Has there always been stuff or nothing?

Many people see the beginning of life as some quantum leap from a rock to something that crawls or barks. OK that's a silly exaggeration. Lets say a leap from naturally forming compounds found in rock, some of which become organic once released, which form microscopic globs of assorted compounds that take on yet new properties just as every complex compound does without being identified as life. Prophets and clerics describe living things as being given "the spark of life," but that's a poetic disservice to natural chemical processes. Life doesn't have to be "given", and what the "spark" stuff is all about is baffling. Life is not worthy of miracle status that can only be described by poets. It's just chemistry, complicated chemistry, of course, and not perfectly understood, but natural and sometimes inevitable. But we are not talking about making frogs, mammals, and one celled protista. We are talking about making something far more simple than a bacterium, something that displays 6 or 7 properties which altogether define "alive."

But lets not wet our pants and exclaim, "Ooooh, it's alive," like Dr. Frankenstein. It's just a combination of compounds, each with special properties, that exhibit new chemical properties when they combine. OK, it's a complicated process, and it's currently a mystery. But the whole universe is a mystery, and probably a bigger mystery than life itself. It's not a mystery complicated enough that only religious dogma is capable of stepping up to the plate to declare with finality how and why it's there, and doing so without any chemistry, physics, peer reviews, or lifting a finger to experiment, and verify. It's just something no one fully understands.

I remember being awed in school by what happens when two deadly chemicals, sodium and clorine, come together and form harmless table salt. But it's not a big deal. This happens all the time in more ways than we can count in chemistry, and it gets more and more complicated as elements continue to combine into compounds, and more complex compounds, but it's natural, and doesn't require miracles to make it happen. That we don't understand it all is just our human ignorance, not the bad kind of ignorance like stupidity, just the simple and forgivable ignorance of not knowing at this time.
 

oldlongwalker said:
If by the word "universe" you mean everything, then there can't be something else without a contradiction in terms.

That means either there has always been something, or the universe came out of nothing. My pick is the first option. The second just leads to something like God. And that only pushes back the question to where God came from.
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How about the term, "present universe" to differentiate from a "prior universe", if it existed?
 
JustDave said:
Many people see the beginning of life as some quantum leap from a rock to something that crawls or barks. OK that's a silly exaggeration. Lets say a leap from naturally forming compounds found in rock, some of which become organic once released, which form microscopic globs of assorted compounds that take on yet new properties just as every complex compound does without being identified as life. Prophets and clerics describe living things as being given "the spark of life," but that's a poetic disservice to natural chemical processes. Life doesn't have to be "given", and what the "spark" stuff is all about is baffling. Life is not worthy of miracle status that can only be described by poets. It's just chemistry, complicated chemistry, of course, and not perfectly understood, but natural and sometimes inevitable. But we are not talking about making frogs, mammals, and one celled protista. We are talking about making something far more simple than a bacterium, something that displays 6 or 7 properties which altogether define "alive."

But lets not wet our pants and exclaim, "Ooooh, it's alive," like Dr. Frankenstein. It's just a combination of compounds, each with special properties, that exhibit new chemical properties when they combine. OK, it's a complicated process, and it's currently a mystery. But the whole universe is a mystery, and probably a bigger mystery than life itself. It's not a mystery complicated enough that only religious dogma is capable of stepping up to the plate to declare with finality how and why it's there, and doing so without any chemistry, physics, peer reviews, or lifting a finger to experiment, and verify. It's just something no one fully understands.

I remember being awed in school by what happens when two deadly chemicals, sodium and clorine, come together and form harmless table salt. But it's not a big deal. This happens all the time in more ways than we can count in chemistry, and it gets more and more complicated as elements continue to combine into compounds, and more complex compounds, but it's natural, and doesn't require miracles to make it happen. That we don't understand it all is just our human ignorance, not the bad kind of ignorance like stupidity, just the simple and forgivable ignorance of not knowing at this time.
Click to expand...

I wonder where RNA might play a part in this – found in things that some say aren’t technically alive, viruses? A template for protein synthesis. Could RNA have taken a role in creating life, along with amino acids?
 

Gary O' said:
Interesting thoughts

I just accept this;
The book of John
'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
In him was life; and the life was the light of men


Romans 1:22-32 talks about man's conjecture
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Sounds nice but what was the word that somehow developed into God?

Since bible reference was used for your post

Can you explain this?
John 1:12 -13 (NIV)
Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. We are all children of God.
 
Magna-Carta said:
I wonder where RNA might play a part in this – found in things that some say aren’t technically alive, viruses? A template for protein synthesis. Could RNA have taken a role in creating life, along with amino acids?
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I assume it's more than a "could have." Since it's there, it's "must have."

As where to put viruses, I always considered them sometimes alive. But that too could be an overstep. But lets go back to those 6 or 7 characteristics of life. I can no longer remember the exact number, and we don't have to remember what they all are, but I think it's a fair assumption that the road to life didn't happen all at once. Each of those 6 or 7, which don't name RNA specifically were likely present in whole or part by themselves along the way, but at some point, all of them showed up together, and the result was that something "twitched." This is not my own wording, I read an explanation where the author was describing abiogenesis and used the phrase, "and a bag of chemicals twitched." I loved that oversimplification so much that I just had to borrow the wording. But at some point, maybe before or after we cross the threshold of life, RNA shows up. Crossing the the threshold was nothing more than a point in a billion year process of chemical reactions that is still taking place today.
 
fuzzybuddy said:
How about the term, "present universe" to differentiate from a "prior universe", if it existed?
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If there was a prior universe, i.e., everything, then the current universe must have come from it. So we are back to a single universe. The difference in priority is hard to specify.

Here is the problem. Think of the present universe as it was just before the big bang. Whatever that was at that point, that was all there was. So that was the universe, just in a different state.

The best you can do is have a continual expansion and contraction. You can't actually have a prior universe in the sense that it was created, utterly annihilated, and then a new universe sprang into existence. That would be to get everything from nothing.
 
oldlongwalker said:
Think of the present universe as it was just before the big bang. Whatever that was at that point, that was all there was. So that was the universe, just in a different state.
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I'm wondering if this is what the theoretical physicists call the "singularity"... the thing that was there at the beginning of the bang. The question could then be, "What was there before the singularity?" I've always been hazy about this, it is often implied that nothing was there, but also makes room for saying, "We don't know?" Because in fact, no one knows or can know. It could be nothing, or it could be a previous contraction of the universe, or something else. But I think a lot of knowledgeable guys could debate my speculation and I wouldn't protest one bit about it either.
 
Knight said:
Can you explain this?
John 1:12 -13 (NIV)
Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. We are all children of God.
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It's the rebirth
He is our Brother

Hebrews 2:11 NIV
Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.
 
Gary O' said:
The Word
Is Jesus
The Creator
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I'm trying to understand the belief that a sentient being 13 billion years old began as a word. And that being created our universe. Hard for me to grasp the idea that humans made in his image were to dominate when the time line is off a little. There were no humans during the Jurassic period. So when did the word transform?
 
Never put much stock in the 'Big Bang' theory. Too simplistic an explanation with nothing, in my opinion, to back it up. More like the 'Big Bull' theory to me.

In my latter years now, I'm not really convinced what we call space is really out there. Could be just a gigantic charade to keep lots of minds occupied.

Having time in retirement to sit and rock on the back porch thinking about things has merit. In my mind, I'm beginning to challenge a lot of things I was led to understand in my active, "productive" life.
 
Decent questions @Knight
I don't know
I don't know where '13 billion years' comes from
I don't limit Him as 'a sentient being'
I'm not familiar with 'the Jurassic period'
The Word was transformed at Jesus' birth

I've never been able to even wrap my mind around no beginning
No end I can handle
But no beginning?
That's when I chop wood for awhile
 
ArnoldC said:
Never put much stock in the 'Big Bang' theory. Too simplistic an explanation with nothing, in my opinion, to back it up. More like the 'Big Bull' theory to me.

In my latter years now, I'm not really convinced what we call space is really out there. Could be just a gigantic charade to keep lots of minds occupied.

Having time in retirement to sit and rock on the back porch thinking about things has merit. In my mind, I'm beginning to challenge a lot of things I was led to understand in my active, "productive" life.
Click to expand...
The big bang theory has nearly universal acceptance among the scientists able to make a sound judgement about it's value. What alternatives do you consider more plausible?
 
Knight said:
Hard for me to grasp the idea that humans made in his image were to dominate when the time line is off a little. There were no humans during the Jurassic period
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Man lived for hundreds of years, were larger, smarter than us now
and were quite busy
Genesis 6 talks about it

so
'God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.'

Probably explains some, about 'the Jurassic period'
Hasn't been a study for me
More interested in the prophecies
What's coming
 
oldlongwalker said:
The big bang theory has nearly universal acceptance among the scientists able to make a sound judgement about it's value. What alternatives do you consider more plausible?
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I don't think the darned thing even exists - the universe as explained by the Big Bull theory. Alternative would be to discount it in its entirety.

I've been to San Francisco and Saudi Arabia. I've been to Kansas and Korea. Those I can see, touch, feel, taste and hear. Anything outside the atmosphere, have to take someone else's word for it. Own a telescope and have done my share of lunar observing and star gazing. Now I question if it even exists at all. Other than to extract massive funds from taxpayers to satisfy scientific egos.

Curious. Elon MUSK has dialed back his Mars efforts, ostensibly to build some town in Texas. Perhaps even he is having second thoughts?
 
As for the thread title, yes there has always been stuff, ever since time began, which according to the theory, time began with the Big Bang. And before that, well, there was no before, according also to BB theory. But you will have to debate that with some guys from Cal Tech.
 
JustDave said:
As for the thread title, yes there has always been stuff, ever since time began, which according to the theory, time began with the Big Bang. And before that, well, there was no before, according also to BB theory. But you will have to debate that with some guys from Cal Tech.
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From what I understand, astrophysicists now believe there was time before the big bang but the big bang is where our understanding of time and the creation of the universe ends. We have no idea what happened before then.
 
SeniorBen said:
From what I understand, astrophysicists now believe there was time before the big bang but the big bang is where our understanding of time and the creation of the universe ends. We have no idea what happened before then.
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That's kind of my life. For 13.7 billion years nothing existed. Then I was born, and time began. People tell me something happened before I was born, but for me, there was no time, no stuff, nothing.
 

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