The following is not a question: Can something come from nothing?

[Alex K]

Since this crops up every week in arguments, I thought I'd make a thread.

The notion of things coming from other things is not applicable to the universe as a whole.

Before and after

When we use the words "coming from", "causing" etc., we allude to principles we have learned from experiences which we have made within our universe. With the help of physics, we can have a pretty decent understanding what lies behind these intuitions, what it means for something to cause something, for something to come from something.

It boils down to statistics: imagine you walk through the forest along a small creek, the trees are swaying gently in the wind. Imagine you have your camera with you and you film this scenery while you walk past the creek.



When you come home, you just for fun let the film roll backwards, and you notice that you can barely make out the difference: the trees are still swaying, and the water runs its shallow course. Since the slope of the river is not noticeable, there is no striking paradox. Until you reach a small waterfall.



Suddenly, it becomes all too clear that something is very wrong with this picture - the cascade runs backwards, waves from the shore coalescing on the creek to form droplets which emerge from the surface to travel upwards, losing their momentum until they integrate with a newly formed, almost unperturbed stream.

Why did the cascade so obviously violate your sense of time, while the other parts of the creek did not? The reason is entropy: the cascade is, from the physics point of view, a very irreversible process which produces lots of entropy. The creek running its course quietly produces entropy as well because of the friction the water experiences, but much less so than the cascade.

The surprising thing is this: nothing in the backwards-running movie violates the laws of physics. The only thing that is striking is how utterly unlikely the events are which we witness in it. In the same way, the laws of physics do not really dictate our everyday arrow of time, which events we interpret as future, which as past. It is merely a matter of probabilities, because increase in Entropy is exactly this: the transition from a less likely state to a more likely one.

No Time

The moral of this story is this: causation is a statistical phenomenon in a world of increasing entropy. Do not think that your intuition about what past and future mean, what causation means, can be applied to realms which are radically different.

Some want to go even further and discuss the origin of the universe, or let us say, of being itself, from nothingness.

Note what has happened: we use the words which have meanings in our everyday lives as well as in science, and try to apply them in a scenario so different that none of them retain any meaning. Two things spoil the question: if there is no universe full of particles doing their statistical dance, there is no notion of an arrow of time, even if we assume that time as a continuous parameter exists. However, if we let even go of this, if we feel compelled to talk about the creation of time itself, all meaning is lost, and the questions we utter merely resemble questions, but in reality only mimic them.

[NoraBrimstone]

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here...

[Alex K]

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here...

It's only the first part of a series, in principle -but the point is this: in particular theists often raise the question:
If there is no God, how can something come from nothing, so atheism is wrong.

Besides the fact that the same problem would exist for God, which is really enough of an argument to deflect this
attack on atheism, I want to stress that the question itself is meaningless.

[tor]

[LostLocke]

It's only the first part of a series, in principle -but the point is this: in particular theists often raise the question:
If there is no God, how can something come from nothing, so atheism is wrong.

Well for me, one problem I have here is that, from what I know, it's the theists who are making the claim that we, atheists, are saying the universe came from nothing.
As far as I can tell, many atheists are saying the universe came from a singularity, a something, which in turn didn't come 'from' anything since ideas like from, before, or after don't work at that stage.

[Alex K]

It's only the first part of a series, in principle -but the point is this: in particular theists often raise the question:
If there is no God, how can something come from nothing, so atheism is wrong.

Well for me, one problem I have here is that, from what I know, it's the theists who are making the claim that we, atheists, are saying the universe came from nothing.
As far as I can tell, many atheists are saying the universe came from a singularity, a something, which in turn didn't come 'from' anything since ideas like from, before, or after don't work at that stage.

Yeah, correct. But the thing with the singularity is also wrong... But they really usually say, ok then before that was a singularity, but why does that exists rather than not exist.

[tor]

If there is something there is question why there is something instead of nothing.
If there is nothing there is question why there is nothing instead of something.

[LostLocke]

Yeah, correct. But the thing with the singularity is also wrong... But they really usually say, ok then before that was a singularity, but why does that exists rather than not exist.

My response:
Why does your god exist rather than not exist?

[Neo-Scholastic]

The issue is not temporal but rather logical priority. In a world characterized by change what are the necessary constants and of those which is most fundamental. Your critique only works against a straw man.

[tor]

The issue is not temporal but rather logical priority. In a world characterized by change what are the necessary constants and of those which is most fundamental. Your critique only works against a straw man.

Are you aware that there is no god?