My question is: Where did the physical law come from?
Exerpt from New York Times book review by DWIGHT GARNER of THE GRAND DESIGN
By Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow
Illustrated. 198 pages. Bantam Books/Random House. $28.
Maybe physical laws don’t come from anywhere, they just are.
“Out of nothing” seems excessive. My familiarity with String theory is limited to the popular works by Brian Greene, but from what I gathered from that is that there was no grandiose “out of nothing” creation but a cyclical regeneration. As I remember it, and I am fallible, strings cannot be infinitely compressed the way that Big Bang theory would require.
Now, perhaps there are many universes, dymensions etc, and perhaps none require God. But this belief is itself fantastic and requires a leap of faith…in my opinion.
One “Creator” exists at least, but there could also be another which requires an even greater leap of Faith. Could be a dynamic duo of sorts! The idea sure makes me smile at any rate.
That supposition is the same one atheists use against the God argument.
You answered your own question. Thanks.
There could be anything. Maybe we should stick to considering what there must be if only for simplicity’s sake.
Maybe they aren’t ‘laws’ at all, just random assignations to a set of constants. However, because only certain values of these constants alow a universe to arise with properties permitting life, then… They would seem to be laws to those of sufficient sentiency to ever investigate them.
Do you think the causal argument is sound?
Felix, though I’m not a theist, I agree with you that the comment “But Mr. Hawking and Mr. Mlodinow assert that “their creation does not require the intervention of some supernatural being or god. Rather, these multiple universes arise naturally from physical law.” isn’t very compelling, especially to a theist. Or is that deist? not sure
“Random assignation to a set of constants” is something isn’t it? In order to have “values” "constants’ must in the first place exist am I right?
What causal argument?
M theory isn’t the only theory that espouses an eternal creation of Universes, Smolins loop quantum gravity suggests an eternity of big bangs and flops that constantly recreate the universe from scratch and there are a fair few more that aren’t so well known. I don’t like M-theory (but not because of its ideas about eternally creating multiple universes from membrane collisions that literally create new Universes) just because its even more esoteric and complicated than string theory and doesn’t really do anything more than suggest a theory of anything rather than a theory of everything, ie it is eternally hard to prove with empiricism and doesn’t readilly open itself to it. Practically anything can be used to confirm string theory and M theory because they don’t have to rely on other theories to confirm them, although they can but that would be the theory of anything again. If it doesn’t fit then it will if we do enough compactifying maths and create enough dimensions, that’s not IMHO what science is its more engineering maths to fit anything. But meh enough people would argue against me to make it an interesting topic of discussion. 
The Universe doesn’t need God or any divine will but then we don’t need science at all to make that argument, logic would suffice. 
OK. But you didn’t answer my question.
The causal argument for God’s existence which supposes an uncaused cause is necessary for any model of the universe that has causes and effects. What other causal argument did you have in mind pertaining to the part of your post I quoted?
I’m pretty sure this will boil down to different conceptions of physical laws. You probably understand them as separate entities guiding physical things, making them act in ways we describe as “regular”, others don’t see the distinction and instead conceptualize them as patterns in which physical things interact with eachother. Only one is, imo, epistemologically justified, and other uses a weird sort of ad Baculum to get it’s conclusion accross. It has to be true, otherwise our models of the world are all fucked up!
The little bit I managed to understand is that the moment energy slows enough for particle formation, we have mass and gravity. With mass, we have friction, with gravity, we have attraction, and that’s all that is needed to explain everything in the universe. I’m sure I have it wrong, because I have next to zero understanding of quantum anything, but it sort of made sense to me.
I didn’t ask a single question. But you’re welcomed.
I dunno, is algebra real…? Can I have some…?
I didn’t have one in mind. That’s why I asked you. In this context the uncaused cause would seem to be the physical law Hawkings refers to. You refer to patterns in which physical things interact. That’s fine once there are physical things to interact. But from whence did the physical things “arise”? Quantum fluctuations? What’s fluctuating? Subatomic particles? What caused them?
Based on that alone the answer to why there is something rather than nothing is not given. He’s not saying laws of nature existed before the things they caused but that they appeared with those things, and they differ from universe to universe. If he were saying laws of nature brought something out of nothing, then he’s contradicting his first premise that there was once nothing. If he’s saying laws of nature caused the universe, then he’s just moving the explanation one step further, but not answering any questions. I doubt he’s saying that, but I guess we’ll see.
You’re taking for granted that there was once nothing. What support this view? You’re privy to something. How do you get to nothing from your knowledge of something?
There’s clearly something right in this moment, we know that for sure at the very least, but does this knowledge somehow warrant the conclusion that at one point there wasn’t something? What’s the line of reason that starts from -there is something- and ends with -there once wasn’t something-, and then necessitates an explanation of how things came to be from nothing? Without this, the question of why there is something rather than nothing is just a thought experiment with no significant import on science or philosophy. Sort of like this thread, in that…assuming Hawkins explains why there is something rather than nothing by positing laws of nature as the producer of something, then where did the laws of nature come from? It’s a good question given that initial assumption, but I doubt that’s his explanation.