You seem not to understand what a contradiction is. In emergent spacetime models (as also holographic models), the effect is a logically inseparable consequence of the cause, so it is still the case that you can’t have fields without places for them to exist, and thus without space. Spaceless fields (or particles or forces or anything else) is nonsensical even according to that system of physics. Nothing exists without or outside of spacetime. Not even the entities that hypothetically produce spacetime.

(This is also not a settled question. Emergent spacetime remains a hypothesis competing with fundamental spacetime physics. But that is moot to the present point.)

“On the one hand, this is as true of the God model (God cannot have existed before or outside of spacetime; those statements are self-contradictory and therefore literally meaningless),”

But this is simply factually wrong as we already have entities in physics which exist outside of spacetime. The whole field of emergent spacetime which tells us space is an illusion and emerges from more fundamental entities outside of spacetime informs us of this.

In the absence of anything governing what happens, what happens is necessarily random. That fact is the “spark” that produces the outcome. And this is a logically necessary fact.

Nothing more is needed here. There is no “extra” thing we have to add to a pure nothing-state to have this physical result.

One cannot try to propose that something even more nothing than this can have existed, because there is nothing more nothing than this—any attempt to describe anything less (like the absence of both all actualities and all potentialities) leads to logical contradictions (e.g. the absence of all actualities logically entails all potentialities, so you can’t have a state that lacks both, any more than you can stand simultaneously on the North and South poles).

Since logically contradictory states of affairs cannot exist, such states cannot have existed, and therefore are out of account. Therefore, such a state, we can be absolutely certain, never existed. Therefore, we have to address nothing states than can have existed.

You can complain that the most nothing nothing that can logically exist still entails measurable outcomes. But that’s just wingeing. Like complaining that you can’t get a circle that doesn’t have a circumference proportional to pi. Complain all you want. It’s still the case.

That’s what I have proved. You have not offered any rebuttal. All I see so far is a failure to comprehend the logical necessity established here, and the impossibility of escaping it.

Indeed, strangely, you end by repeating my own argument as if you were rebutting me: that a nothing state remaining a nothing state is too improbable to credit, because it is one state out of infinitely others, is precisely my point.

This leaves two possible scenarios, which together exhaust all logical possibilities: there was at one point nothing (i.e. time is past finite; meaning, there is a point in the past beyond which no further time exists); or there wasn’t, and “nothing” existentially decided what would exist.

The former is the “there was once nothing” condition.

While the latter I have also been explaining to you multiple times, and I have several mentions of it in the article you are commenting on as well: if the past is eternal, but what existentially selected which past eternal sequence would exist, or none, is the fact that nothing selected which past eternal sequence would exist, or none, then which eternal sequence would exist, or none, was selected at random—the only remaining logical possibility when we eliminate the alternative of something selecting what will exist—and when that is the case, the least likely thing that would exist is “nothing.” (And the most likely thing that would exist is an infinverse. Q.E.D.)

This is my point. You get the same conclusion whether you accept or reject an actual nothing-state having obtained. I only focus on the “having obtained” alternative because Koons did; exactly as I explain in this article. But I have repeatedly made clear the same follows even if we reject this assumption.

In case you missed it (how?), I have a whole section on this. Quote:

…this is true even if there were a past eternal series of contingent causes, because then the ultimate explanation must reside at the ontological level: a reason why that contingent series exists rather than some other, or none at all. But both facts are fully explained by an ultimate basis of “absolutely nothing”:

• In the temporal case, an absolute nothing is by its own inalienable nature too unstable to remain nothing…

• In the past-eternal case, the absolute lack of any ultimate explanation also by its own inalienable nature entails the observed outcome…

Oops, accidentally posted a comment I made in the fine tuning post alongside my point here. Oh well!

In my mind, a huge amount of this comes from people who are unable to recognize when their intuitions will be leading them astray (and then picking a theory that is not actually all that intuitive but they have emotional reasons to prefer and which they have been indoctrinated into ignoring how mysterious the ontology behind it really is). These theistic discussions always take us far beyond the limits of our understanding. What were things like before even our best physics work? What was it like before causality, if that is what it was? The infinite regress possibility of a past-infinite universe feels weird even though there’s nothing logically wrong with it because our minds don’t take well to infinity (WLC trades on this when he misuses Hilbert’s Hotel while also himself believing in plenty of actual infinities). We actually have no idea how nothings would work. We struggle to actually imagine the Big Bang. Apparently, there is a quite natural way of thinking people have to imagine this kind of primordial void from which stuff can come… but only if some kind of great magic is done. But that’s reasoning from our thought about what would happen if we removed stuff: We would remove the land but the ocean would be left; we would remove planets but a vacuum is left. But this isn’t what a primordial void would be like.

This is another version of the theist two-step I’ve talked about. First, the theist invites us to imagine a situation that is weird, that is beyond our everyday understanding. Then they make arguments that implicitly rely on us maintaining that everyday understanding, in a selective fashion as they need. And then they will disguise us from the fact that a God is a very weird thing too.

You’ve lost the plot at this point. Most of what you are saying is just repeating back to me what I already said. You don’t seem to even know what position you are arguing against.

The bottom line is, Krauss can’t get his results without a package of somethings (certain laws of quantum mechanics). Therefore, he isn’t actually talking about absolutely nothing. What we “call” that package (“quantum vacuum” or anything else) is just semantics, and it isn’t worth your thousands of words trying to bicker about semantics. Stick with the substance of what we are saying. Then you’ll realize you can’t argue your way out of this one.

I’ll not respond to everything you wrote, Richard, because it consumes much time (mine and yours). I’ll try to address your best objections.

You wrote: “Perhaps you don’t know what the word “extension” means? It means more than a singularity; any additional amount of spacetime than the smallest unit of it possible.”

I do understand what the word means, and I’m not talking about a classical singularity. A classical singularity (of spacetime) is defined as geodesic incompleteness; or as missing points of the manifold (or more precisely, b-incompleteness) as is predicted by GR. A spatial manifold is geodesically incomplete if it lacks extension in some direction. In the case of cosmology, if there were a classical initial singularity, it would imply space simply disappears as we reach the Big Bang (running the clock backwards).

However, it should be noted that singularities are predicted by General Relativity; not quantum mechanics. But the semi-classical (euclidean) approach used by Dr. Vilenkin is quantum mechanical (see his book Many Worlds in One, for example). Therefore, it doesn’t postulate an initial classical singularity. It does postulate, however, that spacetime has a boundary.

You wrote: “The original classical Big Bang model started at zero spatial dimensions, called a singularity.”

A singularity is not a zero-dimensional spatial point. To my knowledge, the only qualified person who seriously defended this proposition was Quentin Smith (in his 2001 paper “Time was Created by a Timeless Point”). However, he changed his mind about this and admitted the singularity is not a thing because of further study. Singularities are not points. They are boundaries of the spatial manifold. As Tim Maudlin notes, depicting a singularity as a line or point may mislead “the incautious observer” because he might assume that “the singularity were some sort of thing”. However, “the singularity is an edge of space-time itself, where time-like curves simply cannot be continued”.

You wrote: “There are no spatial extensions prior in that model or in that model.”

Yes, Richard. In the singularity model, there is no spatial extension prior to the Big Bang — not even a zero-dimensional point. And while Dr. Krauss’ model is not classical (it is based on the Euclidean approach and Feynman’s path integrals) it also postulates there was no pre-existent quantum vacuum/quantum state prior to the tunneling event.

You wrote: “I can’t help you if you don’t understand geometry, but a zero dimensional point is perfectly intelligible.”

Of course the concept of zero-dimensional point is intelligible. I didn’t say it is not.

You wrote: “He gives no explanation why those laws would be selected, and thus why his model would proceed at all.”

Well, as far as I know, emergent laws are selected at random when a new inflationary event takes place. There are no hidden variables determining which laws will appear.

You wrote: “This is true of all other universe-from-nothing-models in the literature (except the Lincoln-Wasser model, which is why I cited it).”

So, I’ve read this paper (not the Wasser paper; the one you linked) several times and (as you may have noticed) I even linked it in my article and briefly criticized its central claims.

With regards to the Wasser paper, I don’t take it seriously at all. Notice that this model relies on a very controversial hypothesis that information is ontological and fundamental (this was originally postulated by Wheeler) and is frequently defended by weirdos who believe the universe is a computer. There is no such thing as “information” in addition to matter and quantum fields. Information is just an abstraction that refers to features of fields. Please see the article “Bit from It” by Julian Barbour. He presented a nice critique of this non-sense.

You wrote: “As Krauss puts it “Nothing can create something all the time due to the laws of quantum mechanics.” That requires there be “the laws of quantum mechanics.””

He is talking about virtual particles here; not the origin of the universe. Notice he then goes on to say: “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.”

However, as I said in the article, in the end of the day, he admits that empty space/quantum vacuum is not non-existence (even though it is called “nothing” by some physicists) and then proceeds to propose Vilenkin’s tunneling model — which doesn’t posit a pre-existent quantum vacuum/emtpy space: “…some people would say… empty space isn’t nothing. You know, there’s space. How did the space get there? But the amazing thing is, once you apply in fact quantum mechanics to gravity…, then it’s possible… that space itself can be created where there was nothing before…”

As I explained many times, his model entails empty space/quantum state came into existence.

If a quantum vacuum pre-existed the Big Bang, then it is, in fact, an extension of the spatio-temporal manifold.

That would be impossible. Perhaps you don’t know what the word “extension” means? It means more than a singularity; any additional amount of spacetime than the smallest unit of it possible.

The original classical Big Bang model started at zero spatial dimensions, called a singularity. There are no spatial extensions prior in that model or in that model.

Quantum Mechanics adds the impossibility of a definite singularity, i.e. you can’t have “zero” anything; what you have is an undefined singularity of spacetime (a kind of probabilistic haze of a singularity), the nearest equivalent to a geometric singularity allowed on QM. But there are still no extensions of spacetime here; except in the QM sense of that undefined spacetime singularity, which is what allows for universe formation in Krauss’s model.

…when [Krauss] refers to a quantum vacuum, he is talking about empty space…

Sure. But that’s what people are criticizing him for. That’s not what most other folks mean by that term. What they mean is an undefined singularity of spacetime governed by the laws of Quantum Mechanics. Which simply isn’t “nothing.” It’s close. But it still has that unexplained brute fact of “the laws of Quantum Mechanics,” by which Krauss can get a universe-forming incident. He can’t get his results without that quantum vacuum state, that initial undefined void condition (a quantum singularity) where and when “the laws of quantum mechanics” can have produced an outcome.

Again, the problem isn’t his requiring a minimal unit of spacetime (a singularity) where and when his quantum universe-forming event can be spawned by quantum mechanical laws. The problem is the existence of those quantum mechanical laws. Any void state governed by those laws is a quantum vacuum, even if it has no measurable extension of space or time.

But it would be even more nothing if that void state wasn’t even governed by any laws at all (quantum or otherwise). This is where we get my line of argument, where we look to see what happens when we chuck those laws as well.

Krauss is adding something to my nothing (those laws). I am taking them away and then seeing what happens. That way, I don’t have to explain why those laws (instead of others, or none at all) would just exist and govern what happens for no reason. This is the difference between our two projects.

To me it is unintelligible to claim an existent physical thing has zero size/no size.

I can’t help you if you don’t understand geometry, but a zero dimensional point is perfectly intelligible. It is well-defined in mathematics and regularly employed in calculus. Perhaps what you mean instead to say is that such a singularity is as nothing as any nothing can be, so we shouldn’t call it a something. Since I already myself said that very thing, we would not be in any disagreement here.

Hence, again, the problem is not with whether we each require some manner of singularity as starting point (a dimensionless “where and when” there would be nothing or something, from which anything could then arise; like his quantum mechanical laws and anything they then “do”). Any theory of nothing requires that. Because, as I explain in my article, it’s a logical contradiction otherwise. To say that nowhere was there ever nothing is to deny the existence of any nothing-state and thus assert instead a past-eternal existence of some kind. The only way to say the universe began with nothing is to assign a place and a time for there to have been nothing. There is no logical way to avoid this.

The problem is thus not with whether there was a zero point of spacetime at which nothing existed (not even extensions of space or time). The problem is with what “just exists there” for no reason, that will govern what happens to or at that zero point. Krauss adds a bunch of somethings (all the laws of physics his argument depends on, which are particularly quantum mechanical, hence a “quantum” vacuum and not just any vacuum singularity). I take all those away.

I’m thus talking about actually nothing. Krauss is only talking about almost nothing. And that is what his critics have rightly taken him to task for.

Dr. Krauss postulates the laws of physics came into existence along with the physical universe. His reasoning is that the string landscape implies laws are not fundamental, but instead emergent. Laws can be set/selected at random when a new Big Bang takes place.

This is not what Krauss argues. He does not come up with some complete random table of all logically possible physical laws and then determine from that the probability that his preferred laws would be selected and thus cause the quantum event his model depends on.

No.

Krauss self-selects the laws he wants to have existed to have produced that event. He gives no explanation why those laws would be selected, and thus why his model would proceed at all. This is true of all other universe-from-nothing-models in the literature (except the Lincoln-Wasser model, which is why I cited it).

As Krauss puts it “Nothing can create something all the time due to the laws of quantum mechanics.” That requires there be “the laws of quantum mechanics.” If even those don’t exist, then his statement about what nothing can do fails to follow. Thus, he depends on the arbitrary existence of something; that’s a brute-fact cosmogenesis, not a nothing-state cosmogenesis.

Krauss does correctly say “nothing is unstable, it will always produce something,” but that describes the Lincoln-Wasser model, not his own model. His own model doesn’t say “nothing will always produce something,” he says “nothing” will produce something specifically because a weird and very specific set of physical laws (the laws of quantum mechanics his model depends on) exist to govern what a nothing does or what comes from it. But there is no basis for asserting that. He has just arbitrarily insisted those laws will exist and/or govern what happens when there is nothing. This is what he is criticized for.

I personally don’t see that as being that much of a defect of his case, since his brute fact is still vastly simpler than any God hypothesis and has (unlike God) actual evidential support (the laws of Quantum Mechanics we can indisputably say do indeed exist and operate as he describes). But it is a philosophical error of semantics for him to keep calling this “nothing.” It isn’t “nothing” as that word is meant by theists (the people he claims to be responding to), and it isn’t “nothing” by any logically reductive definition—because his initial state still contains “something” that we can still take away without logical contradiction: all those laws of quantum mechanics he uses to get his result.

You don’t actually have nothing until you’ve taken away everything that isn’t logically necessary. And that means taking away the laws of quantum mechanics Krauss’s model employs. Which leaves no Krauss model left to discuss.

You wrote: “People don’t mean an extended spacetime by “initial quantum vacuum.””

I disagree. If a quantum vacuum pre-existed the Big Bang, then it is, in fact, an extension of the spatio-temporal manifold. As Dr. Krauss said, when he refers to a quantum vacuum, he is talking about empty space (which implies an extension). I mentioned this in the article. However, his model denies that (1) there is an extension of spacetime — prior to the Big Bang — and that this extension (2) is a quantum vacuum.

You wrote: “usually not defined in terms of spacetime coordinates, i.e. a volume of zero or undefinable size”

Well, Dr. Vilenkin (from whom Dr. Krauss ‘borrowed’ the model) postulates the radius (and by extension the volume) of spacetime vanished out of existence (to zero size). To me it is unintelligible to claim an existent physical thing has zero size/no size. It is non-existence. If you have a car of zero size, that means you have no car at all. It makes no sense.

You wrote: “Hence he requires a dimensionless point of space…”

A dimensionless thing is still a point. It still has a size. Dr. Krauss’ model implies there wasn’t even a dimensionless point. Rather, space itself vanished; went out of existence as we run the clock backwards in time.

You wrote: “He has to presume Quantum Mechanics governs what forms from an initial void state. … The problem is when he then just arbitrarily says this state is governed by a whole set of physical laws, without explaining where those came from.”

I also explored this in the article. First, Dr. Krauss postulates the laws of physics came into existence along with the physical universe. His reasoning is that the string landscape implies laws are not fundamental, but instead emergent. Laws can be set/selected at random when a new Big Bang takes place. That implies such laws probably didn’t exist without the universe. Second, unlike Dr. Krauss, Dr. Vilenkin postulates laws pre-existed the physical cosmos in some Platonic sense (i.e., without the physical). One possible explanation of the existence of these laws (which I briefly mentioned there) is that they are self-existent/eternal and metaphysically necessary. So, this problem is not insurmountable.

I don’t know what lexicon you mean, but those are the same thing, and are plural. (In case it wasn’t clear, vowels didn’t exist in Hebrew then; so elohim and elhim are identical. It’s simply El, the supreme God of Canaan, with a masculine plural suffix.)

The question of the plural is much discussed in the literature. Many claim it’s a royal singular (or a similar idea of plural intensive or honorific plural), although that actually logically entails a plurality of beings (kings can only describe themselves as “we” because they represent a plurality of agents and subjects acting on their behalf). IMO, these terms refer to the Creator and his angelic court (which at the time of writing would be understood as a court of subordinate gods; the semantic maneuver of re-naming these gods angels was a second temple development). This is confirmed by the identical use of the correlating word at the time in Ugaritic.

Wikipedia has a reasonably useful article on this.

That notes the honorific plural was used for other large things, but IMO, the examples don’t hold the point. For example, Behemoth in Job appears to refer to a species of animals, not a singular beast, and certainly nothing all that large, which is only poetically described in the singular. The idea of Behemoth being a singular monster arose centuries later, after the “plural of greatness” had developed as an idea to convert the polytheistic Genesis into a monotheist treatise. The same was then done for Behemoth to carry an intended parallel of divine greatness. Likewise, achot, sister, looks plural but it’s actually an accident of etymological compression from a similar-sounding non-plural ending. Which cannot have happened to elohim. And the references claimed for the use of Baalim in the singular don’t check out. And so on.

(See Thomas Keiser’s article “The Divine Plural: A Literary-Contextual Argument for Plurality in the Godhead “; IMO his own thesis is incorrect, but he cites and summarizes all the scholarship covering attempts to explain this.)