Paradox of the beginning

Unfortunately, man currently doesn't have the means of explaining such paradoxes (otherwise they wouldn't be paradoxes!). How could something always have existed? How could nothing exist, and then something come from nothing? Either alternative seems entirely nonsensical. Yet there must be one ultimate truth, because here we are!

In Lawrence Krauss's book, A Universe From Nothing, he demonstrates Nothing to be unstable. If Nothing existed before the beginning of the universe, then there would be an infinite amount of Nothing and therefore an infinite probability that Nothing would destabilize into Something. The rest is history.

The true paradox is that if Nothing is infinite, is Infinity also nothingness.

Reply to bahman To find an already to this problem one must attempt to grasp the actual feeling of time and existence.

When one is asleep there is no sense of time though there may be a sense of existence while dreaming. But what if there is no dreaming? Is there existence? There is certainly no sense of time. When we wake you, our sense of existence (our mind's sense of being) leaps into a different feeling of time/duration.

It is in the actual contemplation of life as we feel it that such questions can be understood. But I've must first completely jettison the scientific view of existence, because science cannot answer that kind of questions. It only measures with symbolics. It can never grasp life in the way contemplation can.

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Quoting tim wood

Hawking argues something like the curvature of spacetime is analogous to the surface of a sphere

Yeah but where'd the sphere come from? If you're on the surface it looks like you can go in all directions forever. But if you are outside the sphere, you can ask why there is a sphere at all. Did it have a beginning?

Reply to bahman
What is the beginning? It only exists in humans' minds. Time, as Haramein suggests, is only a memory. What doesn't exists in our collective mind, seems a paradox!
It's not like that.

Reply to Rich
So you are relating time to consciousness?

Quoting tim wood

Hawking argues something like the curvature of spacetime is analogous to the surface of a sphere: - where's the beginning of the surface of a sphere? Similarly, where/when is the beginning of the universe/spacetime? Maybe more to the point is that questions like that of the OP require definition to be meaningful, and usually when you define the terms, the question has disappeared. Without definition there can be no understanding of the question; it becomes a nonsense question.

Beginning: the point in time at which something begins. To define the beginning of time you need time which is circular. You can look at the problem this way.

Quoting phrzn

What is the beginning? It only exists in humans' minds. Time, as Haramein suggests, is only a memory. What doesn't exists in our collective mind, seems a paradox!
It's not like that.

Time in my opinion is real and allows change. I have a thread on this in here.

Reply to bahman it's of course real. But the world must be different beyond it.

That is the price you pay for holding substance views of space-time, as if space and time were transcendental tape-measures being aligned to a table-universe.

So why not simply reduce talk of time to measured intervals between events? For presently observed change does not require a background notion of temporarily if one accepts present change as irreducible and fundamental.

Quoting bahman

So you are relating time to consciousness?

Yes, this is the real time of existence.

Quoting sime

That is the price you pay for holding substance views of space-time, as if space and time were transcendental tape-measures being aligned to a table-universe.

So why not simply reduce talk of time to measured intervals between events? For presently observed change does not require a background notion of temporarily if one accepts present change as irreducible and fundamental.

Time is real. I have an argument in favor of it in here.

Quoting Rich

Yes, this is the real time of existence.

Interesting.

Quoting bahman

Time is real. I have an argument in favor of it in here.

I don't quite follow that argument, because in practice no proposition is applied exactly with infinite precision, hence even the meaning of a 'precise' calculus remains ill-defined in application, whatever the intended precision of the signs.

Remember Heraclitus's argument, that no man ever steps in the same river twice. How does one insist that a single application of a sign refers to a single state-of-affairs without question begging? If one cannot insist upon such a thing, then can't we be said to be using the calculus on X->Y, regardless?

Quoting CasKev

How could something always have existed? How could nothing exist, and then something come from nothing?

this is something that i've struggled to understand my whole life, i understand that the universe is expanding from every point but there still has to be an edge because how can something just be infinite. that's extremely hard to comprehend. and the idea of infinity, what does this mean? is anything possible? if it is infinite i shouldn't any problem stating that spongebob squarepants is a real living sponge somewhere in the universe but that sounds ridiculous. what does infinity actually mean for the universe?

Quoting bahman

I have been struggling with this problem for a while. It is difficult for me to even explain it to you. Lets assume that universe has a beginning. There is however no before before beginning which means we cannot possibly define any reference point to measure the beginning from. This means that the age of universe can be anything which is paradoxical.

All paradoxes are failures of human language or conceptualization. Nothing physical can ever be paradoxical. That's the lesson of the 20th Century, although some always knew. It's not impossible. It's not even weird. It's just what it is. What more is there to know?

Quoting bahman

I have been struggling with this problem for a while. It is difficult for me to even explain it to you. Lets assume that universe has a beginning. There is however no before before beginning which means we cannot possibly define any reference point to measure the beginning from. This means that the age of universe can be anything which is paradoxical.

Good issue. I tend to read this situation in terms of the limitations of human thinking. Maybe our minds just weren't evolved for this kind of thing. Maybe these metaphysical classics are examples of the human mind discovering its own quirks. Hume's problem of induction is another one.

Aside from the time issue, there is the space version, too. A boundless space cannot be clearly imagined (I can't anyway) and yet bounded space is even more impossible. In the first case, it's just too big (though 'big' is maybe the wrong word, since size is made absurd). In the second case, we automatically imagine space beyond the boundary.