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Author | Topic: A Simplified Proof That The Universe Cannot Be Explained | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
1. Consider an empty universe.
a. There is nothing to cause anything to happen. 2. Now consider the first thing in the universe.
3. This first thing has no cause since there was nothing before it.
a. Therefore it cannot be explained. 4. Therefore the universe cannot be explained. Well, I suppose that universe could not be explained. Where were you planning on going from there? But I don't see that having anything to do with our universe, where it did not exist in an empty state before there were things in it. The universe is the things, so without them we don't have our universe.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
As the proof shows only the first thing in the universe cannot be explained. As the proof shows, the origin of the universe cannot be explained. Is it only the first thing or also the universe itself?
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
The universe is the things, so without them we don't have our universe. As the corollary to my proof shows, a universe where the first thing always existed cannot be explained. Well, if the first thing didn't exist until the universe did,and if the universe has a finite past then the first thing has not always been there. But this still doesn't leave room for an empty universe that just sits there without things in it. Your proof fails to take this situation into account. It is still possible that our universe can be explained.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Cat Sci writes:
From the proof: Is it only the first thing or also the universe itself? 3. This first thing has no cause since there was nothing before it.
a. Therefore it cannot be explained. 4. Therefore the universe cannot be explained. So it's both the first thing and the universe that you're claiming cannot be explained, not just only the first thing, so this statement is false:
As the proof shows only the first thing in the universe cannot be explained.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
A=B The first thing is the universe at that point. Or the first things are the universe at that point, but either way your "proof" doesn't account for these possibilities. Your "proof" is limited to a universe that exists as a null set and then is populated with things. It doesn't account for other types of universes that aren't like that, like the ones I've brought up. Another one is where you have half-things in quasi-existence that combine to form the first things that exist in the universe. It just pushes it back a step, but the first things that exist in the universe would have an explanation.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Something like branes colliding, but after the universe is there rather than before it.
It isn't necessary that there are no things and then there are things, there could be intermediate stages.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Assuming that the physicists are right about branes, in what sense are branes not things? In what sense don't they exist? Because in the "proof", things aren't existing until they are in the universe. So a brane that's there before the universe isn't a thing that exists. The proof fails to take that possibility into account. Also, it isn't necessary that there must first be one thing that exists in the universe. It could've be multiple things, or even partial things. There could be intermediate stages to the emergence of the first things. QFT was already brought up, I wouldn't call a quantum field a thing that exists inside the universe, its more like a part of the universe, itself. The concept that the universe was a null set and then something started existing inside it, is only one concept of how the universe began. Even if the proof succeeds in proving that that universe couldn't be explained, it doesn't account for other ways in which the universe could have began. Using terms like semi-things quasi-existing wasn't an attempt to form a concrete idea, but rather to open up the questioning of the universe having to be a null set that is then populated with just one thing.
Well, there again, I find it hard to attach any referents to your words. I can live with that.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
No that's not what nano means. What do they mean?
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
The empty universe = the null set There is nothing there, as in nothing exists. Literally, nothing. Well, the set is there... it's just empty. Here is a quote box with nothing in it:
quote: Here is a quote box containing the empty set:
quote: You see how there is something, rather than nothing, in that second quote? Also, given that the universe is made up of all the things that are in it, then it cannot exist as a set that is null. There wouldn't even be a universe there. And even if it did, the fact that the set is there means that there isn't literally nothing... because there is something: the set.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
The empty set is not nothing. It exists, has properties, and can have operations against it.
The OP erroneously views the universe as a container that can be empty. The universe is the things that exist, not a set that may or may not contain things. If you want to analogize the universe as an empty set, then the universe itself is the first thing. There cannot be an empty universe in which the first thing then exists.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Cat writes: You see how there is something, rather than nothing, in that second quote? Why is the null set necessary to have something existing? Because it is a thing, itself.
The quote box is there which means something exists, a quote box. And the quote box is in a message, which is on a forum, which is on a website, which is on a server.... At some point we're going to have to draw a line and say that the medium in which we are communicating about somethings does not count as one of the things we are discussing.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
Or... the universe includes both the container and the contents. The container exists, even if there is nothing "in" it. The container is the contents... without the contents there is no container.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
But you were presenting the quote box as the first thing just like nano's empty universe. No, I wasn't. The first quote box was to show one with nothing in it. The second one was to show one with the empty set in it. That empty set would be the first thing that is in a quote box. OP analogizes the universe as the empty set that then gets populated with things. That empty universe is called "nothing". I was showing that even the empty set is something rather than nothing. The point was that the first thing would be the universe itself rather than having an empty universe that then later contains the first thing. Since the universe is made up of things, without things you cannot have a universe.
Existence is what is required for anything to exist, or begin to exist. Existence is a property that things have, it does not exist independent of things. Existence cannot be a prerequisite for things anymore than things can be a prerequisite for existence. They're intertwined, one does not come before the other.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member
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Can you have a chemical element with no atoms?
Can you have a society with no people? Can you have a universe with no things? I say no.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
So if there is non existence there is no way for anything to begin to exist. If there IS non-existence? Can non-existence have the property of being? Doesn't being mean existing?
Isn't that nano's reason for having an empty universe that can fill up with things? I dunno, he's not saying much more. In order to go from non-existence to things existing, you have to put non-existence inside some kind of container and then have an outside influence kick off the first things. The problem with the OP is that our universe doesn't fit that model. At best, it's a proof that a particular universe isn't "explainable", it's just not describing this universe.
But since he has an existing empty universe in his proof the universe can be explained. It would be an uncaused eternal entity. Sort of, but it doesn't really matter if that universe contains things or not. And if you make, for that universe, time in the past direction finite then you escape the otherwise inevitable heat death. But I reject the concept of an "empty universe". The universe is the sum of all things, not a container that may or may not have things in it.
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