I sometimes wonder why there is nothing rather than something.
Good. Now we’re getting somewhere. From the chapter “Nothing Is Unstable” in Krauss’s book:
[i]"…Stephen Hawking and his collaborator Jim Hartle have proposed a very different scheme for trying to determine “boundary conditions” on universes that may begin from nothing at all, the important facts are these:
"1. In quantum gravity, universes can, and indeed always will, appear spontaneously from nothing. Such universes need not be empty, but can have matter and radiation in them, as long as the total energy, including the negative energy associated with gravity, is zero.
"2. In order for closed universes that might be created through such mechanisms to last for longer than infinitesimal times, something like inflation is necessary. As a result, the only long-lived universe one might expect to live in as a result of such a scenario is one that today appears flat, just as the universe in which we live appears.
"The lesson is clear: quantum gravity not only appears to allow universes to be created from nothing - meaning, in this case, I emphasize, the absence of space and time - it may require them. “Nothing” - in this case no space, no time, no anything! - is unstable.
"Moreover, the general characteristics of such a universe, if it lasts a long time, would be expected to be those we observe in our universe today.
"Does this prove that our universe came from nothing? Of course not. But it does take us one rather large step closer to the plausibility of such a scenario. And it removes one more of the objections that might be leveled against the argument of creation from nothing…
“…remarkably…even the laws of physics may not be necessary.”[/i]
“A Universe From Nothing”, Lawrence M. Krauss
Which reminds of the one about the dyslexic insomniac who found himself spending sleepless nights wondering if there really was a Dog.
Christians like to present this verse as proof the Bible revealed the earth is round. Not long ago Jehovah’s Witnesses hit me with this verse at my door.
When I pointed out that they are stretching the verse, cuz a circle is not a ball, but a one dimensional object, it caused a pause. Then, the JW that was standing behind the one sharing the verse said, “You know, I’ve often wondered about that.” At least he was honest.
Often believers in “the Bible is the Word of God,” make the Bible say what they want it to say. It’s their desperate effort to support their unfounded-blind-lack-of-facts-or-any-proof-presumption that God wrote the Bible. They’re OCD about it.
And by the way, back then the flat earth was believed to be a circle floating on a body of water … and you could fall off the edge of the circle.
So wrong, Selah, the Bible did not reveal a round earth in Isaiah 40:22 … the Bible revealed that God thought the earth was flat … the Bible often depicts God as dumb … cuz the Bible was written from man’s perspective back then … when they were ignorant … imbuing God with their ignorance. And now, you are doing the same thing to God.
You worship your god blindly.
He has some equations and he assumes that they apply to the creation of the universe. It’s a big assumption.
At the time of the first atomic bomb tests, there was a concern that the atmosphere would ‘ignite’. They had equations for it. Luckily they also had equations that showed it would not ignite. 
Science is not my God (especially theoretical physics).
Modern cosmology has plenty more than just “equations”. They have an increasingly large body of experimental observations that make the Big Bang more than just an assumption. Krauss’ book gives a concise overview of the extent of these observations and their implications.
Though even if true, this still begs the question, because we are dealing with a property of nothing: instability. Why is/was there an unstable nothingness? Why are there rules? Or tendencies?
Why are there rules or tendencies rather than a real, permenant nothing that no one would have noticed? Any new set of rules or noted tendencies just pushes the question back one step but does not answer it or invalidate it. ‘Something’ in this context is not just stars or light or chairs or elephants, but also laws, tendencies, etc.
“Aaah, Grasshopper, you are quite correct!” That is Krauss’ next chapter…
Felix - I don’t have time to respond to every post. If someone addresses me directly, I try to respond to them. I would be very happy to engage in dialog with you. But if you toss a bunch of senseless Christian lingo my direction, I won’t understand what you’re talking about - and to continue a discussion I’d likely need a translation.
Mutcer-- Thanks for replying. Yeah, I can’t see the value of investing in dialogue with you on the outside chance that you might reply if you feel like it. Of course you assume that if you don’t understand something it is senseless. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with your ignorance.The problem must lie with the other person. But, hey, we’re having a discussion here without you. Feel free to jump in. If you don’t understand something, just ask for clarification like other people do. You’d be surprised how it helps foster understanding, if that is what you are after, which I doubt.
Tantalizing. Keep it up and I may have to read this book.
I understand your confusion Felix. Nothing was recently discovered … nothing as a thing that is … nothing that has weight … and energy.
Watch yer self, a full dose of nothing all at once can fry yer brain wiring, and blow a 50 amp fuse. Nothing as an active energy in our universe is almost impossible to comprehend. The Tao says that “nothing” is sacred. Get it?
But look at this way bro Felix : Yer use to the notion of everything coming into being by God saying “Let there be.” Now when have you ever encountered anyone creating something just by speaking it into being? God creating just by speaking doesn’t make sense. Things produce words. Not the other way around … not in the world we’re all use to living in.
And neither does nothing as a thing make sense. It can’t be nothing if it’s something.
But the universe doesn’t care if we agree with it or not … so accept it … the universe has nothing as part of its processes.
Give the nothing notion a try. It’ll grow on ya.
And be sure to watch this youtube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo
Krauss talking about ‘nothing’:
BTW, Krauss talking about philosophy:
So your Baseing what God can do according to what humans can do?
Firstly, “nothing as a thing” is a contradiction. “Nothing as an active energy in our universe is almost impossible to comprehend” because, stated that way, it is illogical.
Also, how do you know what I am “used to”? Your implication that I need to be instructed away from a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation myth is pure presumption.
If you are into accepting things that are contradictory and illogical then you may have no problem accepting this stuff even though you admit you don’t comprehend it. But, why urge it on me? Accepting the world as it is doesn’t mean accepting illogical bullshit.
Oh and by the way, where did the laws of quantum mechanics that determine that something comes from nothing come from? Krauss has no answer as phyllo documented above. That was the same question I was left with upon finishing Hawking’s “Grand Design.” An eternal law or laws that result in the universe is about as far from an eternal law-giver as deism is from theism. The science is new, those isms are not.
I did watch a good bit of the video. Thanks for sharing it. My impression of Krauss was that in addition to his scientific brilliance, he is an arrogant twit who wants a place in the limelight with his radical atheist buddies. So, to me, it seems like a good idea to try to sort the science out from the hubris in which it is enmeshed. The Atlantic article and the NYT article suggest that I am not alone in this observation.
First, thanks Phyllo for that very interesting and informative quote and link. And I must thank you again for posting the link to Sean Carroll, I have been reading more of his stuff and I’m very impressed - to the point I am planning to buy his book, “From Eternity to Here”.
I must admit, when I first saw Krauss in a video my initial reactions was, “What a nerd!” Like many of us geeks, he may face more than a few deficits in dealing with people. Certainly, Krauss is “taking it” to the theists by challenging them directly in his book (and talks, essays, etc.). I think he would like to step in as the replacement ‘Fourth Horseman’ now that Hitchens has departed the scene. He is wearing his own personal philosophy on his sleeve (as he has similarly accused theists of doing) and therefore he should expect to have to defend himself. Personally, I agree with Sean Carroll that Krauss should not have taken the “regrettable tack of lashing out at ‘moronic philosophers’ and the discipline as a whole, rather than taking the high road and sticking to a substantive discussion of the issues.” And despite the (embarassingly) ridiculous afterward by Richard Dawkins, Krauss’s book is still very good for providing a layman-accessible overview of the experimental and theoretical underpinnings of the Big Bang, as well as delving into just how plausible “something from nothing” has become in light of modern physics. Krauss is actually not a big fan of “String Theory” or “M-Theory”, but does entertain the repercussions of “The Multiverse” with respect to his central thesis (something from nothing).
But, as we can see in the Ross Anderson interview with Krauss in The Atlantic, Krauss is the first to point out that his arguments are not definitive. Despite the title of his book (which he admits is deliberately provocative) Krauss doesn’t claim to have closed the question. And he does have a valid complaint, in my opinion, when he points out that every time science advances an argument that might demonstrate how something can indeed come from nothing, the Theologians (and I see this argument as coming mainly from theists and theologians) say, “Well, that isn’t really nothing!” It would seem that those opposed to Krauss’ brand of dysteleological physicalism keep moving the goalposts. I would require that if you are going to ask this question, first please offer a rigid definition of “nothing” (and notice how much you have to draw on modern physics to even attempt this).
And I myself favor what Sean Carroll has to say about this, and I am going to quote him again (I already did so above):
[b][i]“ ‘Why’ questions don’t exist in a vacuum; they only make sense within some explanatory context. If we ask “why did the chicken cross the road?”, we understand that there are things called roads with certain properties, and things called chickens with various goals and motivations, and things that might be on the other side of the road, or other beneficial aspects of crossing it. It’s only within that context that a sensible answer to a “why” question can be offered. But the universe, and the laws of physics, aren’t embedded in some bigger context. They are the biggest context that there is, as far as we know. It’s okay to admit that a chain of explanations might end somewhere, and that somewhere might be with the universe and the laws it obeys, and the only further explanation might be ‘that’s just the way it is.’”
“Ultimately, the problem is that the question — ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ — doesn’t make any sense. What kind of answer could possibly count as satisfying? What could a claim like ‘The most natural universe is one that doesn’t exist’ possibly mean? As often happens, we are led astray by imagining that we can apply the kinds of language we use in talking about contingent pieces of the world around us to the universe as a whole.”[/i][/b]
And he adds: “So the universe exists, and we know of no good reason to be surprised by that fact.” Which I take to mean he is saying there is no need to appeal to the supernatural in explaining the universe. And to me that is the bottom line.
Oh, and for the purposes of giving equal time to Krauss’s greatest detractors, here is a link to David Albert’s scathing review of Krauss’ book.
David Albert’s critique of Krauss’ book (link above) makes some very good points. I am still drawn to Sean Carroll’s suggestion that the idea of “something from nothing” is incoherent (and I suspect the Albert might agree). Here is an excerpt from Albert’s review that I think is pertinent to the larger debate:
“And I guess it ought to be mentioned, quite apart from the question of whether anything Krauss says turns out to be true or false, that the whole business of approaching the struggle with religion as if it were a card game, or a horse race, or some kind of battle of wits, just feels all wrong — or it does, at any rate, to me. When I was growing up, where I was growing up, there was a critique of religion according to which religion was cruel, and a lie, and a mechanism of enslavement, and something full of loathing and contempt for everything essentially human. Maybe that was true and maybe it wasn’t, but it had to do with important things — it had to do, that is, with history, and with suffering, and with the hope of a better world — and it seems like a pity, and more than a pity, and worse than a pity, with all that in the back of one’s head, to think that all that gets offered to us now, by guys like these, in books like this, is the pale, small, silly, nerdy accusation that religion is, I don’t know, dumb.”
By the same token theists and theologians have their own tactics for dismissing scientists/materialists. This speaks to the heart of the problem; the question would be, how do thiests and materialists go about this kind of discussion?
Based theological tradition, Tillich defined God as “Being Itself.” Being itself is No-Thing. Many of rationalistic arguments for God seem to miss that point. Things arising from No-thing seems similar to what Krauss is saying as he seems to treat quantum fields as No-thing.
Exactly
Out of touch with what? What is politically. Correct thousands of years later?
But buffalo does have one point, implied, that I agree with which is that people see a modern Gandhi in an apocalyptic prophet of God’s wrath.
Well, I’m sorry, but when the discussion goes in this direction, I have to say that I start to get frustrated. How is “Being-itself” equivalent to “no-thing”? And how can that possibly define God? Are we even talking about the same thing?
It sounds to me more like God is deliberately being defined in such a way that he/she/it cannot possibly be conceptualized by the average person. And maybe that is the point (Zen philosophy makes references to “no-thing” and my interpretation of this is that it is used to underscore that thought cannot penetrate certain domains). But to me it just seems somehow evasive . I mean maybe it really does make sense on some level, but the problem I have is that a grand array of pseudo-thinkers latch onto this terminology to justify thier version of what is essentially the same old Christian/Jewish/Islamic God.
As an aside, sitting on my bookshelf right now is Heidegger’s “Being and Time”. I have also invested in “Rephrasing Heidegger: A Companion to Being and Time” by Richard Sembera to help me get through Heidegger. Maybe this will help. Either that or I will walk away permanently damaged. I do not have a plan in place as to when I will start reading these books.