On 2/12/2015 9:34 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
meekerdb wrote:
On 2/12/2015 6:24 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
John,
Calling 'empty space' 'nothing' in the philosophical sense is just a confusion. I can
only repeat what I said before:
'My position is that the idea that you can explain the origin of "a universe from
nothing" is absurd.' Either you have pre-existing laws and substrate -- which is not
'nothing' -- or the universe just "pops" spontaneously, and laws, etc, are just
descriptions of observed regularities in whatever has "popped". You don't have many
other options.
The other popular option (in both religion and physics) is that the universe is eternal
and no "popping" is needed. Some are eternal and infinite and others are eternal and
cyclic.
Brent
"Popping" was perhaps a bad choice of term. It conveys the idea of a temporal
progression from 'nothing' to the popped universe. I had in mind, rather, block universe
ideas in which the complete space-time continuum is timelessly existent. There is no
origin since time is a concept only within the block. The block could be either of
infinite temporal duration (if such can be defined within the block universe), or cyclical.
Then it seems it could also be finite and non-cyclical. Augustine already thought that
time only existed within the universe, yet he supposed it was semi-infinite. I wonder if
there has ever been a religion that proposed a world that was future finite, but past eternal?
Brent
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