I’ve had an atheist stop by who actually believes, not theoretically, not in his imagination, but he actually believes that something can appear, uncaused, out of nothing. And, as it relates to our discussion, the universe is his main example.
This is NOT a joke. In this atheist’s mind anything and in fact everything can just pop into existence at any place, at any time. If that's true, if it really did happen once, we can rightly ask, Why not any time?
"Whoa! Where did that come from? Hey, Wendy!!! There's an antelope in our basement!"
Does that sound absurd to you? Incredible? Unbelievable? Profoundly stupid? How about a universe - uncaused - from nothing with 50 constants and qualities precisely and exquisitely set prior to Planck time?
"Oh well, that," says the atheist, "certainly THAT could happen. But not an antelope."
Of course my new friend refers to Quinton Smith and quantum mechanics. In case you don't know, Smith is infamous for his 1993 statement, “The most reasonable belief is that we came from nothing, by nothing, for nothing.” I can’t tell if my visitor isn't aware or if he’s just conveniently forgetting to tell me that Smith, in 2007 retracted that inane proposition and now admits that the universe, “has a cause for its existence.”
The closest other atheists have come and can come to challenging what we consistently observe
- "Whatever begins to exist has a cause” -
is to say, “But why do I HAVE to believe that? So what if it conforms absolutely to the scientific method of inquiry? It wrecks my deep desire for a Creator to not exist!”
My visitor goes beyond anything science has proven and emphatically states what has become the latest addition to atheist origin mythologies,
“Everything came from nothing, by nothing, for nothing.”
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2 comments:
"The closest other atheists have come and can come to challenging what we consistently observe
- "Whatever begins to exist has a cause” -
is to say, “But why do I HAVE to believe that? ..."
"Whatever begins to exist has a cause", is a false statement.
If spacetime came into existence at the birth of the universe, then there was never a time when the universe did not exist. It follows therefore, that there cannot have been a "cause" of the universe. Additionally, if spacetime came into existence at the dawn of the universe, there was no "before the universe" when a cause could have occurred.
Stephen Hawkins, in his "Brief History of Time", proposes a quantum solution to this apparent paradox. He proposed that quantum uncertainty gives us a finite but unbounded spacetime - similar to the surface of a ball or a Moebius strip.
(The apparent paradox here being, not causation but, that the universe is both spatio-temporally finite and there has never been a time when the universe did not exist).
"... what we consistently observe - "Whatever begins to exist has a cause"".
Unless you work in a physics lab, I'm pretty certain that you have never observed anything beginning to exist. You've only observed the transformation and reconfiguration of preexisting things.
Virtual particles have been indirectly observed coming into existence. Particle pairs emerge spontaneously from the vacuum even if there's insufficient energy at the point of manifestation for their emergence, (this energy is "borrowed" and quickly paid back when these particles disappear again, so arguably this is also just a special case of transformation).
"My visitor goes beyond anything science has proven and emphatically states what has become the latest addition to atheist origin mythologies,
“Everything came from nothing, by nothing, for nothing.”"
I think that it is probable that you are not using the concept of "nothing" in the same way as your respondent.
To a physicist, "nothing" can imply "potential" rather than just the absence of things, just as zero can be the sum of negative ten and positive ten. It has been conjectured that the sum total of positive and negative energy in the universe is zero, (when I last checked it was claimed that this hypothesis is supported by observation).
When this concept is combined with the observation of spontaneous symmetry breaking we can arrive at the statement “Everything came from nothing, by nothing, for nothing.”, without violating any known laws of logic or physics.
Of course, you're right to point out that in this form its an unproven assertion. But, its worth noticing how the creator conjecture didn't even make it past first base.
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