Nothing isn't Always Nothing

When physics showed the universe is not eternal, that was a game changer. If the universe began, then there was room for a creator, after all ex nihilo nihil fit or "out of nothing, nothing comes." Until internet atheists argue, "Uh huh! It happens all the time." OK, let's talk about this, because there's nothing and then there's nothing.

If you're thinking, "Wait, when does something come out of nothing?" you're not alone. But they are appealing to something real. 

According to theories of quantum physics, at the smallest level, the universe is made up of an energetic soup. What we think of as empty space is actually a seething quantum foam. Remember Einstein's E=mc²? It tells us matter and energy can change into each other. So this soup should randomly create particles from the energy field. Those particles should exist very briefly and then disappear again, but the matter is just appearing out of the soup. There is no experimental confirmation of this, but it's a strongly held theory in quantum mechanics.

Therefore, some skeptics, upon learning of these "virtual particles" that appear out of the quantum foam, assert "something can come from nothing." The problem is, that's not "nothing."

Let me illustrate. Look at the room around you. Now picture that room as if there were nothing in it. You see it with no furniture, no decorations, no window hangings. Empty, right? Not really. If you were to remove all of those things from that room, it would still contain molecules of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and water vapor. There would still be bacteria on the surfaces. There would still be dust motes floating in the air. You removed all the big stuff, but the microscopic stuff remains.

At the sub-microscopic scale, the universe contains structure. It's smaller than a proton, but it's (probably) there.

In your room, to get "nothing", you'd need to remove the air. Remove the bacteria and dust motes. Then the walls and floor. Now remove the space where you room had been. "Nothing" is not empty space. It's nothing.

The universe is not made up of empty space. It's made of something. But even if that quantum structure wasn't there, if it were truly empty, that's not nothing.

Physics backs us up on this. Prior to the beginning of the universe, there was no empty space. There was no space-time. It was true nothing. This means there was no quantum field because there was no place for there to be a quantum field.

You can see why physicists have been scrambling to find a way around a beginning to the universe ever since they discovered it. Back in the 1930s, one physicist said, "Philosophically, the notion of a beginning of the present order of Nature is repugnant to me." Stephen Hawking wrote, "Many people do not like the idea that time has a beginning, probably because it smack of divine intervention."

And so it does. Once there was nothing. Absolute nothing. And, "out of nothing, nothing comes". Yet here we are. There was no matter. There was no energy. But there was God, who said, "Let there be light."


Related:
The Existence of God 1/3: The Cosmological Argument

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