Stathis,
let me address first Tom C's objection addressing the
"nothing" (from which nothing can come out) - and I
wonder how Hal will feel about this:
All we can talk about as "N O TH I N G" is that it
does not contain anything we know about. It would make
Tom's absolute no-no if we were omniscient gods, what
we are not. OUR nothing may be loaded with things we
do not know about, sense, observe, include into Hal's
list.
>From those 'indonnu's there may be a healthy causation
for a world within our grasp.
Now about your objection:
> when considering the universe as a whole, its origin
> or its ultimate fate.
Read your post to Norman, about the infinite
occurrences and re-occurrences of anything beyond the
world we observe - I agree and cannot consider THIS
one measly little universe "as a whole".
> everything in the universe has a cause - everything
> is "contingent" - so the
> universe itself must also be contingent.
I would rather use 'origin' for 'cause' which includes
the unlimited interconnective effects of the totality
rather than ONE item picked from the model we restrict
our observation into.
I plead guilty (with explanation) to the 'plenitude'
accusation (no Anthropic Principle in my case, however
applied as my 'anthropic' sense of human - logical -
acceptability):
[St:]
> ...I don't see ...how it makes one iota
> >more rational, "scientific" sense to try to explain
> it with a Plenitude ...
'my' plenitude (the "pre-geometrical" of Rainer
Zimmermann) is claimed as providing no detailed
information to us, yet including everything (known or
not, probable or not) in some dynamic invariance of
infinite symmetry of variations - which inevitably
carries its own defeat: the groupings of 'similars'
part of the unrestricted variations, causing an
'asymmetry' that dissipates in the dynamic plenitude
as it formed. However: such even fulgurational 'nod'
IS a universe, which has its inside view as a world of
its own). I made this 'narrative' for the startup of
the universe, no 'final cause', explaining also how
other universes can be different from ours.
This has been 'narrated' in favor of acceptability by
huma logical (natural scientific) thinking. Which is
an assumption in anthropic terms.
--- Stathis Papaioannou
<stathispapaioannou.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> Tom Caylor writes:
>
> >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.
>
> What seems "rational" or "scientific" from our point
> of view need not apply
> when considering the universe as a whole, its origin
> or its ultimate fate.
> One argument for the existence of God is based on
> the observation that
> everything in the universe has a cause - everything
> is "contingent" - so the
> universe itself must also be contingent. Even if the
> universe consists of an
> infinite series of contingent things, the series
> itself must be contingent,
> because there must be a reason why there is any
> series at all. The only way
> to satisfy this endless need for explanation is to
> postulate the existence
> of a "necessary" (uncaused, or non-contingent)
> ultimate cause, the nature of
> which must be utterly different from the contingent
> material universe, which
> ultimate cause we call "God". Hopefully, the
> multiple flaws in this argument
> should be obvious.
>
> --Stathis Papaioannou
>
>
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Received on Sun Oct 30 2005 - 12:06:50 PST