See my article on that:

What If We Reimagine ‘Nothing’ as a Field-State?

The tl;dr is that ZFS is more fundamental than QM. The Lincoln-Wasser model (described in that article) is an explanation for why anything like QM would exist at all, i.e. why there are coherent physical laws at all, and not an explanation of why those laws turned out to be QM specifically. That would be a TOE (like superstring theory or holographic cosmology). Which a lot has been written on everywhere. Wikipedia has whole pages dedicated.

Hence ZFS is just a theory of why there is anything rather than nothing, and why it meets the parameters of physicalism rather than supernaturalism. It is no more specific than that, other than that one can argue it would entail a physicalist multiverse (hence the original Problem with Nothing, which is just a competing hypothesis to theistic cosmologies).

Hi Richard can you explain more about your zero field state theory in regards to ‘nothing’ is this something similar or potentially the same as quantum field and is it physical or theoretical…

So, for example, if an ordinary tree were to suddenly disintegrate (i.e., all of its atoms disassembled and traveled to different directions of space) with absolutely nothing making it disintegrate, then this event took place without an efficient cause. An efficient cause is something that acts upon the materials to bring about some change.

Like a quantum field causing certain random virtual particle behaviors (and not others, or none). Or a God instantiating a selected universe instantaneously. Same thing.

However, the quantum argument says that, while quantum fields are material causes, they are not efficient causes. Therefore, quantum events are counter-examples to the first premise because they occur without efficient causes.

No, they are efficient. When the fields exist, the effect is produced. When the fields don’t exist, the effect is not produced.

You are confusing the material (what particles are “made of”) with the causal regime being referenced (what makes those specific particles and not others appear and disappear, rather than other particles than those or none, and in that particular pattern or frequency distribution and not some other or none).

There are many suitable articles here, depending on specific topics, but if you want the best catch-all (which sounds like it would suit your intention), then post under my Open Thread On the Historicity of Jesus or maybe even more appropriately Doing the Math: Historicity of Jesus Edition.

I don’t know the rest of the context there, but the quoted statement does not seem to be my argument. It looks more like a non-rigorous attempt to claim a nothing-state to be logically impossible, or a semantic attempt to classify the existence of a nothing-state as a state of being and therefore “something.”

How the present world derives from either proposition is unclear here. And the quoted argument isn’t formally sound. So I can’t work with just that.

Closer was Peter van Inwagen and Robert Nozick, who did make arguments almost identical to mine (and Oppy, close). Those are named already in the article here.

I happened to find some authors that may help your case for the argument from nothing.

Recently internet atheist Benjamin Blake Speed Watkins cited the contemporary platonist philosopher Eric Charles Steinhart’s book “Atheistic Platonism: A Manifesto” where he states a similar argument in a hegelian/platonist version. Quote:

“Non-being negates itself. But the self-negation of non-being is not non-being. And that which is not non-being is being, that is, being itself. So, the self-negation of non-being is being-itself.”

Maybe Plotinus and Hegel might have formulated similar arguments as well. I hope they may be helpful to you.

Farewell

Thanks for the fast reply. Is there a better place to ask questions about the OHJ? I am trying to reproduce the calculations and have found what I think are some errors, but perhaps I’m misreading/misunderstanding something.

Excellent response, Dr. Carrier! I’ll only briefly touch on the minor points I disagree with (which are very few).

“That’s their point: every case we know has a cause. Ergo, everything that begins to exist has a cause.”

Their point is that whatever begins to exist needs an efficient cause. So, for example, if an ordinary tree were to suddenly disintegrate (i.e., all of its atoms disassembled and traveled to different directions of space) with absolutely nothing making it disintegrate, then this event took place without an efficient cause. An efficient cause is something that acts upon the materials to bring about some change.

And it is indeed true that buildings and people had efficient causes in addition to material causes. However, the quantum argument says that, while quantum fields are material causes, they are not efficient causes. Therefore, quantum events are counter-examples to the first premise because they occur without efficient causes.

“Actually, it is. The circumstances are identical: something already exists to cause the effect. Thus, everything that begins to exist has a cause.”

They’re committing an equivocation fallacy with regards to the word “cause” here.

The first premise says that ‘whatever begins to exist has an efficient cause.’
Apologists assert that the existence of buildings and people being efficiently caused from pre-existent materials is evidence of the first premise.

Counter-apologists point out that we have some examples of things (particles) forming from pre-existing materials (fields) without an efficient cause.

Apologists respond by asserting that, since particles form from fields (i.e., have material causes), they are NOT examples of things beginning to exist (per the causal principle).

Counter-apologists point out that, if something forming from pre-existing materials implies it is not really beginning to exist, then buildings and people do not really begin to exist, thereby implying they are not evidence favoring the causal principle.

And yet, Craig and his disciples assert that buildings begin to exist

That’s their point: every case we know has a cause. Ergo, everything that begins to exist has a cause.

This is the only sense in which they are correct: there must be some first cause in some sense even if it is only ontological (simultaneous) and not temporal (preceding), and even if that “cause” is the absence of causal laws altogether (because they have nothing by which to rule that out, which is where the debate really ends up, because that’s the real problem with this premise).

The Kalam trades on an equivocation fallacy between those two senses of “cause” (see my discussion of it in Sense and Goodness without God), which is where the real problem begins: once you concede that really all you are talking about is an Ontological Whatsit, and not the logical impossibility of a “cause before time,” there is no reason left to believe it has any of the weird properties of a god or even a mind (see The Argument to the Ontological Whatsit), or any properties at all.

Because you can’t say, in the absence of God, that any causal laws existed uncaused (like “everything that begins to exist has a cause”); saying that would destroy the entire argument. Because it admits something existed uncaused. Which refutes either this premise or the later, hidden one, that tries to get this “first cause” to be a god. Because if you admit causal laws can exist without God, you’ve just admitted God is no longer needed as the conclusion to the argument! We can just posit eternal, mindless, uncaused causal laws.

Hence the Kalam really needs the premise to reference a temporal first cause, which is self-contradictory.

But once you allow a simultaneous first cause, then anything can qualify. Even “nothing” can be that cause (hence The Problem with Nothing that Loke is trying to evade). Because anything at all that “produces the result” qualifies as a cause by this definition.

This is why the Kalam waffles on what kind of cause it’s talking about, and handwaves at the last “hidden” premise where somehow this first cause is supposed to only be a mind of some kind: the actual thing they are supposed to be proving, doesn’t actually follow from any of its initial premises.

Sometimes they admit this and smuggle in that “extra” premise to get there, but that then becomes a circular argument—the conclusion follows only from that premise, not the other two; they are just a smokescreen to make it “look” like a logical argument has been made for the conclusion, when in fact all that was done is a hidden premise that contains the conclusion is snuck in at the end.

So, that’s not a good refutation of the quantum objection.

Actually, it is. The circumstances are identical: something already exists to cause the effect. Thus, everything that begins to exist has a cause. QED.

So that isn’t the problem with the Kalam.

The problem lies elsewhere, e.g. in its original and usual formulation the first cause has to precede everything in time, but that’s logically impossible. So modern advocates who realize this have to “change” the meaning of “first cause” to relate to a “simultaneous” cause, one that does not exist before time but simultaneously with the first instant of time.

Some inept thinkers will try to solve this problem by positing a second “extra” dimension of time, but that quickly becomes an infinite regress problem, as then they haven’t explained what caused that second time, or why we need a second layer of time if we are just going to admit there is a time dimension that is past-infinite and thus in no need of a cause (thus nixing Kalam’s second premise).

So their only recourse is to change the definition of “cause” to refer to “simultaneously” existing causes (a substrate, a.k.a. “an ontological whatsit,” some ground of all being). But this then runs up on the horns of the other (and fatal) dilemma: you can posit a god as the cause; but the absence of god could also now be a cause, because in the absence of everything, you are admitting even causal laws don’t exist in that instant (because nothing means nothing—as they themselves keep complaining about with regard to Quantum Nothing cosmologies a la Krause et al.).

Which is The Problem with Nothing: if there is nothing at t=0, then there can’t be this causal law either, that “everything that begins to exist has a cause,” therefore the premise is self-refuting. Obviously there is one thing that can begin to exist without a cause: anything that follows the absence of that law.

You can backtrack further and claim “that counts as a cause,” i.e. whatever the absence of causal laws causes are thereby still in a sense thereby “caused,” but since what we are talking about now is nothing whatever, the Kalam’s conclusion is nixed. Now we don’t need God. In fact, the absence of God then becomes the only cause we need to explain everything else.

This is why theists love these kinds of arguments: they are semantic whack-a-mole knots that allow an intellectual shell game to be played, where a false premise keeps getting hidden somewhere else every time another premise comes into jeopardy. And round and round theists can go, chasing their tail, convincing themselves they’ve closed all the gaps in their argument when in fact all they have been doing is moving that gap around inside the argument.

So, no, this is the Kalam. This isn’t some separate “contingency” argument. The Kalam needs it to be the case that “everything that begins to exist has a cause,” and observation does uniformly verify that premise (everything we have ever seen or found has a cause). Their problem is that “everything that begins to exist has a cause” is itself a thing requiring a cause. The contradiction is inherent in their own premise.

that nevertheless you can’t get those particles without first getting the fields that are transforming into them.

Yeah, just like you can’t get a building without cement and other construction materials. And yet, Craig and his disciples assert that buildings begin to exist (see, e.g., his discussion with Cosmic Skeptic).

The Kalam is not about denying random things can happen. It is about denying unmotivated things can happen.

The Kalam posits that “whatever begins to exist has a cause.” Buildings and people are used as empirical evidence of the first premise, even though they need construction materials in order to begin. So, that’s not a good refutation of the quantum objection.

You still have something left over to explain: where weird fields with this weirdly specific power came from (and why they act like this and not something else).

This is no longer the Kalam. Now we’re talking about contingency arguments and the Principle of Sufficient Reason. That’s a whole different topic.