Fwd: Let There Be Something

From: <daddycaylor.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2005 17:06:31 -0400

daddycaylor.domain.name.hidden wrote:  
>> I guess I'll "break the symmetry" of relative silence on this list
lately.  
>> I just don't get how it can be rationally justified that you can get
>> something out of nothing. To me, combining the multiverse with a
>> selection principle does not explain anything. I see no reason why it
>> is not mathematically equivalent to our universe appearing out of
>> nothing. And I see the belief that our universe appeared out of
nothing
>> as just that, a belief. In fact, I believe that. But I don't see how
>> it makes one iota more rational, "scientific" sense to try to
explain it
>> with a Plenitude and the Anthropic Principle. It's like a probability
>> argument that poses the existence of as much unobservable stuff out
>> there as we need, along with the well-behaved unobservable
probability
>> distribution we need, in order to give us a fuzzy feeling in terms of
>> probability as we know it in our comfortable immediate surroundings.
>> Sounds like blind faith to me.  

Brent wrote:
> Why would you suppose there was once "nothing" from which
> "something" came? Could you explain when and where there
> was nothing? That there is something is certainly not a matter
> of faith, it's straightforward observation. That there could
> have been nothing sounds like completely unsupported speculation to
me.  
>
> Brent Meeker  
> "What is there? Everything! So what isn't there? Nothing!"  
> --- Norm Levitt, after Quine  
 
I'm not trying to rationally justify the belief of something coming out
of nothing. I'm saying that a selection principle "causing" something
to come out of the "zero-information" multiverse is equivalent to that
belief, or at least equally unjustifiable.

Tom Caylor
Received on Fri Oct 28 2005 - 17:09:17 PDT