Nothing: An Experiment
Posted by Justin on May 11, 2009
There is nothing between these two smiley faces. Let’s wait and see how long it takes for something to appear there out of nothing…
Creation wins again!
Tom said
LOL
Myles said
Wow. I cant argue with that logic. Ok, Yall win. i’m a fundamentalist christian now. Where do I sign up?
Be right back im going to go break up with my same sex partner.
Myles said
Ok. Just for the sake of arguement and because i’m pretty attached to my boyfriend I will try to debate this a little. First of all, who says that something came from nothing? I certainly dont. I personally ascribe to the “brane cosmology” theory of the big bang that basically regards all of this universe as a portion of a much larger, even older universe.
I suspect that maybe matter is eternal, just like you think your God is.
Justin said
Myles, I am not talking to/about every atheist. Just the ones who said everything came from nothing. Myles, check out this ans the subsequent pages. I think you might find it interesting: http://www.everystudent.com/journeys/nothing.html
BathTub said
Oh I know, lets wait for Jesus to come back and put something there. Has 1 generation been yet?
Justin said
Myles, did you read the article on the link above?
Myles said
Yes I did justin but I really doesnt prove anything because I dont think that the universe came from nothing. I believe that matter/energy has always existed in some form and what we think of as ‘the universe’ is just one small part of larger, eternal mulitverse.
This is just a theory of course but it is a alternate theory that explains the universe’s existence without having a deity or postulating that something came from nothing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brane_cosmology
Justin said
Myles, yes you may not believe everything came from nothing. Did you read the second page that said what that something must be? http://www.everystudent.com/journeys/something.html and then the next page, http://www.everystudent.com/journeys/who.html, and then finally http://www.everystudent.com/journeys/who2.html
As far as Brane cosmology, it does not take away the need for an initial singularity. Just curious, do you understand Brane Cosmology or do you just know of it? Check out http://www.bethinking.org/science-christianity/beyond-the-big-bang.htm They specifically deal with Brane Cosmology a little above the middle.
ExPatMatt said
The ‘appearance’ of ’something’ in-between the two smiley faces would be an act of creation. The lack of such an event would constitute evidence that creation (out of nothing) does not happen. So, yeah, what’s your point and what does it have to do with atheism?
Myles said
I agree, I have heard a lot of illogical arguments in my day but this one certainly takes the cake.
Justin said
True, the appearance of something would be an act of creation. The universe came into existence. It was an act of Creation.
BathTub said
Is Jesus back yet, has it been a generation yet?
Justin said
Jesus is coming.
Don’t wait until you get the shock of your death to find out the truth.
BathTub said
Ah so it hasn’t been a generation yet.
jacksonskepticalsociety said
There’s something there.
It’s just invisible spacing.
See. I type two AAs. Now I type one A and paste the “nothing” content of the page into it, then put the other A.
A A
So if nothing was there, then what did I copy and paste?
How do creationists even call this an “argument?” You’re saying that we say nothing + time = everything and you are saying nothing + god + time = everything.
Our is simpler. Occam’s razor.
By the way, “Thou shall not bear false witness,” eh? Would putting up a website and saying it is a source of all kinds of information, and then only putting up one side of the story be… bearing false witness?
Also – I’m STILL waiting on your single bit of evidence for any creationist ideas. NOT illogical arguments and semantic games, but something physical. You know of what I speak.
Even if your silly little creationists could somehow debunk the theory of evolution, one of the most successful explanations of a whole slew of physical phenomenon, that doesn’t make your explanation RIGHT.
For that you need some evidence. I would assume you have some – you’ve said you had some. SO LET ME SEE IT ALREADY.
Tom said
Wow, not much change here. uneducated still arguing with the truth.
jacksonskepticalsociety said
Well, we with the truth try to educate who we can.
But those set in their beliefs won’t bite.
Science is not a faith nor a religion. There is a simple way to change the mind of anyone who uses empirical evidence, logic and reason – and that is PROOF and EVIDENCE.
Could either of you provide me with the slightest shred, I would consider it. But I get none of that from Dr. Dino, or Answers in Genesis. It is not a blanket dismissal of the source. I read all of those links Justin provides to those websites, and so far, not one of them has the slightest basis in reality.
So I ask again – cute games with text formatting and circular logic aside: where is this proof? Where can I go and see something real that backs up these things that you claim?
BathTub said
Has it been a generation yet?
Justin said
Bathtub, see http://www.gotquestions.org/this-generation-not-pass.html for your answer if you were referring to the quote in the Bible scriptures. Next time you have a question, be more specific so I don’t have to guess what you are referring to. You could have meant anything by just asking “has a generation passed yet.”
BathTub said
Ah yes, the old ‘here are something things it could have meant, but by golly it doesn’t mean what he literally said as that would make us look stupid’ trick.
Justin said
Bathtub, that’s just the point. He did literally mean what he said. It eould really be one generation from the time those things happen. You read it wrong it you think it meant one generation from the day he said it. Look at the context.
Nance Confer said
I have to agree with Jackson above.
And if you are going to discuss atheism and atheists you should provide the definition you are using. Switching from one to the other mid-discussion is not acceptable.
Then proceed to offer evidence to support your position that atheists, as you define us, are wrong.
Not quotes from your favorite book. Not discussions about ancient texts. Not poetry. Not the beauty of sunrises. Not the same tired arguments that are thrown up all over the internet without convincing a soul. None of these things are evidence.
Provide verifiable facts that disprove the validity of the atheist’s position, as you define it.
Here’s one of many links with definitions of atheism and discussions of those definitions — including weak and strong atheism. http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/sn-definitions.html
I would choose “atheists are without a belief in dieties.” I think you might favor “atheists believe there is no god” or something similar. You choose whichever suits your purposes.
Now, try to find something that provides evidence that people who are, if you use my definition, “without a belief in dieties” are wrong. That should reasonably persuade someone who “believes there is no god” to change his mind.
Evidence we can all agree is, on its face, clear cut, factual, verifiable, not a matter of interpretation, not a matter of personal experience, not a matter of faith.
Understand, it can’t just be your personal statement of belief. That’s not evidence. Your conviction does not matter in this discussion. It is not in doubt. You must do more than state that you think you are right. The burden of proof is on you.
Or you can use this blog to publish your copies of the beliefs that your church proposes. But that really wouldn’t be a hub for anything to do with atheism.
Good luck!
Nance
JJ said
This makes me think of music, like Mozart. The space of nothing between the notes is created as much as the “something” of the sounds, and arguably is even more definitive than the notes themselves.
What to do with that? Maybe we should be debating who created the nothingness BEFORE the Big Bang, because that was the more definitive of Reality, the Universe and Thanks for All the Fish (apologies to Douglas Adams) than is current life as we know it??
JJ said
When I was a young seeker like Justin, having been raised Methodist and thus in the habit of concocting my own mental constructs, I decided that if “God was Love” then I’s do a little sleight of hand algebraic substitution in every conversation, responsive reading, prayer and sermon, etc. Use the find and replace function, we might say now — simply substitute love for every use of god.
But then today I was perusing some unschooling courses on DVD from The Teaching Company, and it occurred to me that if I were still a young seeker prone to agonizing over such things, in the third millennium gicven what we’ve learned to date, it might be more suitable to substitute “chaos” for every use of “god” . . .
Nance Confer said
http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/big-bang.html
…
“But Augustine was more subtle. The world, he claimed, was made “not in time, but simultaneously with time.” In other words, the origin of the universe-what we now call the big bang-was not simply the sudden appearance of matter in an eternally preexisting void, but the coming into being of time itself. Time began with the cosmic origin. There was no “before,” no endless ocean of time for a god, or a physical process, to wear itself out in infinite preparation.
“Remarkably, modern science has arrived at more or less the same conclusion as Augustine, based on what we now know about the nature of space, time, and gravitation. It was Albert Einstein who taught us that time and space are not merely an immutable arena in which the great cosmic drama is acted out, but are part of the cast-part of the physical universe. As physical entities, time and space can change- suffer distortions-as a result of gravitational processes. Gravitational theory predicts that under the extreme conditions that prevailed in the early universe, space and time may have been so distorted that there existed a boundary, or “singularity,” at which the distortion of space-time was infinite, and therefore through which space and time cannot have continued. Thus, physics predicts that time was indeed bounded in the past as Augustine claimed. It did not stretch back for all eternity.”
…
“The essence of the Hartle-Hawking idea is that the big bang was not the abrupt switching on of time at some singular first moment, but the emergence of time from space in an ultrarapid but nevertheless continuous manner.”
…
“Well, I didn’t promise to provide the answers to life, the universe, and everything, but I have at least given a plausible answer to the question I started out with: What happened before the big bang?
The answer is: Nothing.”
**********
I read this in one of Hawking’s books, can’t remember which one. Oh, it was his “Brief History of Time.” http://www.celebatheists.com/?title=Stephen_Hawking
Nance
Nance Confer said
I read about this . . . etc. “about”
And this was in response to your mention of the nothingness before the BB, JJ.
Nance