If atheism is true, then where did the universe come from? Something can't come from nothing!Sound familiar? If you've ever argued religion with a theist - particularly online - chance are are you've heard something like this before.
Typically, my response has been to dismiss the claim as an argument from ignorance: Just another example of the old and easily dismissed claim that since we don't know how X happened, God must have done it. This dismissal is sufficient and justified - but unfortunately it is unsatisfactory in the mind of the theists that like to raise it.
However, it turns out we have an answer. Lawrence Krauss spends an hour discussing contemporary cosmology. Eventually, he considers the question: Why is there something rather than nothing? His answer:
There had to be. If you have nothing in quantum physics, you'll always get something. It's that simple. It doesn't convince any of those people - but it's true.Give it a go. I promise that it's one of the best uses you'll ever find for spending a free hour of your time - you can't have sex and eat icecream all day.
It would seem to me that this is the usual definition of nothing used by nontheist physicists: a quantum vacuum. For a quantum vacuum to exist, there would have to be space-time in some form or another (perhaps without the time-like aspect). Calling it nothing in the way philosophers use the word "nothing" would be (more than) a bit sloppy.
ReplyDeleteI would also say it is not really fair to say that the theist explanation is a God-of-the-gaps argument; the theist tactic is to point out a first cause, not a "we cannot explain this, so God did it".
Personally, I find the atheist position either that the universe is either eternal or that an infinite regress might be possible more plausible.
Greetings!
And now I catch myself on being quite sloppy. With an "eternal universe", I would mean some "frame" that could provide a quantum vacuum in whatever form.
ReplyDeleteGreetings!