I can't yet demonstration fusion here on ma earth but sure as hell he'll get a good sunburn staying out in view of our home star too long ...some processes require scale ....next he'll ask for an electron while merrily tapping out the question.

truelgbt wrote:...

Point is:
1) Let's say you're a doctor.

I have a Ph.D. in atmospheric physics but rarely use the title Dr., these days.

Is your 'view' on origins going to affect how you treat your patients? No. Not one bit.

Origins of what? I have no patients. The 'origins' and dynamics of weather systems and other fluid flows - like the stuff that came out of the early hot and dense phase of the cosmos - follow similarly chaotic behaviours. Therefore, I would answer, "Yes, quite a lot, actually." to your query after having substituted 'anyone who asks' for 'your patients', of course.

2) Let's say you're an engineer. Is your 'view' on origins going to affect how you design cars? No. Not one bit.

I don't know but some car names, e.g. Ford Galaxy, suggest at least a nod towards 'origins'.

3) Let's say you're a chemist. Is your 'view' on origins going to affect how you make medications or other chemical products? No. Not one bit.

I don't know. Where did the elements for the study of Chemistry originate? I'd guess at least some chemists get asked and answer this question frequently.

The topic of origins is most important for developing one's personal philosophy of life, but as far as pushing various scientific technologies in various fields, then no. This is why what we believe regarding origins is not some prerequisite for working in any of these scientific fields.

That's your opinion and you know what 'they' say about opinions...

truelgbt wrote:

newolder wrote:truelgbt, Your post leads me to question things further...
What does a literal ream of scientists look like?
A1) Who are "they" ?

Gimme some time to drum up a list and mebbe a thread of its own in the near future.

A list of cosmologists currently working towards understanding such questions as, "What happened before the big bang?" ? I look forward to your informed input elsewhere.

Don't stress his "brane"....might be catastrophic.

Are there any examples of something arising from nothing?

Pridefel Knowitelz wrote:Are there any examples of something arising from nothing?

Arising? Wow, PK. You're pouring on the scientific jargon, no mistake. I propose this non-scientific claptrap be moved to the filosofeezing threads.

I don't know. It's always struck me as a peculiar theological question, in that, if you ask theists like William Lane Craig, it's an absolute given that something came from nothing when God created the universe.

The sticking point in his case is that something cannot come "uncreated" from nothing. And it's not hard to see how that has become the sticking point for him, since the difference between the theistic and non-theistic accounts of a universe with a beginning is not "something arising from nothing" vs. "something not arising from nothing".

On the other hand, when you think it through we have no more examples of something being created from nothing than we do of something simply popping into being from nothing. Perhaps the answer is that there was never nothing. Or perhaps not.

Difficult questions rarely have simple answers.

Pridefel Knowitelz wrote:Are there any examples of something arising from nothing?

Yeah. Those farts that seem to come out of nowhere, with no warning. Those are super annoying.

There is a search function here:

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/search.php?keywords=nothing&terms=all&author=&sc=1&sf=titleonly&sr=posts&sk=t&sd=d&st=0&ch=300&t=0&submit=Search

Even if PK wasn't obviously trolling, I'd find it hard to believe they're under the impression that there aren't already 10,000 threads discussing this topic.

Shit threads arise from nothing going on between the ears.

0 = nothing. 1 equals something. 0+1=1. Next!

Yeah, but where did the 1 come from? Canada?

SafeAsMilk wrote:Yeah, but where did the 1 come from? Canada?

Could be, there's a lot of nothing in Canada.

Yeah. These threads you're starting, you're pulling them out of your ass. If that ain't something from nothing then I don't know what is.

Pridefel Knowitelz wrote:Are there any examples of something arising from nothing?

Well, this thread came from nothing. It wasn't there, now it is.

In Physics, it would depend on what you called 'nothing'.

According to most physicists, 'nothing' means a vacuum. Martin Rees, the Royal Astronomer and Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics at Cambridge, made this point quite clearly over the years that when physicists talk about nothing, they mean empty space.

So what is empty space / vacuum? One analogy used is that empty space is for us as water is to a fish. When you take away all the things in the water, what remains is 'no thing' not 'no water'. However, just as with water, vacuums can fluctuate, ripples can propagate, there's an innate elasticity to the medium which can cause itself to do unpredictable (stochastic) things.

This has preoccupied physicists for many years, and there are dozens of experimental and mathematical models simulating this, and for all intents and purposes, we can say with some confidence: yes, something can come from nothing.

Then there's the religious version, particularly in your case the Christian metaphysics.

According to the narrative, God created the universe from nothing. There was no material 'he' used to make the universe, 'he' simply willed it all into existence. This is, of course, basically magic, but setting that aside because Christian theists cannot bear to hear that idea, it still means that theists necessarily accept the proposition that something (the universe and everything in it) came from nothing, it just took their god to make it happen.

Then there's the other problem of where God came from. Again, standard modern apologetics waves this away by saying that God always existed because they want 'him' to be the uncreated creator. Of course, by exactly the same argument, materialists can then say that the universe (not just our local pocket) always existed, and as the universe observably exists, there's no need to go round multiplying entities without adding any explanatory power.

So in summary, basically everyone agrees that something can come from nothing. The answer, regardless of whether you tend towards science, philosophy, or theology is yes.

Pridefel Knowitelz wrote:Are there any examples of something arising from nothing?

It seems counter-intuitive to speak of an uncaused existence of anything, but by invoking yet another incomprehensible link to a chain in order to explain how something might have come from nothing is ultimately unsatisfactory. May as well say we don't know how something can come from nothing. That's what I do.

The_Piper wrote:

SafeAsMilk wrote:Yeah, but where did the 1 come from? Canada?

Could be, there's a lot of nothing in Canada.

Pridefel Knowitelz wrote:Are there any examples of something arising from nothing?

Incidentally, there is another revealing way to think about this problem.

Can you show me a nothing?

If you can't... how do you know such a (thing) can exist?

God is the mysterious veil under which we hide our ignorance of the cause. - Léo Errera