Problems with this section (Agnosticism)

by David Turell , Wednesday, November 25, 2009, 19:44 (5479 days ago) @ George Jelliss
edited by unknown, Wednesday, November 25, 2009, 20:00


> If you look back in the threads you will find we discussed this question quite extensively before you came along. I was referring to the idea, based on quantum theory, that the universe began as a "fluctuation in the void". The physicist Victor J. Stenger favours this view. His recent book "Quantun Gods" concludes with a chapter on "Nothingism".-I know that this idea is also expressed in a paper by NASA. Again, I ask, is there any other support by some of the cosmologic authorities other than Stenger. -Space-time is not an absolute void, but has potential quantum particles, popping in and out of our reality. An absolute void has a true nothing.-From Physics Forums on line:-Re: Nothingness and the rise of something ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I talked to Vic Stenger about his ideas a while back in an attempt to suggest that he is just reinventing Hegel's Absolute Idea, the spiritual unity that would be prior to the world of forms. George Spencer Brown's Laws of Form gives mathematical model of this idea, a calculus that captures the metaphysical scheme of Taoism, Buddhism, Sufism, etc. Russell praised this calculus highly but failed to see its true meaning. Stenger wouldn't even take an interest, mysticism being axiomatically a load of nonsense. -Personally, I would say that a rational thinker must find ex nihilo creation a load of nonsense, and that Stenger, Guth and others who favour it are poor metaphysicians. They don't seem to realise that the idea of the origin of the universe as ''nothing spontaneously breaking symmetry to become something' is just mysticism. Except, of course, that it would only appear to by Nothing becoming Something. If this process were any more than an appearance then the ancient paradox that causes normally sensible physicists to consider ex nihilo creation would arise. -I wish people like Stenger would do some research into these things, then he would not be so casually dismissing the only idea that works.