It is more related to Aether in its Sanskrit origins. "आकाश"
If you're willing to make a linguistic leap, you could argue that "nothingness" or "無" constitutes the essential foundation of modern Japanese philosophy or philosophical Buddhism.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kyoto-school/
IIUC (and with apologies to Grothendieck), Ishida succeeded at 3-dan with a fire spirit, overpowering his opponents. At 8-dan, however, the examiners are looking for the void spirit.
A fire spirit cracks a nut by using a hammer and chisel, striking as needed until the shell cracks.
A void spirit gets the meat by immersing the nut in a softening agent until hand pressure suffices to decorticate, like a perfectly ripened avocado.
Kabbalistic Judaism also addresses the capacity for somethingness to emerge from nothingness. Very interesting interpretations of these metaphysical puzzles.
Tzimtzum, "contraction", proposes that the physical world is infinite somethingness/nothingness (essentially equal representations of one thing) made manifest in the realm of light/waves and distinctions.
Nope, you should read your sources properly, it clearly says that the divine creates something from nothing, NOT that something emerges from nothing by nothing:
"before the universe was created there was only Ayin, and the first manifest Sephirah (Divine emanation), Chochmah (Wisdom), "comes into being out of Ayin."[1] In this context, the sephirah Keter, the Divine will, is the intermediary between the Divine Infinity (Ein Sof) and Chochmah"
so basically, the God entity withdrew (contracted, rescinded) its infinite presence and thus us finite creatures came to be?
I had thought that the nature of the void (i.e. nothingness), or rather, its lack of a nature is what allowed stuff to freely appear into existence (as many times as it wants).
the void imposes no restrictions because it is not really there to impose them.
stuff pops freely into being without requiring any reasoning; requiring a reason would be a restriction which would need to be somehow imposed.
in contrast, they say that, in fact, there wasn't a void, there was only a God entity filling up everything until this entity withdrew from a part of itself (from another part of itself I suppose) so form a space (or a void?) into which creation subsequently appeared
The author TOTALLY misses the point of the question "why is there something rather than nothing". Of course there is something, hence why we are here talking about this at all.
The main problem people grapple with in the question of "why is there something instead of nothing" is how if there was at one point nothing, how is there now something? What caused it?
Further, if there WASN'T at one point nothing, where the hell did all of this something come from?
Considering the first section compresses 1600 years of thoughts it would be surprising if it weren't difficult to digest.
Is nothing really qualitatively different from something? Some greeks held that numbering started at 2, because 1 of something is not a "number of things". It took much longer after 1 was generally accepted as a whole number for 0 to be. These days we often look askance at formal systems which don't have an identity.
(going further back, many old languages have a plural that applies to 3 or more, because 2 of something gets the dual, with its own marking)
> Further, if there WASN'T at one point nothing, where the hell did all of this something come from?
That's easy. "All of this" came from what came before it, and all of that came from what before it, and so on, and so on. Your first question, "If there was at one point nothing, how is there now something?" is far more vexing.
It's actually the same question in a sense, because of the principal of causation and the impossibility of infinite regress, one naturally ponders about the first cause. Before the steady state theory was proved wrong, some would just say that there was no first cause and that the universe had no beginning and no end, but science knows that to be false now.
That's absolutely not true. Science is not certain at all about the origins of the universe. We don't understand the big bang, we don't understand how time and space can seemingly spring from nothing, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a physicist who would claim to know very much at all about the big bang.
It absolutely is true, I was specifically talking about the steady state theory: "While the steady-state model enjoyed some minority support in the scientific mainstream until the mid-20th century, it is now rejected by the vast majority of cosmologists, astrophysicists and astronomers, as the observational evidence points to a hot Big Bang cosmology with a finite age of the universe, which the steady-state model does not predict" [0]
And the observational evidence is interpreted as pointing to a Big Bang. There are other interpretations which don't require a finite age or an initial singularity.
"It receded from serious consideration in the early 1980s after inflation theory emerged as a solution to the horizon problem, which had arisen from advances in observations revealing the large-scale structure of the universe. In the early 2000s, inflation was found by some theorists to be problematic and unfalsifiable in that its various parameters could be adjusted to fit any observations..."
Before the steady state theory was proved wrong, some would just say that there was no first cause and that the universe had no beginning and no end, but science knows that to be false now.
it's the steady state model that science knows not to be true, but not the fact that the universe has no beginning and no end, and not the fact that there was no first cause. Science doesn't know anything of the sort.
Time and space originate from singularity, but singularity doesn't really have time and space, maybe only trivial ones, but trivial space isn't much different from none.
It's not likely that the author of the article on nothingness in the most important academic encyclopedia of philosophy is missing the point of the 'something rather than nothing' question.
One needs to trade off whatever risk there is of fallacious reasoning based on authority with the epistemic dangers of not having the appropriate awareness of, and respect for expertise.
Doubling down on appeal to authority, enhanced with pseudo intellectual drivel, won't help your case, engage with his questions and let's have a proper discussion instead.
It may be useful to do this, but it is not necessary.
Two downfalls of this approach that I see:
1. It increases the likelihood of believing things to be true, that are not actually known to be true
2. Since these things are not known to be true, it can increase societal polarization, because some others are able to see and elaborate that it is actually not known, and this can lead to "warring" tribes, who seem to often let isolated disagreements bleed into their behavior on unrelated matters, such as how they perceive others, or how they vote at the ballot box.
A lot of people seem concerned about the results of #2, but very few people seem to be interested (to put it nicely) in the underlying cause(s).
Conclusions like "It is not conclusively known one way or the other...but all things considered, <x> seems like the most reasonable estimate until we receive more data" are not only possible, but superior, in my opinion.
Then there was 1 and -1, and within each was an entire universe. But the sum total of both of these universes was not more or less than that which came before.
And then the universes of 1 and -1 combined their power and reformed, as zero.
It's like the monthly accounts, all the T diagrams must end up balancing each other out or you've missed something. Accountants are black holes, bringing the universe back into the perfect balance of eventual, and inevitable, nothingness.
"Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
OTOH, you're failing to comprehend what the key word - nothing - means :-) Look here:
> how if there was at one point nothing, how is there now something?
See, you're imagining two points in time. Some stuff exists in the second moment, but not the first. However, since you're saying "one point" and "now" you are assuming that time exists in both instants. But if time exists then this is already something and not nothing. The true nothing excludes time, space and all the junk in it. Nothing is really just
I've always thought of space-time as a convenience for modern thought about how the world works.
We can think about the fact that while we look at a distant galaxy 2 million light years away, that galaxy is in fact at this current moment, doing its own thing and we won't know about it until that light arrives here.
Since we can't observe that galaxy's current state until another 2 million years, it's not very useful to think about it in those terms.
Similarly, we can imagine a time when there was absolutely nothing. It doesn't make sense, but we can imagine it.
We can then imagine what it would take to go from that state into a state where there is matter and other laws of physics and wonder how we went from one state to another.
Then you might suppose that there was never a state of nothingness, and then you might wonder how that could be.
I feel that the author fails to address these basic points of the question "why is there something rather than nothing", so it's hard to move on from that, personally.
The assumption that perpetual nothingness is the expected state of thing seems wrong, there is no evidence of such thing, everything we know about is never truly created, every process we know is a transformation, from "creating" computers to "creating" children, therefore what we are really asking is what were the first transformations if we could look into the past.
No evidence? Says an entity from within the universe bound by its laws. The question transcends those limits. You talk about transformations, how is there even a law that defines what a transformation is. How does a law come into being, how does it enforce or is enforced, how do X laws work together in harmony, why do laws remain constant...
Transformation in the mathematical/physical sense. Every entity in the observable universe that interacts and potentially transforms in consequence,does so according to laws, which I was referring to.
Why shouldn't there be something when once there was nothing?
Because our everyday experience and intuition dictates it?
Our everyday intuition cannot hold a candle to the quantum world.
Hell, our everyday intuition cannot hold a candle to our macro world and to our human everyday affairs.
Why should I concern myself with an open question first asked thousands of years ago?
It is just a grim reminder about thought and knowledge and its limitations, our abstract thoughts helped us become the most successful species of our planets, but being too caught and too serious about our logic and thought is just so silly.
I mean, I get it, it is just an itch that we love to scratch because the thknking itch sensation helped us so much before, but there are just itches we cannot scratch away, by scratching we just make the itching worse.
So, I think I should just enjoy life, embrace and trust my functional humanity.
If some great insight comes from science, great, but I highly doutb it would ever come, and even if it did, how would that change human condition?
Perhaps some great computer in the future will be able to "answer", but I think the answer will most likely be so unspeakable and not a coherent answer, sort of like Alpha Go's way of playing GO, probably cannot be summed in a coherent GO strategy book.
Exactly, there is a good chance we don't have (and never will have) the neural power or processing power needed to figure out how things "started" because our frame of reference of how things should work ("things must have come from somewhere!") is very likely insufficient.
This is what Krauss is often mocked for, because he sneakily redefines "nothing" to include quantum fields, which is not nothing. Even the first comment under the YT video you posted puts it quite well: "Literally " nothing " by definition, should be one devoid of " quantum fields ". And, the question should be where did " quantum fields " come from?"
Which is answered in the video - which is we don't know.
What we know is that there is no "nothing" as we understand or define it.
At the end of the video he says "We can't prove that we came from nothing, But it's plausible." from our limited understanding of whats going on in empty space. I don't know why you think "Krauss is often mocked for" this - because this is not unique to Krauss personal interpretation but there is scientific consensus within the community.
We can't tell where quantum fields came from the same way we can't tell for sure what happened before the big bang - other than the fact that we know it happened.
> I don't know why you think "Krauss is often mocked for" this
Exactly for the reason I wrote above, because his definition of "nothing" is NOT nothing. Quantum fields are something.
To make a pompous proclamation like " UNIVERSE FROM NOTHING", then admit that 1. nothing was deceptively redefined 2. that you don't even know for sure.
That seems to be more than enough valid reasons for people to mock him, I personally don't care about Krauss either way, if he can make money using such tactics, good on him.
Also "scientific consensus" doesn't mean much when it comes to cosmology, since there was "scientific consensus" on many false theories like the steady state theory. Making such an argument is often nothing but an appeal to authority in disguise, in order to validate fragile ideas.
I am not entirely sure what are you arguing against.
- We don't know or its not possible to know what came before something.
- After Big bang, nothing (as you define it), doesn't exist to the best of our understanding.
We both seems to agree on this two key point. So what are you exactly arguing against?
"We don't know yet." is really the answer to whatever you are mad about. Krauss or pick-your-favorite-scientists doesn't really shy away from this fact.
Are you mad because of the wording "UNIVERSE FROM NOTHING", then you just judging the book by its cover.
Sorry it's pointless to have a dialogue with you, since you are unable to retain the information after you tried to consume it.
>"We don't know yet." is really the answer to whatever you are mad about. .
I explained it perfectly well above, why people are mocking him, I also said the following: "I personally don't care about Krauss either way, if he can make money using such tactics, good on him." so your accusation of being mad is nonsense.
>Are you mad because of the wording "UNIVERSE FROM NOTHING", then you just judging the book by its cover.
I am making clear arguments devoid of any emotions, you seem to be hallucinating. I argued against the deceptive nature of Krauss' formulation of "nothing" which is not nothing, which is not "judging a book by it's cover" it's judging the deceptive nature of his rhetoric, which he has also demonstrated in many appearances on TV. And again, I don't care about Krauss either way, if he can make good money by that, good on him.
Didn't even know he was pro-religious until you mentioned it - I was genuinely confused what he was trying to say. He never explicitly mention religion - now that you brought it up, it makes sense. I always try to shy away from religious discussion - online or offline - so this was not intentional from my side.
Well, clearly mind would need a nontrivial idea about nothingness. But you seemingly don't see a difference between nothingness and an idea of nothingness?
The question can be reformulated as whether non-existence (nothingness) exists which is obviously a contradiction. Nothingness is the opposite of existence and hence it does not exist by definition.
Very clever. A whole article (book?) could no doubt be devoted to that logical trick; how a seemingly reasonable argument can lead to such absurd conclusions.
Maybe it was covered in the article, which I didn't read yet (either?). I might have to though, because it touches on a subject which interests me more and more; that of language, perception and meaning vs reality. For example, in the case of "nothing" I would propose that it has a meaning in everyday language that doesn't make it into the dictionaries or thesauri: that it partly means (or can mean) that which has not been discovered yet.
This type of definition differs from a strict logical definition (in which nothing would mean absolutely nothing, void, emptiness, non-existence). Much confusion can be had from mixing the logic of language (terms that are logical/mathematical in nature if you will), with meaning, which is has to be the essence of language.
I like to ponder whether the territory is some giant graph of abstract conscious agents, and space-time as perceived is a simplified map of one’s adjacent nodes (connected agents).
Of course, this puts conventional causality on its head and at this point is ultimately unfalsifiable.
Nothingness in mathematics is an issue and a problem. Proof by contradiction was at one time controversial. That the empty set is unique is an axiom in some versions of set theory.
An operational definition of nothingness is that you apply a sensing operation to something, and if the sensing operation does not succeed, the thing being sensed is a nothingness. Nothingness is defined by the sensing operation. This resolves some, but not all, of the problems.
The other side of this is "what is a something"? That's what led Democritus to invent atoms as a philosophical primitive. Everything bigger than an atom is a grouping of atoms and is defined by some abstraction over the primitives. Straightforward. Then came subatomic physics.
The article contains a theological discussion which is just the first cause argument for God. The answer to "who created God" is usually "shut up, kid". That argument hasn't had much traction in recent centuries.
(I once took "Epistemological problems in artificial intelligence" from John McCarthy. People were serious about this stuff when the logicians ruled AI. Today, not so much.)
> The answer to "who created God" is usually "shut up, kid".
No, that's rather a popular atheist misrepresentation of the theist position. The question itself has a hidden, but false premise, namely that God is created. The position of abrahamic religions is that God, by definition, is an uncreated being and thus a created God is commonly referred to as an idol, a false God.
The OP is being cheeky with that comment - God as a first cause is really orthogonal to abrahamic religion and many arguments are in full agreement with the "original cause" being uncreated. OP is likely alluding to current popular conceptions of time as finite [1] (which has implications/problems for any hypothetical first cause).
Most people are being cheeky when they use that popular misrepresentation of the theistic position, because in many cases it goes unchallenged, thus it becomes a low effort high result quip that perpetuates false ideas.
You don't see a distinction, because you don't want to see a distinction. It's very simple, not only does asking "what came before god, or what created him", bring you to where we started - the impossibility of infinite regress, thus nothing existing - but also the fallacious nature of your question implying that God is a created being, which is false, created Gods are idols. As explained above: "that's like looking at the painting of Mona Lisa and asking "but who painted Leonardo Davinci?", while Davinci is the painter, he is a human, not a painting, creator and created don't have to be of the same nature."
It's one thing to deepen the discussion by contributing new ideas and a whole other thing to just stubbornly insist on making fallacious arguments and repeat them like you did. So unless you prove this time that you're not deaf to the arguments being made, I won't even bother next time...
Not really, as demonstrated: A: Why must there be a god? T: The universe had to come from somewhere; how do you explain all of this; something must have created it! A: Who created god? T: God has always existed. A: WTH.
> A: Who created god? T: God has always existed A: WTH
The fallacious nature of that question has been explained above, yet you ignored it just to repeat it, that's just baffling. Again, to ask "Who created God" doesn't make sense, because God is not a created being, created Gods are idols.
That's like looking at the painting of Mona Lisa and asking "but who painted Leonardo Davinci?", while Davinci is the painter, he is a human, not a painting, creator and created don't have to be of the same nature. You clearly have no interest in understanding the issue, as you already conveniently ignored the explanation of the fallacious nature of the question before, just to mindlessly repeat it.
I believe that the fundamental core issue in this never ending debate is that neither side knows the truth, but realizing that one does not know something is not only difficult, but counter to human nature (so it seems to me, based on observing human behavior across domains). I wonder what difference it would make in the world if more people became able to realize that a massive amount of the things they (and we, broader mankind) believe they know to be true, are actually unknown. Would there perhaps be less polarization and conflict, and more understanding and harmony?
Lol. Ok, my entire comment went over your head. You say that "God is not a created being". But I say "Why is God not a created being? Why do you say that?" The only answer I've ever heard to that is "Well, if God created everything else, then how can there be something greater than God?" You say, "God is greater, of a different nature, etc. etc." But that's just what you say, there's no logical reason why that has to be the case. Yes, God's parent God created God, who created the Universe. Since God is fundamentally different than all "lesser things", there is no contradiction there. God-stuff made other God-stuff, which made non-God-stuff. You can't have it both (all) ways. I say: "God emerged from primordial God goo, and it will return to primordial God goo when it feels like it." Or whatever; it's just philosophical posturing. I can make up things that don't exist which have no foundational rules as well as anyone else. Nothing makes any of it true, or necessarily as someone says it is (it's all "belief by convention").
> Ok, my entire comment went over your head. You say that "God is not a created being". But I say "Why is God not a created being? Why do you say that?" The only answer I've ever heard to that is "Well, if God created everything else, then how can there be something greater than God?"
Missed me with that gaslight. You ignore arguments and then claim that no argument was given. Reread what's been written regarding the question: "Why is God not a created being?", because it would cause an infinite regress, thus nothing would have ever begin to exist, but that contradicts manifest reality, thus there must necessarily have been an uncaused cause starting the chain of events. That's why abrahamic religions describe God as the alpha and the omega, the entity without beginning and no end. It's really perplexing, when you regurgitate statements that have been addressed and claim that they haven't been addressed, makes one really doubt the value in engaging in such discussion to begin with.
I'm not trying to be merely argumentative or dismissive. I understand the words that you've written; I'm saying that there's no real point in them. You're saying (aren't you?): "The way I define God, this other thing must be true." While I'm saying, "So what?" If you are arguing strictly that, according to a specific theology, "this implies that", then great. But you sound more like you are saying, "This is true, therefore that must be true", which is a very different thing. I'm not arguing about your definitions, I'm arguing about the application of your logic to the real Universe. And I'm not arguing as an atheist, but simply as someone evaluating the discussion thread and what you said in that context. But, you seem to have "not addressed" my whole "God goo" thing, which completely demolishes any non-strictly-Abrahamic-definition-of-God argument. If God split itself into two equal parts, would they still not be "alpha and omega"? But feel free to disengage if you feel there's no value in engaging further. :)
> I'm not trying to be merely argumentative or dismissive.
Then try harder I guess, because that's exactly what you are doing.
> I understand the words that you've written; I'm saying that there's no real point in them.
Yet in your supposed 'refutation' you clearly demonstrated that you haven't understood the argument at all, because you outright ignored it and continued paraphrasing already addressed points.
> "The way I define God, this other thing must be true."
False, this is a straw man and proves again that you can't be bothered to understand the argument, because it goes against your narrative. The argument is from the principle of causality and a proof by contradiction of the infinite regress. The first mover, the uncaused cause fits the description of how God describes himself in scripture.
This was in reaction to the popular atheist misrepresentation of what theists supposedly believe.
>But you sound more like you are saying, "This is true, therefore that must be true", which is a very different thing.
That's not even remotely what I said and reflects your poor reading and thinking skills.
> I'm not arguing about your definitions, I'm arguing about the application of your logic to the real Universe.
Yet you failed to propose a single coherent argument and instead resorted to misrepresenting and ignoring arguments in order to engage in the usual atheist rants.
> But, you seem to have "not addressed" my whole "God goo" thing, which completely demolishes any non-strictly-Abrahamic-definition-of-God argument.
Your "God goo thing" is a non argument based on your distortion of the given arguments, it doesn't demolish anything except itself.
> If God split itself into two equal parts, would they still not be "alpha and omega"? But feel free to disengage if you feel there's no value in engaging further. :)
That is the most nonsensical and contrived hypothetical I heard in these discussions and I am actually baffled that you would think that it makes remotely sense. What if you were a frog and had an IQ below 50, would I still need to take you seriously? Hypothetical of course, but feel free to disengage if you feel there's no value in engaging such an absurd question.
Sorry, my main point was: If you press a believer on why there must be a god in order to explain things, they will always point to the necessity of a god, that things had to come from somewhere. But there is never any necessity for god to come from somewhere. Of course, the definition of "god" is different than "things that are not god". The point is the intellectual dishonesty of arguing that their definition of the nature of god necessitates the existence of their defined god.
> they will always point to the necessity of a god, that things had to come from somewhere. But there is never any necessity for god to come from somewhere.
Of course people will and should point to the necessity of an entity that had to be the starting point of a chain of events, this is just common sense, ex nihilo nihil fit.
> But there is never any necessity for god to come from somewhere. Of course, the definition of "god" is different than "things that are not god". The point is the intellectual dishonesty of arguing that their definition of the nature of god necessitates the existence of their defined god.
As explained several times, the reason for that is quite simple, because of the principal of causality and the impossibility of infinite regress, it's the natural logical conclusion.
Are you going to infinitely regurgitate and paraphrase your same misunderstanding of the fundamental arguments? If so tell me, such that I can write an AI which infinitely paraphrases the same answer until you get it.
> [...] because of the principal of causality and the impossibility of infinite regress, it's the natural logical conclusion.
It's only the "natural logical conclusion" under certain assumptions or axioms. For example, "infinite regress is impossible" is one such assumption – an assumption which isn't any more natural than "a first cause is impossible".
> If so tell me, such that I can write an AI which infinitely paraphrases the same answer until you get it.
> It's only the "natural logical conclusion" under certain assumptions or axioms. For example, "infinite regress is impossible" is one such assumption – an assumption which isn't any more natural than "a first cause is impossible".
False. It's neither an assumption nor an axiom, it's a proof by contradiction.
> Please don't be a jerk.
If gently pushing back against deceptive rhetoric derailing the discussion by repeatedly ignoring arguments is classified as being a "jerk' while the offending behavior is not, then it's clearly the judgment that is biased and applied unevenly.
(Sorry, I replied to the other response before I read this one.) "natural logical conclusion" and "common sense": the words "natural", "logical" and "conclusion" (and certainly the phrase "common sense") have no meaning in a theological context. People who believe in the same religion can't even agree on what they believe in. I think you are confusing "I believe this and it makes sense to me" with "I believe this so this is the way things must be". You don't seem to understand that you are inside this bottle, which is why you don't understand what I'm trying to tell you. Even if there were something from which our Universe came (directly or indirectly, actively or passively), that existed before it and will exist after it (forever and ever, outside of time and space), even if it were infinite in every way imaginable and unimaginable, it still wouldn't be anything like what you or anyone else call "God/god/gods". "principal of causality and the impossibility of infinite regress": Are you seriously arguing that God (which by your definition lies outside of all of our Universal constraints and preconceptions) must existbecause of things that only apply in the context of our known Universe? Finally, I don't mind being talked down to, but you are not really presenting any arguments that merit your arrogant tone. But, it's all in good fun.
> the words "natural", "logical" and "conclusion" (and certainly the phrase "common sense") have no meaning in a theological context.
Nitpicking semantics is not a substitute for an argument and making such ignorant assertions doesn't help your case.
> People who believe in the same religion can't even agree on what they believe in.
People generally agree on the fundamentals and argue on edge issues, but even if that were true for argument's sake, it still doesn't invalidate the argument in the very least, because it's independent of religion and is used by theists from a wide spectrum and philosophers alike.
> I think you are confusing "I believe this and it makes sense to me" with "I believe this so this is the way things must be".
That's a petty distortion and a non argument. It describes your own behavior better than anyone else's, a classic case of projection.
> Even if there were something from which our Universe came (directly or indirectly, actively or passively), that existed before it and will exist after it (forever and ever, outside of time and space), even if it were infinite in every way imaginable and unimaginable, it still wouldn't be anything like what you or anyone else call "God/god/gods"
You just made an assertion without any argument or evidence. Not that I made that argument to begin with, but it still reveals a lot about your mindset.
>"principal of causality and the impossibility of infinite regress": Are you seriously arguing that God (which by your definition lies outside of all of our Universal constraints and preconceptions) must exist because of things that only apply in the context of our known Universe?
No, where did I ever make such a claim or put it that way? That's just your usual misrepresentation of the argument, I explained it many times, not going to paraphrase it for the nth time, just scroll up and read it with intellectual honesty.
> Finally, I don't mind being talked down to, but you are not really presenting any arguments that merit your arrogant tone. But, it's all in good fun.
Criticizing obviously deceptive rhetoric is not being arrogant, it's a verifiable claim and is necessary in order to prevent the discussion from being derailed and manipulated.
I have no idea what the obsession with 'Cameron Winklevoss' is but it's kind of funny that he's an actual person and not some tradition like 'Alice' and 'Bob' in cryptography.
Also the inhabitant of the empty set is omnipotent, so the first assumption is actually that there is no God.
93 comments
[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 160 ms ] threadThe fifth element is synonymous with "void" or "sky", ie "空".
For a slightly abstract and colorful philosophy of martial arts, you may enjoy Miyamoto Musashi's Book of Void. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Five_Rings
It is more related to Aether in its Sanskrit origins. "आकाश"
If you're willing to make a linguistic leap, you could argue that "nothingness" or "無" constitutes the essential foundation of modern Japanese philosophy or philosophical Buddhism. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kyoto-school/
TIL Shamil[1] was a نقشبندية Sufi, probably one of the few to have his own ניגון tune[2].
[1] of whom I am always reminded when people in the US write about being "caucasian". Here are actual caucasians:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTdXQabTTRg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-V9vStmsLA
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwaXiur3GK8
Consider:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmLfnWwP0g0&t=280 (4:40 to 7:00)
IIUC (and with apologies to Grothendieck), Ishida succeeded at 3-dan with a fire spirit, overpowering his opponents. At 8-dan, however, the examiners are looking for the void spirit.
A fire spirit cracks a nut by using a hammer and chisel, striking as needed until the shell cracks.
A void spirit gets the meat by immersing the nut in a softening agent until hand pressure suffices to decorticate, like a perfectly ripened avocado.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayin_and_Yesh
Tzimtzum, "contraction", proposes that the physical world is infinite somethingness/nothingness (essentially equal representations of one thing) made manifest in the realm of light/waves and distinctions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzimtzum
I had thought that the nature of the void (i.e. nothingness), or rather, its lack of a nature is what allowed stuff to freely appear into existence (as many times as it wants).
the void imposes no restrictions because it is not really there to impose them.
stuff pops freely into being without requiring any reasoning; requiring a reason would be a restriction which would need to be somehow imposed.
in contrast, they say that, in fact, there wasn't a void, there was only a God entity filling up everything until this entity withdrew from a part of itself (from another part of itself I suppose) so form a space (or a void?) into which creation subsequently appeared
The author TOTALLY misses the point of the question "why is there something rather than nothing". Of course there is something, hence why we are here talking about this at all.
The main problem people grapple with in the question of "why is there something instead of nothing" is how if there was at one point nothing, how is there now something? What caused it?
Further, if there WASN'T at one point nothing, where the hell did all of this something come from?
Is nothing really qualitatively different from something? Some greeks held that numbering started at 2, because 1 of something is not a "number of things". It took much longer after 1 was generally accepted as a whole number for 0 to be. These days we often look askance at formal systems which don't have an identity.
(going further back, many old languages have a plural that applies to 3 or more, because 2 of something gets the dual, with its own marking)
That's easy. "All of this" came from what came before it, and all of that came from what before it, and so on, and so on. Your first question, "If there was at one point nothing, how is there now something?" is far more vexing.
That's absolutely not true. Science is not certain at all about the origins of the universe. We don't understand the big bang, we don't understand how time and space can seemingly spring from nothing, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a physicist who would claim to know very much at all about the big bang.
>That's absolutely not true.
It absolutely is true, I was specifically talking about the steady state theory: "While the steady-state model enjoyed some minority support in the scientific mainstream until the mid-20th century, it is now rejected by the vast majority of cosmologists, astrophysicists and astronomers, as the observational evidence points to a hot Big Bang cosmology with a finite age of the universe, which the steady-state model does not predict" [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady-state_model
And the observational evidence is interpreted as pointing to a Big Bang. There are other interpretations which don't require a finite age or an initial singularity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bounce
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
it's the steady state model that science knows not to be true, but not the fact that the universe has no beginning and no end, and not the fact that there was no first cause. Science doesn't know anything of the sort.
Two downfalls of this approach that I see:
1. It increases the likelihood of believing things to be true, that are not actually known to be true
2. Since these things are not known to be true, it can increase societal polarization, because some others are able to see and elaborate that it is actually not known, and this can lead to "warring" tribes, who seem to often let isolated disagreements bleed into their behavior on unrelated matters, such as how they perceive others, or how they vote at the ballot box.
A lot of people seem concerned about the results of #2, but very few people seem to be interested (to put it nicely) in the underlying cause(s).
Conclusions like "It is not conclusively known one way or the other...but all things considered, <x> seems like the most reasonable estimate until we receive more data" are not only possible, but superior, in my opinion.
There are two possibilities -
1. There is something, and it has always existed. 2. There is something, and it once did not exist.
Either one is weird.
The author doesn't address this, and I feel, despite their sparkling credentials, that they should have.
Then there was 1 and -1, and within each was an entire universe. But the sum total of both of these universes was not more or less than that which came before.
And then the universes of 1 and -1 combined their power and reformed, as zero.
It's like the monthly accounts, all the T diagrams must end up balancing each other out or you've missed something. Accountants are black holes, bringing the universe back into the perfect balance of eventual, and inevitable, nothingness.
The most fundamental rule: There can not be nothing, but all the things that are not nothing cannot add up to more than nothing.
OTOH, you're failing to comprehend what the key word - nothing - means :-) Look here:
> how if there was at one point nothing, how is there now something?
See, you're imagining two points in time. Some stuff exists in the second moment, but not the first. However, since you're saying "one point" and "now" you are assuming that time exists in both instants. But if time exists then this is already something and not nothing. The true nothing excludes time, space and all the junk in it. Nothing is really just
We can think about the fact that while we look at a distant galaxy 2 million light years away, that galaxy is in fact at this current moment, doing its own thing and we won't know about it until that light arrives here.
Since we can't observe that galaxy's current state until another 2 million years, it's not very useful to think about it in those terms.
Similarly, we can imagine a time when there was absolutely nothing. It doesn't make sense, but we can imagine it.
We can then imagine what it would take to go from that state into a state where there is matter and other laws of physics and wonder how we went from one state to another.
Then you might suppose that there was never a state of nothingness, and then you might wonder how that could be.
I feel that the author fails to address these basic points of the question "why is there something rather than nothing", so it's hard to move on from that, personally.
Because our everyday experience and intuition dictates it?
Our everyday intuition cannot hold a candle to the quantum world. Hell, our everyday intuition cannot hold a candle to our macro world and to our human everyday affairs.
Why should I concern myself with an open question first asked thousands of years ago?
It is just a grim reminder about thought and knowledge and its limitations, our abstract thoughts helped us become the most successful species of our planets, but being too caught and too serious about our logic and thought is just so silly.
I mean, I get it, it is just an itch that we love to scratch because the thknking itch sensation helped us so much before, but there are just itches we cannot scratch away, by scratching we just make the itching worse.
So, I think I should just enjoy life, embrace and trust my functional humanity.
If some great insight comes from science, great, but I highly doutb it would ever come, and even if it did, how would that change human condition?
Perhaps some great computer in the future will be able to "answer", but I think the answer will most likely be so unspeakable and not a coherent answer, sort of like Alpha Go's way of playing GO, probably cannot be summed in a coherent GO strategy book.
On the other hand nothingness itself can be a cause. Is it different from any other cause?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9urEFoaI1iY
What we know is that there is no "nothing" as we understand or define it.
At the end of the video he says "We can't prove that we came from nothing, But it's plausible." from our limited understanding of whats going on in empty space. I don't know why you think "Krauss is often mocked for" this - because this is not unique to Krauss personal interpretation but there is scientific consensus within the community.
We can't tell where quantum fields came from the same way we can't tell for sure what happened before the big bang - other than the fact that we know it happened.
Exactly for the reason I wrote above, because his definition of "nothing" is NOT nothing. Quantum fields are something.
To make a pompous proclamation like " UNIVERSE FROM NOTHING", then admit that 1. nothing was deceptively redefined 2. that you don't even know for sure. That seems to be more than enough valid reasons for people to mock him, I personally don't care about Krauss either way, if he can make money using such tactics, good on him.
Also "scientific consensus" doesn't mean much when it comes to cosmology, since there was "scientific consensus" on many false theories like the steady state theory. Making such an argument is often nothing but an appeal to authority in disguise, in order to validate fragile ideas.
- We don't know or its not possible to know what came before something.
- After Big bang, nothing (as you define it), doesn't exist to the best of our understanding.
We both seems to agree on this two key point. So what are you exactly arguing against?
"We don't know yet." is really the answer to whatever you are mad about. Krauss or pick-your-favorite-scientists doesn't really shy away from this fact.
Are you mad because of the wording "UNIVERSE FROM NOTHING", then you just judging the book by its cover.
>"We don't know yet." is really the answer to whatever you are mad about. .
I explained it perfectly well above, why people are mocking him, I also said the following: "I personally don't care about Krauss either way, if he can make money using such tactics, good on him." so your accusation of being mad is nonsense.
>Are you mad because of the wording "UNIVERSE FROM NOTHING", then you just judging the book by its cover.
I am making clear arguments devoid of any emotions, you seem to be hallucinating. I argued against the deceptive nature of Krauss' formulation of "nothing" which is not nothing, which is not "judging a book by it's cover" it's judging the deceptive nature of his rhetoric, which he has also demonstrated in many appearances on TV. And again, I don't care about Krauss either way, if he can make good money by that, good on him.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
how can you even imagine that there's nothing? what are you really imagining when you think of "nothing"?
clearly anything which you imagine is something being imagined by you, how is that "nothingness"?
Maybe it was covered in the article, which I didn't read yet (either?). I might have to though, because it touches on a subject which interests me more and more; that of language, perception and meaning vs reality. For example, in the case of "nothing" I would propose that it has a meaning in everyday language that doesn't make it into the dictionaries or thesauri: that it partly means (or can mean) that which has not been discovered yet.
This type of definition differs from a strict logical definition (in which nothing would mean absolutely nothing, void, emptiness, non-existence). Much confusion can be had from mixing the logic of language (terms that are logical/mathematical in nature if you will), with meaning, which is has to be the essence of language.
Of course, this puts conventional causality on its head and at this point is ultimately unfalsifiable.
An operational definition of nothingness is that you apply a sensing operation to something, and if the sensing operation does not succeed, the thing being sensed is a nothingness. Nothingness is defined by the sensing operation. This resolves some, but not all, of the problems.
The other side of this is "what is a something"? That's what led Democritus to invent atoms as a philosophical primitive. Everything bigger than an atom is a grouping of atoms and is defined by some abstraction over the primitives. Straightforward. Then came subatomic physics.
The article contains a theological discussion which is just the first cause argument for God. The answer to "who created God" is usually "shut up, kid". That argument hasn't had much traction in recent centuries.
(I once took "Epistemological problems in artificial intelligence" from John McCarthy. People were serious about this stuff when the logicians ruled AI. Today, not so much.)
No, that's rather a popular atheist misrepresentation of the theist position. The question itself has a hidden, but false premise, namely that God is created. The position of abrahamic religions is that God, by definition, is an uncreated being and thus a created God is commonly referred to as an idol, a false God.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_finitism
Most people are being cheeky when they use that popular misrepresentation of the theistic position, because in many cases it goes unchallenged, thus it becomes a low effort high result quip that perpetuates false ideas.
“God has always been”
and:
“Don’t ask what created god”
Either explanation dismisses outright the idea that we should even care what came before god, or what created him, etc.
It's one thing to deepen the discussion by contributing new ideas and a whole other thing to just stubbornly insist on making fallacious arguments and repeat them like you did. So unless you prove this time that you're not deaf to the arguments being made, I won't even bother next time...
Is that your belief, or are you stating the belief of the Abrahamic religions? Clarifying this might ease the mutual understanding in this discussion.
The fallacious nature of that question has been explained above, yet you ignored it just to repeat it, that's just baffling. Again, to ask "Who created God" doesn't make sense, because God is not a created being, created Gods are idols. That's like looking at the painting of Mona Lisa and asking "but who painted Leonardo Davinci?", while Davinci is the painter, he is a human, not a painting, creator and created don't have to be of the same nature. You clearly have no interest in understanding the issue, as you already conveniently ignored the explanation of the fallacious nature of the question before, just to mindlessly repeat it.
Missed me with that gaslight. You ignore arguments and then claim that no argument was given. Reread what's been written regarding the question: "Why is God not a created being?", because it would cause an infinite regress, thus nothing would have ever begin to exist, but that contradicts manifest reality, thus there must necessarily have been an uncaused cause starting the chain of events. That's why abrahamic religions describe God as the alpha and the omega, the entity without beginning and no end. It's really perplexing, when you regurgitate statements that have been addressed and claim that they haven't been addressed, makes one really doubt the value in engaging in such discussion to begin with.
Then try harder I guess, because that's exactly what you are doing.
> I understand the words that you've written; I'm saying that there's no real point in them.
Yet in your supposed 'refutation' you clearly demonstrated that you haven't understood the argument at all, because you outright ignored it and continued paraphrasing already addressed points.
> "The way I define God, this other thing must be true."
False, this is a straw man and proves again that you can't be bothered to understand the argument, because it goes against your narrative. The argument is from the principle of causality and a proof by contradiction of the infinite regress. The first mover, the uncaused cause fits the description of how God describes himself in scripture.
This was in reaction to the popular atheist misrepresentation of what theists supposedly believe.
>But you sound more like you are saying, "This is true, therefore that must be true", which is a very different thing.
That's not even remotely what I said and reflects your poor reading and thinking skills.
> I'm not arguing about your definitions, I'm arguing about the application of your logic to the real Universe.
Yet you failed to propose a single coherent argument and instead resorted to misrepresenting and ignoring arguments in order to engage in the usual atheist rants.
> But, you seem to have "not addressed" my whole "God goo" thing, which completely demolishes any non-strictly-Abrahamic-definition-of-God argument.
Your "God goo thing" is a non argument based on your distortion of the given arguments, it doesn't demolish anything except itself.
> If God split itself into two equal parts, would they still not be "alpha and omega"? But feel free to disengage if you feel there's no value in engaging further. :)
That is the most nonsensical and contrived hypothetical I heard in these discussions and I am actually baffled that you would think that it makes remotely sense. What if you were a frog and had an IQ below 50, would I still need to take you seriously? Hypothetical of course, but feel free to disengage if you feel there's no value in engaging such an absurd question.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Of course people will and should point to the necessity of an entity that had to be the starting point of a chain of events, this is just common sense, ex nihilo nihil fit.
> But there is never any necessity for god to come from somewhere. Of course, the definition of "god" is different than "things that are not god". The point is the intellectual dishonesty of arguing that their definition of the nature of god necessitates the existence of their defined god.
As explained several times, the reason for that is quite simple, because of the principal of causality and the impossibility of infinite regress, it's the natural logical conclusion. Are you going to infinitely regurgitate and paraphrase your same misunderstanding of the fundamental arguments? If so tell me, such that I can write an AI which infinitely paraphrases the same answer until you get it.
It's only the "natural logical conclusion" under certain assumptions or axioms. For example, "infinite regress is impossible" is one such assumption – an assumption which isn't any more natural than "a first cause is impossible".
> If so tell me, such that I can write an AI which infinitely paraphrases the same answer until you get it.
Please don't be a jerk.
False. It's neither an assumption nor an axiom, it's a proof by contradiction.
> Please don't be a jerk.
If gently pushing back against deceptive rhetoric derailing the discussion by repeatedly ignoring arguments is classified as being a "jerk' while the offending behavior is not, then it's clearly the judgment that is biased and applied unevenly.
Nitpicking semantics is not a substitute for an argument and making such ignorant assertions doesn't help your case.
> People who believe in the same religion can't even agree on what they believe in.
People generally agree on the fundamentals and argue on edge issues, but even if that were true for argument's sake, it still doesn't invalidate the argument in the very least, because it's independent of religion and is used by theists from a wide spectrum and philosophers alike.
> I think you are confusing "I believe this and it makes sense to me" with "I believe this so this is the way things must be".
That's a petty distortion and a non argument. It describes your own behavior better than anyone else's, a classic case of projection.
> Even if there were something from which our Universe came (directly or indirectly, actively or passively), that existed before it and will exist after it (forever and ever, outside of time and space), even if it were infinite in every way imaginable and unimaginable, it still wouldn't be anything like what you or anyone else call "God/god/gods"
You just made an assertion without any argument or evidence. Not that I made that argument to begin with, but it still reveals a lot about your mindset.
>"principal of causality and the impossibility of infinite regress": Are you seriously arguing that God (which by your definition lies outside of all of our Universal constraints and preconceptions) must exist because of things that only apply in the context of our known Universe?
No, where did I ever make such a claim or put it that way? That's just your usual misrepresentation of the argument, I explained it many times, not going to paraphrase it for the nth time, just scroll up and read it with intellectual honesty.
> Finally, I don't mind being talked down to, but you are not really presenting any arguments that merit your arrogant tone. But, it's all in good fun.
Criticizing obviously deceptive rhetoric is not being arrogant, it's a verifiable claim and is necessary in order to prevent the discussion from being derailed and manipulated.
Also the inhabitant of the empty set is omnipotent, so the first assumption is actually that there is no God.