Nothing (General)

by George Jelliss , Crewe, Friday, December 04, 2009, 17:53 (5280 days ago) @ dhw

dhw claims that Stenger's statement that "... the universe ... looks exactly as it would be expected to look if there is no God") is silly.-I see nothing silly about it.-The last part of his summary at the end of "Quantum Gods" reads:-"The model in which the universe is made of matter and nothing else and had a spontaneous, uncaused, natural origin from a state of chaos equivalent to "nothing" agrees with all the data. As a state of the universe, "something" is more natural than "nothing"."-dhw claims: "... we can't "expect" anything, because there's no precedent for us to base expectations on."-Given purely materialist assumptions we can make deductions from the equations of physics, which lead to our present cosmos. There is no need for other hypotheses to explain anything. -dhw comments: "If an ID-er said the universe/life/evolution looks exactly as it would be expected to look if there is a God, you would probably have a good laugh and say "How do you know?" I'm asking the same question to both parties. Without a precedent, we have no point of reference."-ID-ers claim the universe shows design, but do not say who the designer was. Their claims of "irreducible complexity" have been refuted. -Creationists claim that the universe was designed by a God, but their ideas of the nature of this god and how it goes about its designs are unclear. Their claims that the universe was created in a perfect state some 6000 years ago have likewise been refuted.-dhw also asks: "... how can "nothing" go bang? ... My naïve common sense tells me that "nothing" can't go bang, notwithstanding vacuum fluctuations, potential quantum events, symmetry, broken symmetry ...".-It seems that this is just a failure of imagination on dhw's part.

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GPJ