Why is there anything at all? (Introduction)

by George Jelliss , Crewe, Sunday, June 29, 2008, 11:19 (5990 days ago) @ Curtis

I will respond to some of Curtis's points. - 1) "That there was no "creation" or "coming into being" there was simply a "beginning". The first premises of the Kalam address this and show that the Universe had a beginning." What is wrong with the premises? - You have not defined what you mean by "a beginning". Do you mean a zero point of time, or first instant of time? Or do you mean a creation event? The existence of a zero point of time does not imply a preceding creation event out of some pre-existing state. - 2) A quantum fluctuation happened. This is logically absurd because a quantum fluctuation requires a vacuum which requires something (i.e., spatial dimensions and time) to exist. This view is just wrong. - Why couldn't the space-time dimensions have been zero? I see no logical contradiction here. - 5) The universe is eternal. But the Kalam shows it is not eternal so this is not a possibility. So, what is it that is illogical about the Kalam?
 - For me to say that something is "eternal" means that it exists for all of time, from time zero to the end-time whenever that might be. By this definitin, the universe IS eternal. - In your slides you define eternal as "beginningless", which is something different. The universe has a "beginning" (in the sense of a zero of time) so it is not eternal in this new sense. - However in another of your slides you describe "eternal" as meaning having "an infinite number of past seconds". This is yet a third meaning. You say that the first cause "existed for eternity", and yet "time did not exist". This is all self-contradictory paradox-making, and quite illogical. - Curtis concludes: I also feel the need to address the notion that "universes can appear uncaused from nothing by chance." People who say these sorts of things are being illogical and inconsistent. They do not live this way. For example, if you see a car in your driveway that you didn't put there, would you believe that it appeared from nothing, uncaused, by chance? If police were to find a bank manager had $100,000 in his briefcase, would we believe it appeared from nothing, uncaused, by chance? Absolutely not!!! So why is it that people can say this sort of thing about the Universe without a shred of evidence? Are they trying to get away from the real answer? Why? - The case of the universe, which is "all that exists" is different from the case of something that exists within the universe. Since the universe is all that exists there is nothing outside the universe. So in imagining the universe as being within, or coming into existence within, some larger universe we are attributing to it features that it does not have. It is a habit of mind difficult to escape from.