(February 16, 2016 at 1:17 am)maestroanth Wrote: To OP: do some research on symmetry breaking. It gives a good explanation on why there is something rather than nothing. There is a documentary on curiositystream.com (netflix for documentaries) called the ultimate formula and it explains the concept pretty well to the non-mathematician (like me).
Yeah, I agree, 100%! My OP was really a slam against WLC, who acts like "nothing" can exist, "in theory", and so, the alternative is, "god exists, and god 'did it'". WLC's position is just absurd; he would have to claim that god could make 2 + 2 equal to something other than 4, which is absurd. But, if foundations of arthritic are immutable (hence, eternal), then all of "higher" mathematics follows from that; algebra is, after all, just "arithmetic with letters." Calculus is adding infinitesimals, and finding instantaneous rates of change for different sets of numbers who have relationships to each other (functions). So, if we can add, we can take derivatives, do integrations, etc., which is the basis of all mathematical physics. All of that work leads to things like symmetry breaking, and while most of that is beyond my abilities, others, fortunately, understand it, and there is no need appeal to some sort of "higher power" any more than we need to make an equivalent appeal as to why we can add two numbers together.
