Why does something exist instead of nothing?

Originally posted by sonship

You are quite fond of laughing at what people say so feel free to guffaw at our expense, these are speculations but speculation sometimes leads to actual new phyics, like Higgs did 40 years ago predicting the 'god particle', a terrible name, leading people to think some kind of supernatural aspect is going on.

Your post was interesting. tc. etc. etc. and whatever other innovative concepts which may be proposed in coming years.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Ah, I was reading so many comments I got it backwards. Sorry for that.

So what you are saying about the universe or multiverse is your god exists outside of it.

So you are saying there is a god universe and a people universe? All our universes or universe, however that turns out, is a separate issue from your god?

But your god if I have it right f ...[text shortened]... t, could come knocking on your god's door, Hi, there, So YOU are the one set all this up, eh!🙂

Originally posted by RJHinds
I believe everything must follow God's laws. We may not be able to determine the result of the throw of the die, but God can if he wishes.

HalleluYah !!! Praise the Lord! Holy! Holy! Holy!

Originally posted by sonhouse
But your god if I have it right from your religion, can interact with our universe so it would have to have some kind of entry and exit from our universe if it has its own house somewhere outside of our space-time.

Originally posted by twhitehead
The biggest problem with the concept of an entity outside of time is that it allows for time travel.
The other cool thing is that it makes the universe static from Gods perspective, and God static from our perspective. Its one of those dimension effects.
It also means the future is fixed.

Originally posted by twhitehead
Its still not entirely clear if you believe everything is deterministic.

Originally posted by sonship
[b]"Matter not perfectly conserved" was not strong enough to compel me to admit error in the Principle.[/b]

In the mid-1920s, developments in quantum mechanics led to its becoming the standard formulation for atomic physics.

William Lane Craig comments on Physicist Lawrence Kraus on Creation out of Nothing.

YouTube

Craig defending Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God in the area of
"Doesn't Subatomic Physics (Quantum Physics) show that something can come about out of nothing ?" With Some Q&A

YouTube


Annnd a counter point video saying Craig doesn't understand.

YouTube

Originally posted by sonship
William Lane Craig comments on Physicist Lawrence Kraus on Creation out of Nothing.

. Then he starts up an argument from infinity. Of course he shouldn't have tried that before reading up on Zeno's paradox. He is wrong.

If his argument held then he would have proved that the set of integers was finite, and in fact that infinity could not exist.

There is no philosophical argument that successfully proves that time is finite.

" Again, it would be profitable to consider various objections that have been offered against this reasoning. Against (2.21),

cont.

Mackie objects that the argument illicitly assumes an infinitely distant starting point in the past and then pronounces it impossible to travel from that point to today. But there would in an infinite past be no starting point, not even an infinitely distant one. Yet from any given point in the infinite past, there is only a finite distance to the present.16

J.L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), p. 93.


Now it seems to me that Mackie's allegation that the argument presupposes an infinitely distant starting point is entirely groundless. The beginningless character of the series only serves to accentuate the difficulty of its being formed by successive addition. The fact that there is no beginning at all, not even an infinitely distant one, makes the problem more, not less, nettlesome.

And the point that from any moment in the infinite past there is only a finite temporal distance to the present may be dismissed as irrelevant. The question is not how any finite portion of the temporal series can be formed, but how the whole infinite series can be formed. If Mackie thinks that because every segment of the series can be formed by successive addition therefore the whole series can be so formed, then he is simply committing the fallacy of composition.

Sorabji similarly objects that the reason it is impossible to count down from infinity is because counting involves by nature taking a starting number, which is lacking in this case. But completing an infinite lapse of years involves no starting year and is, hence, possible.17

Sorabji, Time, Creation, and the Continuum, pp. 219-22.


But this response is clearly inadequate, for, as we have seen, the years of an infinite past could be enumerated by the negative numbers, in which case a completed infinity of years would, indeed, entail a beginningless countdown from infinity.

Sorabji anticipates this rebuttal, however, and claims that such a backwards countdown is possible in principle and therefore no logical barrier has been exhibited to the elapsing of an infinity of past years. Again, however, the question I am posing is not whether there is a logical contradiction in such a notion, but whether such a countdown is not metaphysically absurd. For we have seen that such a countdown should at any point already have been completed.

But Sorabji is again ready with a response: to say the countdown should at any point already be over confuses counting an infinity of numbers with counting all the numbers. At any given point in the past, the eternal counter will have already counted an infinity of negative numbers, but that does not entail that he will have counted all the negative numbers. I do not think the argument makes this alleged equivocation, and this may be made clear by examining the reason why our eternal counter is supposedly able to complete a count of the negative numbers ending at zero. In order to justify the possibility of this intuitively impossible feat, the argument's opponent appeals to the so-called Principle of Correspondence used in set theory to determine whether two sets are equivalent (that is, have the same number of members) by matching the members of one set with the members of the other set and vice versa. On the basis of this principle the objector argues that since the counter has lived, say, an infinite number of years and since the set of past years can be put into a one-to-one correspondence with the set of negative numbers, it follows that by counting one number a year an eternal counter would complete a countdown of the negative numbers by the present year. If we were to ask why the counter would not finish next year or in a hundred years, the objector would respond that prior to the present year an infinite number of years will have already elapsed, so that by the Principle of Correspondence, all the numbers should have been counted by now. But this reasoning backfires on the objector: for, as we have seen, on this account the counter should at any point in the past have already finished counting all the numbers, since a one-to-one correspondence exists between the years of the past and the negative numbers. Thus, there is no equivocation between counting an infinity of numbers and counting all the numbers. But at this point a deeper absurdity bursts in view: for suppose there were another counter who counted at a rate of one negative number per day. According to the Principle of Correspondence, which underlies infinite set theory and transfinite arithmetic, both of our eternal counters will finish their countdowns at the same moment, even though one is counting at a rate 365 times faster than the other! Can anyone believe that such scenarios can actually obtain in reality, but do not rather represent the outcome of an imaginary game being played in a purely conceptual realm according to adopted logical conventions and axioms?

As for premiss (2.22), many thinkers have objected that we need not regard the past as a beginningless infinite series with an end in the present. Popper, for example, admits that the set of all past events is actually infinite, but holds that the series of past events is potentially infinite. This may be seen by beginning in the present and numbering the events backwards, thus forming a potential infinite. Therefore, the problem of an actual infinite's being formed by successive addition does not arise.18

.R. Popper, "On the Possibility of an Infinite Past: a Reply to Whitrow," British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 29 (1978): 47-8.


Similarly, Swinburne muses that it is dubious whether a completed infinite series with no beginning but an end makes sense, but he proposes to solve the problem by beginning in the present and regressing into the past, so that the series of past events would have no end and would therefore not be a completed infinite.19

R.G. Swinburne, "The Beginning of the Universe," The Aristotelian Society 40 (1966): 131-2.


This objection, however, clearly confuses the mental regress of counting with the real progress of the temporal series of events itself. Numbering the series from the present backwards only shows that if there are an infinite number of past events, then we can denumerate an infinite number of past events. But the problem is, how can this infinite collection of events come to be formed by successive addition? How we mentally conceive the series does not in any way affect the ontological character of the series itself as a series with no beginning but an end, or in other words, as an actual infinite completed by successive addition. "


Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-existence-of-god-and-the-beginning-of-the-universe#ixzz2OAcSh3Rl

Originally posted by sonship

If his argument held then he would have proved that the set of integers was finite, and in fact that infinity could not exist.

An actual infinite number of things does not exist.
I said that without reviewing Zeno.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I see you are not only infallible, but also remarkably fond of strawmen.
No claim has been made that an infinite number of things exist.
You merely stating that things are finite, does not make it so.

Originally posted by RJHinds
However, excluding spiritual things, the fact that physical things are finite, does make it so. 😏

Originally posted by twhitehead
Nope, facts do not make themselves true. But then your logic is worse than sonships, so I'm not surprised.

Originally posted by RJHinds
How you could be a programmer with your logic is beyond my understanding.