Pax Christi everybody!
Do you think Dr. Lawrence Krauss’ Universe from nothing is feasible, or does further scrutiny cause it to fall apart?
It’s more feasible than God.
Either nothing, i.e. absolutely nothing, null, no thing, not a thing, no field, no quantum - is unstable or the additional (factorial) infinite complexity of God grounds the quantum vacuum, below the infinite, eternal multiverse, (which, incidentally, behaves differently in universes). Or something else.
It all falls apart under scrutiny.
[It’s all uncomfortable]
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I would say, just as a matter of observation that it does seem to fall apart under further scrutiny. And I am not talking about MY scrutiny. The observation I am talking about is how the people who suggest this idea of the universe from nothing themselves don’t stick to it. Now that doesn’t mean they automatically jump to a belief in a creator – they do not. Instead they decide that the some sort of universe with natural laws has always existed and that it was from this that our own universe came into being.
This universe from nothing idea seems to be one of the options people explore when they don’t find the idea of a creator all that believable. But then why do they abandon it?
Well I think it comes from another why question they cannot resists asking: Why did the universe come from nothing? Any answer to that question implies some kind of pre-existing basis for that event – and the answer which typically makes the most sense to them is a system of natural law as part of a wider existence or greater universe.
But there is no more evidence for such a thing than there is for a creator. Any decision on the question derives from subjective reasons only.
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No they don’t. They do not, as in none of them, apart from the imploding minority who say that they believe in a two stroke universe, don’t. And I don’t believe any of them believe it either. It’s all about being published. And who abandons what? And there is no greater universe enveloping lesser universes. Nature, i.e. law, order, has always existed. I’m glad you can resist asking ultimate questions. How do you do that? There are no reasons at all, God or no. There is 100% reason for not invoking the infinite complexity of God beyond that of nature. It isn’t a chiral, even, undecidable, 50:50 balancing act.
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Here is an interesting article.
Apparently Hawking once suggested that the universe had no beginning in the purely mathematical sense of being without a boundary point in time. Others found problems with this and the result now as far as I can tell is uncertain.
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Yes, that is comparable to saying that because speed limits exist, therefore cars sprang into existence.
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It’s funny, but the most “Christian-informed” atheist I have engaged online argued the opposite—that God is “simple” and a complex universe could not be the result of a “simple God.” Theologically, God is said to be “simple” (as in, undifferentiated) but “simple” might be referring to different things here.
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I have no idea what he could possibly mean. The Jewish, Muslim and other unitarian Gods are theologically ‘simple’, the orthodox Christian trinitarian God isn’t. Your man’s idea is not out there as it makes no sense at all. Even with the analogy that your brain is more complex than the entire inanimate universe. Nature approaches infinity in irreducible complexity although it has been iterating for eternity and that actually nicely paradoxically reduces its complexity infinitely compared with if it were unique. If an intentional being is doing (eternal) nature, they are truly infinitely irreducibly complex.
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After further consideration, I have concluded that my “observation” talked about in my first post may be overhasty and not an accurate assessment of what was happening. Instead I think some of those putting out this idea of the universe from nothing were just putting this out as one possibility and then suggesting other possibilities as well without seeing anything wrong with the universe from nothing idea. I was honestly confused by their inconsistency and jumped to a hasty conclusion. For them the point may simply be that we do not have to accept the conclusion that the universe had a creator no matter how many people believe it to be the case.
The problem with the question “why” remains. And I do think this explains why this idea is not convincing for the majority. Though I don’t think this universe from nothing idea is one which should greatly bother theists, because it frankly only underlines the elephant in the room, so to speak.
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And yet, it is traditionally accepted (and has been for quite a while) that God is “simple,” at least, theologically speaking.
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By whom? In what way? I don’t understand. The fact that the creeds and ecumenical statements have a few handfuls of absolutes isolated from the Bible and their corollaries doesn’t make Him ‘simple’ as He is. He has no parts, is that it? He is the monad, in whom we live and move and have our being. Ubiq. All the infinite eternal complexity of being is… part of God.
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