Creation Ex Nihilo

heusdens,

First my ap0logy for screwing up the spelling of your name.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><b>I hold it you say here that since a talented and famous scientist is included in that list,the argument is realy infallible then.</b><hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

ANS: I didn't say that at all. There are many here that have at least some reservation of disagreement with Mr. Hawkins. I am one of those. The point is that he is not the only celebrated physicists, etc., that share this common view and it requires more than just a huntch or assumption to declare them all wrong.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><b>You are right, infinity is a concept, and a very usefull concept.
As far as it is related to physical reality, I agree with you that it can't be measured. There is no real physical property that will ever be measured as having a value of Infinity.</b><hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

ANS: Great we are now closer to talking on the same plane of thought.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><b>However, I don't agree with you that for that reason, Infinity would not be applicable to the real physical world.
Take for example time itself. If time would be said to be finite, then please indicate me, when is time going to stop?</b><hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

ANS: There is indeed a difference in the applicability of the term in a past or future tense. It is by definition impossible to claim the universe has existed for an eternity since that equires an accumulation of an finite number of time intervals but one can suggest that time will never end and hence could be viewed as eternal, realizing that of course the accumulated time never reaches ifinity but is an ever increasing finite number.

(Tom BTW disagrees with this view).

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><b>Is there any finite measure that can be quantified as the amount of time that the universe will still go on, after it stops completely?
If no such finite measure exists, then this means time goes on, and time can be said to be infinite (having no end).
If you say there exists a finite measure that is an upper bound to the amount of time the universe will last, then please indicate me what the universe will be or look like in its last minute, and how it could come ton an end.</b><hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

ANS: You can claim time moves toward infinity but never that time is infinite. (See above) But then that is also an unproveable assumption in that one can never reach infinity to see if it was infinite. If you follow the thought.



<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><b>I place this in doubt. There isn't any measurement that could indicate that the total nett-enery of the total universe is exactly zero. That is non-sense for sure.</b><hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

ANS: You are correct in that I over generalized the statement from the study. What it said was within the range of observerability the calculations shows a net balance of "Zero" energy.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><b>And further, you have not understood the argument at all. When I make a statement that the electric charge of any object is zero, I make a relative statement, comparing a specific charge against some other object (ground) which is defined to be zero

But how much is the charge of ground anyway? To measure that, we would have to measure ground against something else, which would then be called "ground" and be defined as zero.</b><hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

ANS: I see the point you intend but it isn't actually a limitation on the statement of the balance since the + values are being compared against the - values and the absolute value accuracy isn't important.

The issue comes down to the equality of measurement of the two quantities + and -.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><b>ALL our measurements are relatve, not absolute.</b><hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

ANS: We agree and in this case the relative function is between + and - not their absolute correctness against some unknown.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><b>We CAN NOT maeasure the absolute energy contents of the universe, since we have nothing to measure it AGAINST. You can not compare anything to nothing, since outside the universe, there is nothing.</b><hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

ANS: I agree we cannot measure with any absolute accuracy the contenst of the universe but we can get good general numbers for energy/matter and gravity which are physical calcualtion of what we observe and for what we observe it suggest that the balance is "Zero" and hence supports the view of Creation ex nihilo.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><b>In the ABSOLUTE sense, the value of the nett-energy of the universe is realy without meaning.</b><hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

ANS: Not to me. []




"Imagination is more important than Knowledge" -- Albert Einstien

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Mac</i>
<br />heusdens,

First my ap0logy for screwing up the spelling of your name.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

apologies taken, but the spelling must be foreign to you, since there are no other languages that have that "eu" letter combination.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><b>ANS: There is indeed a difference in the applicability of the term in a past or future tense. It is by definition impossible to claim the universe has existed for an eternity since that equires an accumulation of an finite number of time intervals but one can suggest that time will never end and hence could be viewed as eternal, realizing that of course the accumulated time never reaches ifinity but is an ever increasing finite number.

(Tom BTW disagrees with this view).
</b><hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Right. Now we are getting on to something.
What you tell here, is that you believe the (in)famous <i>Kalam Cosmological Argument</i> has any validity.
The KCA in short says: an actual infinite does not exsit; if time did not have a begin, the series of past events would have formed an actual infinity; hence a begin of time is proved.

This argumentation is clearly invalid, and for a simple reason. Just imagine a line that extends to both ends to infinity. Place two points at two arbitrary locations on the line. Measure the distance between them. The result will be always a finite measure.
We have not assumed ANYTHING about the placement of the points on the line. Still, the result is a FINITE measure.
Does that mean the line itself is FINITE?
No. Because if that would be the case, the line would have had a begin and an end, which as we have defined, is NOT the case.
The infinity of the line can be proved as follows. If the line would be finite, there would be a finite measure that would form an upper bound to the distance between two points on the line.
Suppose that finite measure would exist. Then we could place two points on the line in such a way as to conform to that upper bound.
Then shift the leftmost point to the left, and what we will have is a greater distance bewteen the two points. But if the measure would be an upper bound, such would be impossible. Hence, it proofs the line is not finite.

Now, this KCA says that the series of past events would have formed an actual infinite, if time did not have a begin. But an infinite past just means this, that no matter how long one counts back from now, one never reaches the begin. Does that anyhow proof that time had a begin? No, it just proofs that any measure we can take in the real world, is finite. The begin of time is not proved in that way.

For a discussion against a similar argument, check this page.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">
ANS: You can claim time moves toward infinity but never that time is infinite. (See above) But then that is also an unproveable assumption in that one can never reach infinity to see if it was infinite. If you follow the thought.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

My claim is just that time neither has a begin, nor an end, because an absolute begin or end of time is incomprehensible. In that way time is infinite. But time is usually referred to as a measurement of time difference. ALL such measurements will be finite measures.

There is no measure that can be taken in the universe, that can proof that time had a begin, nor the opposite. No scientific theory will ever be able to conclude one way or the other way with absolute certainty. The claim I make is therefore beyond provability in the strict sense, and just intuition.
You could call it a dogma also, or axioma, that I hold it that time did not have a begin. The opposite though is giving rise to even more dogmas though, as that it then must be assumed that time was set in motion by something outside of the universe.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">
ANS: You are correct in that I over generalized the statement from the study. What it said was within the range of observerability the calculations shows a net balance of "Zero" energy.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

What do you mean with "observed" ? The supposed mass/energy contents of the whole universe can only be traced back to some few percent of luminous matter, the rest is supposed to be present in the form of dark matter (no candidate for that yet) and the lambda value.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">
ANS: I see the point you intend but it isn't actually a limitation on the statement of the balance since the + values are being compared against the - values and the absolute value accuracy isn't important.

The issue comes down to the equality of measurement of the two quantities + and -.

ANS: We agree and in this case the relative function is between + and - not their absolute correctness against some unknown.


ANS: I agree we cannot measure with any absolute accuracy the contenst of the universe but we can get good general numbers for energy/matter and gravity which are physical calcualtion of what we observe and for what we observe it suggest that the balance is "Zero" and hence supports the view of Creation ex nihilo.

ANS: Not to me. []
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

From your point of view that time had a begin I can tell you probably support the idea of "creation ex nihilo", but I myself refute the idea that the whole universe started out from nothing. This would mean that all the changes that take place would have begun in changelesness, and all motion from motionlesness.
How do you imagine the world to have begun, if it had started out from a "nothing"?

heusdens,

First let me respond to the bulk of your post in general. We clearly have a different conclusion with regard to infinity and the origin of existance but then that is to be expected.

While you are new here and may not have dug back theorugh the many topics here. There have been very lengthy debates on these issues. The results were resolved as two views. That is each proponent retained his conclusion.

I don't think it would be productive to rehash those arguements. HOwever, I do want to say that your link was interesting. I do disagree however, in that the statement that one cannot project an infinity from a starting point.

The time issue is no different that putting your jpencile down in front of you and to proceed to attempt to draw an infinite line. By having a starting point you can never reach infinity you can onlny go towards it.

In the case of the time arguement the point on the line from which one legitimately starts his count is from the moment "Now" and then proceeds to count time intervals backwards. Doing this one can see that to claim "Eternal" existance requires the accumulation (that is the actual counting) to have reached infinity to actualy be eternal, which it can never do. Hence there must indeed have been an enception.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><b>From your point of view that time had a begin I can tell you probably support the idea of "creation ex nihilo", but I myself refute the idea that the whole universe started out from nothing. This would mean that all the changes that take place would have begun in changelesness, and all motion from motionlesness.
How do you imagine the world to have begun, if it had started out from a "nothing"?</b><hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

I certainly don't have the ultimate answers but I lso believe that is no basis to conclude Gods or Infinity which I find not only impossible but detrimental to the seeking of the ultimate answers.

It simply does not follow that something that exists has always existed and therefore never came into existance. It is wholly contadictory.

N

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&gt;(+s)+(-s) at least is mathematically viable, it remains for us to understand how.

As far as having "observed" the entirity of the universe that clearly is a misrepresentation. The calculation was done making reasonable assumptions. That is extrapolating what we do see into a type of uniform density or +/- components. from there one can assess the balance of +/- energy from a volume of any size - i.e. a tennis ball.

If the underlying assumptions are not valid then certainly the conclusion is not valid but based on the average density that we have observed the result is "Net Zero" and that concurs with Creation ex nihilo.

So we actually have two things in favor.

1 - Observed data.

2 - Mathematical viability.

The Infinity alternative has no such observation or mathematical viability.



"Imagination is more important than Knowledge" -- Albert Einstien

mac

infinity is NOT based on observation or math,it is to me based on SUBSTANCE and the INABILITY of "nothing" to produce SUBSTANCE.

mac

You indeed make the fallacy that you oblige the world that it MUST have started from a point (in time). If you had read the text well (Friedrich Engels, Anti-Duhring. Philosophy of Nature. Chapter V. Time and Space), it rejects that argument, as not having sense for the real world. Only for the mathematician, it is required that an infinite series starts from the definite.

Further, there can not be a physical theory of the "begin of time" pur sang (even the Hawking thesis is not a definite begin of time pur sang, cause in his thesis, time is divided into two components, one with and the other without a begin). Physicsists can not make physical law from nothing.

Mac,

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">I agree we cannot measure with any absolute accuracy the contenst of the universe but we can get good general numbers for energy/matter and gravity which are physical calcualtion of what we observe and for what we observe<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Would it be fair to say that the observed universe may well be highly inadequate for any sort of prediction on contents of matter and energy? For example, has it been proved beyond any doubt that the universe does not look the same on the remotest planet we observe?