Originally posted by ~The_Chosen~
Let's tackle the definition itself.
WEBSTER - universe
1 : the whole body of things and phenomena observed or postulated
This is perhaps the closest to how I (and others) are using the term. Note the inclusion of "postulated" in the definition, which automatically covers any creators or anything that anyone would dream up as being part of existence.
: COSMOS: as a : a systematic whole held to arise by and persist through the direct intervention of divine power
Clearly a religionist's definition; one would hardly expect an atheist to use it. Moreover it presupposes a creator, which in the context of this thread would form a circular argument.
b : the world of human experience
Archaic and too limited. For example, not too long ago such a "universe" would have consisted of a fraction of Earth's surface, plus or minus a couple hundred meters in altitude.
The American Heritage
All matter and energy, including Earth, the galaxies and all therein, and the contents of intergalactic space, regarded as a whole.
This is what I would call the "known" universe. It is a reasonably broad notion, but nevertheless confined to that which is currently known to humans. Hence it is unsuitable when discussing existence in general, as it stands to reason that much exists of which we are still not aware. A slightly broader notion than that of
known universe is that of
observable universe (or alternatively,
knowable universe), as it would include anything that is observable at least in principle (even if not yet specifically known to exist.) However, even this falls short of the general notion of "universe" which encompasses all existence, whether observable or not.
Note that we cannot exclude the possibility of existance for something that cannot in principle be observed; yet that something (should it in fact exist) would nevertheless be a subset of the universe. For a physically relevant example, consider the post-Big Bang universe that lies beyond the lightcone of an observer and is destined to forever remain beyond that lightcone due to cosmic expansion. Those parts of "our" universe are in principle unobservable according to modern physics, but that does not mean they do not or cannot exist.
The notion of "our" universe might be defined to be broader even than the
observable universe, to include everything that formed as a result of the Big Bang whether beyond the horizon of observability or not. This however is still but a narrow subset of the universe at large, which includes everything that exists including that which gave rise to the Big Bang in the first place. However, "our" is commonly used in discourse and as a word is a bit ambiguous so I don't like it very much. Perhaps a more precise word would be something like "human" or "anthropic". Still, these are too anthropocentric so I'm open to suggestions. A nice and succinct term to borrow from Relativity is "spacetime" (though depending on validity of various multiverse theories, it might unintentionally extend beyond the post-Big Bang structure to all the parent and child universes.) Then
our universe would be idempotent with
spacetime. The unqualified term "universe", however, ought to be reserved for that which encompasses
all existence, including but not limited to spacetime.
I believe that my creator "started" our universe.
Perhaps you can see that in the broad meaning of the term, the universe cannot have a cause. Any such cause would be encompassed by the universe as per definition, and hence could not precede the universe's existence.
Hawking's "instanton theory" of something from nothing is interesting but highly questionable.
It is not a theory of something from nothing; it's a theory of something from something that is very poorly defined and generally unknown. Plus, unless it's testable we shouldn't call it a theory.
Reactions do not occur spontaneously, something must have caused it, then the cycle continues.
This is the notion of causality, which IMHO is inherent in the notion of existence. Causality is idempotent with order; in absense of causality there is chaos. Existence (or anything) cannot be defined in the context of chaos because any meaning would imply a degree of order, which is incompatible with the notion of chaos. In fact, if "chaos" can be defined in any way, then the definition would have to be of the form "condition under which no definitions whatsoever can be made" (since any definition involves an implicative or causal relationship between fixed concepts, and neither fixedness of a description nor causality of descriptions is possible when there is no causality of the underlying medium that the descriptions are supposed to model.) This is paradoxical in and of itself, as it would seem to state that should chaos exist then by definition it has no definition and therefore does not exist. As we observe existence and order, the only possible conclusion is that order has always been present and that existence is eternal. If not, you have order arising from chaos in which it is not inherent in any direct or indirect way; it would indeed be something from nothing.
I believe in an absolute solution to how things came to be. Not in the infinite model in which there is not a real actual solution.
Such an "absolute" solution can only be possible when applied to an incomplete subset of the universe. For example, you might be able to trace the origins (and perhaps the cause) of the "anthropic" universe. However, as previously discussed the general universe could not have "come to be" as such a notion contradicts with the notion of universe as per definition.
For our universe to be possible, something must have always existed.
If by "our" you mean "known" or "observable" or "anthropic" then the "something" you mention is the universe itself. Naturally, for a subset to have definition the encompassing set must exist first.
Science is fully capable of explaining some of the universe.
Namely, the observable subset.
You could be right. But the issue is, something can't come from nothing.
Under this assumption, the universe is eternal.
Hawking proposed the "Baby Universes" theory to eliminate any questioning of a possible creator.
That was not Hawking. One well-known author of this type of idea is <a href="http://physics.stanford.edu/linde/">Andrei Linde</a>. He (and others) rely on <a href="http://www.discover.com/apr_02/featguth.html">Alan Guth's</a> inflation theory.
Moreover it's hardly the goal of these theories to "eliminate any questioning of a possible creator." This assumes that the notion of a "possible creator" is somehow important or takes precedence. True, chronologically it was first to appear but in fact this does not bode well for it (as historically, the earliest theories have always turned out to be incorrect.) But at any rate creationism is but one of the infinitely many hypotheses that can be proposed for the origin of Big Bang. Until experimental evidence can come in, and barring any other criterion for judgement, all such hypotheses are equally worthless as far as knowledge is concerned. But we might note that the hypotheses advanced by physicists are quite a bit more constructive than the "creator" hypothesis in the sense that they at least have a potential of being testable, not to mention that they work within the confines of known laws of physics and hence are apriori more plausible.
Who cares about the beginning of our universe if it is just part of a series of quantum fluctuations?
Any such fluctuations would occur in the context of the encompassing universe (as compared to "our" universe), which you fail to capture with your statement. Naturally, the universe cannot have a beginning.
Energy does not spontaneously form itself, reactions are caused and do not "just happen"
Actually, energy is a narrow empirical concept and as such might just as well be capable of forming itself (out of something else, presumably) outside the confines of "our" universe. IOW just because it seems fundamental to the observable universe, does not mean that it is fundamental in an absolute sense. Generally speaking, any concepts derived through observation (like "energy") are likely too limited and superficial for our discussion.
We are concerned with the general notions of existence and causality, and debating universal applicability of particular empirical concepts is an inconsequential tangent.
