The Void of nothing

Originally posted by knightmeister
What do you mean by the "nature" of nothingness. Nothingness has no nature , because it's....ehem...not there. Infact I find it easy to understand because you just refuse to allow anything to exist in it. This is why I find all this quantum talk about "vacuums of nothing" which have the "potentiality" for virtual particles. It sounds like something to me , not the real nothing I'm talking about.

And yet through out your posts you insist that there might have been a 'time' and 'place' where 'nothing' existed. And then you proceed to claim that as that is illogical you find it easier to believe in the existence of infinite time (eternity). As I said it is all a strawman. If time is truly a property of the universe and only of the universe then there can be no such thing as before the universe and hence no such thing as nothing.
You also repeatedly talk about 'cause and effect' while ignoring the fact that they are entirely time dependent and could not operate outside the universe.

Please give us your understanding of the word eternity.

If the nothing in your description is truly nothing then why do you then propose that the universe 'emerged' from it? Surely that makes it something and includes a time and space element.

Therefore , because there is something (the universe) it suggests that there has always been something (eternity).
I fail to see your logic here. Why must time be infinite just because ie exists? Does a circle have infinite length? You are claiming that if a line cannot have a starting point then it is infinite in length. That is not true for a circle and hence your claim is false.

Originally posted by twhitehead
And yet through out your posts you insist that there might have been a 'time' and 'place' where 'nothing' existed. And then you proceed to claim that as that is illogical you find it easier to believe in the existence of infinite time (eternity). As I said it is all a strawman. If time is truly a property of the universe and only of the universe then ther ...[text shortened]... it is infinite in length. That is not true for a circle and hence your claim is false.

You also repeatedly talk about 'cause and effect' while ignoring the fact that they are entirely time dependent and could not operate outside the universe. TWHITEHEAD

So what does time depend on? If you must have time to have a universe then why is there any time in the first place? Causality is more fundamental than time because it involves real things like chain reactions of chemicals and atoms , quarks and the like. What is time made of ?

You think that by saying that there was no time before the universe that that puts a stop to anyone asking why? or How?

Originally posted by twhitehead
And yet through out your posts you insist that there might have been a 'time' and 'place' where 'nothing' existed. And then you proceed to claim that as that is illogical you find it easier to believe in the existence of infinite time (eternity). As I said it is all a strawman. If time is truly a property of the universe and only of the universe then ther ...[text shortened]... it is infinite in length. That is not true for a circle and hence your claim is false.

If the nothing in your description is truly nothing then why do you then propose that the universe 'emerged' from it? Surely that makes it something and includes a time and space element. WHITEHEAD

Which is precisely my point . The universe emerging from nothing makes no sense. We have no rational way of describing something from nothing because it makes no rational sense at all. Tell me , do you believe that the universe kind of miraculously appeared from a void of nothing ? Do you have a better way of describing it ? No one has as yet rationally explained it to me. That's why I find the other idea more coherent.

Originally posted by knightmeister
If the nothing in your description is truly nothing then why do you then propose that the universe 'emerged' from it? Surely that makes it something and includes a time and space element. WHITEHEAD

Which is precisely my point . The universe emerging from nothing makes no sense. We have no rational way of describing something from nothing because it ...[text shortened]... ne has as yet rationally explained it to me. That's why I find the other idea more coherent.

No I do not believe that the universe emerged from nothing. Your fallacy however is in asserting that there is only one other possibility ie emerging from something.
For example consider this:
1. Cows do not eat.
2. Cows eat stones.
Clearly we all know that cows must eat so 2. is a more coherent idea. Therefore cows eat stones.

Originally posted by twhitehead
No I do not believe that the universe emerged from nothing. Your fallacy however is in asserting that there is only one other possibility ie emerging from something.
For example consider this:
1. Cows do not eat.
2. Cows eat stones.
Clearly we all know that cows must eat so 2. is a more coherent idea. Therefore cows eat stones.

To use your cow analogy if I may ....

It's more like

1) Cows have always existed (eternal)
2) Cows don't exist and never have (non-existence)
3) Cows didn't always exist but now they do (something from nothing)

If we substitute the word existence for cows then we can safely say that 2) is false because existence exists. 3) Implies a movement from nothing to something 1) Is the eternity of existence.

Now I know of only 3 states that can logically be said to hold true for existence. Either a) Non- existence , b)Existence , or c) a mixture of the two. I find a) to be false because the universe exists c) seems illogical for the reasons I have stated , that leaves me with only b) Existence.

Now if I assume existence to be anything other than eternal then I am logically saying that existence is temporary. However , this leads me back to c) which I already find to be highly unlikely. I can't go to a) so really I am left only with b)

So unless you can come up with a logical d) or e) you are left with b) or c) . You say that you don't believe in c) so you must believe b) but with b) existence must not have a beginning because it would be c) again , therefore b) must be eternal and uncaused.

You can say b) is a cow if you like but it cannot be a temporary cow if you don't believe c) . God is not logically implied but something eternal and uncaused is.

Eternity implies something that always have existed and always will exist,
yet nothing in our known existence is eternal. Everything wither and die,
and new forms take place from that. Energy, they say, is eternal. It
cannot be destroyed and it cannot be produced. It can merely change
form. Does time and energy interact? Is energy directly dependant on
time? Yes. Without time, no changes can take place and so the energy
won't be anything but a static image, which is the exact opposite of what
energy is. Time then? Can it really be eternal? If everything stops
moving, energy will cease to exist because it, by definition, is about
movement. Time on the other hand could exist in a purely theoretical
sense, but no one would know this because our very existence relies on
the idea of combined energy. We cannot measure time if movement
stops because we will have no references to measure against as we and
our environment will not exist. So, if everything stands still, it can be said
not to exist in time, but only in space. Space then? What is space? If we
can count particles, being made of smaller particles, in turn the
composition of even smaller particles, surely there's no end to how small
or big such a particle can be? There can be no absolutely smallest
particle that is truly undividable. So space is eternal in all directions, or it
wouldn't be able to hold all these particles that are eternal on a scale of
size. But what if you have a particle that is merely the absence of
surrounding matter? Doesn't that particle exist? Or is it a particle of
nothing?

Time is dependant on movement, and movement is dependant on the
interaction between particles, which is dependant on space, some of
which is particles, because particles use up space that other particles
need and they will move to new locations to get their space and this
causes movement, movement which can only be measured using the
idea of time. Time is now an abstract measurement technique that we
can understand simply because our brains allow us to store the various
impressions we receive from our senses about our scale of particle
existence. We've learned this over generations as we've adapted
adequately to our form of existence on this planet. Nothing to strange
about it really. Our brains are merely particles taking up space through
movement that is ruled by the various innate properties of each particle
and conciousness is the product. We don't transcend to other states of
being because we can't. The physical combinations that we are can only
function well in this environment in this area of space in this short million
year moment of time. When the environment around us end, we end.
When air is lost, the particle combinations that make up our lungs can't
provide air to the rest of our physical bodies and so we cease to function.
We're still part of time and the movement though. We're being
consumed by other "complex" combinations of particles.

Why wouldn't time itself have a beginning and an end? If movement
stops, time stops. If movement begins, time begins. If all space is
made up of the absence of particles, space still exist. What can cause
movement between particles? What can stop it? If I have something that
is nothing, I have nothing that could potentially be something. Because
where there is nothing, there is room for something. Space can begin.
But to begin, it requires movement. Just like nothing that can be
something, lack of movement can be movement. When movement
takes place in nothing, time can be measured. When time can be
measured, anything can happen. Life even, because it too, is only
movement measured over time in a specific area of space, or lack
thereof.

How can anything start from nothing? Because everything is
nothing.

Originally posted by stocken
Eternity implies something that always have existed and always will exist,
yet nothing in our known existence is eternal. Everything wither and die,
and new forms take place from that. Energy, they say, is eternal. It
cannot be destroyed and it cannot be produced. It can merely change
form. Does time and energy interact? Is energy directly dependant ...[text shortened]... f.

How can anything start from nothing? Because everything is
nothing.

where there is nothing, there is room for something. Space can begin.
STOCKEN

How can you have "room" for nothing? "Room " implies 3 dimensional space! So you need space in order for space to begin , which is of course illogical and circular. Your concept of nothing contains more than just plain old nothing and you have hidden this logical contradiction amongst a load of woolly pseudo-scientific poetry.

Originally posted by knightmeister
How can you have "room" for nothing? "Room " implies 3 dimensional space! So you need space in order for space to begin , which is of course illogical and circular.

This is only true if you consider "room" a three dimensional space, which
it need not be. The three dimensions is much like time. It's a way to
measure something that doesn't necessarily exist as we perceive it.
Without movement, time can't exist and neither can space. But, the lack
of space is also something other than nothing, just not space. Perhaps
it's movement. Movement require space and will therefore give the idea
of space, as it provides the idea of time. So, where there's nothing there
can potentially be something.

Yes, it's circular. Our very existence is circular by definition. Everything
repeats itself on all scales of time measurement, and it does this
because it's all the same: nothing.

Originally posted by knightmeister
Your concept of nothing contains more than just plain old nothing and you have hidden this logical contradiction amongst a load of woolly pseudo-scientific poetry.

😵

Isn't it fun though? And, frankly, I think my "wolly pseudo-scientific poetry"
is every bit as believable and "logical" as any religion you can find out there.
Only, it's not religion. It's wolly pseudo-scientific poetry that can change over
time. And time can stop, but my poetry won't stop. It transcends time as it is
actually something other than nothing.

Addition: (By virtue of being nothing, of course.)

One thing about 'time' before the big bang, think of the universe as a space with an infinite number of clocks. Our clock started on day one, 13.7 billion years ago according to the latest estimate. But before that, there was just another clock, maybe it ENDED when ours started, or maybe it runs together with ours but in a differant coninuity. A black hole starts up, there is a definite starting time in our frame of reference but inside the black hole a new clock starts from its zero hour, the time when the matter that made it all collapsed inward and bent the universe at that point past normal limits and started its own space-time. New clock.

Originally posted by twhitehead
And yet through out your posts you insist that there might have been a 'time' and 'place' where 'nothing' existed. And then you proceed to claim that as that is illogical you find it easier to believe in the existence of infinite time (eternity). As I said it is all a strawman. If time is truly a property of the universe and only of the universe then ther ...[text shortened]... it is infinite in length. That is not true for a circle and hence your claim is false.

I fail to see your logic here. Why must time be infinite just because ie exists?

Please give us your understanding of the word eternity.
TWHITEHEAD

Eternity need not be an infinite amount of time. In reality I see time as a non-phenomenological concept. I think time doesn't exist in real terms , just like a mile doesn't exist. It's a measuring device. I equate eternity not with huge amounts of time but with a non temporary existence. Temporary means that it is not permanent and comes into existence at some point. Existence (life itself) has to be either temporary or permanent.
If it is temporary then it always begs the question how did it start? Then you are back into all the troubles and logical contradictions of something from nothing. And since I believe that absolutely nothing would have just continued in nothingness , this seems unlikely.

So if you accept this is too contradictory then existence must be permanent. That means existence is uncaused at it's ultimate level (and I don't mean the universe here because the universe seems to have many of the traits of a finite temporary state). Eternity is this uncaused permanent state of something so permanent is has no beginning. Eternal existence is not contingent/dependant on anything else. There is no need to ask what caused eternity because only things that have beginnings need causes. Eternal existence is the ultimate reality upon which everything else becomes contingent and it's a permanent fixture of life. In fact it IS life itself. Life has never never never ever ever ever not existed. Life has always been even though it may possibly have been a static timeless state latent with potential energy but I would have to think that one through.

To illustrate this I will give you a story/thought experiment.

Long, long before I ever believed in God I asked myself this question. Could it have been possible that life just didn't happen? By life I was meaning EVERYTHING. I included in my concept of life not just the universe we know but all possible universes and even all possible forms of life that we don't even know about. Whatever was out there I included it , even the unknown ,even God (although I was an Atheist at the time). So I pondered to myself..." What if there had been non-existence , non -life instead of life (everything). this idea seemed awesome but also possible. I could just about imagine it. Nothing. Zilch. No energy , matter , extra dimensions , God , space/time , eternity , spirits , no ....it had never been. I wondered if that could ever have been possible , but not once did it logically occur to me at all that this non-existence of life would mean anything other than what it was ...life not existing. Life was permanent. Or it wasn't ever there. It seemed and still does seem entirely improbable and logically unlikely that from this absolute zeroness anything could come. Infact , I never really considered it since there seemd no rational reason to consider it. And no-one has ever given me a good reason to think it likely. All they say is " to ask what came before is invalid because time didn't exist" or " that's just the way it is ...full stop". I always felt , and still do , that they are not addressing the same question as I was . They hadn't thought about it deeply enough and hadn't REALLY REALLY thought hard and logically about what the term nothing really means. When I looked into quantum physics I always found physicists talking about "potentiality" and energy fields in vacuums. I thought to myself "That's not nothing!" To me as soon as there is even the smallest particle imaginable there it becomes just as much something as the whole universe is something. It would be like saying that infinity + 1 is one bigger than infinity itself. Nonsense!

My experience has been that Atheists have got hooked on this idea of something from nothing because they see it as an argument against God. In doing this they have taken their eye off the ball and not realised that what they have actually said is even more irrational. Like all ideas born out of a reaction against another idea it lacks the logical grounding they think it has. They always give themselves away with ill thought out concepts of nothingness. Far better to accept eternal permanence but they find this difficult because to them it seems a slippery slope towards God. However , logically there is still a million miles intellectually between you and God if you accept eternity. It took a lot more than my thought experiment for Him to reel me in.

Originally posted by knightmeister
I fail to see your logic here. Why must time be infinite just because ie exists?

Please give us your understanding of the word eternity.
TWHITEHEAD

Eternity need not be an infinite amount of time. In reality I see time as a non-phenomenological concept. I think time doesn't exist in real terms , just like a mile doesn't exist. It's a measuring ity. It took a lot more than my thought experiment for Him to reel me in.

Transform { translation 0 0 0 scale 1 1 1 rotation 0 1 0 0
children [ Shape { appearance Appearance{ material Material {DEF universe diffuse Color 0 0 0 emissive Color 1 1 1}}
geometry Sphere{ radius 1}
}
]
}

now just Route a color to the universe and you got the 1st second of the Big Bang


edit : you do need the header at the top though #VRML V2.0 utf8

Originally posted by frogstomp
Transform { translation 0 0 0 scale 1 1 1 rotation 0 1 0 0
children [ Shape { appearance Appearance{ material Material {DEF universe diffuse Color 0 0 0 emissive Color 1 1 1}}
geometry Sphere{ radius 1}
}
]
}

now just Route a color to the universe and you got the 1st second of the Big Bang


edit : you do need the header at the top though #VRML V2.0 utf8

🙄

Here's a challenge to the something from nothing idea....


Something from nothingers (S from Ns) tend to say that questions like "what came before something " or "where did something come from" or "what caused something" are invalid because they imply space/ time etc . A S. from Nothinger will say "there was no before , where , or cause" immediately closing down the debate with the retort "the question is invalid" This is a cool semantic trick.

For , if there is no valid question at all we may ask logically about something from nothing then it's open season to say anything. For example , I can say that the universe sits on the back of a giant polar bear and that's where it came from and then I can just say there is no valid question one can ask about this , you just have to accept it. The giant polar bear idea then becomes potentially just as likely as something from nothing , infact more so , because at least a polar bear is something and we know polar bears exist. If there is no valid rational question one may ask at all about S from N then it falls into the realm of mysticism , not rational belief. Without any valid rational enquiry there is no way to prove or disprove the validity of S from N as compared with the giant polar bear idea. If a S from Nothinger cannot provide a positive rationale for this belief then one may rightly ask "why not believe in the giant polar bear then , it's just as likely?".
S from N turns out to be the worst kind of circular reasoning because it's premise is that questions cannot even be asked with any meaning. This makes it even more irrational because with no questions how can there be any rationale? Even theists accept that there are valid questions that can be asked about God and that the idea of God is answerable to some kind of logical questioning. But S from N is the ultimate in mysticism. You can't even ask a question!! So until S from N come up with something more than restrictive logical shutdown and start telling us why S from N is more probable than the giant polar bear , the S from N idea will continue to stay in the realms of mysticism.

To my mind the something from nothing idea has always had the whiff of something else . It is a reaction against the idea of eternal existence. Somewhere , the S from Nothinger realises that eternal existence is the only other viable option and this idea is so abhorent (possibly because the idea of an eternal God appears on a distant horizon) that any old circular myticism will do. Even better the S from N idea closes down the debate and avoids questioning any further (lest it might lead logically to eternity). Thus S from N is a reactionary , restrictive idea rather than a positively affirmed idea backed up with a rationale. It starts with the premise of nothing and then works backwards closing down any logical enquiry. You could do the same thing with a giant polar bear, but that would be silly wouldn't it?

Originally posted by psychoalpha
humans just need to believe theres a begining and an end, were born we die so the universe had to be born..or created and it will eventually die.. its hard to imagine nothing in the material sence but when considering things as small as the atom or as large as a sun it pust things into perspective..there was never nothing...thats impossible there wil alw ...[text shortened]... of our known universe there still remains the left over matter light or dark...it dosent matter

Glad to have you on board the good ship eternal !