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Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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If there is radiation, or light photons passing through, or the effects of gravity, or even time, then there is something. And I hope you agree that something can not be nothing.
This is why many intelligent people can not define "nothing". In my post, I did not try to define nothing, I gave a general description of what it is not.
Simply define it as the absence of all things, including the absence of photons and radiation. Right?
Everything, even time.
I view time as a psychologist more than a physicist. So my perspective on time is that it is a subjective perception of change. This implies two things: you need subjects to exist which can perceive change, and you need things out there than can undergo change. If neither of those two things are present, such as in absolute nothingness, then neither does time exist.
I would even suspect our notion of time is heavily intertwined with how our memory systems work, and our sense of rhythm.
No John, time can be measured by anyone with various instruments and it is also intertwined with the fabric of space.
Time is not part of any psychology, it is integral to physics.
I'm sure time can be measured by anyone, just like music can be heard by anyone. But music doesn't exist outside of someone's brain, only vibrations in the air, and neither does time exist outside your head, only movement and change, to which you ascribe time.
And you just described why it is all physical. It is only how the mind interprets such that puts it into psychological.
rmfr
Change is physical, time is psychological.
Time is physical. How time is interpreted is psychological. You should know this Breezy.
rmfr
Two people can be in the same room, agree on a specific time, then separate for a month. Bring them together again, they may disagree on how long the separation was, but their wristwatches or smartphone timing will agree with each other.
Sure, assuming the wristwatches are perfectly in sync with each other. But notice that wristwatches don't measure time the way litmus paper measures pH. We decide the speed at which we want the hands to rotate, because the visual perception of change, helps us externalize our mental representation of time.
If you can find a way to measure time in the absence of change, then you can show that it is not a psychological attribution.
Every fallacious argument I gave an example that countered yours. In desperation you now propose that time must be stopped to measure. You have outdone yourself John, since time is considered by all rational beings as continuous.
Stop time? If time exists then it does so independently of clocks ticking and things moving. If you cannot find a way to distinguish time from movement, then time reduces to movement; or as I have been saying, time is nothing but our perception of change.
We have no examples of complete nothing existing. It's a philosophical concept and I do not think we can even imagine truly nothing. It's foreign to us because if we were there to witness it, it wouldn't be complete nothing.
10/10, precisely correct. Whenever it used in arguments it also is usually based on the assumption that "nothing" existed prior to the point of origin of our universe, or the big bang. Occam's razor doesn't like assumptions, and neither do I.
AUS-LGBT,
IMO the main problem is that people seem to think that everything simply popped into existence at once.
My opinion is that we simply don't understand the properties of "nothing" so we have difficulty understanding how stuff can come from it. That is the major mistake. The "nothing", whether strings or quantum foam, produces elemental particles. Over time these elemental particles continue to evvole into more complex elemental particles until they produce hydrogen atoms. Once there is enough hydrogen atoms they clump together because of their gravity into huge balls of varying sizes and go nuclear, forming stars. The stars then cook up new elements. Evetually the star goes nova and in some fashion a new star is formed and attracts the debris from the old star into planets. The planets then cook up new elements within their cores. In this way the universe is like a living organism.
Where did your bones, blood, intestines, brain, and other organs come from when all there was in the beginning was a tiny egg and an even smaller sperm cell that combined? We have no idea what the universe is or how large it is. A hundred years ago people thought that the universe was just the visible stars in the night star. Before that they thought that the stars were tiny points of light that would fall to the Earth.
My opinion is that everything comes about through the process of evolution. And the universe is still evolving.
Hey there, Miss AUS. Always good to see your smiling face on here, young lady. Also good to see you are out there studying, researching, and learning. Keep up the good work. *smile*
Before reading any of the other posts, I figured I would plop my two cents worth into the pot based on some of the things I have learned since joining this site. Keep in mind, it is entirely possible I could be waaaay off base with this, but here goes my current understanding of the whole "nothing" conundrum...
For starters, what exactly IS nothing? Until I joined this site, that question seemed fairly straightforward to me. (And I have been a big science nerd for most of my life.) Now, however, I have come to realize that trying to imagine pure "nothing" is a bit trickier than it sounds. If you really think about it, even trying to define what true "nothing" is can be a bit challenging. With that in mind, there is one glaring thing I noticed about that quote you made from the book. It stated, "...that something can arise from empty space precisely because the energetics of empty space, in the presence of gravity..." Do you see it yet? Basically, if you have "energetics" and "gravity", then you do not have true "nothing." Both energy and gravity are "something". Therefore, that whole claim about there being "nothing" just got cancelled. See what I mean?
Okay, next in line is the fact we have NO IDEA what was around prior to the Big Bang. Just like we have NO IDEA into exactly what the universe is expanding. For all we know, our entire universe could be nothing more than a "galaxy-sized" component within some type of tremendously larger "space". Sure, maybe a little far-fetched, but still fun to think about... *grin*... Bottom line is, though, anybody who believes that "something came from nothing" is making wild assertions about something they cannot possibly prove or provide any evidence for. And to me personally, the whole concept is fairly nonsensical. Hope that helps a bit. Now to go see what everybody else is saying.
Miss AUS
Glad to see you doing as I have said on the site elsewhere: "Searching for knowledge and learning is what it means to be human and not a religious robot being force fed only the data they wish you to know. There is no shame in being self-taught, to search for learning and knowledge. The only shame is not searching in the first place." — Arakish
Keep at it young lady. There should also be a chapter, if I remember correctly, about "the something in nothing" or similar. In that chapter, he tells you exactly what is meant by nothing to astrophysicists, theoretical physicists, et. al. There truly is no such thing as nothing since we can create a complete vacuum, yet see quantum particles popping in and out of existence in that vacuum. Thus, there is concepts of quantum foam and quantum vacuum. I have a general understanding, but it is way of my league of expertise.
If you like Lawrence Krauss's books, you will also love books by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, amongst many others. My mind ain't thinking quite straight since I have another migraine coming on. Gotta go take some Imitrex.
rmfr
A UNIVERSE FROM NOTHING:
It is wrong because you are making an assertion that "nothing' exists. This would be the same thing as asserting a "god" exists. We have no example of nothing existing anywhere. If you are going to assert that something came from nothing, you have to prove there is such a thing as nothing.
Modern physics had discovered that what we once thought was nothing is actually something. There is no empty space in space. There is no empty space in an atom. There is no empty space between the planets. And believe it or not, there is no empty space between RAT SPITS ears.
What we do know is that our physics seems to break down at Planck time. Microseconds before the Big Bang (The expansion of the universe.) This is still something and we can't yet see beyond it. Is there a multiverse? Is there nothing? Is there a God? All of these are unfounded assertions that we just do not know. (That's my understanding anyway.) You do not get to assert NOTHING is real without proving it.
(Don't confuse the nothing of Physics - a pragmatic nothing, with a mathematical or philosophical nothing.) In math and philosophy we can get to or imagine an absolute nothing. Pragmatically, we have not gotten there yet and so "I don't know" is the proper position to take.
What was the first thing to ever exist?
Way outside my pay grade, but isn't LK talking about what is theoretically possible, as opposed to what is objectively evidenced? The definition of nothing is vital here, as it's literal meaning is not what LK is using. When theist make the unevidenced and perhaps unfalsifiable claim that "nothing can come from nothing" they are using the literal meaning of nothing. How exactly would someone evidence such fallacious hubris? It's not as if we can test "nothing" or as if we know nothing is even possible. You can see the assumptions piling up whenever the claim is made.
Diotrephes: What was the first thing to ever exist?
According to the best theory we have so far "Big Bang" a singularity was the first thing to exist and we have thus far been unable to look past that. Physics breaks down. That's my understanding.
Cognostic,
"According to the best theory we have so far "Big Bang" a singularity was the first thing to exist and we have thus far been unable to look past that."
See, that is the problem. Once you say that a singularity was the first thing to exist then you are also saying that there was nothing before the singularity came in existence. That means that nothing did at one time, at least, existed. That blows the argument about "nothing" existing out of the water so to speak. It also means that since there was nothing before the singularity the only place the singularity could have came from was from "nothing". That makes "nothing" the source of creation.
LISTEN AGAIN _ "According to the best theory we have so far "Big Bang"
It does not mean anything. It means this is what we think we know; "thus far been unable to look past that."
I did not say there was nothing beyond a singularity. I did not say there was something beyond the singularity. WHAT I CLEARLY SAID WAS "THIS IS WHAT WE THINK WE KNOW."
The universe appears to have begun from a singularity. Was there something beyond that? WE DON'T KNOW. Is the singularity eternal, in that something has always existed? WE DON'T KNOW. I made no assertion about anything beyond what we think we actually know. You are jumping to conclusions and reaching for assertions of which we have no evidence for.
It is so liberating to say "I don't know". And what you said just negate every first cause, kalam argument.
It actually does not "negate" the Kalam/ It only asks that the person asserting Kalam provide some frigging evidence for it. Not simply filling what we do not know with the god of the gaps or the blue universe creating bunny rabbits.
Cognostic,
"LISTEN AGAIN _ "According to the best theory we have so far "Big Bang""
It simply doesn't matter what existed first, the Big Bang" or a banana. That is because whatever existed first came from "NOTHING" because there was "NOTHING" and then there was "SOMETHING". The "SOMETHING" had to have came from "NOTHING" because there was no "SOMETHING" other than "NOTHING".
There was "NOTHING" and then there was "SOMETHING". The only place the "SOMETHING" could have came from was "NOTHING".
@ Diotrephes
Evidence please.
Are you telling us you have solved what the best theoretical physicists have not?
Or are you just unwilling to admit, "I do not know."
rmfr
Please evidence anything that can be described as truely 'nothing'.
Diotrephes:
"That is because whatever existed first came from "NOTHING""
Nice Assertion ----- PROVE IT. Demonstrate "nothing." Where is your Nobel Prize?
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