can the universe come from nothing?

i started this thread because i was afraid that this blind theory of 'something from nothing' was beginning sound a lot like the rhetoric and 'reasoning' of religious people.

when religious people have no understanding of events they make stuff up. what this theory tells me is that when certain physicists have no understanding of events they also just make stuff up.

asking me to prove the universe can come from nothing is exactly the same as a religious person asking to prove that god does not exist? surely you can see that?

I'm not aware of any good reason to suppose it can't. It strikes me as entirely plausible that the universe could simply have popped into existence from nothing.

As for Krauss, I'm not going to watch that two-hour video, but I'm aware of his views here. In fact, he does not defend the claim that the universe came from nothing. It might seem as though he defends that claim; but he uses the word "nothing" in a completely nonstandard way. "Nothing", to Krauss, does not mean what it means to almost every other English-speaking person. Krauss's views are irrelevant to this thread.

As for Krauss, I'm not going to watch that two-hour video, but I'm aware of his views here. In fact, he does not defend the claim that the universe came from nothing. It might seem as though he defends that claim; but he uses the word "nothing" in a completely nonstandard way. "Nothing", to Krauss, does not mean what it means to almost every other English-speaking person. Krauss's views are irrelevant to this thread.

No they're not, his views are more than relevant. He's the theoretical physicist, not us.

In the same way that when he says 'nothing', there's a lot more to the definition to the word than what we know it as.

So what do you think is the "standard" way to define nothing? Do you think laypeople draw a distinction between a "nothing" with physical laws and one without them? It had never even crossed my mind that "nothing" could mean something without physical laws until I read discussions such at these; I'd always assumed physical laws were not "things" and just pervaded the universe by necessity.

Regardless, Krauss goes into some detail on definitions of nothing so I'm not quite sure where you take issue!

I couldn't care less that he's a theoretical physicist. Do you accept everything every theoretical physicist says?


Which is just to repeat what I said - that he's using the word "nothing" in a nonstandard way. Hence, when Krauss asks "can the universe come from nothing?", that question does not mean what it means when almost any other person asks "can the universe come from nothing?" This is not to say that there's anything wrong with Krauss's definition. People can define words however they like. But he's just not talking about the same question as the rest of us (again, this is not to say there's anything wrong with the question he is talking about; it may be a perfectly fine and interesting question).

I may be cautious with everything a theoretical physicist says but I'm going to listen to him before anyone else on this matter because he's the expert.

And not quite, although he defines nothing as a physical quantity, that physical quantity can still include not having any space, any time, any radiation, any particles... that's a pretty good estimation of the nothing we're all talking about.

...

I may be cautious with everything a theoretical physicist says but I'm going to listen to him before anyone else on this matter because he's the expert.

And not quite, although he defines nothing as a physical quantity, that physical quantity can still include not having any space, any time, any radiation, any particles... that's a pretty good estimation of the nothing we're all talking about.

This argument indicates to me that, at some point, we have a HUGE misunderstanding of physics. Fair enough, we can understand many things that are happening now, but there is a very big lapse of information when it comes to going further back. Perhaps we shall never know.

But the only thing I say is that SOMETHING must have come from nothing at some point to be the first thing that existed. Existence is something that messes with my head a bit. I can understand evolution and the formation of the universe.. but what comes before that is mind-blowing. Because surely there isn't an infinite number of years that we can go back, but everything has to have a beginning.. or does it? Refer back to my first paragraph.

There's something that we, as human beings, do not yet know or understand. When we do, although it probably won't be in our lifetime, the huge questions such as these will start to make more sense.

This isn't true. Something can have always existed which means it was never "created" because it always existed

lol wow

You're making perfect sense.




Nothing is not an object. Some people do treat nothing as an infinitely small quantity where nothing exists but this is the wrong way of describing nothing.

One of the reasons is because the word nothing is not well defined. If I open the fridge I might and usually do say "ffs there's nothing in the fridge" which is just a badly structured sentence because I am literally saying "There is something in the fridge, but it's nothing."

Here is a better way of thinking about it.... Nothing is true if and only if everything else is false. I could use a truth table but I don't think I need to go that far lol.

So are you disagreeing with Krauss when he says nothing is a physical quantity in the preface of his book?


Posted from TSR Mobile

Incorrect, something can always have existed, meaning it's eternal.

Physical laws are very arguably not concrete objects like, say, trees and cars, and "thing" can be used in a restricted sense to refer only to concrete objects. However, "thing" is also used in a broader sense to refer to any object, property, state of affairs, etc. Here's the first entry in the definition of "thing" from my Little Oxford Dictionary:

"any possible object of thought including persons, material objects, events, qualities, ideas, utterances, and acts"

Similarly, "nothing" can be used in a narrow or broad sense. In the context of this discussion (and really in almost any more philosophical context), "nothing" is used in the broad sense. Physical laws are not nothing. Physical laws are laws; and the question of whether the universe can come from nothing is completely different to whether it can come from pre-existing physical laws.

Almost nobody has that latter question in mind when they ask whether the universe could have come from nothing.

Yes.