{"id":1189,"date":"2012-09-10T10:09:45","date_gmt":"2012-09-10T00:09:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=1189"},"modified":"2012-09-10T10:09:45","modified_gmt":"2012-09-10T00:09:45","slug":"something-from-nothing-and-your-chicks-for-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/?p=1189","title":{"rendered":"Something From Nothing And Your Chicks For Free"},"content":{"rendered":"

Question from Jay:<\/strong>
\nHow is nothingness able to create a finely tuned universe?
\n
\nA theist might make it more complicated by saying
\n“If something can come into being from nothing, then it becomes inexplicable why just anything or everything doesn’t come into being from nothing. Why can’t books pop into being from nothing? Why is it only the universe that can come into being from nothing?”
\n
\nIf mind and conscience is invisible and if matter does not contain conscience or the potential of consciences, Where does conscience come from?
\nIf the universe began with brute matter, there will be no explanation of the origin of consciences.
\n
\nHow do I answer these questions cause they are really hard?
\n– This is for my philosophy class.
\n
\nAnswer by SmartLX<\/a>:<\/strong>
\nThis stuff isn’t just philosophy, this is “philosophy of religion”. It’s religious apologetics by way of arguments from ignorance, where if someone can’t answer the questions the questioner is free to insert God as the answer. Even if there aren’t any other answers it’s a terrible way to make a point, logically speaking, but that doesn’t stop people.
\n
\nWe don’t know whether there was ever nothing, so how something can come from it is a hypothetical question rather than an essential one. There might<\/em> have been nothing once; if something emerged from it then we know that the process is extremely rare, or happens out of our view, or both. If whole universes emerge all at once in each event, as the Big Bang would seem to suggest when viewed as a something-from-nothing moment, we’d have to travel to the next universe to see the effects of another such event, so it’s no wonder we don’t see ex nihilo<\/em> creation every day. For a more scientific perspective, take an hour to watch Lawrence Krauss’s lecture<\/a> on the subject, or read his book A Universe From Nothing<\/em><\/a>.
\n
\nThe universe is not necessarily finely tuned, for that assumes a tuning process and a tuner. The universe supports life, yes, on the crust of one known planet in countless light years of nothingness and extreme conditions (most of which would instantly kill us if we went there unprotected). That suggests two things: if the universe is tuned at all then it’s not very finely<\/em> tuned, and life has emerged in the one place which happens to be hospitable. I’ve addressed the fine tuning argument<\/a> several times on the site already, if you want some more material.
\n
\nMind, consciousness and the specific aspect of conscious thought we think of as “conscience” are functions of the brain. They’re not entirely invisible, because many experiments have used MRI to measure electrical activity in specific parts of the brain during specific mental activities (dreaming, problem-solving, emotional reactions). Furthermore, if the brain is damaged then consciousness may be impaired or lost forever, leaving a human “vegetable”. We see the beginnings of all these thought processes in animals such as apes, which suggests to us that consciousness has evolved slowly in our ancestors, and persisted because of the tangible benefits of being self-aware and able to think well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question from Jay: How is nothingness able to create a finely tuned universe? A theist might make it more complicated by saying “If something can come into being from nothing, then it becomes inexplicable why just anything or everything doesn’t come into being from nothing. Why can’t books pop into being from nothing? Why is … Continue reading “Something From Nothing And Your Chicks For Free”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[176,168,13,403,328,315],"class_list":["post-1189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","tag-conscience","tag-consciousness","tag-fine-tuning","tag-mind","tag-origins","tag-something-from-nothing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pB6tr-jb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1189"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1191,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1189\/revisions\/1191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asktheatheist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}