If there was nothing before God created the universe then how do you explain this?

[interchange]

Indeed I am.

I do not believe any human communication can exist that is absent these dynamics. Nonetheless I am trying hard to observe and distance myself from them in order to understand your position in case I may learn something from it.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

I do not believe any human communication can exist that is absent these dynamics. Nonetheless I am trying hard to observe and distance myself from them in order to understand your position in case I may learn something from it.

My position is this:

"Something exists" is a tautology. "Nothing exists" is a contradiction. If you are confused as to why this is the case, then I submit that you do not understand the words "something," "nothing," and "exist."

 

[interchange]

My position is this:

"Something exists" is a tautology. "Nothing exists" is a contradiction. If you are confused as to why this is the case, then I submit that you do not understand the words "something," "nothing," and "exist."

Sure. I am something. That something is human. The condition of human is the inability to understand anything that is not a piece of itself. Since I am a human, and that is something, and "nothing" is not contained within "something", then I cannot understand the word "nothing".

Perhaps I find this so interesting because it is exploring the limits of what I can do.

 

[agent00f]

My position is this:

"Something exists" is a tautology. "Nothing exists" is a contradiction. If you are confused as to why this is the case, then I submit that you do not understand the words "something," "nothing," and "exist."

This is certainly in large part a linguistic disagreement. What he really finds interesting is the seemingly paradoxical state of "nothingness", which can be reconciled by understanding that it's just an abstract concept conjured by the human mind.

Sure. I am something. That something is human. The condition of human is the inability to understand anything that is not a piece of itself. Since I am a human, and that is something, and "nothing" is not contained within "something", then I cannot understand the word "nothing".

Perhaps I find this so interesting because it is exploring the limits of what I can do.

Ironically, "nothing" is wholly created by and only exists in the mind. It only "exists" in the sense it can can be used rhetorically to convey information. It doesn't actually correspond to any reality.

 

[disappoint]

True. All primitive peoples have a concept of God or gods.

True, and that continues even to this very day.

 

[RiverStream]

Did color come first?

 

[Dr. Zaus]

My position is this:

"Something exists" is a tautology. "Nothing exists" is a contradiction. If you are confused as to why this is the case, then I submit that you do not understand the words "something," "nothing," and "exist."

You've unduly totalized existence: what "is" must be stated relative to some function, or at least apparatus of observation.

 

[piasabird]

Matter can not be destryed or made from nothing. It is a simple Physics true-ism. In my LDS Bible there is a footnote on the word Create meaning "To Organize." i.e. you cant organize nothing. This is also the argument against the Big Bang theory. How does nothing create a big bang? Then there also arises the need for an explanation about where all the things in the Universe Come From, or were they always out here in some form of gas and dust? For instance if you use the Hubble telescope the further away you look, the more you see. However, you are also looking back in time as well to compensate for the time light takes to travel to the earth. So is it all a trick with mirrors?

 

[Dr. Zaus]

Matter can not be destryed or made from nothing. It is a simple Physics true-ism. In my LDS Bible there is a footnote on the word Create meaning "To Organize." i.e. you cant organize nothing. This is also the argument against the Big Bang theory. How does nothing create a big bang? Then there also arises the need for an explanation about where all the things in the Universe Come From, or were they always out here in some form of gas and dust? For instance if you use the Hubble telescope the further away you look, the more you see. However, you are also looking back in time as well to compensate for the time light takes to travel to the earth. So is it all a trick with mirrors?

No.

Exist means something is a thing. Not-exist means it is not a thing.

We can define this two ways: A "gods eye view" and an "Body's senses" view.

The universe was made by a "god's eye" something that is a body's eye nothing.

The something that created the Big Bang existed before it, but not to our bodies.

This is the only logical source of creation.

 

[Charmonium]

Matter is constantly being created and destroyed in the form of virtual particles. In fact that is the nature of Hawking radiation.

Honestly, I don't think anyone really understands how you could get an explosion of matter from nothing like the big bang but to say that you can't get something from nothing is a direct contradiction of what we know from quantum mechanics.

 

[IronWing]

My position is this:

"Something exists" is a tautology. "Nothing exists" is a contradiction. If you are confused as to why this is the case, then I submit that you do not understand the words "something," "nothing," and "exist."

The existence or non-existence of nothing is rather interesting. In his popular writings, Einstein suggests that empty space only exists as a dependent or auxiliary to the existence of matter and that if matter did not exist then empty space would also not exist.

 

[William Gaatjes]

An interesting take on the big bang theory



I quoted the text :
"

Alfvén VERSUS THE BIG BANG

For 30 years, based on plasma physics, Alfvén and his colleagues proposed an alternative cosmology to both the Steady State and the Big Bang cosmologies. While the Big Bang theory was preferred by most astrophysicists for nearly 30 years, it is being challenged by new observations, especially over the last decade. In particular, the discovery of coherent structures of galaxies hundreds of millions of light years in length and the large-scale streaming of superclusters of galaxies at velocities that may approach 1,000 kilometers per second present problems that are difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile with the Big Bang theory.

To Alfvén, the problems being raised were not surprising. "I have never thought that you could obtain the extremely clumpy, heterogeneous universe we have today, strongly affected by plasma processes, from the smooth, homogeneous one of the Big Bang, dominated by gravitation."

The problem with the Big Bang, Alfvén believed, is similar to that with Chapman's theories, which the scientific community accepted mistakenly for decades: Astrophysicists have tried too hard to extrapolate the origin of the universe from mathematical theories developed on the blackboard. The appeal of the Big Bang, said Alfvén, has been more ideological than scientific. When men think about the universe, there is always a conflict between the mythical approach and the empirical scientific approach. In myth, one tries to deduce how the gods must have created the world - what perfect principles must have been used."

To Alfvén, the Big Bang was a myth - a myth devised to explain creation. "I was there when Abbe Georges Lemaitre first proposed this theory," he recalled. Lemaitre was, at the time, both a member of the Catholic hierarchy and an accomplished scientist. He said in private that this theory was a way to reconcile science with St. Thomas Aquinas' theological dictum of creatio ex nihilo or creation out of nothing.

But if there was no Big Bang, how -and when- did the universe begin? "There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time," Alfvén explained. "It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago."
"


http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1970/alfven-bio.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannes_Alfvén

http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/people/alfven.html


Some excerpts :

Hannes Alfvén, winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Physics,acknowledged as one of creative and intuitive intellect's of the 20th century, died peacefully Sunday evening, April 2, 1995 in Stockholm, Sweden. He was 86 years old.
In the world of specialized science, Alfvén was an enigma. Regarded as a heretic by many physicists, Alfvén made contributions to physics that are today being applied in the development of particle beam accelerators, controlled thermonuclear fusion, hypersonic flight, rocket propulsion, and the braking of reentering space vehicles. At the same time, applications of his research in space science include explanations of the Van Allen radiation belt, the reduction of the earth's magnetic field during magnetic storms, the magnetosphere (a protective plasma envelope surrounding the earth), the formation of comet tails, the formation of the solar system, the dynamics of plasmas in our galaxy, and the fundamental nature of the universe itself.
Alfvén was the first to predict (in 1963) the large scale filamentary structure of the universe, a discovery that confounded astrophysicists in 1991 and added to the woes of Big Bang cosmology. Hannes Alfvén has played a central role in the development of several modern fields of physics, including plasma physics, the physics of charged particle beams, and interplanetary and magnetospheric physics. He is also usually regarded as the father of the branch of plasma physics known as magnetohydrodynamics.

In spite of these fundamental contributions to physics and astrophysics, Alfvén, who retired his posts of professor of electrical engineering at the University of California at San Diego and professor of plasma physics at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm in 1991, was still viewed as a heretic by many in those very fields. Alfvén's theories in astrophysics and plasma physics have usually gained acceptance only two or three decades after their publication. Characteristically and also concomitant with his 80th birthday in 1988, Alfvén was awarded the most prestigious prize of the American Geophysical Union, the Bowie medal, for his work three decades earlier on comets and plasmas in the solar system. Disputed for 30 years, many of his theories about the solar system were only vindicated as late as the 1980's through measurements of cometary and planetary magnetospheres by artificial satellites and space probes.

Although Alfvén received these singular honors from many parts of the world -and a rash of scientific journals scheduled special issues in honor of his 80th birthday- for much of his career Alfvén's ideas were dismissed or treated with condescension. He was often forced to publish his papers in obscure journals; and his work was continuously disputed for many years by the most renowned senior scientist in space physics, the British-American geophysicist Sydney Chapman. Even among physicists today there is little awareness of Alfvén's many contributions to fields of physics where his ideas are used without recognition of who conceived them.

Attempting to explain the resistance to his ideas, Alfvén pointed to the increasing specialization of science during this century. "We should remember that there was once a discipline called natural philosophy," he said in 1986. "Unfortunately, this discipline seems not to exist today. It has been renamed science, but science of today is in danger of losing much of the natural philosophy aspect." Among the causes of this transition, Alfvén believed, are territorial dominance, greed, and fear of the unknown. "Scientists tend to resist interdisciplinary inquiries into their own territory. In many instances, such parochialism is founded on the fear that intrusion from other disciplines would compete unfairly for limited financial resources and thus diminish their own opportunity for research."

Alfvén versus Chapman

Alfvén became active in interplanetary and magnetospheric physics at a time when a contrary viewpoint prevailed. Alfvén's views were consistent with those of the founder of magnetospheric physics, the great Norwegian scientist Kristian Birkeland. At the end of the nineteenth century Birkeland had laid out a compelling case-supported by theory, laboratory experiments, polar expeditions, and a chain of magnetic-field "observatories" around the world -that electric currents flowing down along the earth's magnetic fields into the atmosphere were the cause of the aurora and polar magnetic disturbances.

However, in the decades following Birkeland's death in 1917, Chapman became the acknowledged leader in interplanetary and magnetospheric physics. Chapman proposed, in contradistinction to Birkeland's ideas, that currents were restricted to flow only in the ionosphere with no downflowing currents. Chapman's theory was so mathematically elegant that it gained wide acceptance over the Birkeland theory. Based on Chapman's theory, algebraic expressions of the ionospheric current system could, with complete mathematical rigor, be derived by any student of the subject. Birkeland's ideas might have faded completely had it not been for Hannes Alfvén, who became involved well after Chapman's ideas gained predominance. Alfvén kept insisting that Birkeland's current system made more sense because downflowing currents following the earth's magnetic field lines were required to drive most of the ionospheric currents. The issue was not settled until 1974, four years after Chapman's death, when earth satellites measured downflowing currents for the first time.

This story was typical of the difficulties Alfvén faced in his scientific career. Interplanetary space was commonly considered to be a good vacuum, disturbed only by occasional comets. This viewpoint was widely accepted because space "looked" that way, having been viewed only by using telescopes at optical wavelengths. In contrast, the electrical currents proposed by Alfvén generated a telltale signature only in the radio portions of the electromagnetic spectrum so they had not yet been observed. Thus Alfvén's proposal that there were electrical currents in space was received with great skepticism.

In 1939 Alfvén advanced a remarkable theory of magnetic storms and auroras that has widely influenced contemporary theories of plasma dynamics in the earth's magnetosphere. He used the notion of electric charges spiraling in magnetic fields to calculate the motions of electrons and ions. This method came to be universally adopted by plasma physicists and remained in use until the tedious task was assigned to computers in the mid-1970s. Yet in 1939, when Alfvén submitted the paper to the leading American journal Terrestrial Magnetism and Atmospheric Electricity, the paper was rejected on the ground that it did not agree with the theoretical calculations of Chapman and his colleagues. Alfvén was forced to publish this seminal paper in a Swedish-language journal not readily accessible to the worldwide scientific community. Restrictions such as this were imposed on several of Alfvén's other key articles as well.

It is usual in science that one or two major discoveries place their author in the rank of leading authorities with great influence and continuing funding commonly following. This was certainly not the case with Alfvén. At no time during his scientific career prior to winning the Nobel Prize was Alfvén generally recognized as a leading innovator by those in the scientific communities who were using his work.

Dessler has written of his own realization that Alfvén's contributions were being overlooked.

"When I entered the field of space physics in 1956, I recall that I fell in with the crowd believing, for example, that electric fields could not exist in the highly conducting plasma of space. It was three years later that I was shamed by S.Chandrasekhar into investigating Alfvén's work objectively. My degree of shock and surprise in finding Alfvén right and his critics wrong can hardly be described. I learned that a cosmic ray acceleration mechanism basically identical to the famous mechanism suggested by Fermi in 1949 had [previously] been put forth by Alfvén."

 

[agent00f]

The existence or non-existence of nothing is rather interesting. In his popular writings, Einstein suggests that empty space only exists as a dependent or auxiliary to the existence of matter and that if matter did not exist then empty space would also not exist.

As previously implied that would certainly be an agreeable definition of words, but it's also trivial to define "emptiness" as what conceptually exists irrespective of matter. Philosophical Investigations was a very novel and influential work which explored linguistic disagreements underlying dilemmas such as these, which plague that field of presumed experts historical flummoxed by artificially created paradoxes.

 

[Ichinisan]

LOL. "New Testament" / "John"

Genesis 1:1 is as far back as you can go in the Old Testament.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

LOL. "New Testament" / "John"

Genesis 1:1 is as far back as you can go in the Old Testament.

Job is older. And John, like Genesis, starts with creation.

 

[Ichinisan]

Job is older. And John, like Genesis, starts with creation.

Ah. OK. Which book/verse was OP referring to?

Do you mean Job was authored before Genesis?

 

[MtnMan]

I forget in the bible where it says but it is new testament John I think said:
In the beginning darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.
I can't remember the rest of it but it implies that there was something there before God said"Fiat Lux"("Let there be light").
I think that there just might be something to the the big crunch.

First problem is your source, a book written by men that didn't have a clue where the sun went every night.

 

[Charmonium]

First problem is your source, a book written by men that didn't have a clue where the sun went every night.

Of course they did. The great god Khepri rolled the dung ball of the sun through the underworld to the other side of the earth so that it could be reborn. Don't you know anything?

 

[Dr. Zaus]

Ah. OK. Which book/verse was OP referring to?

Do you mean Job was authored before Genesis?

First: the OP is all confused - he's referring to the opening of Genesis, the first book in the old tears, as though it is John, the third book (and likely one of the last written) in the New Testament. Both books start with a creation story - John's is "God made everything through Jesus." Genesis has the bit about sprit over the waters.

Second: Job, the 18th book in the Protestant Old Testament, is likely the first book in the Bible that was written. It has some exceptional influence on modern philosophy, well worth reading.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

No one knows much about the beginning of the universe and nothing about "what came before". Some say there was no time before but that's not automatically true since time itself doesn't have any objective definition regarding substance. Some don't believe it even exists, at least as commonly understood. In any case a preexisting universe or substance passing through a singularity would be akin to information leaving a black hole. That's a rat's nest right there and means that we can't know anything about the state of "before". It's not even possible to answer in reasonable hypotheticals.

As for the Bible let's assume it was created by God and he communicated with humans a few thousand years back. Assuming Creation came about in a humanly comprehensible way (and that is not certain at all) the understanding of the process would not be possible if for not other reason that no language supported the terms to usefully communicate the details. So metaphors would be the means and metaphors by nature are not precise terms.

 

[agent00f]

No one knows much about the beginning of the universe and nothing about "what came before". Some say there was no time before but that's not automatically true since time itself doesn't have any objective definition regarding substance. Some don't believe it even exists, at least as commonly understood. In any case a preexisting universe or substance passing through a singularity would be akin to information leaving a black hole. That's a rat's nest right there and means that we can't know anything about the state of "before". It's not even possible to answer in reasonable hypotheticals.

As for the Bible let's assume it was created by God and he communicated with humans a few thousand years back. Assuming Creation came about in a humanly comprehensible way (and that is not certain at all) the understanding of the process would not be possible if for not other reason that no language supported the terms to usefully communicate the details. So metaphors would be the means and metaphors by nature are not precise terms.

If god were smart, he would've made a much more convincing argument by sharing knowledge which could only be obtained through divinity.

 

[Ventanni]

Ah. OK. Which book/verse was OP referring to?

Do you mean Job was authored before Genesis?

Yes, Job is older than Genesis. Job is thought to have been written during or just before the time of Abraham, while Genesis is written by Moses, which came hundreds of years after. Modern day protestants place Job as the 3rd book of the wisdom serious (1st Proverbs, 2nd Ecclesiastes, and 3rd Job) where Proverbs states what people can do to gain wisdom, Ecclesiastes actually argues that not of of Proverbs are that simple, and Job tells a story of Job himself that ties the understanding of wisdom altogether; that wisdom isn't just something you learn, it's something you tap into.

Understanding Job (and the wisdom series) is actually key to understanding Genesis, as is understanding who the book of Genesis is written to/for. If you interpret the Genesis creation story literally, then you run into a tremendous amount of controversy, and the very thing that the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil argues against. Take in point, this thread is over 3 years old, yet we still continue to debate it. But the Book of Genesis is not written to modern day scholars and 21st century Americans like us. It was written to the Israelite's coming out of Egypt. Allow me to translate what that group of people really were: They were former slaves, they had a slave/warfare mentality, they were used to being told what to do, they had no self worth, no self identity, had no concept of ownership, and their only grid for understanding how to function in a society was that of the Hammurabi Code, which is quite barbaric by modern standards. These weren't educated scholars, they were slaves. Even God became frustrated with them on multiple occasions and nearly wiped them out. In fact, he almost wiped out all of the Israelite's at Mount Sinai while the 10 commandments were being written, stating that he would fulfill his promise to Abraham through Moses, but Moses intervened and saved them from destruction.

So let me ask you guys. If I'm a slave just coming out of Egypt who might be listening to the Genesis story, do you think I'm going to benefit from knowing the exact detail of how the earth was created? Not at all, because that was never the intention of the Genesis story.

The true intention of the Genesis story when Moses wrote it was to re-establish identity. The Jewish concept of 7 days is to show completeness, not 7 actual days (6 days of creation + 1 day of rest). To the Israelite's who would have been listening to this, they would have recognized that it for what they would have culturally recognized, and coming out of Egypt where there were multiple creation stories and that different gods created different things, Moses establishing in Genesis that God created all of creation wholly and completely by Himself. Additionally, what is always missed in Genesis 1 is that line, "And God saw that it was good." This, too, is stated 7 times. Tying the knot to the creation story, God gives all dominion and authority of the earth to mankind. To a society that views themselves as slaves, who own nothing, and who have no concept of self-worth, this is a revolutionary concept, and even one that many people still struggle with today.

So where does Job fit in? In the story of Job, you are presented with the story of a man who is faithful to God, but God allows all of his possessions to be taken away, much of his family to be killed, and his health and wealth to be stripped of him. His friends mistakenly accuse him of harboring sin in his life, but Job remains adamant that he has not sinned. But as the story progresses, Job becomes increasingly legalistic, demanding that he be presented before God to state his case. He's very much on an emotional roller-coaster, and goes back and forth between praising God for his goodness, and whining that he doesn't deserve the condition he is in, and that he needs to argue his case in a courtroom before God. Finally, God speaks to Job through a storm, which I may add is some of the most powerful, beautiful, and amazing scripture to read if anyone ever wants to read it (starts in Job 40 I think). He basically says, "Job, you're not me, and you don't think like I do. May thoughts aren't your thoughts. You don't see the detail that I do." God takes Job on a tour to His creation, and points out that the things which Job viewed as evil, destructive, or untamed are actually good. And in this process, Job is humbled, and he repents of the way he handled himself. Job realizes that he can trust in God's wisdom and goodness regardless of the circumstances of his surroundings. The book ends with God blessing Job far more than what was originally taken away.

In contrast, the story of Adam and Eve, as we all know, ends much differently. Adam and Even are placed in the Garden of Eden (which is probably more appropriately translated as an Enclosure of Pleasure) where they are set apart from all animals, livestock, and plants, and are given dominion and authority over the earth. That last part is very key. There, God walks with Adam, and even has all the animals in the garden come together just to see what Adam would name them (this shows that the original intention of God is to co-labor with us, not to rule us). And in the middle of the Garden of Eden, God places two trees: The Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Unfortunately, because they represent many things, modern scholars like to over-complicate what these two trees are, but it represents choice. The tree of life represents those who choose to walk in a co-laboring, son-ship relationship with God. It means to actually walk and talk with God, to live in His image, and this choice is still present for anyone to take. Abraham got this, and God called him his friend - not his slave, not his subject, not his employee, but his friend. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil also has multiple meanings. It means to not be in relationship with God. It means to do things by yourself, to define good and evil as you see fit, and what Israelite's coming out of Egypt would have recognized; "good-evil" is an Egyptian merism for "everything". It's not just the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it's the tree of the knowledge of everything. Job demanded answers, facts, and demanded that his cases be presented before God as that like a courtroom. In essence, Job doubted God, and this helps us understand a little more of what the true sin Adam and Eve were guilty of.

The difference though is how Job handled his doubt and how Adam and Eve handled their sin. In the story of Job, Job takes ownership of himself. He realizes the error of his ways and is humbled in the process. For Adam and Eve, Eve blames the serpent, and Adam blames Eve. Neither takes ownership of themselves. And when God confronts them, neither of them take ownership of themselves. For this reason, God is forced to kick them out of the garden in an act of mercy. To Israelite's listening to this story, the purpose was to teach them identity that they were not slaves, that God actually wants them to take ownership for themselves and not place blame on others, and to walk and talk with him so that they can fulfill their dreams of who they were truly created to be.

Notice the difference? The purpose was never, ever to debate how God created the universe. The purpose was always to establish identity.

 

[digiram]

Why did God make people to praise him? Dude was bored, and was like "let me make people to praise me" wtf? This crap is nothing more than a means to control people.

You have one life to live, enjoy it, remember it, share it with loved ones, and that's it. When it's over its over. If people lived this way, there would be much more love for life. If you believe in God, and the "afterlife" is more important, then you have no problems blowing people up to be with 72 virgins or whatever it is.

 

[Ventanni]

Why did God make people to praise him? Dude was bored, and was like "let me make people to praise me" wtf? This crap is nothing more than a means to control people.

You have one life to live, enjoy it, remember it, share it with loved ones, and that's it. When it's over its over. If people lived this way, there would be much more love for life. If you believe in God, and the "afterlife" is more important, then you have no problems blowing people up to be with 72 virgins or whatever it is.

God doesn't make you do anything. It's your choice to be in relationship with Him. Anything that has to do with fear and control is not God. Sadly, there are still many who stand behind the pulpit and preach that.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

God doesn't make you do anything.

Oh, so your god-concept does not include the attribute of inerrant foreknowledge?