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Originally Posted by Katczinsky  I was in a debate earlier about the paradox of God supposedly being able to 'exist' while at the same time being objectified from existence (in order to create it). And it got me thinking.
The way I understand physics, is that the universe is expanding and with it space/time. I was wondering how exactly space/time expands into nothingness, or the absence of space-time. Because nothingness isn't some 'space' to move around in, as it is negated by the fact that it is nothingness...or no space at all. So adding onto the debate on 'how can God be objectified from existence', how can the universe expand existence into non-existence? And for that matter, how can two (or more) different existences exist as their own separate totalities (parallel worlds, separate universes, etc.) when there is "nothing" to separate them? Two objects can't be seen parallel to one another in a void of 'nothingness' (because nothingness isn't a void but rather no space or time existing).
I was just wondering if any of you thinkers out there had any thoughts on this. | Strangely enough, this cropped up on another board I post on (BC). There's an article in New Scientist about the possibility of consciousness arising spontaneously through quantum fluctuations - the full article is here: Spooks in space - cosmology - 17 August 2007 - New Scientist Space
What I find interesting is that it's atheist scientists discussing this possibility, which on the face of it seems just as weird and supernatural as a deity existing.
The basic idea is this: virtual particles pop in and out of existence all the time. In theory, there's nothing to stop a rock, a small office table or a conscious entity popping into existence - although the more complex the structure, the longer the timescale required. 13 billion years is far too short a time for the spontaneous emergence of a conscious entity to be likely, but in an ever-expanding universe that goes on for ever, such entities will eventually occur, and will probably be the *only* form of matter that exists in the universe after all the protons have decayed 10[sup]32[/sup] or so years from now.
The discussion on BC is here - I don't know if it's considered bad form to post links to another forum, but BC and DtT are on good terms and share the same server, so I hope so - but mods, please feel free to remove this link and accept my apologies if it isn't appropriate: BC Forums |