A bit related to my previous blog post, one concept that many apologists and creationists take completely for granted is that absolute nothing, the absolute non-existence of anything at all, is possible. They casually throw expressions like "the universe came from nothing" and so on.
However, we can ask a quite relevant question: Is absolute nothingness actually possible? Is it possible for such a state to exist under some circumstances? Can we actually say that "the universe came from nothing"?
Perhaps a bit surprisingly, we cannot factually state that absolute nothingness, the complete non-existence of anything, is possible in our reality. That's because we have no examples of this. We can only observe this universe, and everything we can observe has something (space, time, possibly all kinds of quantum phenomena such as quantum foam or virtual particles...) We cannot point anywhere in the universe and say "there's absolutely nothing here," because there is no such place. If there exists some kind of "outside" of this universe, something where our universe resides in, we do not know what kind of properties it might have.
This is not just nitpicking, playing with terms, or highly abstract philosophical discussion. This is an actual question of physics: Is absolute nothingness even possible? Or is our reality such that something always exists in some manner by necessity? This is, in fact, an unanswered (and maybe even unanswerable) question. We cannot take it for granted.
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ReplyDeleteAs an aside, it would be helpful if one could still edit their work after posting it.
ReplyDeleteTo my way of thinking, our reality is such that something always exists in some manner by necessity. The Space -Time Paradigm we humans inhabit has three dimensional geometric space; even if empty, it would still be a “context” (like a blank sheet of paper). Even a vacuum (like an empty room), is still “a thing” contained in something else and so would not be absolute. Absolute Nothingness would have to be fundamental: dependent upon, contained within or preceded by nothing else. Nothing comes from nothing yet "Cogito ergo sum" sense I could not have proceeded from nothing. I must conclude Absolute Nothingness is impossible.
Forgive me but I feel compelled to take the next logical step and ask: what is fundamental? Would that be space, time and matter or conscious, willful, intelligence? If I were casting a movie with two characters one named Cause and the other named Effect and Consciousness and Matter were auditioning, which actor would be best suited for which part? In the spirit of “type casting” the answer is obvious but the choice is yours. As for me...row, row, row your boat gently down the stream. merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily life is but a ...