How exactly does the theory that something can come out of nothing show evidence that no creator was needed?

Question

One of the leading theories is basically that it IS possible for something to come out of nothing. In the world of subatomic particles, it's possible for a matter/antimatter pair (say, a proton and an antiproton) to form spontaneously out of nothing. If this happened on a very large scale you could get a whole universe -- (in theory). Some use this argue for a creator, or against a creator. For those who use this evidence that we don't need a creator: this theory accounts for "something" to be created from nothing, but this does nothing to explain the enviornment that these subatomic particles had to come out of nothing right? Where did the enviorment come from that allowed this to happen?

Choosing a best answer is going to be tough. Many of you gave great answers. Some of you are simply stupid.

The first two answers in particular. As for Fred, go back to the drawing board youself. It is your type in fact that pollute the sites such as this. There are many non-believers in a creator that believe the something out of nothing theory, it's a leading viewpoint in science right now, ask any biologist who is up to speed with the trends you moron.

As for the second poster. You allude to an infinite past which has been shown to be impossible. Infinity is a concept, not a reality. You can't have an "actual" infinite because think about it, if you have "INFINITY" you can't add or subtract from it.

Anyone else who rambled, do more research before shooting off, it makes you look like a fool to anyone here over 14.

Answer 1

First, the "something out of nothing" has been shown to exist.

Also, anything that does not break a "law of conservation" can occur. How often it occurs (or the probability it occurs) may depend on the number, severity and limits of all the conditions that must be in place for it to occur.

A particle can come out of nothing as long as the combination mass-time does not exceed a value set out by the amount of energy available in the "false vacuum".

In this manner, pairs of electron-positron (total energy a bit above 1 million electron-Volts) are thought to be common place in today's universe. They appear, last a very short time, then annihilate each other and go back to being energy again. Some pairs may last longer before disappearing. There is a very small probability that some pairs may last as long as the universe.

Pairs of proton-antiproton are far more rare, as they require a lot more energy (almost 1900 million eV). The probability that they last long is even smaller than for electron-positron pairs.

The more massive the particles, the more energy is needed -- the less likely the event. And when they do occur, the less likely they will last very long.

The probability that a whole universe springs out of nothing and last billions of years would be almost impossible because you'd need as much energy as there is... in the universe!

However, "almost" is the operative word. You only need it to occur once.

Of course, the people who came up with this theory had to come up with an "anti-particle" and things got a bit tricky when another theory showed that time could be the result of the existence of matter. So the latest version I had seen (a long time ago) called for 4 universes coming out of nothing:

Our universe, time flowing towards what we call the future.
An anti-universe (anti-matter), also flowing towards the future.
A regressive universe (time flowing backwards)
A regressive anti-universe (time also flowing backwards).

According to what we know so far (or what we knew at the time the theory was formulated), there is nothing that makes it impossible. Therefore, given as much time as we want, waiting for a universe to be created... it is bound to happen.

However, there is also no indication that's how it all began.

The theory itself (as well as the people who formulated it originally) says nothing about the presence or absence of a creator.

Some people latched on to the idea to claim that this was "proof" that we did not need a creator while others used the same idea to claim that this is "proof" that there is one*.

This is what happens when you use a theory for purposes other than what it was conceived for.

Remember: in science, a theory is a tool to make predictions about some things. Move away from the things it was designed for, and the theory may become a useless tool.

Einstein's Theory of Relativity may be very useful to explain why some decaying particles appear to last longer than usual when they are moving very fast; however, it is a lot less useful when trying to predict if the next egg I crack will have two yolks.

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*The Bible does claim that God created the universe out of nothing. Except man (created from a bit of dirt) and woman (from man's rib).

Answer 2

A creator being "needed" is the First Cause argument. This leads to infinite regress: where did the creator come from?

There is no satisfactory explanation of any sort why there is something rather than nothing. I don't count the "self-creating God" idea as satisfactory. At any rate, why wouldn't that self-creating thing, whatever it is, be really simple instead of an all-knowing, all-powerful sentient being? That really simple self-creating thing could then evolve into the Universe.

More likely is that our intuitive notions of time, or causation, are wrong. We have no problem with the idea of an indefinite future, so why can't there be an infinite past (obviously with multiple Big Bangs, etc.), and no "time" when reality did not exist. Then no creation is needed, and no creator is needed.


A further illogical step is the idea that the First Cause, whatever that is, is a sentient being that cares about us and will possibly punish our moral transgressions in some hypothetical afterlife.

Answer 3

This question is really more appropriate for either religion or philosophy than science, so you might want to post there too.

Basically the logical/scientific problem with God is that God is not an answer that solves anything: it just begs the question. If God created the universe, who or what created God? If God needs no creator "by definition," why can't the universe as a whole need no creator "by definition"? What about the universe as it exists would be different if there were no God? (Answer: as far as we can tell, nothing at all).

Creation of virtual particles out of vacuum is fine, as far as it goes. It shows that God is not necessary for the creation of matter, and therefore is one more item removed from the list of those things that deists assert only God can do. But to believe in God simply because that ever-narrowing set is not yet reduced to zero? That's silly. Belief or lack thereof is based on faith, not on science.

Answer 4

All theories of the nature and origin of the universe can be reduced to one of three ideas:
1) eternal existence
2) infinite loop
or 3) infinite regress.

None of these really answers the question, "but where did that come from?". The God hypothesis, for example, raises questions like "where did God come from?" and "what did he do before there was a universe?".

Some people find the God hypothesis comforting because it means that Someone, at least, understands all that, but from a logical standpoint it doesn't go further than any other hypothesis in actually explaining anything. Examined carefully, all explanations of the origin of the universe are simply mind-boggling.

Answer 5

Yeah, NO, IF this was true... "something" would still be coming out of "nothing" today. Random new creations would just be popping up all over the place... same as the whole evolution theory... if it were true then why are we still not evolving, and why do we still have apes...they would have evolved, not SOME of them, and the others didnt. All these theories, which any good scientist will admit that they are just that--theories-- are an attempt to explain something scientifically that was not meant to be explained. People believe in LOVE... which is 100% unexplainable by science. Wind... which is also unexplainable. WHY, then, is a creator so hard to believe??? Science can have theories upon theories upon theories, but please explain where the SOUL comes from...the ability to feel, love, hurt, etc. Did that just come from nothing too? Nope. It is undeniable, there is a Creator. Anyone who argues otherwise is having a crisis of intellectualism and can not bear to believe something that doesnt make sense in their head... not to mention humans only use 10% of our brains.... so that would demonstrate how we should know everything right?! Please! Anyway, all this protons and neurons and particles etc. etc. etc. may be a pattern that the Creator uses for our creation, but when it comes down to it, what does that matter to your soul? When you die, will you still care about particles? Will you be laying in the grave wondering about protons? Or will you care about the RELATIONSHIP that you have formed with your Creator, and the eternal life that He has promised through His Son? There IS a Creator. Do you know Him?

Answer 6

In my view the reason we run into trouble when we credit things to a Creator is that it makes us stop asking questions. I just read a response to another question about why the moon has less gravity than the earth. Good question... but one of the answers was, "Only God can know the answer to that!" This person stopped asking questions when she said that, so for her, that's the end of learning. To me that's one of the biggest dangers we face in this world.

When I read that subatomic particles come out of nothing, my question is, "How do you know?" It's just as likely that they came out of something we don't have the technology to detect yet. Just as people used to believe that the sun would periodically disappear but now we know it is simply eclipsed from time to time, subatomic particles that come out of no where will probably be explained in the future in a far more natural way than the age old "Poof!" explanation.

Answer 7

It is great that every year we learn more about the universe. The problem with matter/antimatter coming from nothing is; our uniiverse is full of a lot of things. The matter/antimatter could be coming from something we do not see at this time; not from nothing. In the beginning of everything, there was indeed nothing. Well, nothing as we understand it. We now have matter and energy. Perhaps BEFORE the universe was created, something else was around that CHANGED into matter and energy, i.e. the beginning of our universe. And the universe came from something small, so we had something in the beginning. Not nothing...

Answer 8

basically, the mind-boggling fact of the matter is that following the cause-effect chain back far enough, one of two conclusions is true: Either something appeared from nothing, or else something existed without ever having been created.

To me, using science to prove/disprove god, using religion to prove/disprove science is pointless. Science, ultimately, is the study of how things work. Religion is the study of "why"

To see how the universe works doesn't mean (in my opinion) that it wasn't created. You're just seeing how the creation works, and understanding the mechanisms by which creation was done. To me, it's not unreasonable to think that God uses the laws of physics that he created to make things end up the way they are today by design. Just because we can analyze the steps doesn't mean it wasn't guided.

If you see a baseball sitting in a bunch of shattered glass underneath a broken window, and ask how the glass got there, science is the discipline that calculates the trajectories of the pieces of glass, the mass of the ball, etc and can give an excrutiatingly accurate depiction of the ball breaking the glass.

Religion is the study of who threw the ball.

Answer 9

Seems to me that everyone is chasing the 'something out of nothing' chestnut, when really what we are talking about is/are observable phenomena. We live in a thing that we call a ;Universe', and we have, in all our wisdom , decided to quantify everything according to out latest observations, and then define 'Laws' that govern the behaviour of stuff.

A clever fellow tried to point out the futility of this many years ago in a piece called 'Flatland'. It tried to describe how things would appear to us if we were looking a a two dimensional world, and how things about us would appear to the two dimensional people.

We think that we live in a four dimensional world, and try to rationalise everything on that basis. The truth is that we exist/manifest in all sorts of worlds and dimensions, the observable, physical one just being a tiny part of this overall thing that some of us refer to as the 'Omniverse'.

The problems that quantum physicists have encountered have been found to be explicable only outside of our Newtonian/Einsteinian physics, so we are, literally, in the process of re-writing the book, or one should say all the books.

That 'things' can appear out of nowhere is merely a factor of observation, and it is our limited ability to observe across an electromagnetic spectrum that covers a frequency range unimaginably vast, and within which our physical senses are restricted to a fraction of a percent, and our current 'scientific' instruments barely more than this.

We live in an energetic Omniverse, and all is composed of energy, manifesting in divers forms. Some we see, some we don't, and some hover in and out of our dim perception. None of which adds up to stuff being created out of nothing.

As regards the 'creative' process, is it not clear that we are all 'Creators', in the sense that it is clear that the observed is, in a sense, the product of the observer ?

To observe means to break down the wave-form, and instigate the particulate. Few would argue with this concept, but if you really think about it...............???

Answer 10

Your theory, as you have attempted to state it, is a flawed paraphrasing of the contrapositive of a First Causes argument. As pointed out above, this argument suffers from infinite regression: if there is a First Cause, then what caused it, etc. You simply pose the example along the lines of who/what is responsible for the laws of physics that permit the proton/antiproton pair to form in the first place, and you are clearly back on the regression to nowhere.