RE: Four proofs of the nonexistence of God
July 20, 2017 at 10:06 pm
(This post was last modified: July 20, 2017 at 10:11 pm by Jehanne.)
(July 20, 2017 at 9:53 pm)RoadRunner79 Wrote:
Can you explain those, and show where you start with nothing, which causes something.
You simply can't have it "both ways". Either the Universe is spatially infinite, which means that actual infinities exist (per the above), or, the Universe is finite in spatial extent, which means that there is nothing "outside" of it, which means that it is expanding into nothing. From the following Wikipedia article (which is completely accurate -- verified myself through Griffiths):
Quote:Zero-point energy is fundamentally related to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.[93] Roughly speaking, the uncertainty principle states that complementary variables (such as a particle's position and momentum, or a field's value and derivative at a point in space) cannot simultaneously be specified precisely by any given quantum state. In particular, there cannot exist a state in which the system simply sits motionless at the bottom of its potential well: for, then, its position and momentum would both be completely determined to arbitrarily great precision. Therefore, instead, the lowest-energy state (the ground state) of the system must have a distribution in position and momentum that satisfies the uncertainty principle−−which implies its energy must be greater than the minimum of the potential well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy
In other words, it is impossible to have a zero-energy state anywhere in the Universe, which means that the question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" is equivalent to asking, "What color is Saturday?" and then arbitrarily assigning Saturday the color "blue" as opposed to pink, red, orange, or saying that Saturday is "Chevy day," etc., etc.
And, so, "nothing" exists as being "outside" the Universe (if it is finite), or the Universe is spatially infinite, which means that actual infinities exist. You can't have it both ways.
As for virtual particles arising without a cause, they do that because they can, which means that they must. There is nothing that "causes" them; if there was, that would require energy that was greater than the zero-point energy demanded by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which means that there would have to be infinite energy everywhere in the Universe to accommodate the infinite regress that you would get if you claimed that virtual particles were "caused".