Nothing (General)

by David Turell , Monday, November 30, 2009, 16:50 (5284 days ago) @ dhw
edited by unknown, Monday, November 30, 2009, 16:58

On the Stenger site, under GOD: THE FAILED HYPOTHESIS, I see he comes up with one of those hackneyed arguments ... like God-of-the Gaps ... which get trotted out as if they actually meant something significant. He writes: "Not only does the universe show no evidence for God, it looks exactly as it would be expected to look if there is no God." The same silly claim is often applied to life and to evolution.
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> How the heck does anyone know what a universe/life/evolution would look like if there is or isn't a God? This is the only universe/life/evolution we know. In other words, we can't "expect" anything, because there's no precedent for us to base expectations on. Or have Stenger et al. been on mystical trips to other worlds?-Stenger can be made to look even sillier, by George Ellis' review of his book:-http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/27736
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> À propos of nothing, let me ask a naïve question, which has been asked many times but the answer to which I have never understood. If the Big Bang really did take place, and if the universe was created "ex nihilo", what went bang?-According to Guth, Valenkin, Stenger, et. al. a vacuum fluctuation. This presumes the vacuum space-time that is in our universe pre-existed the appearance of the universe; it contained potential quantum events which could come and go in 10 ^minus 23 power of a second. So it is not ex nihilo, if an absolute void, with a true nothing existed first.-So, if nothingness can be described as somethingness, Stenger and Guth have a way to create the universe without 'outside, possibly divine, help'. Mathmatically, nothingness has perfect symmetry and Stenger conjures up theory and math to find somethingness. Nothing really proven, of course, just math/philosophic babble, as suggested by a copied internet post I sent for George from Physics Forums.