I was listening to a podcast this morning which touched on the evolution of ideas and how objects and cultural experiences reflect something back to us about ourselves. Also something about the leap of imagination necessary to accept something which once was pretty wild and dangerous but is now ordinary and commonplace.
And it struck me how the categories of good/bad, right/wrong, useful/stupid break down in the context of discussing ideas and experiences.
Experiences don’t just exist or don’t exist. Ideas aren’t just true or false. There’s a dichotomy there somewhere that is context-driven. The telling of a human experience can be utterly incomprehensible in one context but utterly sublime in another. To me somehow this seems to be somehow perpendicular (if that’s the right word) to the plane of whether something is true or not.
I need to do something else, but thought I’d try to write down this thought before I lost it.
Not a question atheists as such can't answer, but one to which the secular rationalists whom most Westerners think of when they think of atheists don't have any good answer, is metaethics.
That is what is the status and basis of ethical statements. There are three rough categories of answer (*), all somewhat unsatisfactory.
One is to argue that ethical statements are wishes or commands or otherwise expressions of emotion with no grounds outside the speaker's mindset. The problem is we don't treat ethical statements in the same way as we treat other such statements.
A second is to argue that ethical statements have a naturalistic basis in the way humans have evolved or in enlightened self-interest or so on. The problem is human nature and self-interest underdetermine any ethical code to the point that "so what" is a reasonable response.
A third is to argue that ethics has a non-natural component, but that rather undermines the standard secular rationalist metaphysics.
(*) that I am aware of; but I have a degree in secular ethical philosophy so it's unlikely there are answers out there I'm not aware of.
Thinking about Hitchens (God help me), I don't know if the New Atheists see/saw themselves as secular rationalists, but their fundamentalist approach - as shown in their absolutist demarcation of science, religion, atheism - suggests they might have a stab at the problem.
He acknowledges them, but he tends to see them more as liabilities to faith than enhancements. I was just listening to his Oxford debate with Alister McGrath on my morning commute, and he (Hitchens) was just beginning to address that when I thad to turn it off.
Not a question atheists as such can't answer, but one to which the secular rationalists whom most Westerners think of when they think of atheists don't have any good answer, is metaethics.
That is what is the status and basis of ethical statements. There are three rough categories of answer (*), all somewhat unsatisfactory.
One is to argue that ethical statements are wishes or commands or otherwise expressions of emotion with no grounds outside the speaker's mindset. The problem is we don't treat ethical statements in the same way as we treat other such statements.
A second is to argue that ethical statements have a naturalistic basis in the way humans have evolved or in enlightened self-interest or so on. The problem is human nature and self-interest underdetermine any ethical code to the point that "so what" is a reasonable response.
A third is to argue that ethics has a non-natural component, but that rather undermines the standard secular rationalist metaphysics.
(*) that I am aware of; but I have a degree in secular ethical philosophy so it's unlikely there are answers out there I'm not aware of.
So where do theists do better in metaethics, or even equally as bad?
I mean, being a "thinker" requires one set of skills, being aware of and able to burrow away at difficulty, an ability to understand the strengths of different positions, and so on.
Polemics means only acknowledging the strengths of the other position or the weaknesses of your own if it helps you prepare for a riposte.
Lewis's reasoning led him to conclude that Christianity is true. But Mere Christianity is not a rewrite of Surprised by Joy or The Pilgrim's Regress.
The one referenced in Eliot's 'Little Gidding', which us quoted in that post. The 'intolerable shirt of flame' which comes from stories in Eastern religions.
I think Eliot was referencing issues of suffering and inherent frustrations within the human condition as much as traditional notions of eternal torment and hell-fire.
I quoted a few lines from T.S.Eliot's Little Gidding (a fuller quotation was added later, and Gamma Gamaliel told us of what I found to be an enviable experience in the Little Gidding chapel).
My purpose, such as it was, was to suggest a question that an atheist would hardly ask, let alone answer.
So the torment, according to the poem, is due to the "Dove descending".
How does a polemicist arm him-/herself if not by thinking?
There are different senses of the word 'thinker' and 'thinking'.
The word 'thinker' on its own implies I think that the person is making some original and positive contribution to human understanding.
In classical terms, the art of dialectic is a distinct art from rhetoric, even from that part of rhetoric inventio which is the discovery of arguments to convince an audience of what you believe.
In his literary criticism, for the most part, and in some of his theological writing, Lewis is engaged in dialectic. In his apologetics he is, for the most part, engaged in rhetoric. I'm pretty sure he'd accept the distinction.
In some of his, especially early, writing on evolution, Dawkins is writing dialectic. In his writing on religion it's pure rhetoric.
I mean, being a "thinker" requires one set of skills, being aware of and able to burrow away at difficulty, an ability to understand the strengths of different positions, and so on.
Polemics means only acknowledging the strengths of the other position or the weaknesses of your own if it helps you prepare for a riposte.
Lewis's reasoning led him to conclude that Christianity is true. But Mere Christianity is not a rewrite of Surprised by Joy or The Pilgrim's Regress.
Why should it be? I’m confused. I mean it’s in the title.
How does a polemicist arm him-/herself if not by thinking?
There are different senses of the word 'thinker' and 'thinking'.
The word 'thinker' on its own implies I think that the person is making some original and positive contribution to human understanding.
I don’t understand that implication at all. Or at least that seems to be one particular notion of that. Being able to use reason extremely well and grasp profound truths and help communicate them doesn’t really seem to me to require “originality.” Positive, absolutely.
I quoted a few lines from T.S.Eliot's Little Gidding (a fuller quotation was added later, and Gamma Gamaliel told us of what I found to be an enviable experience in the Little Gidding chapel).
My purpose, such as it was, was to suggest a question that an atheist would hardly ask, let alone answer.
So the torment, according to the poem, is due to the "Dove descending".
So you think a question about a poem is unanswerable by an atheist? If the atheist has studied poetry, and in particular this poem, I'm sure they could take a stab at it. That's a pretty milquetoast application of the thread title, honestly.
I think atheists could answer all of those. Whether I’d agree with the answers is another matter. But I don’t think it’s like all atheists would strike their forehead (“I could have had a V-8!”*) and cry, “I— I never thought of that! Theism, here I come!” at really any question. Some might, depending.
Maybe it’s a good time to revisit the list of questions to which the OP linked:
Oooh something I can answer. Atheist Man to the rescue!
* Why is there something rather than nothing?
No idea. Perhaps there was always something; that seems most likely. Certainly it is a question that could not be asked if there was nothing, so perhaps there's a bit of a built-in paradox in posing the question at all.
* Can one get an 'ought' from an 'is'?
Nope
* How does one explain the 'divine sense'?
Self-deception; compare to déjà vu. It really really seems this scene has played out before. The internal feeling is very strong. But you know logically it hasn't; it's a trick your brain chemistry is playing on you.
* Why doesn't atheism work on a national level
I have no idea what this means. What does it mean for atheism to "work" when atheism is merely the lack of a belief in god(s)?
* Where do laws of logic come from?
Humans.
* What is consciousness?
Dunno. I assume this is something we will learn in time; in other words it's a scientific and not a metaphysical question.
No idea. Perhaps there was always something; that seems most likely. Certainly it is a question that could not be asked if there was nothing, so perhaps there's a bit of a built-in paradox in posing the question at all.
That's not an answer.
(The weak anthropic principle works best where the reason for the range of probabilities is understood and there's enough trials for many outcomes to be instantiated. It gets progressively less informative as those conditions are weakened.
Also, taken seriously it would rule questions about how humans evolved meaningless, which they are not.)
* Can one get an 'ought' from an 'is'?
Nope
I think it's more complex than that, although as I said up thread it rather scuppers the scientific argument that justifies morality on the grounds that it evolved.
* Where do laws of logic come from?
Humans.
That doesn't work, unless you're going for some form of Kantian idealism or stronger about the external universe. If cosmology can describe the universe before humans existed then logic and mathematics applied before humans existed.
That said, as I said up thread, the order of priority between logic and God is a problem for theists too.
No idea. Perhaps there was always something; that seems most likely. Certainly it is a question that could not be asked if there was nothing, so perhaps there's a bit of a built-in paradox in posing the question at all.
That's not an answer.
It literally is though - perhaps part of the issue is to what extent one is comfortable with not knowing the explanation. Though obviously, one possible reply to that is - if you don’t know how come you are atheist rather than agnostic ?
Agnostic presumably means lacking knowledge. Dawkins did a poll of his forum members, asking where they fit on a spectrum from 1-7, where 1 = "I know there are no gods", and I was surprised how many avoided that one. Can't find it now, as D closed it all down.
It literally is though - perhaps part of the issue is to what extent one is comfortable with not knowing the explanation.
It's a response.
In that sense of answer, 'are there any questions atheists can't answer' is trivially no. But I think a more meaningful sense of answer is in question.
Not that questions to which one has no good answer (yet) are a gotcha (looks at the problem of evil).
I think that's strong atheism. There is a weaker version.
Strong and weak atheism have always seemed to me terms coined for convenience in scoring points in debate than for shedding light on the issues.
I find the distinction between knowledge and belief useful. There are atheists who assert there are no gods. I think Flew made this distinction, but it's really a gradation, not a binary.
Agnosticism says it’s impossible to know one way or another that gods exists.
Atheism says the evidence presented for gods/God is insufficient, leading to a conclusion that in all likelihood gods don’t exist.
Anti-theism isn’t so much a decision about the existence of God, but more a position that religion does more harm than good, and should be left in humanity’s past.
. If cosmology can describe the universe before humans existed then logic and mathematics applied before humans existed.
Isn’t it reasonable to think that the conditions of the cosmos preëxisted humanity’s comprehension and descriptions of them?
Well, that was what I was affirming.
I just don't think one can maintain that the conditions of the cosmos preexisted humanity without maintaining that logic and mathematics are among those conditions.
Again, it’s heady, but Cosmologist Lawrence Krauss has shown how a universe from nothing isn’t impossible:
I don't suppose you can give or link to a written summary for those of us who take information in better by reading? (And prefer to avoid YouTube.)
Agnosticism says it’s impossible to know one way or another that gods exists.
Atheism says the evidence presented for gods/God is insufficient, leading to a conclusion that in all likelihood gods don’t exist.
Anti-theism isn’t so much a decision about the existence of God, but more a position that religion does more harm than good, and should be left in humanity’s past.
A single universe from nothing is naturally impossibly meaninglessly absurd to the point that God done it. Universes come and go (after an insanely long time), all the time, from forever. Minimally by nature abhorring a vacuum (without even a vacuum in it) and doing quantum perturbations of if null then not null, or more likely due to branes colliding in 5D bulk-hyperspace or some such meaningless higher order natural, eternal, infinite level of unintentional being.
That doesn't work, unless you're going for some form of Kantian idealism or stronger about the external universe. If cosmology can describe the universe before humans existed then logic and mathematics applied before humans existed.
That said, as I said up thread, the order of priority between logic and God is a problem for theists too.
The idea that any branch of science or philosophy incorporates or embodies a perspective that prevenes humanity is hubris. Such a perspective does exist in theology, and to that extent, I would say the question itself tries to evade the possibility of an atheistic answer - in which regard I consider it to be rather disingenuous, and that there is nothing to dismiss about mousethief's answer.
And that's without considering the multiplicity of meanings of "the laws of logic" or the extent to which the concept of "laws" itself embodies a theistic framing or perspective.
I agree about not wanting to watch a video explainer of *anything*.
That doesn't work, unless you're going for some form of Kantian idealism or stronger about the external universe. If cosmology can describe the universe before humans existed then logic and mathematics applied before humans existed.
The idea that any branch of science or philosophy incorporates or embodies a perspective that prevenes humanity is hubris. Such a perspective does exist in theology, and to that extent, I would say the question itself tries to evade the possibility of an atheistic answer - in which regard I consider it to be rather disingenuous, and that there is nothing to dismiss about mousethief's answer.
The acts of knowing or believing or perceiving or similar have a subject and an object (the knower and the thing known; the branch of science and what the branch of science is about (*)). Confusing terms and concepts that refer to the subject side for terms and concepts that refer to the object side only leads to more confusion.
Both the idea of a branch of science and the idea of a perspective belong to the subject side. So yes - no branch of science can include a perspective other than human. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about whether we can know anything about the universe before humanity existed on the object side.
That said, I think you are going for some form of idealism, whether Kantian or otherwise, so your position is covered under that clause.
But scientific rationalists are not generally idealists in that respect.
(*) confusingly what the branch of science is about is also called the subject.
I don't suppose you can give or link to a written summary for those of us who take information in better by reading? (And prefer to avoid YouTube.)
I’ll look for something more helpful, but in the shorter term, here’s Krauss speaking about his book in to an interview on NPR’s Science Friday:
“Empty space is a boiling, bubbling brew of virtual particles that pop in and out of existence in a time scale so short that you can't even measure them. Now, that sounds of course like counting angels on the head of a pin; if you can't measure them, then it doesn't sound like it's science, but in fact you can't measure them directly.
But we can measure their effects indirectly. These particles that are popping in and out of existence actually affect the properties of atoms and nuclei and actually are responsible for most of the mass inside your body. And in fact, really one of the things that motivated this book was the most profound discovery in recent times, and you even alluded to it in the last segment, the discovery that most of the energy of the universe actually resides in empty space.
You take space, get rid of all the particles, all the radiation, and it actually carries energy, and that notion that in fact empty space - once you allow gravity into the game, what seems impossible is possible. It sounds like it would violate the conservation of energy for you to start with nothing and end up with lots of stuff, but the great thing about gravity is it's a little trickier.
Gravity allows positive energy and negative energy, and out of nothing you can create positive energy particles, and as long as a gravitational attraction produces enough negative energy, the sum of their energy can be zero. And in fact when we look out at the universe and try and measure its total energy, we come up with zero.”
A single universe from nothing is naturally impossibly meaninglessly absurd to the point that God done it. Universes come and go (after an insanely long time), all the time, from forever. Minimally by nature abhorring a vacuum (without even a vacuum in it) and doing quantum perturbations of if null then not null, or more likely due to branes colliding in 5D bulk-hyperspace or some such meaningless higher order natural, eternal, infinite level of unintentional being.
I don't suppose you can give or link to a written summary for those of us who take information in better by reading? (And prefer to avoid YouTube.)
I’ll look for something more helpful, but in the shorter term, here’s Krauss speaking about his book in to an interview on NPR’s Science Friday:
“Empty space is a boiling, bubbling brew of virtual particles that pop in and out of existence in a time scale so short that you can't even measure them. Now, that sounds of course like counting angels on the head of a pin; if you can't measure them, then it doesn't sound like it's science, but in fact you can't measure them directly.
But we can measure their effects indirectly. These particles that are popping in and out of existence actually affect the properties of atoms and nuclei and actually are responsible for most of the mass inside your body. And in fact, really one of the things that motivated this book was the most profound discovery in recent times, and you even alluded to it in the last segment, the discovery that most of the energy of the universe actually resides in empty space.
You take space, get rid of all the particles, all the radiation, and it actually carries energy, and that notion that in fact empty space - once you allow gravity into the game, what seems impossible is possible. It sounds like it would violate the conservation of energy for you to start with nothing and end up with lots of stuff, but the great thing about gravity is it's a little trickier.
Gravity allows positive energy and negative energy, and out of nothing you can create positive energy particles, and as long as a gravitational attraction produces enough negative energy, the sum of their energy can be zero. And in fact when we look out at the universe and try and measure its total energy, we come up with zero.”
A single universe from nothing is naturally impossibly meaninglessly absurd to the point that God done it. Universes come and go (after an insanely long time), all the time, from forever. Minimally by nature abhorring a vacuum (without even a vacuum in it) and doing quantum perturbations of if null then not null, or more likely due to branes colliding in 5D bulk-hyperspace or some such meaningless higher order natural, eternal, infinite level of unintentional being.
It seems most likely, yes.
By how many sigmas isn't it?
And Krauss is talking about our spacetime vesicle, not about the null or whatever before and after and around it. And energy is a property of matter. There is no energy without matter. The net vectored energy of the universe is certainly zero and that never varies. As for its mass, as the expansion of spacetime is accelerating, mass must be? But the expansion is accelerating matter out of the observable universe. Does that balance the mass?
...But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about whether we can know anything about the universe before humanity existed on the object side.
I think that reflects your framing (your conceptualisation) of the original question. I'm not denying that "logic and mathematics applied before humans existed", I'm saying that "where do laws of logic come from" is a loaded question.
No idea. Perhaps there was always something; that seems most likely. Certainly it is a question that could not be asked if there was nothing, so perhaps there's a bit of a built-in paradox in posing the question at all.
That's not an answer.
(The weak anthropic principle works best where the reason for the range of probabilities is understood and there's enough trials for many outcomes to be instantiated. It gets progressively less informative as those conditions are weakened.
Also, taken seriously it would rule questions about how humans evolved meaningless, which they are not.)
Wrong. "I don't know" is an answer.
* Can one get an 'ought' from an 'is'?
Nope
I think it's more complex than that, although as I said up thread it rather scuppers the scientific argument that justifies morality on the grounds that it evolved.
Only if you think morality must be expressed in "oughts". Please give me good reasons why this is the case.
* Where do laws of logic come from?
Humans.
That doesn't work, unless you're going for some form of Kantian idealism or stronger about the external universe.
Why?
If cosmology can describe the universe before humans existed then logic and mathematics applied before humans existed.
"Agnostic atheism" is a helpful term, and one I ascribe to. "Atheism" in itself just means what it says -- not theism. An atheist is someone who does not believe in gods. Someone who believes in a lack of gods is termed (in some parts of the atheismsphere), a gnostic atheist, where "gnostic" means "knowing (believing) that" rather than the ancient Christian heresy. But in the long run just because someone says they're an atheist doesn't mean they believe God/gods don't exist. They may just not believe they do. Which is a huge difference.
Krauss wrote a whole book about it. I’m afraid I’m very poorly equipped to do much more than point to that, @Martin54.
As I said, he's tacitly extrapolating from known physics to theoretical with no warrant. He's implying that the zero-point energy of quantum mechanical systems explains the existence of them. How? It's another fallacy. The multiverse matrix, womb, the phenomenon that makes universes is infinite and eternal and no more makes something from nothing than God does.
"Agnostic atheism" is a helpful term, and one I ascribe to. "Atheism" in itself just means what it says -- not theism. An atheist is someone who does not believe in gods. Someone who believes in a lack of gods is termed (in some parts of the atheismsphere), a gnostic atheist, where "gnostic" means "knowing (believing) that" rather than the ancient Christian heresy. But in the long run just because someone says they're an atheist doesn't mean they believe God/gods don't exist. They may just not believe they do. Which is a huge difference.
Yes, my son is an ‘agnostic atheist’. He doesn’t preach it at all but, if asked, he will tell you he doesn’t believe God/gods exist.
He thinks all faiths have stories to help people cope with life. I believe all faiths have stories to help describe that which is indescribable - that light which created and holds all together - ‘all’ being everything that ever existed.
Comments
And it struck me how the categories of good/bad, right/wrong, useful/stupid break down in the context of discussing ideas and experiences.
Experiences don’t just exist or don’t exist. Ideas aren’t just true or false. There’s a dichotomy there somewhere that is context-driven. The telling of a human experience can be utterly incomprehensible in one context but utterly sublime in another. To me somehow this seems to be somehow perpendicular (if that’s the right word) to the plane of whether something is true or not.
I need to do something else, but thought I’d try to write down this thought before I lost it.
C.S.Lewis was a thinker and an apologist, but his thinking only rarely gets into his apologetics.
So where do theists do better in metaethics, or even equally as bad?
I don't understand that--surely he wrote his apologetics because his reason led him to conclude those things were true?
Polemics means only acknowledging the strengths of the other position or the weaknesses of your own if it helps you prepare for a riposte.
Lewis's reasoning led him to conclude that Christianity is true. But Mere Christianity is not a rewrite of Surprised by Joy or The Pilgrim's Regress.
Wait, who devised what torment?
I think Eliot was referencing issues of suffering and inherent frustrations within the human condition as much as traditional notions of eternal torment and hell-fire.
My purpose, such as it was, was to suggest a question that an atheist would hardly ask, let alone answer.
So the torment, according to the poem, is due to the "Dove descending".
How does a polemicist arm him-/herself if not by thinking?
The word 'thinker' on its own implies I think that the person is making some original and positive contribution to human understanding.
In his literary criticism, for the most part, and in some of his theological writing, Lewis is engaged in dialectic. In his apologetics he is, for the most part, engaged in rhetoric. I'm pretty sure he'd accept the distinction.
In some of his, especially early, writing on evolution, Dawkins is writing dialectic. In his writing on religion it's pure rhetoric.
Why should it be? I’m confused. I mean it’s in the title.
I don’t understand that implication at all. Or at least that seems to be one particular notion of that. Being able to use reason extremely well and grasp profound truths and help communicate them doesn’t really seem to me to require “originality.” Positive, absolutely.
So you think a question about a poem is unanswerable by an atheist? If the atheist has studied poetry, and in particular this poem, I'm sure they could take a stab at it. That's a pretty milquetoast application of the thread title, honestly.
* Why is there something rather than nothing?
* Can one get an 'ought' from an 'is'?
* How does one explain the 'divine sense'?
* Why doesn't atheism work on a national level
* Where do laws of logic come from?
* What is consciousness?
* https://youtu.be/qYo0lVVH2wU?si=8CPn5OvOdsE8nBL_
Oooh something I can answer. Atheist Man to the rescue!
No idea. Perhaps there was always something; that seems most likely. Certainly it is a question that could not be asked if there was nothing, so perhaps there's a bit of a built-in paradox in posing the question at all.
Nope
Self-deception; compare to déjà vu. It really really seems this scene has played out before. The internal feeling is very strong. But you know logically it hasn't; it's a trick your brain chemistry is playing on you.
I have no idea what this means. What does it mean for atheism to "work" when atheism is merely the lack of a belief in god(s)?
Humans.
Dunno. I assume this is something we will learn in time; in other words it's a scientific and not a metaphysical question.
(The weak anthropic principle works best where the reason for the range of probabilities is understood and there's enough trials for many outcomes to be instantiated. It gets progressively less informative as those conditions are weakened.
Also, taken seriously it would rule questions about how humans evolved meaningless, which they are not.)
I think it's more complex than that, although as I said up thread it rather scuppers the scientific argument that justifies morality on the grounds that it evolved.
That doesn't work, unless you're going for some form of Kantian idealism or stronger about the external universe. If cosmology can describe the universe before humans existed then logic and mathematics applied before humans existed.
That said, as I said up thread, the order of priority between logic and God is a problem for theists too.
It literally is though - perhaps part of the issue is to what extent one is comfortable with not knowing the explanation. Though obviously, one possible reply to that is - if you don’t know how come you are atheist rather than agnostic ?
I think that's strong atheism. There is a weaker version.
In that sense of answer, 'are there any questions atheists can't answer' is trivially no. But I think a more meaningful sense of answer is in question.
Not that questions to which one has no good answer (yet) are a gotcha (looks at the problem of evil).
I find the distinction between knowledge and belief useful. There are atheists who assert there are no gods. I think Flew made this distinction, but it's really a gradation, not a binary.
Atheism says the evidence presented for gods/God is insufficient, leading to a conclusion that in all likelihood gods don’t exist.
Anti-theism isn’t so much a decision about the existence of God, but more a position that religion does more harm than good, and should be left in humanity’s past.
Isn’t it reasonable to think that the conditions of the cosmos preëxisted humanity’s comprehension and descriptions of them?
Again, it’s heady, but Cosmologist Lawrence Krauss has shown how a universe from nothing isn’t impossible: https://youtu.be/vwzbU0bGOdc?si=rNNoNEJfwjy4nxoE
Apologies for the untidy link.
I just don't think one can maintain that the conditions of the cosmos preexisted humanity without maintaining that logic and mathematics are among those conditions.
I don't suppose you can give or link to a written summary for those of us who take information in better by reading? (And prefer to avoid YouTube.)
A single universe from nothing is naturally impossibly meaninglessly absurd to the point that God done it. Universes come and go (after an insanely long time), all the time, from forever. Minimally by nature abhorring a vacuum (without even a vacuum in it) and doing quantum perturbations of if null then not null, or more likely due to branes colliding in 5D bulk-hyperspace or some such meaningless higher order natural, eternal, infinite level of unintentional being.
And that's without considering the multiplicity of meanings of "the laws of logic" or the extent to which the concept of "laws" itself embodies a theistic framing or perspective.
I agree about not wanting to watch a video explainer of *anything*.
Both the idea of a branch of science and the idea of a perspective belong to the subject side. So yes - no branch of science can include a perspective other than human. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about whether we can know anything about the universe before humanity existed on the object side.
That said, I think you are going for some form of idealism, whether Kantian or otherwise, so your position is covered under that clause.
But scientific rationalists are not generally idealists in that respect.
(*) confusingly what the branch of science is about is also called the subject.
“Empty space is a boiling, bubbling brew of virtual particles that pop in and out of existence in a time scale so short that you can't even measure them. Now, that sounds of course like counting angels on the head of a pin; if you can't measure them, then it doesn't sound like it's science, but in fact you can't measure them directly.
But we can measure their effects indirectly. These particles that are popping in and out of existence actually affect the properties of atoms and nuclei and actually are responsible for most of the mass inside your body. And in fact, really one of the things that motivated this book was the most profound discovery in recent times, and you even alluded to it in the last segment, the discovery that most of the energy of the universe actually resides in empty space.
You take space, get rid of all the particles, all the radiation, and it actually carries energy, and that notion that in fact empty space - once you allow gravity into the game, what seems impossible is possible. It sounds like it would violate the conservation of energy for you to start with nothing and end up with lots of stuff, but the great thing about gravity is it's a little trickier.
Gravity allows positive energy and negative energy, and out of nothing you can create positive energy particles, and as long as a gravitational attraction produces enough negative energy, the sum of their energy can be zero. And in fact when we look out at the universe and try and measure its total energy, we come up with zero.”
It seems most likely, yes.
By how many sigmas isn't it?
And Krauss is talking about our spacetime vesicle, not about the null or whatever before and after and around it. And energy is a property of matter. There is no energy without matter. The net vectored energy of the universe is certainly zero and that never varies. As for its mass, as the expansion of spacetime is accelerating, mass must be? But the expansion is accelerating matter out of the observable universe. Does that balance the mass?
Yes - they're not great. I think the term agnostic atheism might do a better job.
Wrong. "I don't know" is an answer.
Only if you think morality must be expressed in "oughts". Please give me good reasons why this is the case.
Why?
Who was applying them then?
As I said, he's tacitly extrapolating from known physics to theoretical with no warrant. He's implying that the zero-point energy of quantum mechanical systems explains the existence of them. How? It's another fallacy. The multiverse matrix, womb, the phenomenon that makes universes is infinite and eternal and no more makes something from nothing than God does.
Yes, my son is an ‘agnostic atheist’. He doesn’t preach it at all but, if asked, he will tell you he doesn’t believe God/gods exist.
He thinks all faiths have stories to help people cope with life. I believe all faiths have stories to help describe that which is indescribable - that light which created and holds all together - ‘all’ being everything that ever existed.