RT Article
T1 Arguments from Nothing: God and Quantum Cosmology
JF Zygon
VO 44
IS 4
SP 777
OP 796
A1 Cahoone, Lawrence E. 1954-
LA English
YR 2009
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1827961090
AB Abstract. This essay explores a simple argument for a Ground of Being, objections to it, and limitations on it. It is nonsensical to refer to Nothing in the sense of utter absence, hence nothing can be claimed to come from Nothing. If, as it seems, the universe, or any physical ensemble containing it, is past-finite, it must be caused by an uncaused Ground. Speculative many-worlds, pocket universes and multiverses do not affect this argument, but the quantum cosmologies of Alex Vilenkin, and J. B. Hartle and Stephen Hawking, which claim that the universe came from literally nothing, would. I argue that their novel project cannot work for reasons both physical (their “nothing” is actually a vacuum state governed by eternal physical laws) and methodological (physical theory cannot explain the emergence of the physical per se). Thus my argument stands. However, as David Hume showed, a posteriori arguments like mine infer a creation, and Creator, of a certain character, namely, a stochastic concept of creation and a panentheistic, partly physical Creator lacking omniscience and omnipotence. Rather than undermining the cosmological argument, as Hume intended, these limitations liberate the concept of the Ground from unnecessary problems, as Hartshorne suggested.
K1 Alex Vilenkin
K1 Universe
K1 Teleological Argument
K1 quantum gravity
K1 quantum cosmology
K1 past-finite
K1 past-eternal
K1 origin of universe
K1 Nothing
K1 no-boundary proposal
K1 Inflation
K1 David Hume
K1 Hartle-Hawking
K1 God
K1 Creator
K1 Creation
K1 Cosmology
K1 Cosmological Argument
K1 Big Bang
DO 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2009.01033.x