A notion which laymen (like me) find similar to that of Hawking, but which is actually a different argument, that of quantum theory. In quantum theory particles seem to "pop" into existence from out of nothing, if particles can do so, why not whole universes? The universe is not supposed to be coming out of the vacuum fluctuation, but this is used as an example of the notion that not everything requires a cause. Stephen Barr handles this notion easily by saying that a quantum state is still not nothing. Take the analogy of a bank account (which Barr uses) a bank account with no money in it is still a bank account, as opposed to no bank account at all. A quantum state is still a universal system with laws of it's own, it is a fallacy to assume that universes are only collections of space-times. Quantum states are universes too, and the existence of a quantum state in which something can pop out of nothing still requires an explanation as to its origin.
Christopher Southgate
Center for Theology and Natural Sciences
http://www.ctns.org/Information/information.html
Dr. Christopher Southgate the Co-ordinating Editor of God, Humanity and the Cosmos, trained originally in research biochemistry.
A. "The quantum view of the world departs from classical assumptions in three main ways.
1. Determinism has given way to an emphasis on probabilities. We simply do not have access to enough information to make deterministic predictions. And this is widely held to be a feature of the world rather than an observational limitation. See the Schrödinger Wave Equation and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.
2. Reductionism has given way to a more holistic approach to physical systems. See the EPR Paradox.
3. Most basic of all, the classical assumptions of continuity and divisibility (that between any two points there is an infinite number of intermediate values) have given way to quantisation – for certain physical quantities, the range of permissible values is severely restricted. "
A. "The quantum view of the world departs from classical assumptions in three main ways.
1. Determinism has given way to an emphasis on probabilities. We simply do not have access to enough information to make deterministic predictions. And this is widely held to be a feature of the world rather than an observational limitation. See the Schrödinger Wave Equation and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.
2. Reductionism has given way to a more holistic approach to physical systems. See the EPR Paradox.
3. Most basic of all, the classical assumptions of continuity and divisibility (that between any two points there is an infinite number of intermediate values) have given way to quantisation – for certain physical quantities, the range of permissible values is severely restricted. "
B. Not all versions posit something from nothing
Dr. Robert J. Rusell
Ph.D, Assistant Professor of Theology and Science, in Residence, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, 1981-1986 Associate Professor of Theology and Science in Residence, GTU, 1986-1992
Founder and Director, The Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences,
Berkeley, 1981-present
CTNS
http://www.ctns.org/Information/information.html
"...Quantum mechanics is subject to competing interpretations - none of which can be overruled by known data to date.The Copenhagen interpretation of Niels Bohr stressed the epistemic limitations of quantum physics. Here one is forced to use contradictory models, such as waves and particles, to refer to the same phenomena in order to explain all of its aspects. Others argued for an ontological interpretation of quantum mechanics, arguing that quantum unpredictability points to a fundamental indeterminism in reality. Werner Heisenberg argued this way: the chance aspects of quantum phenomena are due to an ontological property, indeterminism, which holds at the quantum level in the world. Albert Einstein and later David Bohm also opted for an ontological interpretation, but they sided with determinism, hoping that the statistical character of quantum data could be explained by as yet unknown causal factors ("hidden variables") or by a revised view of matter itself. Eugene Wigner and others have suggested that it is mind acting on matter that accounts for quantum phenomena. Everett-Graham-Wheeler adopt a "many worlds" view, in which with every quantum phenomenon, the universe splits into all possible states, and every possible outcome occurs in a distinct but unobservable universe. Astonishingly, over 60 years have passed since quantum mechanics was completed and we still cannot decide between these interpretations based on physical data!"
Abstracts from Journal of Scientific Explorer
"Consciousness, Causality, and Quantum Physics"
37, 2563 XK The Hague, The Netherlands
"Quantum theory is open to different interpretations, and this paper reviews some of the points of contention. The standard interpretation of quantum physics assumes that the quantum world is characterized by absolute indeterminism and that quantum systems exist objectively only when they are being measured or observed. David Bohm's ontological interpretation of quantum theory rejects both these assumptions. Bohm's theory that quantum events are party determined by subtler forces operating at deeper levels of reality ties in with John Eccles' theory that our minds exist outside the material world and interact with our brains at the quantum level. Paranormal phenomena indicate that our minds can communicate with other minds and affect distant physical systems by nonordinary means. Whether such phenomena can be adequately explained in terms of quantum effects and the quantum vacuum or whether they involve super-physical forces and states of matter as yet unknown to science is still an open question, and one which merits further experimental study."
C. NO version really posits something from nothing
(1) QM particles do not come from literal "nothing"
The recent use of such vacuum fluctuations is highly misleading. For virtual particles do not literally come into existence spontaneously out of nothing. Rather the energy locked up in a vacuum fluctuates spontaneously in such a way as to convert into evanescent particles that return almost immediately to the vacuum. As John Barrow and Frank Tipler comment, ". . . the modern picture of the quantum vacuum differs radically from the classical and everyday meaning of a vacuum-- nothing. . . . The quantum vacuum (or vacuua, as there can exist many) states . . . are defined simply as local, or global, energy minima (1986, p. 440). The microstructure of the quantum vacuum is a sea of continually forming and dissolving particles which borrow energy from the vacuum for their brief existence. A quantum vacuum is thus far from nothing, and vacuum fluctuations do not constitute an exception to the principle that whatever begins to exist has a cause."
"As Barrow and Tipler comment, "It is, of course, somewhat inappropriate to call the origin of a bubble Universe in a fluctuation of the vacuum 'creation ex nihilo,' for the quantum mechanical vacuum state has a rich structure which resides in a previously existing substratum of space-time, either Minkowski or de Sitter space-time. Clearly, a true 'creation ex nihilo' would be the spontaneous generation of everything--space-time, the quantum mechanical vacuum, matter--at some time in the past."(1986,441)."
"In the case of quantum events, there are any number of physically necessary conditions that must obtain for such an event to occur, and yet these conditions are not jointly sufficient for the occurrence of the event. (They are jointly sufficient in the sense that they are all the conditions one needs for the event's occurrence, but they are not sufficient in the sense that they guarantee the occurrence of the event.) The appearance of a particle in a quantum vacuum may thus be said to be spontaneous, but cannot be properly said to be absolutely uncaused, since it has many physically necessary conditions. To be uncaused in the relevant sense of an absolute beginning, an existent must lack any non-logical necessary or sufficient conditions whatsoever.
"
"The 'vacuum' of modern particle physics, whose 'fluctuation' supposedly brings our universe into existence, is not absolutely nothing. It is only nothing like our present universe, but it is still something. How else could 'it' fluctuate?" (William Carroll,Thomas Aquinas and Big Bang Cosmology)
"
"The 'vacuum' of modern particle physics, whose 'fluctuation' supposedly brings our universe into existence, is not absolutely nothing. It is only nothing like our present universe, but it is still something. How else could 'it' fluctuate?" (William Carroll,Thomas Aquinas and Big Bang Cosmology)
Joseph yciski has described well the confusion between actual nothingness and the concept of a vacuum in contemporary physics. Even in the absence of particles, "physical fields do not disappear, and their properties still can be characterized in the abstract language of mathematics."[ Joseph yciski, "Metaphysics and Epistemology in Stephen Hawking's Theory of the Creation of the Universe," Zygon, vol. 31, no. 2 (June 1996), p. 272.]
Quotes:
Robert C. Koons (University of Texas)
"Others have used the creation of virtual particles from the vacuum as evidence that things can begin to exist without a cause. If the energy involved is small enough, and the period of existence is short enough, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle allows particles to emerge from "nothing" and to disappear shortly thereafter. However, this argument fails to distinguish between something containing no energy or particles and sheer nothingness. In quantum mechanics, the vacuum is not a nothing. It is the indeterministic cause of the temporary existence of the virtual particles."[Robert C. Koons]
William Carroll:
,
of the Jacques Maritian Center: Thomistic Institute "Thomas Aqunias and Big Bang Cosmology" (Center Website visited aug. 1999)
"Joseph yciski has described well the confusion between metaphysical nothingness and the concept of a vacuum in contemporary physics. Even in the absence of particles, "physical fields do not disappear, and their properties still can be characterized in the abstract language of mathematics."(35) In attempting to describe the significance of Hawking's discussion of creation, C.J. Isham claims that we can identify the mathematical concept of any empty set with the absolute nothing in the traditional understanding of creation out of nothing: "The initial space from which the universe 'emerged' can be defined to be that part of the boundary of four-dimensional space which is not part of the (later) three-surface. But this is the empty set, which gives a precise mathematical definition of the concept of 'nothing'!"(36)
"yciski correctly observes that the empty mathematical set, to which Isham refers, is subject to the principles of logic and to the laws of quantum cosmology and, as such, cannot be identified with absolute nothing. The various accounts of an initial singularity embrace physical and mathematical principles necessary to account for the emergence of the universe.(37) "The alleged nothing [discussed in contemporary cosmology by Hawking and others] turns out to be a complex reality of ordering principles without which there would be no uniformity in nature and no scientific study of natural phenomena would be possible."(38)Thus, the nothing of contemporary cosmological theories turns out to be really something. "
(2) Stenger site inaccurate
Quotes:
Robert C. Koons (University of Texas)
"Others have used the creation of virtual particles from the vacuum as evidence that things can begin to exist without a cause. If the energy involved is small enough, and the period of existence is short enough, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle allows particles to emerge from "nothing" and to disappear shortly thereafter. However, this argument fails to distinguish between something containing no energy or particles and sheer nothingness. In quantum mechanics, the vacuum is not a nothing. It is the indeterministic cause of the temporary existence of the virtual particles."[Robert C. Koons]
William Carroll:
,
of the Jacques Maritian Center: Thomistic Institute "Thomas Aqunias and Big Bang Cosmology" (Center Website visited aug. 1999)
"Joseph yciski has described well the confusion between metaphysical nothingness and the concept of a vacuum in contemporary physics. Even in the absence of particles, "physical fields do not disappear, and their properties still can be characterized in the abstract language of mathematics."(35) In attempting to describe the significance of Hawking's discussion of creation, C.J. Isham claims that we can identify the mathematical concept of any empty set with the absolute nothing in the traditional understanding of creation out of nothing: "The initial space from which the universe 'emerged' can be defined to be that part of the boundary of four-dimensional space which is not part of the (later) three-surface. But this is the empty set, which gives a precise mathematical definition of the concept of 'nothing'!"(36)
"yciski correctly observes that the empty mathematical set, to which Isham refers, is subject to the principles of logic and to the laws of quantum cosmology and, as such, cannot be identified with absolute nothing. The various accounts of an initial singularity embrace physical and mathematical principles necessary to account for the emergence of the universe.(37) "The alleged nothing [discussed in contemporary cosmology by Hawking and others] turns out to be a complex reality of ordering principles without which there would be no uniformity in nature and no scientific study of natural phenomena would be possible."(38)Thus, the nothing of contemporary cosmological theories turns out to be really something. "
(2) Stenger site inaccurate
There is a much quoted website on the net, but a scientist named Stenger, who argues that quantum thoery proves this something from nothing hypothesis.>>Stenger, is wrong. Stenger is known for his obfusctation and wild speculations. He cannot provide one example of the "spontaneous self organization" he thinks brought the universe into existence in his "Free Inquiry" article "The Face of Chaos". That's why his speculations remain on his web-site and not in peer-reviewed astrophysical journals. They are just there to cloud the issues, and to comfort the atheist drones who visit the Secular Web.That is an arbitrary necessity. There is no difference in that and merely saying "I stipiulate that this is not a problem."
We DO NOT have a counter-example to the first premise of Kalam. We don't EVEN have something coming out of nothing. Ugh, I CONSTANTLY see atheists snipping this stuff from Stenger's crappy little web-page linked to from the Secular Web. As I will show, once again, he is DEAD WRONG.
And this is also the fallacy of equivocation. The quantum vacuum is not to be confused with nothingness (i.e., no time, no space, no energy, no matter), as these fluctuations are TIME-BOUND phenomena, and occur WITHIN space, nor are they uncaused in the sense that they require no physical antecedent conditions.
3) Origin of embryonic Bubble is causal process.
We DO NOT have a counter-example to the first premise of Kalam. We don't EVEN have something coming out of nothing. Ugh, I CONSTANTLY see atheists snipping this stuff from Stenger's crappy little web-page linked to from the Secular Web. As I will show, once again, he is DEAD WRONG.
And this is also the fallacy of equivocation. The quantum vacuum is not to be confused with nothingness (i.e., no time, no space, no energy, no matter), as these fluctuations are TIME-BOUND phenomena, and occur WITHIN space, nor are they uncaused in the sense that they require no physical antecedent conditions.
3) Origin of embryonic Bubble is causal process.
The primordial vacuum is a physical state existing IN space and time. As Kanitscheider notes: "The violent microstructure of the vacuum has been used in attempts to explain the origin of the universe as a long-lived vacuum fluctuation. But some authors have connected with this legitimate speculations [sic] far-reaching metaphysical claims, or at most they couched their mathematics in a highly misleading language, when they maintained 'creation of the universe out of nothing.' "From the philosophical point of view it is essential to note that the foregoing is far from being a spontaneous generation of everything from naught, but the origin of that embryonic bubble is really a causal process leading from a primordial substratum with a rich physical structure to a materialized substratum of the vacuum. Admittedly this process is not deterministic; it includes that weak kind of causal dependence peculiar to every quantum mechanical process."[Kanitscheider, B. 1990 "Does Physical Cosmology Transcend the Limits of Naturalistic Reasoning?" In Studies on Mario Bunge's "Treatise", ed. P. Weingartner and G.J.W. Dorn, p. 346-47. Amsterdam: Rodopi.]
So there ARE causal conditions of a quantum vacuum fluctuation though they are not fully deterministic, and we do not have something from nothing.
4) Quantum Vacuum not nothing.
Joseph yciski has described well the confusion between actual nothingness and the concept of a vacuum in contemporary physics. Even in the absence of particles, "physical fields do not disappear, and their properties still can be characterized in the abstract language of mathematics."[ Joseph yciski, "Metaphysics and Epistemology in Stephen Hawking's Theory of the Creation of the Universe," Zygon, vol. 31, no. 2 (June 1996), p. 272.]
"A quantum mechanical vacuum spawning material particles is far from the ordinary idea of a "vacuum" (meaning nothing). Rather, a quantum vacuum is a sea of continually forming and dissolving particles, which borrow energy from the vacuum for their brief existence. This is not "nothing," and hence, material particles do not come into being out of nothing. Popular presentations of these models often do not explain that they require a specially fine-tuned, background space-time on the analogy of a quantum mechanical vacuum. The origin of the observable universe from this wider space-time is not a free lunch at all. It requires an elaborately set table, which must be paid for."[William L. Craig, Cosmos and Creator, "Origins & Design", Vol. 17, No. 2, 1996]
"…use of such vacuum fluctuations is highly misleading. For virtual particles do not literally come into existence spontaneously out of nothing. Rather the energy locked up in a vacuum fluctuates spontaneously in such a way as to convert into evanescent particles that return almost immediately to the vacuum. As John Barrow and Frank Tipler comment, ". . . the modern picture of the quantum vacuum differs radically from the classical and everyday meaning of a vacuum-- nothing. . . . The quantum vacuum (or vacuua, as there can exist many) states . . . are defined simply as local, or global, energy minima (V'(O)= O, V"(O)>O)" ([1986], p. 440). The microstructure of the quantum vacuum is a sea of continually forming and dissolving particles which borrow energy from the vacuum for their brief existence. A quantum vacuum is thus far from nothing, and vacuum fluctuations do not constitute an exception to the principle that whatever begins to exist has a cause."[William L. Craig, "The Caused Beginning of the Universe: a Response to Quentin Smith." British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44 (1993): 623-639.]
"The 'vacuum' of modern particle physics, whose 'fluctuation' supposedly brings our universe into existence, is not absolutely nothing. It is only no thing like our present universe, but it is still something. How else could 'it' fluctuate?"[William Carroll,Thomas Aquinas and Big Bang Cosmology]
"Others have used the creation of virtual particles from the vacuum as evidence that things can begin to exist without a cause. If the energy involved is small enough, and the period of existence is short enough, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle allows particles to emerge from "nothing" and to disappear shortly thereafter. However, this argument fails to distinguish between something containing no energy or particles and sheer nothingness. In quantum mechanics, the vacuum is not a nothing. It is the indeterministic cause of the temporary existence of the virtual particles."[a href="http://www.leaderu.com/offices/koons/docs/lec5.html">Robert C. Koons]
"A quantum vacuum is a physically necessary condition of a virtual particle coming into existence and, in this 'physically necessary' sense of causation, virtual particles may be said to have causes. A probabilistic definition of causality would also enable us to say that virtual particles have causes, for given a quantum vacuum there is a certain probability that virtual particles will be emitted by it."[Quentin Smith, "Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology," Essay VI., p. 179.]
So quantum vacuum fluctuations DO NOT get something out of nothing, and they are NOT uncaused.And all of that is really beside the point. The original proponents of these models have abandoned them, and chastised others for reviving them. They posit all sorts of metaphysical entities that can never be observed and are not falsifiable (i.e., a wider background space AND time). They have ZERO empirical evidence in their favor. And finally, they CONTRADICT observation.
Dr. Sten Odenwald (Raytheon STX) for
NASA IMAGE/POETRY Education and Public Outreach program, 2001.
How can 'nothing' do anything at all, let alone create an entire universe? When physicists say 'nothing' they are being playful with the english language, because we often think of the vacuum as being 'empty' or 'nothing' when in fact physicists know full well that the vacuum is far from empty. The primordial 'state' at the Big Bang was far from being the kind of 'nothingness' you might have in mind. We don't have a full mathematical theory for describing this 'state' yet, but it was probably 'multi- dimensional', it was probably a superposition of many different 'fields', and these fields, or whatever they were, were undergoing 'quantum fluctuations'. Space and time were not the things we know them to be today because our world is a lot colder than the way it started out. Nothingness was not nothing, but it was not anything like the kinds of 'somethings' we know about today. We have no words to describe it, and the ones we borrow (that are listed in the Oxford English Dictionary) are based on the wrong physical insight.
D. Quantum Universe requires prior conditions.
(1) Which came first, matter or physical laws?
"We do not know, but matter is derivative from energy, and energy is derivative from 'field' so in some sense, the physical laws that determine the quantum dynamics of fields must have been primary, with matter as we know it coming much later."
Ibid.
What sort of quantum field could possibly have triggered the Big Bang out of nothingness?
http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/ask/a11035.html
We have no idea. And certainly not one that we can examine and test to confirm the theoretical expectations. The best we can say is that the fundamental field in nature is the gravitational field, and out of this and its weird quantum properties, the stage was somehow set for everything else we can identify in the physical world. We do not, however, understand what the gravitational field 'IS' in any real fundamental way. We know how it OPERATES but that is nit the same as understanding its actual nature.
Kieth Ward, God, Chance, and Necessity
On the quantum fluctuation hypothesis, the universe will only come into being if there exists an exactly balanced array of fundamental forces, an exactly specified probability of particular fluctuations occurring in this array, and existent space-time in which fluctuations can occur. This is a very complex and finely tuned ‘nothing’... So this universe looks highly contingent after all, and a creator God might well choose to create a partly probabilistic universe by choosing just such an origin for iit."
(3) Wider Background Space
Quantum vacuum fluctuation models postulate a vacuum in a wider background space from which new expanding universe emerges, just as sub-atomic particles emerge from a quantum vacuum. This background space is in a steady state (not expanding) and gives birth to other expanding mini-universes, one of which is our own.
Is there any good reason to regard the observed expansion of our universe as only something local and not applicable to the universe as a whole? The Copernican principle states that we hold no special place in the universe and, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, it is safe to assume that the expansion we observe everywhere we can check applies to the entirety of the universe.
Craig observes "Indeed, since we are confined to the observable universe, one wonders how we could ever have such evidence. Postulating a different, wider universe is akin to postulating God -- except that, unlike God, we have no independent reason to think that a wider universe exists."[Cosmos and Creator, "Origins & Design", Vol. 17, No. 2, 1996]
As philosopher of science Quentin R. Smith admits, "A disadvantage of . . . theories that postulate a background space from which the universe fluctuates, is that they explain the existence of the universe but only at the price of introducing another unexplained given, viz., the background space"[Quentin R. Smith (1988), "The Uncaused Beginning of the Universe," Philosophy of Science 55:54]
The Dutch physicist J.P. Van der Weele states, "We will never be able to determine which of these possibilities is actually true (if any), so all our ideas about the outer universe are doomed to remain metaphysical speculations."[ J.P. Van der Weele, "The Inflationary Universe" (doctoral report, University of Utrecht, 1983), p. 36.]
E, Universe not Analogous to a Virtual Particle
Craig states: "Nor does the comparison of the universe's origin to the spontaneous production of a virtual particle serve to render these models plausibly realistic. For if this comparison is meant to be reasoning by analogy, then it seems extraordinarily weak, since the disanalogies between the universe and a virtual particle are patent. If we are to believe with Tryon [1973] that the universe literally is a virtual particle, then this seems even more preposterous, since the universe has neither the properties nor behavior of a virtual particle. One might ask, too, why quantum fluctuations are not now spawning universes in our midst? Why do vacuum fluctuations endure so fleetingly rather than grow into mini- universes inside ours?"["The Caused Beginning of the Universe: a Response to Quentin Smith." British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44 (1993): 623-639.]
