The "something can't come from nothing" argument

[SkepticThinker]

Yes that is true but it still leaves thousands that can and have been corroborated. The bible is not lacking in corroboration.

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What supernatural claims in the Bible are verifiable?

 

[SkepticThinker]

So? It was in most cases a man of faith who decided based on faith that the universe must be rational since it was created by a rational being and set out to find that rationality that I know of these things. Christians more than any other single cultural group have made the great scientific breakthroughs but I do not get your point.

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So? Christianity was the only game in town for a very long time. By threat of death, in fact. So it's not all that surprising that most people who made scientific breakthroughs during that period had no choice but to identify themselves as Christian.

Of course, that leaves out all the contributions made by Muslims and peoples of the far East as well.

 

[Thief]

So? Christianity was the only game in town for a very long time. By threat of death, in fact. So it's not all that surprising that most people who made scientific breakthroughs during that period had no choice but to identify themselves as Christian.

Of course, that leaves out all the contributions made by Muslims and peoples of the far East as well.

See if Revoltingest has his list handy.
There's also a collection of atheists that have enormous efforts accomplished.

 

[metis]

I have little doubt that something can come from nothing. If the net energy of the universe is zero, then the positive energy that we can see and feel must be balanced by negative (dark) energy. It's just a math problem.

But the net energy isn't zero. Is it possible that you're confusing "energy" with the relative balance of matter and antimatter, although matter ended up winning out by a very narrow margin?

To me, both M-Theory and String Theory, although being still hypothetical, point in the direction that quantum physicists and cosmologists do believe it's more likely that there was something present before the BB, and mathematical models point to our minute universe being even smaller than today's atoms prior to expansion.

But who knows?

 

[Tumah]

So? Christianity was the only game in town for a very long time. By threat of death, in fact. So it's not all that surprising that most people who made scientific breakthroughs during that period had no choice but to identify themselves as Christian.

Of course, that leaves out all the contributions made by Muslims and peoples of the far East as well.

I'm pretty sure you should have underlined, bolded and knocked the size of to 7 on that last line.

 

[Thief]

But the net energy isn't zero. Is it possible that you're confusing "energy" with the relative balance of matter and antimatter, although matter ended up winning out by a very narrow margin?

To me, both M-Theory and String Theory, although being still hypothetical, point in the direction that quantum physicists and cosmologists do believe it's more likely that there was something present before the BB, and mathematical models point to our minute universe being even smaller than today's atoms prior to expansion.

But who knows?

Indeed!....all of this to the 'size' of something so small!
So the numbers seem to indicate.

Care to venture a guess?
Spirit first?.....

 

[1robin]

Because making bare assertions doesn't cut the mustard in a debate or discussion setting. Simply saying something doesn't make it so.

Then why did you do that very thing in reply?

Not really.

In the land or the pathetic that is king.

Nice cop-out. You excuse yourself from backing up the BS you like to go around claiming... Only, guaranteed we go through this cycle again- you making the same assertions, claiming to be be able to back them up, then finding a convenient excuse to avoid doing so when the time comes.

It won't work. I am just burned on arrogance for the time being. You can attempt to fool your self into thinking I actually was scared of something you said if you want. I have no use for dishonesty with myself but do as you wish. I told I was getting tired of those emoticons being used where arguments should be long ago.

 

[1robin]

I have some doubts that something can come from nothing, even considering what we now know (or should I say, think we know) about quantum mechanics. Yes, sometimes a sub-atomic particle may appear to come out of nowhere, but I'm very reluctant to go to that being a clear-cut indication that there is no cause behind it.

BTW, to be clear, this is also why I have strong doubts about there being a single creator-god, if there's any at all. Our experiences tend to tell us that is something happens, something(s) has caused it to happen, even if we don't always know what it was.

Your initial assumption is well justified. Nothing is the lack of being. Lack of being has no potential creative power what so ever. Not even in the quantum does something come from nothing. It already has fluctuating energy densities that produce matter. It is truly mysterious but fields that can fluctuate are certainly something not nothing.

 

[1robin]

I have little doubt that something can come from nothing. If the net energy of the universe is zero, then the positive energy that we can see and feel must be balanced by negative (dark) energy. It's just a math problem.

Having equal potentials between positive energy fields and negative fields is something not nothing. Nothing means non-being. It literal means no-thing. You cannot redefine something as nothing and then claim something came from the something that is now nothing.

 

[metis]

Care to venture a guess?
Spirit first?.....

That seemingly would fall under the "uncaused cause" category, so I tend to think that is less likely than the concept of somethings going back into infinity.

 

[1robin]

They were off by a couple of hours. And you're trying to use that to say they can't predict the weather at all? Give me a break. That's quite a stretch. It snowed on the same day they were reporting that it was going to snow, correct?

Now I was not. If you use my claims as intended they work much better. Which is probably why you simply will not do so. I said the error rate given predicting the weather 48 hours in advance does not indicate I can trust science concerning either a billion years into the future or the past. My job consists entirely of getting science concerning todays products to actually work, and business is a booming. Every single radio show host predicted the snow was coming later the day before. Meteorologists on the other hand get invested in their forecasts to the point they jealously guard them even when they are proven wrong. Everyone I know simply dismisses forecasts made more than 24hours in advance because they are so undependable (at least in my geographical area). When we get a few hours out from a significant event we start to actually care what they are saying. I will say this, the Naval meteorologists I knew on active duty were far better but still could not be accurate more than 48 hours in advance half the time.

I don't know where you get the idea that there's no data of any kind.
And you’re certainly content with the idea that the Bible is basically 100% accurate in its description of events, including the supernatural ones. Aren’t you the one always talking about double standards? Hmmm.

Why don't you carbon date something from the dawn of life? Show me a bone from that period. Find a fossil of the original life forms. It is not my claim there is no evidence of life from that time period. That is what geneticists say. There is not one example of any remains of the original forms of life.

Hate to point it out, but maybe you're not very good at what you do then, if your failure rate is 100%.

My Lord. I did not say I had a 100% failure rate. I said I have been given instruments from the factory with a 100% failure rate. I have a 100% recovery rate. So far I and others have been able to redesign and reconfigure the instruments until they eventually worked. Unlike theoretical science I must meet goals and have tests to determine if what I do is actually right.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Faith is required to believe in supernatural claims. You have all the faith cards in your hand, I’m afraid.

Many of your claims require more faith given less evidence than mine. Of course I willingly grant mine include faith, yet you hypocritically refuse to acknowledge this unavoidable fact concerning yours.

 

[1robin]

What supernatural claims in the Bible are verifiable?

Yet again you misunderstood my statement. The discussion went like this.

1. Some things are matters of faith alone.
2. I agreed to that.
3. I added however that other claims can be verified by science.
a. That means historical corroboration and testimony evaluation.
b. What your saying is that I meant that some of the supernatural claims can be verified the same way. I did not mean that here but in other places I made a qualified statement similar to this.
c. I said that while science may not be able to evaluate the supernatural cause, it can shed light on the events surrounding the claim.

For example several very central facts are agreed to by a majority of scholars.

The proposition is that Christ rose bodily from the dead. The facts concerning this claim are these:

1. Jesus was a historical figure that (believed) he had unprecedented divine authority. (Don't jump off the cliff again on the "unprecedented", it is simply part of another persons claim so I include it, in this context it matters not whether he actually had it or not).
2. He was crucified by the Romans and died. BTW forensic coroners (one of them among histories greatest) suggest every single detail describing the medical aspects of the crucifixion is accurate).
3. His tomb was found empty.
4. People (including his enemies) sincerely claimed to have experienced him after death.

Now those historical events are as certain as history can make them.

1. The noted scholar, Professor Edwin Gordon Selwyn, says: "The fact that Christ rose from the dead on the third day in full continuity of body and soul - that fact seems as secure as historical evidence can make it."
2. Many impartial students who have approached the resurrection of Christ with a judicial spirit have been compelled by the weight of the evidence to belief in the resurrection as a fact of history. An example may be taken from a letter written by Sir Edward Clarke, K. C. to the Rev. E. L. Macassey:
"As a lawyer I have made a prolonged study of the evidences for the events of the first Easter Day. To me the evidence is conclusive, and over and over again in the High Court I have secured the verdict on evidence not nearly so compelling. Inference follows on evidence, and a truthful witness is always artless and disdains effect. The Gospel evidence for the resurrection is of this class, and as a lawyer I accept it unreservedly as the testimony of truthful men to facts they were able to substantiate."


Add in a few more relevant details.
1. The Jews nor the apostles had any expectation of a dying messiah that would rise bodily on the third day. They had no need to adopt the empirical burden of a missing body. Yet they chose a vastly more complex claim that made a missing body necessary.
2. The apostles unlike Muhammad's companion knew with absoluteness whether what they claimed was true or not. If you wish to include that absurd claim they stole the body from a sealed tomb then why were they willing to live lives dedicated to a proposition they knew was false, again unlike Muhammad's band they did not conquer nations, did not raid caravans, did not acquire significant power or wealth of any kind. Some in fact lost everything including their freedom and their lives. They were not fighting to carve up Jesus land's, riches, or power base as the Muslims did. They lived exactly as people who knew their claims were true.
3. Why did the Romans not simply produce the body and end the lie? They had sealed to prevent that very thing. The guards risked their lives if the body was missing.

I can add more indefinitely but since no combination of words will make any difference I will leave it here.

The proposition that Jesus rose from the dead is consistent with all the reliable facts and inconsistent with none. No matter what you invent as an alternative it will conflict with facts and in the end not be as fractionally as comprehensive, consistent, and satisfactory as the Gospel claims. I have every early record on my side.

In this way science can help verify a supernatural claim. It cannot prove it, but it can be used to verify the effects of the supernatural action. I find exactly what I expect to find (actually far more) given the resurrection.

 

[1robin]

So? Christianity was the only game in town for a very long time. By threat of death, in fact. So it's not all that surprising that most people who made scientific breakthroughs during that period had no choice but to identify themselves as Christian.

Of course, that leaves out all the contributions made by Muslims and peoples of the far East as well.

Christianity was not only not the only game in town originally, it was persecuted by the most powerful empire on earth and even their by their own countrymen. Unlike Islam it did not grow based on power, loot, raiding caravans, and force in those early decades. It only had the strength of it's message to overcome the world, and did so astonishingly well. Your referring to a time long afterwards when that message had converted the empire that had tried so many times to destroy it. Yet even then it was not the only game in town. What I mentioned happened mostly during the enlightenment. Which was not as commonly thought a push back against faith, it was a push back against corrupt church domination of intellectualism. Even during the enlightenment it was Christians making the most progress. At that time less than 30% of humanity was Christian, yet most of the science came from that 30%.

You are right that China and Islam added to scientific knowledge but not on any scale comparable to Christianity. For many centuries the greatest institutions of learning were monasteries. I have helped a PhD friend research the history of mathematics concerning his dissertation. 40% - 50% of the sources we found in the incremental process of mathematic advancement were monks. They were doing math hundreds of years ago that are more advanced that I was even required to take for engineering. BTW it was not Islam that helped Muslims produce science. At the time they were doing their best work they were the only people who had retained and taught Greek science. The diabolical Catholic church had suppressed pagan Greek and Roman science and this led to the dark ages. At the same time Islam was simply adding the next step to science invented a thousand years previously by others. In my ten years of higher education not one Chinese or Muslim was ever even mentioned in the history of my academic disciplines. They of course existed but were not necessary to establish the development of science.

You can get from arithmetic to Boolean differential calculus using approx. 20% Egyptian learning, 20% Greek learning, 20% Roman learning, and 40% Christian learning without need for anyone else. You cannot do the same minus the Christians.

 

[1robin]

I'm pretty sure you should have underlined, bolded and knocked the size of to 7 on that last line.

That would have made the font about 3 times too large to be in proportion to their contributions. They certainly added some but in 10 years of engineering not one Muslim or Chinese was ever mentioned.

 

[Avi1001]

But the net energy isn't zero. Is it possible that you're confusing "energy" with the relative balance of matter and antimatter, although matter ended up winning out by a very narrow margin?

To me, both M-Theory and String Theory, although being still hypothetical, point in the direction that quantum physicists and cosmologists do believe it's more likely that there was something present before the BB, and mathematical models point to our minute universe being even smaller than today's atoms prior to expansion.

But who knows?

Metis, please remember that energy and mass are introvertible (or is the right word introconvertible or other word ?). I will go back and look at some of Hawkings work and modify my comment if needed.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Now I was not. If you use my claims as intended they work much better. Which is probably why you simply will not do so. I said the error rate given predicting the weather 48 hours in advance does not indicate I can trust science concerning either a billion years into the future or the past. My job consists entirely of getting science concerning todays products to actually work, and business is a booming. Every single radio show host predicted the snow was coming later the day before. Meteorologists on the other hand get invested in their forecasts to the point they jealously guard them even when they are proven wrong. Everyone I know simply dismisses forecasts made more than 24hours in advance because they are so undependable (at least in my geographical area). When we get a few hours out from a significant event we start to actually care what they are saying. I will say this, the Naval meteorologists I knew on active duty were far better but still could not be accurate more than 48 hours in advance half the time.

I think your anecdote establishes that they aren’t really all that bad at predicting the weather 48 hours in advance, even if they’re off by a couple of hours. So I don’t know what you’re going on about.

Never mind that you seem to think everything in the Bible occurred as written.

Why don't you carbon date something from the dawn of life? Show me a bone from that period. Find a fossil of the original life forms. It is not my claim there is no evidence of life from that time period. That is what geneticists say. There is not one example of any remains of the original forms of life.

You said there is no data of any kind. Scientists don’t say there is no data of any kind.

My Lord. I did not say I had a 100% failure rate. I said I have been given instruments from the factory with a 100% failure rate. I have a 100% recovery rate. So far I and others have been able to redesign and reconfigure the instruments until they eventually worked. Unlike theoretical science I must meet goals and have tests to determine if what I do is actually right.

Then maybe order your stuff from a different factory.

If you’re able to fix the stuff you get using science, then what are you going on about?

Many of your claims require more faith given less evidence than mine. Of course I willingly grant mine include faith, yet you hypocritically refuse to acknowledge this unavoidable fact concerning yours.

I don’t claim the supernatural exists, as you do. I also don’t claim that I know how this supposed supernatural realm operates, as you do. I also don’t claim some god exists without any empirical evidence backing it up, as you do.

What claims have I made that require more faith than that?

 

[SkepticThinker]

I'm pretty sure you should have underlined, bolded and knocked the size of to 7 on that last line.

I hear ya.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Having equal potentials between positive energy fields and negative fields is something not nothing. Nothing means non-being. It literal means no-thing. You cannot redefine something as nothing and then claim something came from the something that is now nothing.

What is nothing then? Do we have an example of nothing? Have you ever seen nothing?

 

[SkepticThinker]

Yet again you misunderstood my statement. The discussion went like this.

1. Some things are matters of faith alone.
2. I agreed to that.
3. I added however that other claims can be verified by science.
a. That means historical corroboration and testimony evaluation.
b. What your saying is that I meant that some of the supernatural claims can be verified the same way. I did not mean that here but in other places I made a qualified statement similar to this.
c. I said that while science may not be able to evaluate the supernatural cause, it can shed light on the events surrounding the claim.

For example several very central facts are agreed to by a majority of scholars.

The proposition is that Christ rose bodily from the dead. The facts concerning this claim are these:

1. Jesus was a historical figure that (believed) he had unprecedented divine authority. (Don't jump off the cliff again on the "unprecedented", it is simply part of another persons claim so I include it, in this context it matters not whether he actually had it or not).
2. He was crucified by the Romans and died. BTW forensic coroners (one of them among histories greatest) suggest every single detail describing the medical aspects of the crucifixion is accurate).
3. His tomb was found empty.
4. People (including his enemies) sincerely claimed to have experienced him after death.
Now those historical events are as certain as history can make them.
1. The noted scholar, Professor Edwin Gordon Selwyn, says: "The fact that Christ rose from the dead on the third day in full continuity of body and soul - that fact seems as secure as historical evidence can make it."
2. Many impartial students who have approached the resurrection of Christ with a judicial spirit have been compelled by the weight of the evidence to belief in the resurrection as a fact of history. An example may be taken from a letter written by Sir Edward Clarke, K. C. to the Rev. E. L. Macassey:
"As a lawyer I have made a prolonged study of the evidences for the events of the first Easter Day. To me the evidence is conclusive, and over and over again in the High Court I have secured the verdict on evidence not nearly so compelling. Inference follows on evidence, and a truthful witness is always artless and disdains effect. The Gospel evidence for the resurrection is of this class, and as a lawyer I accept it unreservedly as the testimony of truthful men to facts they were able to substantiate."
Add in a few more relevant details.
1. The Jews nor the apostles had any expectation of a dying messiah that would rise bodily on the third day. They had no need to adopt the empirical burden of a missing body. Yet they chose a vastly more complex claim that made a missing body necessary.
2. The apostles unlike Muhammad's companion knew with absoluteness whether what they claimed was true or not. If you wish to include that absurd claim they stole the body from a sealed tomb then why were they willing to live lives dedicated to a proposition they knew was false, again unlike Muhammad's band they did not conquer nations, did not raid caravans, did not acquire significant power or wealth of any kind. Some in fact lost everything including their freedom and their lives. They were not fighting to carve up Jesus land's, riches, or power base as the Muslims did. They lived exactly as people who knew their claims were true.
3. Why did the Romans not simply produce the body and end the lie? They had sealed to prevent that very thing. The guards risked their lives if the body was missing.

I can add more indefinitely but since no combination of words will make any difference I will leave it here.

The proposition that Jesus rose from the dead is consistent with all the reliable facts and inconsistent with none. No matter what you invent as an alternative it will conflict with facts and in the end not be as fractionally as comprehensive, consistent, and satisfactory as the Gospel claims. I have every early record on my side.

In this way science can help verify a supernatural claim. It cannot prove it, but it can be used to verify the effects of the supernatural action. I find exactly what I expect to find (actually far more) given the resurrection.

What are these medical aspects of the crucifixion you speak of? Where are they described? Even if your claim is true, how on earth do you make the jump from people having witnessed crucifixions before and knowing something about what happens to the human being involved to some divine occurrence going on?

What evidence do we have that indicates anyone can rise from the dead? What does your forensic coroner have to say about that? What does he say about zombies rising from their graves and walking the streets?
I mean, it’s one thing to say a man was crucified, at least that much is believable. But zombies rising from the dead? That’s a stretch of the imagination if ever there was one.

 

[FranklinMichaelV.3]

If I remember correctly the thing that was considered odd about Jesus's crucifixion was how quickly he died. Crucifixion was apparently a long dying process which is why the leg breaking was brought in, so that they body could not hold itself up.