of time in your own words, using clear, crisp definitions. Where did substance, motion, and time come from if there was no creation or miracle? And when you say "no miracles are needed", do you mean that no God was needed to make all this happen? Nature alone was sufficient? (See definition of "miracle".)

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">An eternal universe creates much more difficult logical issues since it implies that an infinite amount of time must have passed by. Such an event would definitely be in need of a miracle.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Either something can come from nothing, or it cannot. The former invoves a miracle by normal definitions. If the latter is true, then all substance always existed and only forms change. Because there was no "something from nothing" event, there is no miracle. You apparently mean "harder to imagine", which I would readily concede until one confronts the details.

For example, most of us have no difficulty imagining that the universe can last forever into the future. (I don't mean most people think that it will, but only that it is easy to imagine the cycles of birth and death continuing forever as they are now.) That surely requires no miracle. Yet "forever" into the future would be no longer if we went back a trillion years into the past. If time is just a measure of change and can be eternal in the forward direction, why should it present any logical difficulty to posit that the universe can also be eternal in the reverse time direction? The only way it could NOT be eternal back in time is if there was a creation event; i.e., a miracle. -|Tom|-

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">In Meta Science (also called "deep reality physics"), time is not a physical, tangible thing that can affect material entities in any way. It is simply a concept, specifically a dimension used to measure change. (Change exists because there is motion, and neither substance nor motion can be created or destroyed.)<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
I agree with this definition, though I would say that motion exists because there is change.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">With that definition of time, it is as impossible for time to "begin" as it is for substance or motion to begin because motion cannot arise from non-motion, just as substance cannot arise from non-substance.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
This is where our disagreement lies. In the use of the word "begin". To me, the word begin doesn't imply that there was anything "before" the universe that it had to "come from". It doesn't imply a creation.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Where did substance, motion, and time come from if there was no creation or miracle? And when you say "no miracles are needed", do you mean that no God was needed to make all this happen? Nature alone was sufficient?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Neither substance, motion nor time "came from" anything. It didn't "come" at all. It was always there. But it hasn't been here for eternity, only for a finite amount of time. You seem to be assuming that the Big Bang theory implies that there was an initial state of "nothingness" from which the universe arose. I don't believe such a state could exist. Nothingness = non existence. A "state of nothingness" can't exist because if it existed it would be "something".

A beginning of the universe only implies that it hasn't existed for an infinite amount of time. It doesn't imply that it was created or arose from some other state of existence or non-existence. There is no "before" the first moment of time and therefore there is no "nothing" before the universe since time is only a quality of the universe. As you yourself said, it is simply a concept used to measure change. It doesn't have a separate existence.

No god is needed because there was no creation (although a god could still exist).

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Either something can come from nothing, or it cannot. The former invoves a miracle by normal definitions. If the latter is true, then all substance always existed and only forms change. Because there was no "something from nothing" event, there is no miracle.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
I agree with all of this. What I don't agree with is your implicit statement that something that has a beginning must have been created or must have come from something else. Such a statement makes sense for all things existing in the universe (space and time), but not for space and time itself.

Why do you assume that existence must be eternal? That would only make sense if you assume that time has a separate existence and could exist before space. Since space and time can't be separated there is nothing illogical with a finite uncreated universe.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">For example, most of us have no difficulty imagining that the universe can last forever into the future. (I don't mean most people think that it will, but only that it is easy to imagine the cycles of birth and death continuing forever as they are now.) That surely requires no miracle. Yet "forever" into the future would be no longer if we went back a trillion years into the past. If time is just a measure of change and can be eternal in the forward direction, why should it present any logical difficulty to posit that the universe can also be eternal in the reverse time direction? The only way it could NOT be eternal back in time is if there was a creation event; i.e., a miracle.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
There is a very important difference between potential and actual infinities. I have no problem imagining the universe lasting forever into the future. That is because it is only a potential infinity, not an actual one. No matter how long the universe exists, an infinite amount of time will never have passed. It will always be a finite amount, and this is exactly the problem I have with an eternal universe in the reverse time direction. It is impossible to reach an actual infinite amount of time and this is exactly what is needed for the universe to have existed eternally.

Science tries to make the univers as understandable as possible; for this it must use meaningful sentenses. "Origin of the Universe" is meaningless from a scientific point of view.
The worst problem of the Big Bang is that it uses the hypothesis that the frequency shifts can only be Doppler, expansion or gravitational. People who send the light pulses in the optical fibres which allow us to communicate through internet observe every day coherent frequency shifts. Any astrophysicist may observe that anomalous frequency shifts appear mainly where the physical conditions produce excited atomic hydrogen : close (many AU however)to the quasars, over 5-10 AU from the Sun, where the solar wind becomes cold enough, ...
I wrote "mainly" because it seems that some molecules, around the galaxies, have the same property than excited atomic hydrogen.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by tvanflandern</i>
<br />With that definition of time, it is as impossible for time to "begin" as it is for substance or motion to begin because motion cannot arise from non-motion, just as substance cannot arise from non-substance. So a first moment of time implies a creation event of the miracle variety.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I normally avoid getting into discussions on subjects that I'm not exactly "current" on, but I was interested in finding out that you had this idea as part of "meta-science". It seems to me like you're concluding something that doesn't have to be concluded. You appear to be basing your conclusions on "definitions" that are meaningful to us, but I'm not so sure that is possible. Just because we don't know <b>what </b>happened at that point in time when the big bang happened (assuming it did) doesn't at all mean it had to be a <b>miracle </b>. And to assume that the miracle was "God-made" is really taking it to an unreasonable extreme. Just as the proverbial two-dimensional ant doesn't know anything about the three dimensional world, we might not be able to grasp in normal terms and words what happened and "where it came from" or even if such a concept has anything to do with it at all. That "something happened" might be as close as we can get.

rd

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Fopp</i>
<br /><blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">[tvf]: Change exists because there is motion<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I would say that motion exists because there is change.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Change cannot be more fundamental because change cannot exist without motion preceding it.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">[tvf]: With that definition of time, it is as impossible for time to "begin" as it is for substance or motion to begin because motion cannot arise from non-motion, just as substance cannot arise from non-substance.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">This is where our disagreement lies. In the use of the word "begin". To me, the word begin doesn’t imply that there was anything "before" the universe that it had to "come from". It doesn’t imply a creation.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I do not understand this. The causality principle, which follows from logic alone (because any violation is a type of miracle), states that every effect has a proximate, antecedent cause. Are you proposing an effect without a cause? A cause that is not antecedent to its effect? Remember, “First Cause” is another name for God.

I asked you to describe that first instant. I was really asking for the initial cause-effect sequence because your words seem vague on this critical point.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">[tvf]: Where did substance, motion, and time come from if there was no creation or miracle? And when you say "no miracles are needed", do you mean that no God was needed to make all this happen? Nature alone was sufficient?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Neither substance, motion nor time "came from" anything. It didn’t "come" at all. It was always there. But it hasn’t been here for eternity, only for a finite amount of time.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Your words seem to describe a miracle but deny that it is a miracle. I don’t see any possibility that this scenario can be consistent with the causality principle except by creation ex nihilo, which is also a miracle.

Specifically, it makes no sense that past time is finite but did not have a beginning. Those two concepts are opposites and, much like a square circle, cannot co-exist. If the “measure of (total elapsed) change” is zero, the following instant is the first. If there was no first instant, then the measure of total elapsed time is infinite. Don’t play word games. Which is it?

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">You seem to be assuming that the Big Bang theory implies that there was an initial state of "nothingness" from which the universe arose. I don’t believe such a state could exist. Nothingness = non existence. A "state of nothingness" can’t exist because if it existed it would be "something".<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Many people believe in logical contradictions. The current field of quantum mechanics has an embedded contradiction. But when there is a contradiction in your logical syllogism, you are definitely no longer talking science.

You are only in logical trouble here because you reject the label “miracle”. Do you have a reason to resist calling miracles by their customary name, other than that it then becomes a religious tenet rather than a scientific thesis?

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">A beginning of the universe only implies that it hasn’t existed for an infinite amount of time. It doesn’t imply that it was created or arose from some other state of existence or non-existence. There is no "before" the first moment of time and therefore there is no "nothing" before the universe since time is only a quality of the universe.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">A Freudian slip? Tell me more about this “first amount of time” that there is nothing before. Did it contain motion or non-motion?

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">No god is needed because there was no creation (although a god could still exist).<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">A miracle is sufficient to require a god.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">What I don’t agree with is your implicit statement that something that has a beginning must have been created or must have come from something else. Such a statement makes sense for all things existing in the universe (space and time), but not for space and time itself.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">However, space and time are concepts, not material, tangible entities. So let’s focus on “all things existing in the universe”. You seem to agree they must have been created or come from something else. So which is it, and how do you avoid creation from nothing (a miracle) for all that substance?

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Since space and time can’t be separated there is nothing illogical with a finite uncreated universe.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I don’t see that for the preceding reasons. But now you introduce yet another dubious assumption. In Meta Science, time and space are independent dimensions and are always separate. The idea of time and space being interchangeable came from special relativity, which has now been falsified in favor of Lorentzian relativity. Motion and potential can affect clocks, but nothing affects time (the measure of change).

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">No matter how long the universe exists, an infinite amount of time will never have passed. It will always be a finite amount, and this is exactly the problem I have with an eternal universe in the reverse time direction. It is impossible to reach an actual infinite amount of time and this is exactly what is needed for the universe to have existed eternally.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I take it then that you deny the existence of integers because that is a set infinite in both directions. Any integer you propose to use had an infinite number of predecessor integers. There is no “first integer”.

The alternative to denying that integers exist and are an infinite set is that they do exist. In that case, I can create a one-to-one correspondence (the standard way of dealing with infinities) between the integers and the ticks of a gedanken clock measuring the passage of time all through an eternal past and completely through an eternal future. -|Tom|-

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by rderosa</i>
<br />Just because we don’t know what happened at that point in time when the big bang happened (assuming it did) doesn’t at all mean it had to be a miracle.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Again, by the ordinary definition of the words, a First Cause is a miracle. The Roman Catholic Church has sanctioned the Big Bang (an unusual step for a religion) precisely because it is based on a miracle origin.

Would you care to describe a First Instant that does not require any miracles?

This is a much stronger issue than not knowing. We can reason that such an origin is impossible without a miracle because it requires an uncaused effect at the outset.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">And to assume that the miracle was "God-made" is really taking it to an unreasonable extreme.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Despite the frequent use of “It’s a miracle!” in lay dialogue, the strict definition is an act of God, something impossible without a Supreme Being. Whether you agree with that or have your own definition, that is the definition my dialogue assumed.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">That "something happened" might be as close as we can get.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Observationally and experimentally, sure. But that denies the whole field of logic, the only field that reaches conclusions having certainty as opposed to conclusions that merely have some probability (however large) of being correct. -|Tom|-