How can the univese exist without God to create it?

[EarthScienceguy]

Explain the existence of the universe without God to create it.
In other words, how can the universe be shown to come into existence empirically without God to create it?

The basic building block of the universe is energy. We do not even know what energy in its most basic form is.

There is a fact, or if you wish, a law, governing all natural phenomena that are known to date. There is no known exception to this law – it is exact so far as we know. The law is called the conservation of energy. It states that there is a certain quantity, which we call energy, that does not change in manifold changes which nature undergoes. That is a most abstract idea, because it is a mathematical principle; it says that there is a numerical quantity which does not change when something happens. It is not a description of a mechanism, or anything concrete; it is just a strange fact that we can calculate some number and when we finish watching nature go through her tricks and calculate the number again, it is the same.

— The Feynman Lectures on Physics

[Haven]

Lastly, any attempt to extrapolate QM values from relativistic facts will fail, because the two theories are (as of now) fundamentally incompatible. This is one of the greatest frontiers in theoretical physics, and it’s likely that an explanation of quantum gravity will unite the two fields.

Until then, there just isn’t enough evidence to make strong statements of fact about the relation between these two scales. With that said, recall that premise 1 of the KCA states that “whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence.” There simply is not enough evidence to conclude that is true, so P1 is questionable.

P2 “the universe began to exist” is likely false because “began” depends on time, which wouldn’t have obtained “prior to” the Big Bang (English doesn’t even have the language to express this concept, which shows the limits of our cognition around issues like this; this is why physics uses mathematics instead).

So if the first two premises of the argument don’t work, the argument fails. It doesn’t matter how personally compelling or intuitive it may seem.

And again, atheism (a-theism, not theism) is the null hypothesis, a position of skepticism about theism (the alternative hypothesis). It has no burden of proof. The burden of proof rests solely on the person making the positive claim, and in this case that’s the theist. Until theism is sufficiently supported with evidence, a skeptic has no reason to change their position.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to Haven in post #0]

You’re equivocating on the term “causation” here. Recall the original post’s debate question (posed by you, no less): “how can the universe exist without God to create it?” The “causation” implied by the term create is wholly distinct from the potential, indefinite, unresolved causality held in a quantum superposition. ‘Creation’ is linear, macro-scale and, well, obvious from an ancient human perspective, while quantum causality is only probabilistic until resolved.

Did you even read the article you posted? Hardy (thats the guy the wrote the paper, in case you did not know) did not use the equations of quantum mechanics to describe this causality superposition. The equations of quantum mechanics describe time as continuous. He did not describe how quantum equations could be described in relativistic terms; if he did, we would all know the name of this researcher, but we do not. Belief clothed in mathematical equations is still belief. If it is based on his belief, it is not empirical; it is nothing more than scientism. You all should start a postvisim church, it did not work so well last time, but who knows, it might this time.

And again, Hardy's theory did not nullify causation; it puts causation in a superposition state. Therefore, he is saying that an event caused the creation of the universe before the creation of the universe or after the universe was created. Postvism would not allow for anything before the universe was created; therefore, the universe was created by an event after the universe was created. So you are saying that your empirical evidence is that the universe was created by an event after it was created. Wow, nothing to take on faith there!!!

According to Hardy's theory, the universe just popped into existence. Wow!! Wait, I saw this episode of Star Trek. It was sad that the person Captain Pike was going to marry had to keep these bad beings out of our universe. It is hard to explain in a short and concise way. However, it is all about reverse causality.

Getting rid of causality does not help with your problem of explaining the universe empirically. Because it still does not explain where the energy came from or how the universe was created out of nothing. Something still had to exist to produce the universe; in this case, the universe had to exist to create the universe. Therefore, there is still causality.

Again, recall the debate question? Skeptics don’t have to provide a complete and exhaustive explanation for the totality of physical reality to fail to reject the null hypothesis (that there is no reason to accept supernatural creation).

Yes, but it does need to be rational. God creating the universe is rational. Anything coming from philosophical nothing is not rational.

And the fact that we don’t fully understand how or if quantum “time” (a misnomer, since this word describes something fundamentally different than it does at the macro scale; you’re equivocating again) relates to relativistic time doesn’t mean magic suddenly becomes more likely. ‘God did it’ is not the default position or an explanation for lacunae in current scientific understanding. To insist otherwise is classic God-of-the-gaps fallacious reasoning.

Nothing can come from philosophical nothing. Therefore, how is your positivism the default position? God can exist in positivism's nothing. There is nothing in the beliefs of positivism that can exist in nothing.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to Haven in post #140]

However, the uncertainty principle does not say that we cannot know the exact position and momentum (velocity) of a particle. It says that we can know either the position or the momentum, not both at the same time.
That’s literally what I said, just rephrased.

No, it is not. You said that we cannot know both position and velocity. That is not correct, we can know one of them, either we can know the position or the velocity.

And your line about “you agree the universe is impossible without God.” No, I don’t. I don’t think the universe is impossible because it obviously exists; the actual probability of its existence is 1. If you’re asking me the prior probability of its existence, my only honest answer is “I don’t know.” But it must necessarily be greater than zero, and as QM and astrophysics reveals more about the fundamental nature of reality, the prior probability estimates seem to be rising.

Yeah, we know more about the fundamental nature of reality. Simulation theory, The Boltzmann brain theory, and many-worlds interpretations, reality has problems in many of those "new theories." So which one is your favorite?

I do think your god (the god of evangelical Christianity) cannot exist, however, because it is logically incoherent to an overwhelming level.

So, do you find living in a computer simulation more enjoyable than being the figment of the imagination of a Boltzmann brain?

[Difflugia]

The Boltzmann brain theory

figment of the imagination of a Boltzmann brain?

This isn't something that affects your overall argument, whatever it is, but is just kind of an aside to help you a bit in the future.

The Boltzmann brain isn't a "theory" as such and isn't, as you seem to think, a brain that holds within it an entire imagined universe. It's a thought experiment. It's an informal filter. It's a way of deciding if any particular path of cosmological reasoning is worth pursuing.

In essence, a number of cosmological hypotheses reduce to the observation that over a long enough period of time, the universe will statistically fluctuate between all possible states of existence, including the state that the universe is in right now. The "Boltzmann brain" concept is the recognition that a disembodied brain, complete with all of its memories, is smaller and less complex than a universe, so is statistically much, much more likely than a complete universe. Therefore, for every viable configuration into a universe like ours, there would be many, many more disembodied brains that spontaneously appear during that time.

The idea of the thought experiment isn't that such a statistical explanation for the universe isn't true, but that explanations that rely on random noise through time to explain the state of the universe aren't worth the academic chase. If the spontaneous appearance (or, more precisely, statistical evolution) of a brain that thinks it's in our universe happens more often than universes do as part of a particular explanation, that explanation might just as well be chalked up to undirected chance.

As a corollary to that, the Boltzmann briain isn't something that contains people as "figments of the imagination," but is the solitary observer. It's you. Or me. Or whoever is thinking about it. The idea is that if I am proposing an explanation for the universe to have arrived in its current state and it would statistically happen less often than fully functioning (if entirely delusional) brains on their own, I should probably continue on to the next explanation.

[The Tanager]

[Replying to Difflugia in post #124]

So either share how the physical data itself proves

I've yet to use the word "proves." I hope you're not trying to subtly change my argument.

I am not trying to change your claim. I’m not using ‘prove’ in the 100% certainty sense. If you want to clarify term(s) as you would use/view them, I'd be happy to adapt to that.

That's not what "null hypothesis" means. If you're arguing for causality, the null hypthesis is a lack of causality.

Why does that apply here?

Because a lack of causality fits the data exactly as well as any of the proposed sources of causality.

The null hypothesis is used in contexts where the causal principle is true to where we require evidence before accepting new proposed causal relations like in drug trials, chemistry, economics, etc. But why is it applicable in our discussion about whether the causal principle itself applies or not?

Sure, if one is researching something for a new drug, one needs to prove causation by the proposed chemical and the null hypothesis is that it doesn't have an effect, but that's a different context.

Not different enough to buy you anything. You're still trying to argue that P1 is true, or at least probable enough that an invalid syllogism can tell us something useful. Despite no evidence for anything in the room, you're certain that something's there. You're also certain that there's something more than your own incredulity propping that up.

In that other thread I was arguing that P1 is the most reasonable premise to hold and using it within a logically valid syllogism to abductively get the most reasonable conclusion. There, it is my burden to show there is "something in the room". But this is a different thread, where we are analyzing atheistic attempts to explain the existence of the universe. For that we can ignore the Kalam or assume it doesn't go through. That is not enough to support atheistic attempts to explain why the universe is here in the first place.

Analogically, if "there is something in the room" is equivalent to ‘quantum events are caused’, then your "there is nothing in the room" is either equivalent to (a) quantum events are uncaused or the weaker (b) quantum events are not shown to be caused.

If you mean (b), then this is not support for saying that an atheistic framework can explain the existence of the universe by positing an ultimate, uncaused first event. Option (b) is not strong enough for that; you’d need evidence of events being actually uncaused.

If you mean the stronger (a), then you've got to show that some quantum event is actually uncaused. You seem to be taking this route and offering the HUP as support for that.

According to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, the energy density of some space and the amount of time that the density measurement is true cannot both be precise values. Again, this is a fundamental property of the universe, not a technical limitation or artifact of measurement. If someone were to prove that it is just a technical limitation and there really is a way, even in principle, for those to both have precise values at the same time, then the uncertainty principle is false. Physicists don't think it's false.

What that means for the uncaused particles is that since energy density and time can't both be arbitrarily precise (the "blurriness"), then if one is precise, the other is not. If we have a region of space with nominally zero energy density, we can know that's true over a relatively long (imprecise) period of time. If we are measuring the energy density over a very short (precise) amount of time, we can't know that the energy density is exactly zero, only that it's within certain bounds. These bounds are known, both for time and energy density. They've been theoretically derived and measurements match theory.

A nonzero energy density of space manifests as a particle. During a short enough amount of time, a region of space with otherwise zero energy density is sometimes not zero. When it's not zero, a particle is there. As far as we can tell, the only reason that it's there is because energy density is uncertain in principle. We've identified no other cause. The existence of these particles isn't just theoretical, but is measurable.

Are you saying that even competing interpretations of quantum mechanics agree that the uncertainty is fundamental? If so, that's simply not true. You are offering a Copenhagen(-like) interpretation as though it's been proven true beyond any doubt. Other interpretations disagree. Bohmian mechanics interprets the HUP as an epistemic limitation, where there are actual definite values that are inaccessible to us. You need to show why your interpretation of the HUP is true.

Now, to the unfalsifiable bit from our other discussion:

On the second, you were claiming the whole thing was unfalsifiable and, therefore, should be rejected. Asking you to back that up isn't making an argument from incredulity, either.

I backed it up by explaining that if a vacuum isn't nothing, then there's no nothing in our universe where we can conduct our test:

I don't actually need to argue with that, though. The vacuum with its vacuum energy is the lowest energy state that we have available to us in our universe. If he's arguing, as I think he is, that virtual particles can't be defined as uncaused because they don't come from nothing (a lower energy state than we have available to us), then there's no way for us to test his assertion.

Your response was that an inability to conduct a test and unfalsifiable aren't the same thing:

Yes, maybe we dont have the capabilities to scientifically measure it (or maybe we just dont have that capacity yet, I dont know the uncertainty principle enough to say it contains this point). But even if we dont, we still have the philosophical ability to compare alternative theories and come to what the best inference is.

If you understand what "falsifiable" means, that's just incredulity.

I take 'unfalsifiable' to mean that the statement can't be proven false. And I'm using that within the context of best, rational inferences not 100% certainty. If one brings in scientistic or naturalistic philosophical beliefs 'unfalsifiable' will include the need to be empirically falsifiable.

My points there are the following:

(1) Requiring empirical falsifiability for a statement to be true is self-defeating and, therefore, irrational.

(2) The Kalam is falsifiable through philosophical means.

(3) As to Craig's claim that I think you are referring to, I think he's responding to this kind of argument:

P1. Quantum event A comes into existence from the quantum vacuum
P2. The quantum vacuum is nothing
P3. Therefore, quantum event A comes into existence from nothing
P4. Things that come into existence from nothing are uncaused
P5. Therefore, quantum event A is uncaused

His response is that this argument equivocates on 'nothing' where the 'nothing' in P2 is a different concept than the 'nothing' in P4. This equivocation makes the argument unsound.

First, do you disagree with any of that assessment and, if so, where and why?

Second, if you agree with that assessment, then why would we need a 'nothing' to test Craig's rebuttal to his opponent?

[The Tanager]

[Replying to Haven in post #132]

I should clarify that I’m a weak (agnostic) atheist (not-theist), and hold the position as a null hypothesis*. To put it another way, I’m an atheist because no brand of theism has presented sufficient evidence to justify the rejection of H0 (that is not-creation, not-cause). And even if physics or another field demonstrated a cause to the totality of physical reality, that would not be proof of a god (let alone your god). The leap in the KCA from “there was a cause” to “that cause was God” (following Craig) is based on motivated reasoning from pre-existing belief and does not follow from the premises, whatsoever.

The move from a cause of physical reality to an unembodied mind doesn't follow from the 3 premises of the kalam proper, but comes through corollary arguments that build off of those three and include new premises. But this thread isn't about the truth of the Kalam; it's about atheistic explanations of physical reality.

*Your objection to Difflugia that the null hypothesis framing only works when all priors are completely understood on both sides is false. The H0/H1 framework is employed in both the hard sciences (like your chemistry example) and in the soft sciences as well (where there is a lot more fuzziness and ambiguity when it comes to models of events and statistical priors vs physics!). Even fields as nebulous as economics, political science and sociology use null hypothesis framing. So I maintain that the onus is on you to demonstrate exactly why it wouldn’t apply to the cause (or not-cause) of the universe itself.

Why do you think my objection to the null hypothesis is based on needing all priors to be completely understood? I've also said more to Difflugia about the aptness of using the null hypothesis that I'd love your thoughts on.

Furthermore, in every domain that was once thought supernatural (everything from weather to the origin of species to disease fell under this a mere 600 years ago), compelling natural explanations have been found. The God of the Gaps has shrunk tremendously in the light of modern science, and I don’t see why this last “gap” should be taken as any different than the previous ones.

Science tells us how things physically work. We have to go beyond that when asking how there is the physical in the first place. By definition that isn't a scientific gap waiting to be filled. Whether atheism can fill that gap convincingly is what we are exploring here.

This is the typical apologist move when someone presents the lack of empirical evidence for theism and the strong empirical evidence that contradicts religious claims: calling the authority of science into dispute. This is a form of special pleading, since it seeks to object religious claims from scientific scrutiny.

The origin (if any) of physical reality is a physics question, and more physical data will indeed bring us closer to a definitive answer. And yes, researchers are finding ways to operationalize the multiverse hypothesis (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.08220).

I disagree. We aren't asking about the laws of the earliest state or things like that. Physics can describe the various states of the physical universe, including the earliest we have access to, but it doesn't answer the question of why there is something for physics to describe. It certainly should inform one's answer to the why question, including info on a possible multiverse, but we have to go beyond physics (i.e., into metaphysics) to answer the metaphysical question of why there is something for physics to describe.

Atheists and theists are both (rightly) doing this, so there is no special pleading. Going beyond on this metaphysical question isn't calling the authority of science into question, but accepting its defined limitations and realizing that there are non-scientific questions to be answered.

I don’t think you’re fully understanding the argument here. I’m not postulating an “eternal bit of physical reality” that caused an effect on the rest of reality at a given point in time. Eternity is a temporal concept; I’m saying it’s a category error to apply temporal language to anything outside the observable macro-level universe, since time is an aspect of space and appears to break down at the quantum level.

There is no physical reason to believe that realities outside of or below the scale of our macro-observable (that is, not quantum) bubble of spacetime (that also aren’t part of other, similar “universes”) are bound by causality or time. Therefore your argument about an impersonal cause not waiting falls flat.

I think what 'time' and being 'eternal' is is a key hinge of our discussion.

First, make sure I understand what your proposal has been. It sounds like you are proposing that there could have been a multiverse with a quantum vacuum (or something like it) that occasionally has fluctuations and, eventually, one of those fluctuations results in our bubble. Is that correct? If not, how would you change it?

[William]

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #143]

Yeah, we know more about the fundamental nature of reality. Simulation theory, The Boltzmann brain theory, and many-worlds interpretations, reality has problems in many of those "new theories."

"in the beginning God created..." fits in with both simulation and boltzmann brain.

As I pointed out in my first post to this thread, it is one thing to claim "We exist within a created thing", and another thing to claim which "God" created it, let alone how such a thing was achieved ex nihilo...

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to Difflugia in post #144]

The Boltzmann brain isn't a "theory" as such and isn't, as you seem to think, a brain that holds within it an entire imagined universe. It's a thought experiment. It's an informal filter. It's a way of deciding if any particular path of cosmological reasoning is worth pursuing.

Do you just make this stuff up and then expect people to believe you? You do this in your theology and now here. It actually was originally defined as the Boltzmann brain paradox, and it is still a paradox in cosmology. Or do you just read Wikipedia instead of actual papers? But anyway, from Wikipedia.

The consensus amongst cosmologists is that some yet-to-be-revealed error is hinted at by the surprising calculation that Boltzmann brains should vastly outnumber normal human brains.[9] Sean Carroll states "We're not arguing that Boltzmann Brains exist—we're trying to avoid them."[13] Carroll has stated that the hypothesis of being a Boltzmann brain results in "cognitive instability". Because, he argues, it would take longer than the current age of the universe for a brain to form, and yet it thinks that it observes that it exists in a younger universe, and thus this shows that memories and reasoning processes would be untrustworthy if it were indeed a Boltzmann brain.[21]

The math says that it is more likely that you are a Boltzmann brain than a human. And that everything around you that you are seeing is a figment of your imagination and is not real.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to William in post #147]

"in the beginning God created..." fits in with both simulation and boltzmann brain.

As I pointed out in my first post to this thread, it is one thing to claim "We exist within a created thing", and another thing to claim which "God" created it, let alone how such a thing was achieved ex nihilo...

Not really, the Boltzmann brain paradox is a mathematical construct that assumes an uncreated universe. Simulation theory, besides being a simply stupid theory, is an effort to explain the fine-tuning of the universe without the need for God. All these theories do is show that a universe as we perceive it is only possible if a creator God created it. There is no way to get to a universe as we perceive the universe to be without a Creator God.

[Difflugia]

Do you just make this stuff up and then expect people to believe you?

Well, not you, obviously.

You do this in your theology and now here.

Within the context of your comment, "this" seems to be understanding the source material better than my debate opponent. Just like when we discussed allegory, you insist that none of an author's intended meaning is implicit. If it's not obvious to you personally, it's not there.

It actually was originally defined as the Boltzmann brain paradox, and it is still a paradox in cosmology.

The paradox lay in the underlying assumption that a Boltzmann brain is absurd, yet within the current theoretical framework, Boltzmann brains are more likely than universes that have (or start with) low entropy. The attempted solutions to this apparent paradox are to attack either end: either find a reason that low-entropy universes are more likely or a reason that Boltzmann brains are less likely.

Or do you just read Wikipedia instead of actual papers?

Yeah, that sounds like me.

But anyway, from Wikipedia.

The consensus amongst cosmologists is that some yet-to-be-revealed error is hinted at by the surprising calculation that Boltzmann brains should vastly outnumber normal human brains.[9] Sean Carroll states "We're not arguing that Boltzmann Brains exist—we're trying to avoid them."[13] Carroll has stated that the hypothesis of being a Boltzmann brain results in "cognitive instability". Because, he argues, it would take longer than the current age of the universe for a brain to form, and yet it thinks that it observes that it exists in a younger universe, and thus this shows that memories and reasoning processes would be untrustworthy if it were indeed a Boltzmann brain.[21]

The math says that it is more likely that you are a Boltzmann brain than a human. And that everything around you that you are seeing is a figment of your imagination and is not real.

I highlighted the important part of what you quoted. The point of the Boltzmann brain idea is to figure out why you're not one. That's exactly the filter I mentioned before. If your cosmological theory is such that Boltzmann brains are more likely than universes, there's something wrong with it. The papers that discuss it treat the idea as a tongue-in-cheek argumentum ad absurdum. Since the other physicists already know this, nobody feels like they have to spell it out for them. Or, incidentally, for you.

One of my favorite papers ever might not seem related at first, but it totally is:

Conforti, A., Bellavite, P., Bertani, S. et al., BMC Complement Altern Med 7, 1 (2007). "Rat models of acute inflammation: a randomized controlled study on the effects of homeopathic remedies"

The paper reads as a straight trial of homeopathic remedies on rats. That's not its point, though. The paper is about the importance of experimental double blinding over single blinding. If you read the writeup from the point of view of a professor, he created the experiment for his students to show them that even when they try to be objective, they can't be. Like Boltzmann brains, homeopathy is generally considered absurd by scientists. Since the experimental design shows a statistically significant effect of certain homeopathic treatments, something must be wrong. What's wrong is that some of the trials weren't properly blinded. Since the students did it themselves, they were able to see firsthand how important the blinding of trials is to clinical work. Because the professor has a sense of humor, he submitted the results of the trial to a "complementary medicine" journal, where it was accepted and published. If the journal editors didn't appreciate the irony, then it's just that much funnier. If you read that paper and it's not hilarious, you don't get it.

Boltzmann brains are to cosmologists what homeopathy is to medical professionals: an in-joke. It's an important joke with implications that are theoretically extremely relevant, but absurdist nonetheless.