Stenger\'s Cosmology refuted (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, March 24, 2014, 19:57 (3897 days ago) @ romansh

Dhw: This, of course, would mean that nothing preceded the universe (no "before") and that everything sprang from nothing. 
Romansh: There is some evidence pointing to if we add up the energy in the universe then the whole lot comes to about zero. So nothing sprang from nothing ... if this observation is correct.
-This is very confusing. Do you mean something sprang from nothing? How can the energy IN the universe lead to the coming into existence of the universe? If the universe sprang from energy, then energy preceded the universe and there was a before.
 
ROMANSH: Secondly it does not just mean time did not precede this universe, but that anything preceding this universe is an incoherent concept. This of course does not mean we cannot model bounces and multiverses and no doubt other weird and wonderful concepts.

What is incoherent about the idea of eternal energy preceding and spawning this universe?-Dhw: He [George] claims that the alternative is "fanciful fiction" and he is "going by the facts we know". We do not know that our universe constitutes "everything", and even with your more circumspect wording, we have no data or models that can explain how a universe can come out of nothing. We can only speculate, and scientific and philosophical wordsmiths can only twist themselves in knots describing how nothing can be something can be nothing. -ROMANSH: We can only go by what data we have and the evidence that corroborates our models. The problem is our models also predict strange things ... at the moment we don't have the acumen to test these.
We have models that do give us mechanisms for how the universe came from nothing. So I don't really understand how you can say this dhw.
http://]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Universe_from_Nothing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo
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The problem with models that give us mechanisms for reality is that they just generate more questions at a deeper level.

Which of course makes them all suspect. Perhaps I have misunderstood the word "models". People have theories, which include bounces and multiverses, and universes springing from energy which they did not spring from because energy could not have preceded the universe...The reception of Krauss's theory makes it abundantly clear that there is no scientific consensus. How then can anyone dismiss an alternative which allows for energy to precede the universe it gave birth to?

Dhw: The hypothesis that there was no "before" is therefore as fanciful a fiction as the hypothesis that energy has been spewing out universes throughout eternity.

ROMANSH: The speculation that there is a before can be result from a deep misunderstanding of the models we have.

Once again, since there are various models, none of which has led to any kind of consensus, perhaps the models we have are inadequate, as you have more or less indicated above.
 
ROMANSH: Ultimately we can't know, but we can eliminate nonsense.-The idea that our universe sprang from energy can hardly be called nonsense, and if something springs from something else, that something else must have preceded it.