Maybe the universe has always existed

[Clivedurdle]

Quote from deconversion thread, paraphrasing Sagan.

Have got Zero - History of a dangerous idea, at home.

Do not all the uncaused causes arguments just disappear if one posits the universe always existing? I am not saying as it is now - _ I think it has clearly evolved and become more complex, probably has been through a series of big bangs, probably new universes are created in black holes - so this universe we are in is actually a universe generating type, and this level of complexity means life is a bi-product, including me typing away!

But why do we not turn the argument around and ask if "true nothing" - not quantum fluctuations - is a theoretical fiction, useful like the square root of minus one - but still a fiction?

And then seriously start asking how does an eternal universe actually work?

Why do we allow all this arguing about a fiction? Maybe the answer to the question which came first, the chicken or the egg, is both?

 

[Clivedurdle]

Are not uncaused cause arguments - like goddit - actually an admission that it is eternal, but just shifting the goalposts elsewhere, to a god, rather than trying to work out what is, what was and what might be?

 

[Juma]

There are no causes. There are laws. A doesnt cause B. But B follows when A is the case.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Quote from deconversion thread, paraphrasing Sagan.

Have got Zero - History of a dangerous idea, at home.

Do not all the uncaused causes arguments just disappear if one posits the universe always existing? I am not saying as it is now - _ I think it has clearly evolved and become more complex, probably has been through a series of big bangs, probably new universes are created in black holes - so this universe we are in is actually a universe generating type, and this level of complexity means life is a bi-product, including me typing away!

But why do we not turn the argument around and ask if "true nothing" - not quantum fluctuations - is a theoretical fiction, useful like the square root of minus one - but still a fiction?

And then seriously start asking how does an eternal universe actually work?

Why do we allow all this arguing about a fiction? Maybe the answer to the question which came first, the chicken or the egg, is both?

I never understood this idea that everything should either be somehow eternal or somehow caused. I'm perfectly happy with the idea of a time-loop, or even a more complex topology like, say, a net or a moebius ring.
EB

 

[Clivedurdle]

Is something before time existed eternal?

 

[surreptitious57]

There can be no such concept as something which existed before time. That is because time itself is temporal dimension so if it did begin at a specific point then nothing can have existed before it. This is however a physical impossibility because it would violate the laws of physics as absolute nothing cannot exist in actuality. Matter can of course cancel out anti matter. But as matter itself is something as opposed to nothing then no violation would
have occurred. So this is entirely permissible

 

[Speakpigeon]

Is something before time existed eternal?

You would need to ask people would lived at that time what their thoughts were on this.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

There can be no such concept as something which existed before time.

Sure, but maybe outside time?

That is because time itself is temporal dimension so if it did begin at a specific point then nothing can have existed before it. This is however a physical impossibility because it would violate the laws of physics as absolute nothing cannot exist in actuality.

I'm not too sure about "physical impossibility" so much as logical impossibility. Physical laws can only be expected to apply within time so that they cannot be regarded as a logical constraint for how things could go outside of time.

But logical impossibility because existence "before time" sounds like a logical impossibility.

And then logical impossibility would of course trivially imply physical impossibility.

That is because time itself is temporal dimension so if it did begin at a specific point then nothing can have existed before it.

The notion of nothing implies non-existence (i.e. there is no thing there). To say that nothing can have existed before time does not mean that something called "nothing" can have existed before time, which would indeed sound bizarre, but that no thing could have existed before time or that something could not have existed before time, which sounds more reasonable.
EB

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

There can be no such concept as something which existed before time. That is because time itself is temporal dimension so if it did begin at a specific point then nothing can have existed before it. This is however a physical impossibility because it would violate the laws of physics as absolute nothing cannot exist in actuality. Matter can of course cancel out anti matter. But as matter itself is something as opposed to nothing then no violation would
have occurred. So this is entirely permissible

A quantity of zero is premised on a quantity greater than zero. Even the concept of a quantity of zero is something. I can't quite get my head around having no concept of no quantity of zero except to say that it essentially defines what we refer to as the universe/cosmos. Game, set, match.

I'd have to find a place where there is no universe/cosmos, even theoretically, before I can take the concept seriously. All we hear today is semantics, people using the word "nothing."

 

[Clivedurdle]

Zero is powerful because it is infinity's twin

From Charles Seife Zero.

I wonder if they are not twins but more parents - the result being a universe?

 

[surreptitious57]

Nothing and absolute nothing are not the same. Nothing is defined as an absence of matter. But that is not all that exists and so paradoxically
that nothing actually contains something which could be energy for example. Absolute nothing would be devoid of not only matter but energy
and property and dimension. In other words it would be invisible. Which is a space so small that it has zero dimension [ although technically it
would be wrong to refer to it as a space as such for that very reason so just saying ]

 

[Speakpigeon]

Zero is powerful because it is infinity's twin

From Charles Seife Zero.

I wonder if they are not twins but more parents - the result being a universe?

A family. They were a family.

They got children, too; many children; an infinity of children: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six... They were far too many to count. Zero and the Infinite were a rich family, owning a gold mine somewhere in Andromeda and such. But the inheritance had to be divided by so many children that each of them got absolutely... nothing. So, the universe just vanished in a puff of nothingness.
That's how nothingness was created.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Nothing and absolute nothing are not the same. Nothing is defined as an absence of matter.

Nothing is defined as an absence of matter???

Since about when exactly?
EB

 

[surreptitious57]

That is what the standard definition of nothing is : an absence of matter
It is no thing and since a thing is by definition physical and all physical
things are made of matter then it logically follows that that is what it is

 

[Speakpigeon]

That is what the standard definition of nothing is : an absence of matter
It is no thing and since a thing is by definition physical and all physical
things are made of matter then it logically follows that that is what it is

A thing is not by definition physical. The word "thing" can be used to refer to immaterial... things. The concept of thing includes God, fairies, Santa Claus, leprechauns, mermaids etc., at least to the extent that people talk about them as if they were real things, and sometimes they do.

You are confusing the concept (of thing) with the theories, or views, certain groups of people have about what things, or kinds of things, do exist. Certainly, all things are physical presumably for all existing sciences and probably for a big majority of scientists themselves. But that's obviously not true for many ordinary people, for example religious people, and probably that's not even true for also a minority of scientists. Thus the notion, or concept, of thing has to accommodate what people may mean, not just what scientists believe unless you want us to live in some kind of 1984 dystopia.
EB

 

[Perspicuo]

Maybe the universe has always existed

Maybe we'll never know. "Always" is a very long time to meticulously gauge every moment of the multiverse until forvever towards the past.

If or when religion dies, soon after, few people will remain concerned by that question. Such inane speculation into "forevers" and "wherevers" can only be wrought in the feverish mind of theology. Sane curiosity is interested in a boundless array of questions, but is quickly unenthused by any sort of concern or worry regarding theological superlatives.

 

[fromderinside]

Someone has come up with a exception to entropy?

 

[Kharakov]

Someone has come up with a exception to entropy?

I thought old people already had wisdom.

 

[Juma]

Someone has come up with a exception to entropy?

Big bang

 

[Clivedurdle]

Substituting a big bang first cause with a goddidit first cause?

I think time with its conjoined twin space emerged at this local big bang, and this is a rare type of universe that also enables black holes and their bi-product, complex enough systems to enable even more complex adaptive systems that we label life.

So the invention of time in this universe enabled the invention of the categories "nothing""always"...

The rest of the universe with its multiverses is therefore always existing, and interestingly has zero energy, so is not existing at the same time eternally! And that actually is far more sensible than illogical searches for fictional first causes!