How could something come from nothing?

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Maybe humans dont go to heaven only animals do!

This is a good question. All that I know is that we live in a broken world because of us. God hates sin, but he loves us. All that I could do is trust that God knows what he is doing, pray, and feel in my heart that He is in control.

One thing that we know about this world is that it is full of pros and cons. Autism can cause us to feel uncomfortable around other people, highly sensitive, and so on; however, we can have abilities that make this world a better place. Who knows? Perhaps one day an autistic person will find a cure for cancer. This could also be the reason that this thread is getting so long. Some of the people on this website are bursting with ideas, curiosity and interest about this subject.

Last edited by HarmonySeptember on 23 Jun 2014, 12:23 pm, edited 3 times in total.

I believe that was moi.

I love this picture!

I like to believe that animals do go to heaven because they don't have souls. They can't sin.

/\ Or their souls are less susceptible to contamination than ours......

http://www.gotquestions.org/pets-heaven.html

Last edited by HarmonySeptember on 22 Jun 2014, 2:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

So empty space, nothing? Vacuum, nothing? An atom, nothing? Does something have to be tangible to qualify as something. Air, nothing?

No air, space, time, nothing. Probably a vacuum like you said, but I'm not sure because a vacuum might be considered something. It is really hard to wrap my thoughts around it.

Empty space, where? Even apparently empty galactic voids are thought to be teeming with electromagnetic fields and virtual particles.

Atoms, how atoms? Do you mean the space between the nucleus and the surrounding electron shells? I'd imagine that space is also filled with an electromagnetic field, and there are smaller particles in nature that the components of an atom.

'Nothing' is a very tricky concept, I have difficulty imagining it.

Oh, and air can be weighed you facetious bugger

I don't believe in 'free will', however, a 'free will' would appear to be an example of 'something out of nothing'.

'Something' (i.e., human decisions) 'pop' into existence based on 'free will'. The human decisions cannot come from something else (i.e., have deterministic casual factors) or it would not be 'free will'.

We don't relate well to absolute nothing and/or total emptiness because we're used to something, no matter how small, being everywhere. Total nothingness is outside of most people's frame of reference.

Talking about 'something coming from nothing', mainstream Catholic/Protestant orthodoxy claim that the universe was created 'ex nihilo' which literally means 'from nothing' by the word of God. That's done to sort of clamp down a dualistic scenario where what's of matter is not of God and therefore as much as sending a piece of that to hell would grieve God it wouldn't be God sending a piece of itself to hell.

My problem with ex nihilo is that if God spoke matter into reality (whether or not this was performed by anything we could recognize as a mouth) those 'words' to follow the analogy came from a thought, that thought was a combination of imagery and planning, both revolved around an idea to create something, God created what God wanted to create and thus by words (ie. God speaking) it translated from one form of being into another. If you use steam from a furnace to turn a generator in producing a current you haven't created electricity ex nihilo. Similarly if you write a poem on a piece of paper the poem didn't come 'from nothing' as your pen applied ink to paper. Similarly, assuming deity, none of this is ex nihilo as physical reality came from the idea for physical reality.

I think it's been said that space is simply equilibrium of some kind rather than the lack of energy. Outside of an abstraction or by analogy we'd have a very difficult time finding nothing anywhere.

An argument that impresses grandmothers in the pews but not anyone that really thinks about it. No answer will hold to the rules of everyday logic on Earth. Our daily world doesn't involve first causes or eternal regression. It's mind boggling no matter what you believe. If your beliefs don't seem strange then you've just repeated them once too often.

Further comments: The religious argument is that a 'soul' is the thing that allows for free will. The soul is metaphysical, yet can interact within the body to affect human decisions. Thus, 'something out of nothing' by means of a metaphysical entity.

The Bible also mentions the universe expanding:

Psalm 104:2-"The LORD wraps himself in light as with a garment; he stretches out the heavens like a tent." (NIV)