Universe from Nothing?

[Esquilax]

"...how things behave under certain conditions" is not the same thing as "how things behaved under a given condition." The kind of science we practice is fundamentally predictive in nature. "how things behave under certain conditions" is predictive generalization. It reflects inherent order in the universe.

Not really, it's just humans being able to spot a pattern. This is a stimulus/response thing: if X happens under A, B, and C conditions, Y results. If we don't change X, A, B or C, why would Y ever change?

You seem to be arguing that because stuff doesn't happen completely at random at every corner of space simultaneously, this is evidence of a designer. The problem is, you haven't yet shown that order is the exclusive domain of designers, nor that chaos is the basic state of reality at a universal scale. Every part of this objection is you begging the question.

How does subscribing to the B-theory allow the universe to exist any more than A-theory? Since you choose an a-temporal stance, the question must be rephrased for you:

"Why is there a universe, rather than nothing?"

Would you take an answer of "I don't know," as evidence for your god?

[Jesus is Lord]

Thanks to everyone who has posted.
We've talked about a lot of different ideas -
but the central idea I'm trying to hear about
is the idea of the origin of the universe.

How did the universe that we observe come to be?
IF you think it arose from nothing, then how?
IF you think it arose from something - "" ""
IF you think that time inheres in existence,
then why is there something and not nothing?

If you have some other view of the origins of the universe,
please explain - WITHOUT invoking anything supernatural.

---

You and I are walking near the south pole.
We both come upon a fresh baked loaf of bread on a table.
The bread is still steaming in the tin.
I suggest that - only moments ago,
this loaf of bread must have been in a hot oven,
and that we are not alone - there is someone else here.
Neither of us can physically see any evidence of the oven or the person.

You respond, "No - I don't think it is fresh from an oven,
but rather that it arose long ago."

I say, "had it been on its own for more than five minutes
it would be frozen solid by now."

You say, "It gave rise to itself."

I say, "It's a loaf of bread - these things don't arise by themselves
anywhere else in human experience.
All the loaves of bread that we can actually see and measure
don't do what you are suggesting."

The universe is here - it is made up of particles and systems
which progress from order to disorder; it is breaking down.
It is a fresh baked universe.
It lacks the capacity for eternal existence.
Given time the Sun will swallow the earth,
the stars will fade from view, black holes will predominate,
matter will evaporate via Hawking radiation
leaving lone leptons that miss each other by one hundred million light years.

Why is there a universe?
What is it still doing here?
Why is there order?
Why is there anything for entropy to act upon?
The only situations where we can measure and document
order arising and persisting in the face of entropy
are where consciousness is present.

[Optimistic Mysanthrope]

"Why is there a universe, rather than nothing?"

Honestly? My pet 'hypothesis', for want of a better word, is that a universe is pretty much inevitable. I think it's a result of fluctuations in the quantum foam - akin the application of the non-linear schrodinger equation in relation to rogue waves. Basically, I get the feeling (and that's all it is, mind) that the universe is effectively a 'rogue wave' of virtual particles. I'm sure there are plenty of people on the forum that are capable of explaining to us both why my idea is absolute shite but hey, it makes sense given my limited understanding of things

[Jesus is Lord]

Not really, it's just humans being able to spot a pattern. This is a stimulus/response thing: if X happens under A, B, and C conditions, Y results. If we don't change X, A, B or C, why would Y ever change?

---This is not an accurate representation of the state of scientific theory. Special relativity is not merely descriptive; it is predictive - as are most of the more robust theories of modern science. It isn't much of a theory if it does not have predictive power. You are underselling science, in order to downplay the scripted-ness of the universe.

---

"Why is there a universe, rather than nothing?"

Honestly? My pet 'hypothesis', for want of a better word, is that a universe is pretty much inevitable. I think it's a result of fluctuations in the quantum foam - akin the application of the non-linear schrodinger equation in relation to rogue waves. Basically, I get the feeling (and that's all it is, mind) that the universe is effectively a 'rogue wave' of virtual particles. I'm sure there are plenty of people on the forum that are capable of explaining to us both why my idea is absolute shite but hey, it makes sense given my limited understanding of things

So what is the quantum foam doing here?

[Esquilax]

I say, "It's a loaf of bread - these things don't arise by themselves
anywhere else in human experience.
All the loaves of bread that we can actually see and measure
don't do what you are suggesting."

This, right here. This is the part where your comparison to the universe breaks down.

You're right: loaves of bread have never arisen by themselves anywhere in human experience, and all the loaves of bread we have to compare to have been baked by human intervention. You're dead on correct, and we can see, measure and confirm this.

But what other universes have you been able to investigate? Where's this large succession of alternate realities that you've compared this one to, and more importantly, even if you had them, how would you be able to confirm that they were designed in order to make that comparison in the first place? Do you have a designer out there making universes in front of you, so you can confirm that?

Your analogy presents us with an object that we can compare and contrast with the natural world and other examples of it and thus of course we can determine its nature as a designed object. But you have no other universes to enact this same process on the other end of the comparison, and comparing the universe to things within it would be fallacious in the extreme. In a very real sense, it'd be comparing apples and oranges.

[Esquilax]

---This is not an accurate representation of the state of scientific theory. Special relativity is not merely descriptive; it is predictive - as are most of the more robust theories of modern science. It isn't much of a theory if it does not have predictive power. You are underselling science, in order to downplay the scripted-ness of the universe.

Yes, but they're predictive theories based upon data gathered through stimulus/response testing and experimentation. That's why we have a basis for them, and why we can confirm them. A theory conceived without the initial stimulus/response is just a guess.

[Optimistic Mysanthrope]

So what is the quantum foam doing here?

See Heisenburg's Uncertainty Principle. It can't not be there.

[max-greece]

"Why is there a universe?
What is it still doing here?
Why is there order?
Why is there anything for entropy to act upon?"

None of these questions can be answered, but:

Looking at the size, age, complexity, structure and components of the universe only the most insane egotist would claim the reason for the universe has anything to do with a 200,000 year old descendent of a monkey.

[Mystical]

...but that we can tell the difference between the deliberate and the accidental.

---

Two weeks before the onset of the APS March Meeting in Seattle, the city was rocked by a magnitude 6.8 earthquake, cracking sidewalks, toppling building facades, and even cracking the capital dome in Olympia. Fortunately, major structural damage was less than expected, since the quake was located about 30 miles below Earth's surface. The meeting took place without a hitch. But further north, in the sleepy settlement of Port Townsend, Mother Nature offered striking visual evidence that earthquakes have an artistic bent as well.

A local shop called Mind Over Matter displayed a sand-tracing pendulum, featuring a pointed weight at the end of a long wire suspended over a tray of sand. The vibrations of the quake produced an intricate, rose-like shape in the sand. "You never think about an earthquake as being artistic - it's violent and destructive," Norman MacLeod, president of Gaelic Wolf Consulting in Port Townsend, told ABC News. "But in the middle of all that chaos, this fine, delicate artwork was created."

Images of the unusual pendulum pattern were distributed over the Internet, and quickly spread around the world. MacLeod, who posted the images on his Web site (http://www.gaelwolf.com/pendulum.html), has received thousands of letters from people theorizing about what the shape might mean: the eye of Poseidon, a rose, or even (for conspiracy buffs) a recording of a top secret government weapon designed to trigger earthquakes.

Seismologists are a bit more circumspect in their conclusions. "The pattern shows the three-dimensional pattern of the quake. It's a nice little seismogram that helps people understand how the ground was moving at the time of the quake," says Bill Steele, a seismologist at the University of Washington. Modern seismograms record the north-south, east-west and vertical shakings of a quake. The information is then fed into a computer that creates a three-dimensional reading.

While the sand carved by the pendulum offers a less precise reading of the multidirectional tremors of the quake, it preserves two features of the earthquake waves in particular. The "flower" in the center records the surface movements associated with the higher frequency waves that arrived first. The outer larger amplitude oscillations record the lower frequency waves that arrived later.

Sadly, the Earthquake Rose is no more. Shop owner Jason Ward had intended to take a mold of the pattern. But before this could be done, his three-year-old son accidentally kicked the pendulum - and erased the sand's design. At least Ward still has the photographs.

---

[MindForgedManacle]

"...how things behave under certain conditions" is not the same thing as "how things behaved under a given condition."

...Huh? Those are effectively stating the same thing. o.o

The kind of science we practice is fundamentally predictive in nature. "how things behave under certain conditions" is predictive generalization. It reflects inherent order in the universe.

A predictive generalization is just that: a generalization, an approximation of what happened, or will happen. It doesn't perfectly encapsulate the goings on, and much of quantum theory would indicate it isn't even possible to do so. Further, you tacitly admit that our 'laws of physics' are just descriptions of what happens. That things behave the way they do is a brute fact in all possible worlds. This would be true, even of God.

But all that is beside the point. I haven't contested that the universe is largely ordered, because that wasn't my criticism of your original post. You're making bare assertions and special pleading. If something that is ordered requires a higher power to imbue it with said order (which was your argument), then God cannot have order because by definition God is the Maximally Excellent Being; there can be no higher power than He.

You were one of the only people who actually tried to answer my original question - thank you for bringing up your answer again, and I apologize for skimming.

Eh, it's okay. Somtimes the conversations here go south in a way that seems dishonest to me at times.

How does subscribing to the B-theory allow the universe to exist any more than A-theory? Since you choose an a-temporal stance, the question must be rephrased for you:

"Why is there a universe, rather than nothing?"

Firstly, under the B-theory there can be no account of the origin of existence. In fact, I'm willing to affirm that talking about existence "beginning" is entirely nonsensical. It's not even possible to coherently talk about "nothingness", because you aren't talking about ANYTHING. It can't even be spoken of or referred to in, because it's either a contradictory concept or it resides at a linguistic limit. To paraphrase Wittgenstein: "The limits of my language are the limits of my world." I see no reason to think nothingness makes any sense at all, so it isn't really a question that can be meaningfully asked.

If we ascribe temporal dimensions to objects as though they were physical dimensions inherent to the object, then your view of the universe would require all things to have infinite temporal dimensions. How would you avoid this? It must be avoided, as all the finite elements of the universe that we can actually study do not have unlimited temporal dimensions.

Er, the B-theory does not ascribe infinite temporal dimensions to anything. Under the B-theory, there are at least 4 dimensions: [at least] 3 spatial dimensions and [at least] 1 temporal dimension. Objects are extended temporally, they don't have infinite temporal dimensions, anymore than they do spatial ones. All that the B-theory says is that objects pervade time as well, so that it can be said that both the past and the future exist as well (in contrast to the A-theory and presentism).