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"That's not nothing"
#21
RE: "That's not nothing"
(May 14, 2014 at 11:09 pm)MindForgedManacle Wrote: You're missing some crucial points. If physics is going to redefine nothing to actually be something, then it's an obvious equivocation fallacy to say that physics shows that the universe came from "nothing" when an apologist asks why anything exists. The apologist is obviously using "nothing" in a way the physicist isn't. This is why people like Krauss are totally full of shit on this topic.

Despite carefully explaining exactly what he means: there is no such thing as absolute nothingness, at the closest we can get to it, there is still quantum foam.

(May 14, 2014 at 11:09 pm)MindForgedManacle Wrote: You're misunderstanding Craig. He's saying it's a logical contradiction to say something can come from nothing (at least without a cause) because "nothing" has no properties, which means it has no potentiality for creation.

'No potentiality for creation' is a property, and an awfully convenient one for Craig to apply to nothingness, given that he wants to conclude that 'nothing can come from nothing'.

(May 14, 2014 at 11:09 pm)MindForgedManacle Wrote: That we say things possess "positive" and "negative" properties is not a real thing, in the sense that we could just as easily say that protons possess a negative electrical charge, while electrons possess a positive charge.

That is true. It is also true that if the energy balance of the universe ('negative' energy plus 'positive' energy) is not exactly zero, it is very, very, close to zero.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.
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#22
RE: "That's not nothing"
(May 15, 2014 at 5:16 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:
(May 14, 2014 at 10:54 pm)Marsellus Wallace Wrote: But in order for nothing to be something it has to obey the laws of logic, otherwise it wouldn't have made a universe where you exist in it .

Look at all the balanced things in the universe, think of the atom structure for example, it points to the nothing or balance.
The Atom: proton = +1 , electron = -1 , neutron = 0 . Add them all together you get 0 , which is the nothing in terms of logic..

So maybe the universe is just another value of zero(nothing) : (+1 -1 + 0) = 0

PS : I'm not sure of anything I just said, I just used logic to reach my own conclusions .

This is the point at which an ion shows up and kicks logic right square in the balls.

Boru

An ion is an atom that lost electrons or gained extra electrons, those lost electrons are still existing , they didn't disappear and those extra electron in some ions came from other ions that lost electrons .

What do you get if you collected the sum energy of all the particles in the universe ?
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#23
RE: "That's not nothing"
(May 15, 2014 at 11:43 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: Despite carefully explaining exactly what he means: there is no such thing as absolute nothingness, at the closest we can get to it, there is still quantum foam.

Well... I don't think we can say that for sure... all tests we can make are within the framework of the Universe itself.
Some claim there's no space-time "out" of the Universe and hence no quantum foam (If I understand the concept properly). But how can we test that?
Should we assume that there is, in fact, space-time "out" of the Universe? And, of course, with that comes all the quantum foam that an infinity of space can provide, stock full of Universes and all!


PS: I used "out" when I should have used "beyond the scope", but it makes the reading a bit more intuitive.
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#24
RE: "That's not nothing"
(May 15, 2014 at 1:11 am)max-greece Wrote: Interesting take.

For me its entirely the opposite. Its WCL that's full of it. Whilst he says you can't get something from nothing he claims God made the universe from nothing which is the ex-nihilo creation with an efficient cause (AKA Magic).

Oh I agree on that. I was only clarifying what Craig was trying to say. :p

Quote:One of the biggest problems of QM is that our logic fails. This doesn't mean QM is wrong merely that our logic is more dependent on conditions than might have been obvious. In a scenario where time itself may not exist our brains can't make sense of it.

This logic failure is not only true of QM. Give me the logic of time going more slowly with speed. How does time know how fast I am going?

That's not really a logic failure, so much as it is a failure of we humans to intuitively grasp it. After all, quantum systems and such still follow the "laws of logic" in a metaphysical sense, i.e even indistinct quantum systems are themselves, and hence "obey" the law of identity.

Quote:That defining nothing is proving a lot more difficult that we had imagined is hardly the fault of the physicists. Not all that long ago everyone would have agreed that nothing meant no thing. Are fields things? Is energy a thing? Are fundamental rules a thing? A vacuum used to be nothing and that contains much of the above and then some.

All of those - fields, energy, etc. - are things. Vacuums were never considered to not be a thing as far as I know, just simply a truly empty region of space.

Quote:What it appears that the physicists are really saying is that true nothing (whatever that is) cannot exist. That it therefore appears to be "unstable." That particles and sub-particles are continuously popping in and out of existence.

The last part, if true, immediately gives you something from nothing.

Yeah, that right there is the equivocation fallacy. When they say "nothing" there, they admit that they mean quantum foam, and the "fluctuations" of it which produce things. Apologists mean something entirely different.
"The reason things will never get better is because people keep electing these rich cocksuckers who don't give a shit about you."
-George Carlin
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#25
RE: "That's not nothing"
(May 15, 2014 at 12:07 pm)pocaracas Wrote: Well... I don't think we can say that for sure... all tests we can make are within the framework of the Universe itself.
Some claim there's no space-time "out" of the Universe and hence no quantum foam (If I understand the concept properly). But how can we test that?
Should we assume that there is, in fact, space-time "out" of the Universe? And, of course, with that comes all the quantum foam that an infinity of space can provide, stock full of Universes and all!


PS: I used "out" when I should have used "beyond the scope", but it makes the reading a bit more intuitive.

Quantum foam exists even without space and time. The quantum fluctuations are like tiny flickers of space and sometimes time, although don't ask me to explain how you can have space without time, apparently it's a thing. But yeah, we can't know it for sure, only show the math works and it doesn't contradict the available evidence. The math works for multiple origin scenarios, including the one you've just mentioned.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.
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#26
RE: "That's not nothing"
(May 15, 2014 at 1:31 am)Freedom of thought Wrote: And does that nothingness have that property of logic like non contradiction? Then its not nothing... And Krauss is pretty full of shit on this topic, because he's defining nothing as something, but in his defense he did go further to say that without a quantum vacuum (pretty much nothing) due to the effects of gravity a quantum vacuum can form, but this isn't nothing, because you still had the laws working there. Krauss went even further than that though, he said the laws themselves could be formed by random.

Logic isn't a property to be had. Regardless, "nothingness" as apologists mean isn't anything, it has no properties. You're making use of a linguistic trick here. "Nothingness" is not a referent, it's not a thing. It can't have properties for precisely that reason.
"The reason things will never get better is because people keep electing these rich cocksuckers who don't give a shit about you."
-George Carlin
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#27
RE: "That's not nothing"
(May 15, 2014 at 12:20 pm)MindForgedManacle Wrote: [Yeah, that right there is the equivocation fallacy. When they say "nothing" there, they admit that they mean quantum foam, and the "fluctuations" of it which produce things. Apologists mean something entirely different.

The quantum fluctuations themselves are something from nothing. There is no true nothingness because nothingness 'fizzes'.

The uncertainty principle says that you cannot simultaneously know the position and momentum of a particle. The position and momentum of a particle that doesn't exist is 0,0. Since we can't know that, it might exist, and therefore it does, at least sometimes. Quantum vacuum fluctuations aren't coming from something, they are causeless.

Even if there were no space and time, these fluctuations would still happen, they are essentially temporary bits of energy and space flashing into and out of existence. That's how the hypothesis goes, anyway.

(May 15, 2014 at 12:27 pm)MindForgedManacle Wrote: Logic isn't a property to be had. Regardless, "nothingness" as apologists mean isn't anything, it has no properties. You're making use of a linguistic trick here. "Nothingness" is not a referent, it's not a thing. It can't have properties for precisely that reason.

Clearly it has the property of not having properties. It seems superficially to involve a contradiction to say nothingness has no properties.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.
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#28
RE: "That's not nothing"
(May 15, 2014 at 11:43 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: Despite carefully explaining exactly what he means: there is no such thing as absolute nothingness, at the closest we can get to it, there is still quantum foam.

...Okay? That doesn't escape the equivocation fallacy. Saying "The closest we can get to X is Y, therefore X is Y" is clearly fallacious.


Quote:'No potentiality for creation' is a property, and an awfully convenient one for Craig to apply to nothingness, given that he wants to conclude that 'nothing can come from nothing'.

Again, that's just obviously playing on language. Not having any properties is NOT a property. And if you're going to be consistent, you might as well say that non-existent things have the property of non-existence. It's absurd, but that's what is entailed by what you're saying.


Quote:That is true. It is also true that if the energy balance of the universe ('negative' energy plus 'positive' energy) is not exactly zero, it is very, very, close to zero.

So? These are still existent things. They couldn't (even in principle) balance off to be "nothing".

(May 15, 2014 at 12:34 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: The quantum fluctuations themselves are something from nothing. There is no true nothingness because nothingness 'fizzes'.

And here we go again. Are you saying there isn't anything, and yet it "fizzes"? If you are, then you're contradicting yourself. Processes require there to be something going through the process or action, i.e you don't have rolling going on without something that exists which is rolling.

Quote:The uncertainty principle says that you cannot simultaneously know the position and momentum of a particle. The position and momentum of a particle that doesn't exist is 0,0. Since we can't know that, it might exist, and therefore it does, at least sometimes. Quantum vacuum fluctuations aren't coming from something, they are causeless.

The uncertainty principle is an epistemic barrier, I don't think it has anything to do with ontology.

Quote:Even if there were no space and time, these fluctuations would still happen, they are essentially temporary bits of energy and space flashing into and out of existence. That's how the hypothesis goes, anyway.

Which means they exist, and hence are a referent, a thing.



Quote:Clearly it has the property of not having properties. It seems superficially to involve a contradiction to say nothingness has no properties.

I already dealt with this above, but for a quick recap: that is absurd. Not having a property is not itself a property. Otherwise I could, under that paradigm, say all non-existent things have the property of non-existence. But having properties denotes existing, hence demonstrating a contradiction in your account.
"The reason things will never get better is because people keep electing these rich cocksuckers who don't give a shit about you."
-George Carlin
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#29
RE: "That's not nothing"
(May 15, 2014 at 9:24 am)Freedom of thought Wrote:
(May 15, 2014 at 7:29 am)StuW Wrote: Can you provide sources as I'd be interested to read up on them.

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing"-Stephen Hawking

That's not a source, that's a quote, I wish to read about the specifics behind the theory.
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#30
RE: "That's not nothing"
Quote:Vacuums were never considered to not be a thing as far as I know, just simply a truly empty region of space.

I do sympathise with Krauss in many ways. We really are delving into semantics:

From Webster on-line

Full Definition of VACUUM

1
: emptiness of space
2
a : a space absolutely devoid of matter
b : a space partially exhausted (as to the highest degree possible) by artificial means (as an air pump)
c : a degree of rarefaction below atmospheric pressure
3
a : a state or condition resembling a vacuum : void <the power vacuum in Indochina after the departure of the French — Norman Cousins>
b : a state of isolation from outside influences <people who live in a vacuum…so that the world outside them is of no moment — W. S. Maugham>
4
: a device creating or utilizing a partial vacuum; especially : vacuum cleaner
See vacuum defined for English-language learners »
See vacuum defined for kids »

When I was a kid a vacuum was a space with nothing in it. Look at the terms in the definition void, deviod of...

Things were objects and there were non in there. They could be particles, and sub-particles but no-one ever said they could be fields or energy. This to me is the meaning of no-thing. That it has now changed to include the non physical I can accept but again I don't think Krauss or the other physicists were at fault. I really don't believe they were trying to pull a fast one.

Just to repeat - I think this is all a blind alley anyway. If nothingness cannot exist - which is what the physicists are saying then the universe coming from nothing defaults to the nearest thing to nothing that can exist, or, we come up with a new term.
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