When Theists Use Nothing, Absolute Nothing, Improbable & Impossible
*unedited*
Theists often employee terms like nothing, absolute nothing, improbable or impossible when attempting to make their case for God. Although I can understand that the "some thing cannot come from no thing" is a pivotal line of reasoning in their argument it is somewhat painful to receive. In fact, I'm not really sure what an absolute nothing is. I assume you could argue that, "absolute nothing" has a single property (the property that it has no properties) and that any [thing] that possesses the property of having no properties would meet the criteria to be labeled absolute-nothing.
One problem I see is that "nothing" by itself serves the need of an absolute modifier; it needs nothing else to make its point. Using the phrase "absolute nothing" seems akin to using the phrase very unique. Since unique is defined as one of a kind adding comparatives and superlatives to modify it seems somewhat silly. But worse, I believe the phrase "absolute nothing" is composed of two absolute modifiers.
Nevertheless, if "absolute nothing" has the single property of having no properties then how can we discuss it? Normally when we discuss nothing we discuss it within the framework of zero things. This allows us to compare the absence of some thing with things that are present. It would appear that this contrast is absent for absolute nothing as there is no inherent property within the definition that can be used to describe the comparison. For example, discussing a state in which there are no apples could be related to states where there are other fruits, or food, or some other item of similar size or curvature. But to discuss a state of absolute-nothing would have no point of reference to use in our model of comparison.
We could think about our everyday use of the term nothing as that of the empty-set. It is the set that contains no elements (zero cardinality). Yet, even the empty-set is normally thought of in relation to some alternative set with X>0 cardinality. My question then becomes, what would the "absolute nothing" set look like? What would it's cardinality be?
The possible cardinalities are
1) infinite
2) finite
3) Zero.
Let us assume that the cardinality of the absolute nothing set is infinite for the moment. That is, there are infinite amount of "things" that have no properties. Normally in set theory when dealing with infinite sets we use a method of comparison to help us understand the set. This method tells us that if two sets are equal in cardinality then a bijection exits from one set to the other. Thus, we might decide to compare the absolute nothing set to another infinite set like the set of all natural numbers. But before we engage in such an exercise let us first try to unpack these elements within the absolute nothing set. How might we go about doing this? Maybe it would be helpful to pose some possibilities and see where this leads us.
Possible Elements (e) of Absolute Nothing Set:
1) Let e be an even number described by the function 2n-1
2) Let e be the set of all thoughts that have not been thought
3) Let e be the set of all objects that are not manifest in reality.
4) Let e be that which was before the Big Bang
5 Let e be a set in which the universal set is it's subset
What is interesting about the thought experiment above is that we continue to describing nothing in terms of something. Yet we have a concept that already performs this task, zero. The concept of zero is dual purpose. It acts as a place holder and represents nothing in reference to some idea/thing/concept. From this point of view the set of absolute nothing and the set of all zero things seem similar. If both sets are indeed equipotent then maybe there is no distinction between the two sets except that which we label it. If this is the case then the cardinality of the absolute nothing set must too be zero as the empty set is.
Maybe the sets do not possess equinumerosity. Maybe the absolute nothing set does have some nonzero cardinality. However, for this to be true we would need to think of an example of absolute nothing that cannot be described in the way in which we describe zero of something (meaning it cannot be described as no thing relative to some thing but instead is described in some other way).
We may be tempted to say that the set of zero things is not empty but is infinite. For example, I have zero of many things in my home right now. I have zero milk in the refrigerator, zero apple, zero cats, etc. But this is not the proper way of thinking about the empty set. No matter how many occurrences you can contemplate involving zero of an item this adds nothing to the cardinality of the empty set. You can think of having zero apples as well as zero oranges but when you relate this to the idea of sets, the empty set is now redefined in terms of two categories instead of one yet the number of elements in the set is still zero.
Whats seems to be different about the absolute nothing set is that there isn't enough wiggle room in the definition to allow for a set to be formed. The definition, as used by theists, would seem to argue that it is some type of empty-nothing-set. A concept that cannot even be bounded within the braces of a set notation. It would be some type of super zero. It is some type of state that existed in the past that was impossible to deviate from without divine intervention.
It might be worth discussing the difference between something that is impossible and something that has a zero probability before moving on. Throwing a dart at the real number line between [0,5] has a zero probability of hitting the number pi but yet it is not impossible. However, it is impossible when throwing a dart at the real number line between [0,5] to hit the number SQRT(-1). In other words, an impossible event has a zero probability but not all zero probabilities are impossible. I think this is where theist-thinking gets muddled. They are beginning with a true statement, that impossibility necessarily implies zero probability but they are then assuming the truth of its converse.
So what do we actually know about nothing?
1) We know that some thing can come from some other thing
2) We know that you must have had zero of a thing before you produced said thing
3) We know that some thing can become none of that thing
4) We know that even though you must have had zero of a thing before you produced said thing, the only way to have none of a thing is to first have said thing
5) We know that something can be divided up into infinitely many things
6 We know that you cannot divide something into no things but you can divide no thing by something without altering its state of nothingness
What if we instead considered nothingness as a temporary phenomena? As a type of localized state of temporary rest. You can imagine a curve running though the origin. At the origin it has a quantity of zero but it also possesses a rate of change that allows it to accelerate past the origin. The observer living on the curve in quadrant one would be correct to say their universe came from nothing but only in the sense that their universe traveled through a local state of nothingness to reach where it currently resides. We may be able to parallel this to the subject of vector spaces since all vector spaces and sub-spaces must possess the zero vector. In this way, nothing has a type of emergent property. It is an unstable point in space.
Finally, why should we entertain the idea that our universe is the thing that came from gods pile of nothing? Clearly this pile of nothing is something to god and if so then our universe did come from something. In fact, it might be considered quite wasteful to build a universe from a bunch of nothing.
*To be continued