What's the problem with something coming from nothing?

Question

I always find this coming up as an argument against evolution or the big bang, but I don't really see the relevance, could someone enlighten me.

Under quantum theory, particles and their anti particles are created and destroy eachother spontaneously all the time (giving rise to observable effects such as Hawking radiation from black holes). In addition, as gravitational energy is negative, it is quite probable that the sum total of all the energy and matter in the universe is 0, therefore no laws are violated. What is the problem with something coming from nothing?

Papa G: Yes, it all came from my head (though I prefer to call it an education)

Suspender: We can observe these spontaneous generations, they are called quantum vacuum fluctuations and are the result of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

rkilburn410 and person below: possibly do some research on quantum mechanics, its interesting and may enlighten you a bit.

Answer 1

the problem is many of these rather simpleminded people can't make the conceptual leap from very early stages of the universe to now and the immense amount of time that has passed. They don't buy that from the earliest earth soup, given enough time (and billions of years is a looong time), something as complex as a human could arise. They completely underestimate the complexity of the universe, do not understand many of its natural laws, and have a poor grasp of how natural selection works. Free from that knowledge they make the most ludicrous claims.

They also realise that science does not offer conclusive answers in this area: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life so they perceive it as a 'weakness'. Therefore they attack it. Because what else can they do? It's either refute the scientific stuff or prove that adam and eve populated the world and that different world languages were caused by a miracle at the tower of babel. So they attack. With hilarious results.

In a way this is good, it spurs more people to research these items, if only to shut them up.

Answer 2

Neither physics nor biology claims that something came from nothing. The physics of our universe applies post- Big Bang.

Creationists and fundamentalist Christians make this crap up so they can blame it on scientists and then argue against it. You are wasting your time on subtleties and precision of definition with them. They are not interested in the truth or in thinking about the truth. Ignorance is their game, and Christian is their name

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acid_zebra ---

So true. In fact, it would have been more unlikely had life not occurred on earth. All of the ingredients and the water-rich environment necessary to fuel the bio-chemical reactions that drive the transition between ‘living’ and ‘non-living’ molecules were in place. It was only, as you note, a matter of time.

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rkilburn410 –

Why couldn’t it have been something else. Besides, you cannot use the ‘something from nothing’ argument against reality-based explanations of the universe, but allow some imaginary supreme being to escape from the same box.

You cannot have it both ways. If your God can have always existed, so can the universe.

However it happened, the universe had to come first. Otherwise, where was God hanging out?

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heartbeat_54 –

‘Discovery’ – everything in science is not ‘invented’ or ‘created’. Be careful that you are not confusing science with engineering. They are not the same thing.

Answer 3

Nothing. It's just that a lot of Creationists don't bother learning their quantum physics to understand the details of the current inflationary era theory to realize that it is mathematically interally consistent.

They'd rather read a book that does the thinking for them, even if the thinking is 2000 years old.

Answer 4

Who "invented" the particles"? Everything has to have a beginning..you talk about black holes etc...things can seem to come from nothing right now..but really they don't because there is already lots of unseen bits around. I mean no one can ever honestly say that you can get something out of nothing..absolutely totally nothing...and of course it is is relevant as we all want to have a beginning..we all want to know how things ever got started..even in science things have to be "invented" or "created"...the same with our existence, the planets existence etc. Many people want to be able to have things make sense to them so they reason things out.....nothing that we can reason with our minds can ever truly reason out that something is possible to come from nothing..scientifically..just the same as no non christian can believe that God always has existed somewhere....for Christians it is based on faith..and the reasoning that without having faith in that..then we are back to having the fact that something can come out of nothing...God can do everything..create.."invent"..etc.

Answer 5

No problem at all. I myself was created from nothing by nobody and I will return to nothing. I see no problem with that.
Church people will tell you it's big problem -- if it's such a big problem then they need to tell us where their God came from.
Their own logic comes back and bites them, because their God had no creator and no cause, they just leave it at that. Moreover, their God has no scientific evidence; he has only the emotional evidence that sits in their heads.

(Six answers down from mine, Gary F is right, arguing sublties with church people is a waste of time. Religious belief is emotion.)

Answer 6

define nothing, there is, or there is not. I haven't taken physics but to me 0=0 not 1 so to say that some thing came from nothing does from a logical standpoint makes any sense. As if something came, it was something to begin with.

Answer 7

Then nothing exists as something we completely misunderstand. I would be willing to bet that if such is the case that nothing does not exist in the first place.

Answer 8

there are a selection of difficulty it no longer something comes up between the RAM fault is likewise the between the substantial issues and signal cable disconnect ,issues in VGA port, and difficulty interior the device software are the computing gadget issues.

Answer 9

Perhaps you need to define 'spontaneous', then. Why can't we observe spontaneous generation like that under controlled conditions?

Answer 10

People don't appreciate it as much, that's why the world is in such a crumby state.