On 9/19/2011 8:19 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 1:27 AM, nihil0 <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hi everyone,
This is my first post on the List. I find this topic fascinating and
I'm impressed with everyone's thoughts about it. I'm not sure if
you're aware of this, but it has been discussed on a few other
Everything threads.
Norman Samish posted the following to the thread "Tipler Weighs In" on
May 16, 2005 at 9:24pm:
"I wonder if you and/or any other members on this list have an opinion
about the validity of an article at
http://www.hedweb.com/nihilism/nihilfil.htm
Jon,
Thank you for your post. I actually came across that page many years ago, before
joining this list. It is interesting to go over it again and I am glad to see it still
online. I appreciated the Liebniz quote he cites "omnibus ex nihil ducendis sufficit
unum" which he translates as "For producing everything out of nothing, one principal is
enough". I searched for this, and also found by John Wheeler:
/The Universe had to have a way to come into being out of nothingness. ...When we say
“out of nothingness” we do not mean out of the vacuum of physics. The vacuum of physics
is loaded with geometrical structure and vacuum fluctuations and virtual pairs of
particles. The Universe is already in existence when we have such a vacuum. No, when we
speak of nothingness we mean nothingness: neither structure, nor law, nor plan. ...For
producing everything out of nothing one principle is enough. Of all principles that
might meet this requirement of Leibniz nothing stands out more strikingly in this era of
the quantum than the necessity to draw a line between the observer-participator and the
system under view. ...We take that demarcation as being, if not the central principle,
the clue to the central principle in constructing out of nothing everything. / — John A.
Wheeler
Yet the central premise of this list is that there is no such demarcation. Every distinct
observation defines a distinct observer because observer and observed are both quantum
mechanical.
I think Liebniz's words are insightful, but more to the point was when he said:
"There is an infinity of figures...of minute inclinations....Now, all of this detail
implies previous or more particular contingents, each of which again stands in need of
similar analysis to be accounted for, so that nothing is gained by such analysis. The
sufficient or ultimate reason must therefore exist outside the succession of series of
contingent particulars, infinite though this series be. Consequently, the ultimate
reason of all things must subsist in a necessary substance, in which all particular
changes may exist only virtually as in its source: this substance is what we call God."
This just Aquinas argument from infinite regress in different words. It's a demand that
the world be comprehensible in anthropomorphic terms. That everything must have reason as
we conceive efficient causes. If the world is infinite it must not be infinitely
contingent because then I couldn't comprehend it; so it must be comprehended as the effect
of necessary being.
Brent
“People are more unwilling to give up the word ‘God’ than to give up the idea for which
the word has hitherto stood”
--- Bertrand Russell
He says that the source of our existence is something that has to exist, it's existence
is a necessary property. Of everything humans have discovered, I think mathematical
truth most closely fits. It seems to insist on its own existence unlike any physical
contingency or the universe itself. Yet as Bruno has helped to illustrate, the
universe, or our perceptions, follow from the existence of mathematical truth.
Jason
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