tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764946987133813099.post4080279538370621395..comments2024-01-29T01:22:14.621-08:00Comments on Makarios: He actually believes that!Thesauroshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13305052511095551483noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764946987133813099.post-38484487555686780172009-04-11T12:45:00.000-07:002009-04-11T12:45:00.000-07:00"The closest other atheists have come and can come..."The closest other atheists have come and can come to challenging what we consistently observe<BR/>- "Whatever begins to exist has a cause” -<BR/>is to say, “But why do I HAVE to believe that? ..."<BR/><BR/>"Whatever begins to exist has a cause", is a false statement.<BR/><BR/>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.<BR/><BR/>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.<BR/>(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).<BR/><BR/>"... what we consistently observe - "Whatever begins to exist has a cause"".<BR/><BR/>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.<BR/><BR/>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).<BR/><BR/>"My visitor goes beyond anything science has proven and emphatically states what has become the latest addition to atheist origin mythologies,<BR/><BR/>“Everything came from nothing, by nothing, for nothing.”"<BR/><BR/>I think that it is probable that you are not using the concept of "nothing" in the same way as your respondent.<BR/><BR/>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).<BR/><BR/>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.<BR/><BR/>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.VeridicusXhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06142066725668197305noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4764946987133813099.post-7773105465009657722009-04-11T12:27:00.000-07:002009-04-11T12:27:00.000-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.VeridicusXhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06142066725668197305noreply@blogger.com