The document discusses the question of why there is something rather than nothing from scientific and philosophical perspectives. It covers: 1) The emergence of modern cosmology in the 20th century and proposals like the Big Bang theory and steady state theory to explain the origin and evolution of the universe. 2) How current scientific theories like quantum fluctuations and inflationary cosmology suggest that the universe could have spontaneously emerged from a prior state of "nothing" with zero total energy. 3) Philosophical critiques that question if these scientific accounts truly describe a state of "nothing" and if they fully explain where the laws that govern this process come from. The ultimate origin of the universe remains an open question.

1. Why is There Something Rather Than Nothing?
God and the Natural Sciences 2017
John Wilkins

2. Why is there something rather
than nothing? If there was nothing
you’d still be complaining!”
Sidney Morganbesser

3. The basic question
Leibniz’s Contingency Argument
• “However far you turn back ... you will never
discover in any or all of these states the full
reason why there is a world rather than nothing,
nor why it is such as it is.”
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716)
“On the Ultimate Origination of the
Universe” (1697)

4. Cosmological Questions
• Modern cosmology emerged in the first half of the 20th
century, with Einstein’s general theory of relativity
• It had become a ‘legitimate’ field of physics by the 1960s.
• According to modern cosmology, the universe is thought
to be approximately 13.82 billion years old.
• This raises many questions:
▫ How did it come into existence?
▫ Why is there a universe at all?
▫ Can science answer these questions?

5. The Birth of Modern Cosmology
Edwin Hubble (1889–1953) Georges Lemaitre (1894–1966)

6. Hubble’s Discovery (1929–1931)

7. The Origins of the Universe
• The idea of an ‘origin’ of the universe had emerged as a possibility in
the late 1920s, when theoretical physicists and astronomers
recognized the universe was expanding
• By the 1930s it was widely accepted the universe was expanding
• In 1931 the Belgian physicist, and Catholic Priest, Georges Lemaitre
(1894–1966) proposed that the universe began from an exploding
‘atom’ of energy – an idea later dubbed by Hoyle as the “Big Bang”
• It was assumed expansion and cooling of the early universe from an
initial super-dense and hot state
• In that state all matter would have been protons, neutrons, and
electrons merging in an ocean of high energy radiation

8. Rival Cosmological Theories
• In the 1940s the scientific community was divided
• Thomas Gold, Herman Bondi, Fred Hoyle argued it was impossible
to extrapolate with confidence from the present back to the super-
dense origin of the universe
• Initial estimates of the Hubble’s constant suggested the universe is
younger than the earth!
• Bondi and Gold insisted that the universe will look the same at any
place and at any time – the ‘perfect cosmological principle’.
• The universe is homogeneous and unchanging, but requires the
constant creation of matter
• Part of Hoyle’s motivation for proposing the theory was to reject the
Judeo-Christian overtones of the Big Bang

9. Big Bang Theology?
It would seem that present-day science, with one sweep
back across the centuries, has succeeded in bearing
witness to the august instant of the primordial Fiat Lux
[Let there be Light], when along with matter, there
burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation,
and the elements split and churned and formed into
millions of galaxies. Thus, with that concreteness which
is characteristic of physical proofs, modern science has
confirmed the contingency of the universe and also the
well-founded deduction as to the epoch when the world
came forth from the hands of the Creator. Hence,
creation took place. We say: “Therefore there is a
Creator, therefore God exists!
▫ Pope Pius XII, ‘Address the Pontifical Academy of
Science’ (1951)

10. Religion and Cosmology
• Lemaitre and D. O’Connell, Australian director of the Vatican Observatory
and science advisor to the pope, met with Pius XII and persuaded him this
was helpful neither to science nor to the Church.
• Theologians also objected to the pope’s use of science to prove the doctrine
of creation
• Big Bang Theory did not rule out a prior contraction, i.e. big bang big
crunch big bang  … so not to be automatically identified with a
temporal beginning
• On the other hand, might it be possible to find ways of interpreting Steady
State Theory as consonant with creatio ex nihilo and creatio continuans?
• Is there any good theological reason for preferring the BBT over the SST?

11. Science or Metaphysics?
As far as I can see, such a theory remains entirely outside any
metaphysical or religious question. It leaves the materialist free
to deny any transcendental Being… For the believer, it removes
any attempt at familiarity with God… It is consonant with Isaiah
speaking of the hidden God, hidden even in the beginning of the
universe. God cannot be reduced to the role of a scientific
hypothesis… [This] does not mean that cosmology has no
meaning for philosophy. Philosophy and theology, when kept in
isolation from scientific thought, either change into an outdated
self-enclosed system, or become a dangerous ideology.
▫ G. Lemaitre, ‘The Philosophical Implications of the Hypothesis of
the Primeval Atom’, Solvay Congress (1958)

12. The Triumph of the Big Bang
• By early 1970s the Big Bang model had triumphed
• Many observations confirmed, cosmic background radiation
2.7° K in all directions
• Support for the SS faded but was not finally extinguished.
Hoyle continued to develop the theory
• But the observational support for the BB steadily has
increased – by far the dominant view (opponents typically
dismissed as ‘crackpots’)
• But how did the universe spontaneously ‘come into existence’
13.7 billion years ago?
▫ Physicists now think they may have an answer!

13. A Universe from Nothing?

14. The Basic Idea
1. Quantum Fluctuations
• Matter and energy can, and indeed always will, spontaneously appear (from
nothing), as long as the total energy (including negative energy associated
with gravity) is zero.
2. Inflation
• In order for a universe that might be created through such mechanisms to
last for longer than an infinitesimally short time, there must have been a
brief period of rapid expansion immediately after the Big Bang.
3. Zero Total Energy
• According to the most recent astronomical measurements (1998) the total
energy in the universe is zero – exactly the conditions necessary for this
idea to work!

15. 1. Quantum Fluctuations
• Throughout the universe, particles and antiparticles spontaneously form
and quickly annihilate each other without violating the law of energy
conservation
• These spontaneous births and deaths of so-called “virtual particle” pairs are
known as “quantum fluctuations”
• Quantum field theory provides a natural explanation for how this happens
• Laboratory experiments have proven that quantum fluctuations occur
everywhere, all the time
• Virtual particle pairs (such as electrons and positrons) directly affect the
energy levels of atoms, and the predicted energy levels disagree with the
experimentally measured levels unless quantum fluctuations are taken into
account

16. 2. Inflationary Cosmology
• A hypothesis originally proposed in 1980 by American physicist Alan Guth
and by Katsuhiko Sato in 1981
• The early universe underwent extremely rapid exponential expansion by a
factor of at least 1078 in volume, driven by a negative-pressure vacuum
energy density
• The inflationary epoch lasted from 10−36 seconds after the Big Bang to
sometime between 10−33 and 10−32 seconds
• Following the inflationary period, the universe continued to expand at a
slower rate
• Inflation is not proved, but answers the classic conundrum of the Big Bang
cosmology: Why does the universe appear ‘flat’, homogeneous, and
isotropic when one would expect a highly curved, heterogeneous universe?

17. 3. Zero Total Energy
• A vast amount of so far unobserved energy in the universe is needed to
explain the ‘flatness of the universe’
▫ Matter consists of positive energy
▫ Negative gravitational energy
• Results from 1998 by two major projects studying supernovae support the
contention that about 5 billion years ago the expansion rate of the universe
began accelerating after a period of decelerating
• The change in expansion rate is understood as the point where the energy
density of empty space exceeded the energy density of matter in the
universe.
• Remarkably this provides exactly the 70% energy needed to account for the
‘flatness’ of the universe! It looks out the total energy of the universe is
zero!

19. A Universe From Nothing?
Lawrence Krauss’ A Universe
from Nothing (Free Press, 2012)
Professor of Theoretical Physics at
Arizona State University
“The purpose of this book is
simple. I want to show how
modern science, in various
guises, can address and is
addressing the question of why
there is something rather than
nothing”.

20. A Universe from ‘Nothing’!
• “Perhaps many quantum fluctuations occurred before the birth of our
universe. Most of them quickly disappeared. But one lived sufficiently long
and had the right conditions for inflation to have been initiated. Thereafter,
the original tiny volume inflated by an enormous factor, and our
macroscopic universe was born.”
• “The lesson is clear: quantum gravity not only appears to allow universes to
be created from nothing – meaning in this case , I emphasise, the absence
of space and time – it may require them. ‘Nothing’ – in this case no space,
no time, no anything! – is unstable.”
• “Moreover the general characteristics of such a universe, if it lasts a long
time, would be expected to be those we observe in our universe today. Does
this prove that our universe arose from nothing? Of course not. But it does
take us one rather large step closer to the plausibility of such a scenario.”
▫ Krauss, A Universe from Nothing, 2012, p. 170

21. But is this Really ‘Nothing’?
• Particles can appear from no-particles, but not from nothing
– a quantum state with zero energy is not ‘nothing’.
• There are theories that suggest that that space and time
themselves are not fundamental, but emerge from a state
without space and time
• But a ‘physical state’ with no space or time, however strange,
is still not thereby nothing. It just makes the laws more
complicated

22. Much Ado About Nothing
• “I have learned that, when discussing this question in public forums, nothing upsets
the philosophers and theologians who disagree with me more than the notion that, I,
as a scientist, do not truly understand “nothing”… “Nothing” they insist, is not any of
the things I discuss. “Nothing” is nonbeing” in some vague and ill-defined sense…
Similarly, some philosophers and many theologians would define nothing as not
being any of the versions of nothing that scientists currently describe.
• But therein, in my opinion, lies the intellectual bankruptcy of much of theology and
some of modern philosophy. For surely “nothing” is every bit as physical as
“something”, especially if it is to be defined as the “absence of something”. It then
behooves us to understand precisely the physical nature of both these quantities. And
without science, any definition is just words. My real purpose here is to demonstrate
that in fact science has changed the playing field, so that these abstract and useless
debates about the nature of nothingness have been replaced by useful, operational
efforts to explain how our universe might actually originated.”
▫ L. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing, 2012, ii-xv

23. Krauss Debates Theologian Lane Craig
• ‘Has Science Buried God?’ Brisbane City Hall, 2013

24. But Why Call it Nothing?
“It’s true that I’m applying the laws of quantum mechanics to it, but I’m
applying it to nothing, to literally nothing. No space, no time, nothing. There
may have been meta-laws that created it, but how can you call that universe
that didn’t exist “something” is beyond me… I don’t give a damn what
“nothing” means to philosophers. I care about the “nothing of reality.”
“Of course, you’ll say that the laws of quantum mechanics existed, and those
are something. But I don’t know what laws existed then. In fact, most of the
laws of nature didn’t exist before the universe was created; they were created
along with the universe, at least in the multiverse picture.”
Interview with Lawrence Krauss by Ross Anderson, ‘Has Physics Made Philosophy and Religion
Obsolete?’, The Atlantic, 2012, pp. 7-8.

25. By What Process Are Laws Created?
We might still ask where the quantum laws describing this process
come from.
In response, Krauss suggests two possibilities.
• God (not a very attractive option for Krauss!)
• The multiverse (each with a different set of laws)
It is not clear how exactly how the second possibility really answers the
question, as first it assumes a multiverse, presumably with its own set
of laws!
This would suggest that there is ultimately the ‘something’ of the
multiverse

26. A Universe from Nothing?
“We don’t yet have the mathematics to describe a multiverse, and so I
don’t know what laws are fixed. I also don’t have a quantum theory of
gravity, so I can’t tell you for certain how space comes into existence”.
 Interview with Lawrence Krauss by Ross Anderson, ‘Has Physics Made
Philosophy and Religion Obsolete?’, The Atlantic, 2012, pp. 7-8.
But even if we did have such a theory of “nothing”, Krauss insists that
1. we should not speak of this “nothing” as existing
2. this “nothing”, whatever it is, is capable of generating a universe
Is this satisfactory? Can physics really answer this question?

27. A Block Universe
• Perhaps the universe just is
• Aristotle held the universe was eternal
• Einsteinian relativity treats time as another
spatial dimension
• Different views
of time:
• A-theory
• B-theory

28. The metaphysics of time

29. The metaphysics of time
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-bebecome/

30. Eternality
The block universe can be
1. Infinite from a starting point like the Big Bang
2. Finite, with beginning and end
3. Infinite, with neither beginning and end
• If the universe is a block, then causation as we
know it only applies within the universe
• A block universe need have no cause
• It exists as the structure within which time
occurs (and so neither comes to be, nor ceases
to be)

31. So…
• As Morgenbesser noted, we exist to complain
about existence
• Why is there something rather than nothing?
▫ Because…
• Your thoughts?