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I think in essence what one has to wrap ones head around is that... whatever the explanation turns out to be... words like "something" "nothing" might have little meaning and words like "before" "after" "always" and "out of" even less so.
I doubt there are many in our species who can imagine such things entirely divorced from the concept of time and yet that is likely very much what we will have to do. Languages like mathematics will be likely the way in which we do it. Already we can "imagine" in maths things we can not with our minds such as dimensions higher than the three we are used to etc.
For me, the more intuitively correct answer is the cyclical theories of the universe, in which big bangs happen over and over again, into infiniti. But intuition is a really poor way to decide what is real in cosmology.
Either way, one has to wrap their head around the possibility of "something out of nothing" or "something always existed."
The universe is cyclic(creation,expansion and Destruction) is what we beleive in Hinduism.
Unfortunately that is not a journal in the scientific peer reviewed sense. It is a website that posts all kinds of tosh for the right price and just calls itself a peer reviewed journal to sound good. They seem to spend more time calling people terrorists, lunatics, inquisition holders and filth throwers and other such names than they do peer reviewing anything. No surprise therefore that they happily publish the likes of Stuart Hameroff.
There are some interesting chapters on this at the end of Hawkings "Brief History of Time" in which he shows how some of the models for the universes origins actually do not have the current "laws" simply coming out of nothing but actually being necessarily the way they were and could not have been much different. Might be interesting for you to read.
His current book, in which I hope he goes deeper into that area of discourse, is alas quite far down my current "to read" list. Currently the number of books waiting to be read on my shelves actually out number the ones that have been read... such has been the rate I have been buying them.
I haven't read much of Hawkings' work, even though I should. I'm definitely interested in understanding why he supports M theory. Even though much of it is mathematical models and speculation at the moment, I think there's going to be a breakthrough in the empirical evidence as there are many predictions made by the theory.
If there ever is a theory of everything which reconciles relativity and quantum mechanics, then it will hopefully provide a more precise explanation as to why physical laws are the way they are.
If there was ever a time when there was nothing, how could there possibly be anything now?
Quote:
Originally Posted by BigCityDreamer
In scientific terms, this would mean the complete absence of matter, energy, time and space. But it's not known whether a state of nothing could ever really exist, because subatomic particles have the property of constantly popping into existence.
...implying that subatomic particles are uncaused? If so, how do you arrive at such a conclusion?
This question is answered the same way by both Christians and Scientist:
"We don't really know how the the first thing got here. Maybe something was always here."
Whether that "first thing" is God, or a particle, no one really knows how it got here, or if it could have always been here.
The following is the translation of rigveda's creation hymn.
1. THEN was not non-existent nor existent: there was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.What covered in, and where? and what gave shelter? Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?
2 Death was not then, nor was there aught immortal: no sign was there, the day's and night's divider.That One Thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature: apart from it was nothing whatsoever.
3 Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness this All was indiscriminated chaos.All that existed then was void and form less: by the great power of Warmth was born that Unit
.4 Thereafter rose Desire in the beginning, Desire, the primal seed and germ of Spirit.Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered the existent's kinship in the non-existent.
5 Transversely was their severing line extended: what was above it then, and what below it?There were begetters, there were mighty forces, free action here and energy up yonder
6 Who verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes this creation?The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then whence it first came into being?
7 He, the first origin of this creation, whether he formed it all or did not form it,Whose eye controls this world in highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.
If there was ever a time when there was nothing, how could there possibly be anything now?
...implying that subatomic particles are uncaused? If so, how do you arrive at such a conclusion?
Modern physics has shown that the philosophical and intuitive concept of "nothing" is probably meaningless. We usually think of nothing as being the absence of something. However, the absence of something is not a state which exists anywhere in the universe.
Even so-called empty space is not actually empty. Rather, it has vacuum energy from quantum vacuum fluctuations. Based on Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, virtual particles are constantly popping in and out of existence everywhere in the universe.
Location: Sitting on a bar stool. Guinness in hand.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BigCityDreamer
So, do you think that a God was necessary to cause the origin of these physical laws, or will science eventually find a better explanation for this gap in our knowledge?
Well just to give a simple answer and a simple explanation.
No I personally don't think there is a god required to "create” the laws of the universe. Actually I don't think there is need for a god for creating the universe. I personally think this way because thus-so-far to my knowledge, science has found that all the mechanisms/process that work under these laws (At least the mechanisms we understand best) are blind processes (no guiding hand). So if the processes under these laws are blind. Then why can't the laws of the universe/reality be blind as well?
So basically I (I speak only for myself) believe that science will eventually explain way why these particular laws exist and why they are in their respective balances.
Again this is just a very simple answer without getting too much into deep philosophy or the "language" of math (equations) here.
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