Raugust wrote:

According to modern physics, it is impossible for "nothing" to exist. Even a completely empty vacuum still has low-level energy, manifested in the firm of "virtual particles". Virtual particles are low-level quantum fluctuations which give a small level of energy even to the void; it seems that the very nature of existence is such that 'something comes from nothing' (albeit on a very small scale of space and time) constantly. This energy isn't even hypothetical or theoretical; it's been experimentally observed (cf. the Casimir effect).


But it certainly could have existed forever, which is what is implied by the second law of thermodynamics. Ultimately, though, the real answer is that nobody knows what happened at the beginning of the universe, because physics as of yet has a very weak understanding of how singularities behave, especially with respect to gravity. Further research will need to be done before we can reach any conclusion--even the conclusion that we will never know the answer.


What makes you think that they "came from" anything? At some point you need to posit something that has always existed, else you will have an infinite regress. You would probably be comfortable positing a God that always existed and did not 'come from' anything; it is a double standard, then, for you to refuse to consider the possibility that the universe did not 'come from' anything.

The Big Bang theory does not describe what the universe 'came from', it describes the early inflation of the universe. If you are really curious about some interesting modern hypotheses about pre-Big Bang cosmology, you'll need to delve into speculative physics like brane theory.


Ordinary, day-to-day logic and human intuition break down at a singularity. Causality and the fundamental forces do not operate in an infinitely dense point in the same way that they operate in the modern universe. Thus your mere intuitions are a poor guide for understanding such an atypical scenario, rife with quantum paradoxes; you will need to take some courses on physics and cosmology, and understand both the experimental data and the mathematics, before you can reach a safe conclusion even about the state of our ignorance, or about the available possibilities. Mere introspection cannot make up for lack of knowledge.


The distinction between living and nonliving matter is rather arbitrary; there are many examples of quasi-organic self-replicators on the Earth, complex chemistry which does not fit the ordinary criteria for 'living' but has some similarities to living things, e.g., viruses, prions, fosmids, plasmids, transposons, viroids, and nanobes. Clearly complex chemistry can exhibit numerous life-like behaviors; ultimately the line we draw between when something is a live (e.g., a bacterium) and when it isn't (e.g., a crystal) is based on which arbitrary qualities we deem of more importance than others. So your question is a bit poorly-framed; it is no more mysterious that life is possible than that crystals are possible.

To be more specific in answering your question: the exact chemical process of abiogenesis is as yet quite unknown (and is a very active area of research in biochemistry), but there are some excellent theories (RNA World in particular) which have shed much light on many of the stages by which life could have developed from nonlife. Since your question focuses on the question of how life could have arisen on 'a huge rock', the answer is: the same elements that make up life happen to be the most common elements in the universe. Carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, etc. are all super-abundant in the universe at large, and it has been experimentally proven that these common elements can, and do, form complex amino acids in various naturally-occurring circumstances. It is very clear that the right ingredients existed on the early Earth for life to develop; the only lingering question is what particular recipe was used to bake those ingredients into RNA molecules.


A baby also doesn't just come out of a God. A tree doesn't just come out of a God. Organisms come from like organisms. So you are forced either to posit an infinite regress (i.e., "there have always been organisms"), or to explain how the earliest life-forms developed--not from a rock, but from a nutrient-rich soup of organic molecules.


How does something "create itself"? Wouldn't it need to already exist in order to perform an action like the act of creating?


There is no compelling evidence that any supernatural thing exists.


How do you know? You're the one who posited that supernatural things exist; what experiments have you done to show that supernatural things are not made of molecules--albeit supernatural molecules? If supernatural things are not made of molecules, what are they made of? What evidence is there for them? How do they behave, and what laws can describe that behavior? How do supernatural entities interact with natural entities, and what observational clues can be used to infer when this interaction occurs? These are the kinds of questions you should be asking, and striving to answer, if you really want to put forward an intellectually honest explanation for any phenomenon which invokes the supernatural.


Not only is your God not the 'only logically answer' [sic], but it's not even clear that it's a logical answer. You need to clarify and specify what you mean by 'God', and provide a way for us to test this hypothesis of yours for the origin of life, if you want the idea of theistic creation to be taken seriously and begin to be published in science journals. If you are successful, you can be assured that you will revolutionize the sciences and win at least one Nobel Prize. Get crackin'!

scmeehan1 wrote:
Could there be other conclusions than 'particles pop in to and out of being'? Absolutely.

They could be always present and our ability to detect them is lacking

OR they are not present at all and their effects are caused by something else.

Physics can not currently disprove either of these possibilities

I could likewise argue for the existence of non-physical spirit based on this same reasoning.

What is the cause of will? The chemical reaction that occurs within the brain that tells my arm to move happens after I will it to do so, so it is not identical.

And if it is, what is its cause?

Therefore, based on the observable effect, non-physical mind necessarily exists.

Biology has very poor explanations of why cells divide to acheive growth. The 'how' of the process can be explained perfectly, but why does a nucleus split and the DNA self-divide? The instructions to do so are not contained within the DNA itself.

You say that "Organisms come from like organisms." Is that not what the poster is saying?

How is this less mystical then arguments for the existence of spirit and a God?

What is the fundamental difference between this nutrient soup and a rock?

Do we have evidence of organic molecules existing entirely separate from any plant/animal life form?

If this is not the case, how can a primoridal soup containing carbohydrates exist prior to organic life?

Plant/animal life comes from that which sustains animals, which in fact is other plant/animal life.

You seem to literally have to 'pop' an amoeba into existence from nothingness to make this fly

You then need to 'pop' its food supply into existence as well.

Then, after these two miracles occur, it can proceed to divide and evolve into other organisms to neatly fit the assumptions that we hold to that we refuse to question in spite of the evidence to the contrary.

M3LIX wrote:
I was thinking how did we come to be here. Let's start from the beginning.
Let's take the approach that before the world came into existence there was nothing. Just an empty space with no particles or anything. Just empty. If that were the case (it makes a lot of sense, since if there was something out there where did it come from? It can't just appear) how did the world get here? What I don't understand with the big bang theory is that where did the particles that expanded to create the earth come from? Say that somehow the world did come from nothing (logically impossible) how did we humans come from the earth. The earth is a planet, a huge rock, how can life come from something without life. A baby doesn't just come out of a rock. A tree doesn't just come out of a rock.
Personally the only other explanation is that something was already out there that could do anything, e.g. create itself or something that was never created but always existed. Something supernatural. It couldn't be molecules to create a planet since molecules are not supernatural. How about God? Is that not the only logically answer?

swstephe wrote:
But "you" (speaking rhetorically to anyone reading this) came from nothing. How do you explain yourself? You might have or know some kids that recently came from nothing. The process for you or those kids coming from nothing is pretty well understood. If someone talks about God creating the child, it is usually understood as metaphorical. We can manipulate the process down to the smallest detail. If a couple can't conceive, there are procedures to help them, (is God consulted?). The same could be applied to everything living. I can point at islands who appear from nothing, (I climbed a 600-year-old island volcano a few weeks ago).