Love this Father Michael Heller, who has won the $1.6 million Templeton Prize. From the Times:
Much of Professor Heller’s career has been dedicated to reconciling the known scientific world with the unknowable dimensions of God.In doing so, he has argued against a “God of the gaps” strategy for relating science and religion, a view that uses God to explain what science cannot.
Professor Heller said he believed, for example, that the religious objection to teaching evolution “is one of the greatest misunderstandings” because it “introduces a contradiction or opposition between God and chance.”
In a telephone interview, Professor Heller explained his affinity for the two fields: “I always wanted to do the most important things, and what can be more important than science and religion? Science gives us knowledge, and religion gives us meaning. Both are prerequisites of the decent existence.”
Nice, but where are the big awards for the priest-cosmetologists? I ask you.
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I love the passive-aggressive martyr technique.
"Einstein's E=mc2, which says that energy and mass are interchangeable, is not, of course, the same as E=o or o=E. It just means that a particular something equals a particular something. So your implication that he realized that nothing can equal something is not how I read the story--it's not what stopped him in his tracks. Can we agree on that? Can we agree that a discovery that nothing can equal something would be earthshaking; shouted from the rooftops?"
No, my implication is not that nothing can equal something. It's that nothing can equal something plus minus something. I think we agree on that.
"And if the Universe contains zero energy overall, all that means is a NET effect of a plus something and a negative something, e.g., 2 + minus 2 = 0."
That's right.
"If I completely burned a piece of paper in an electric furnace, nothing would not be what was left; energy, which is something, is what would be left. Moreover some energy was necessary to convert the mass of paper to more energy."
No, that wouldn't be analogous to the creation or destruction of a universe with zero net energy. When you combine the positive energy and the negative energy there is no extra energy left over, thus zero net energy.
"Where, moreover, would the energy to convert nothing to something come from? In short, wouldn't it require something to convert nothing to something."
Again, you're not converting nothing into something. You are converting nothing into something and minus somthing, which are the net equal of the nothing they arose from.
Now how did the nothing convert into something and minus something? That's a good question! Science doesn't have all the answers yet. General Relativity and Quantum Theory haven't been successfully combined yet into Quantum Gravity. Don't you think science will keep advancing?
Just to be clear, you wouldn't be putting positive energy in to separate nothing into positive energy and negative energy, because then you wouldn't have net zero energy, you would end up with the positive energy you put into it when you recombine the positive and the negative. The separation would have to be more akin to a spontaneous quantum fluctuation. Again, we don't have all the answers yet, but the possibiltiy has not been ruled out as you imply.
"I love the passive-aggressive martyr technique." aaron
I presumed as much.
Per meh: "...my implication is not that nothing can equal something. It's that nothing can equal something plus minus something. I think we agree on that."
Yes, we can: 0=2+-2. But so what?
Per meh: "When you combine the positive energy and the negative energy there is no extra energy left over, thus zero net energy."
Agreed. My example of burning a piece of paper was not meant to be analogous to the posited creation or destruction of a universe. My point was that it took a separately existing amount of energy (a something) to convert something into something else. You, for example, used the term," When you combine." Combining requires energy.
But, OK, let's say the universe was composed of equal amounts of SELF-COMBINING positives and negatives. If that were true, there would be either (A) a self-combined nothing always, or (B) a singularity and an expanding universe sharing time. We know that A is not true. So if B must be true, than something--a singularity--pre-existed.
Per meh: "Science doesn't have all the answers yet. General Relativity and Quantum Theory haven't been successfully combined yet into Quantum Gravity. Don't you think science will keep advancing?"
Yes I do. That's why the Roman Catholic Church gave it birth and jealously nursed it into a self-sustaining concept/method--even at the cost of looking stupid (and some of its clerics were stupidly proud of it) in the Galileo case. The dispute was not that the Church decreed the geocentric theory a dogmatic truth (Copernicus was given a medal by the Pope for his contrary theory), but that Galileo broke his promise not to teach the contrary theory AS SCIENTIFIC FACT until it could be demonstrated as such. I.E., the Church didn't want science polluted with half-baked theories by every Tom, Dick and Lefevre.
Sorry, meh, for getting religious on you, but it's a pet peeve of mine when secularists throw around the nonsense (and you have not done so in this debate) that science is an enemy of a Prime Mover. Hell, science has done nothing but support its plausibility. Which is one reason why the Church embraces its still growing child today. A Prime Mover and science are anything but contradictory. The existing dispute is contrived.
Again, sorry for that aside. I appreciate your cold, scientific approach to the issue of why is their something rather than nothing. It's refreshing.
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