Well, I can never resist elongating a discussion unrelated to a thread's ostensive subject. Before responding however, I want to make something clear. We can and should be able to discuss philosophy and science without assuming it's a zero sum adversarial game between the religious and the secular. I have and will continue to take positions that will be adverse to certain philosophical or scientific points of view, but that need not be an endorsement of religion or an indictment of science.
David Hume famously revisited the problem of induction, but this was not a secret attempt to justify religious thought, it was simply an intellectual exercise. I would like to think we can use the word faith in our vocabulary without raising swords in protest; it need not stand for anything other than its normal definition of 'confidence or trust in something without proof', proof in the stricter sense here (proof =/= evidence). Now then, moving on to the actual post.
First, let me just say that I have already addressed PD's argument. It was fallacious, and I have explained why it was fallacious. He constructed a false equivalency by implying that scientists just implicitly trust that eternal nothingness just somehow suddenly brought life into existence. It's utterly ridiculous. The journey towards the existence of life was long and arduous, not sudden, and did not come from pure nothingness.
I now see that you have clarified what you believe to be his underlying point, but I have already addressed this as well, though maybe I should elucidate.
I often go back to the transcript and will do so here.
Can't say I disagree about the Big Bang. Lots of faith involved in the proposition that something existed out of nothing, and that nothingness suddenly exploded into life. There's no real difference between "well God existed forever" and "well the nothingness existed forever"
Clearly there's not perfect synchronization of vocabulary nor expertise in subject matter, so we should keep our expectations in check when reading into what the poster meant. I think the last sentence provides a much better sense of insight into the central issue that is trying to be expressed, so although I understand the desire to talk about the cosmic calendar and whether life's appearance was relatively fast or slow, I don't see that as central to what's being said.
It would seem that your point is that if quantum fluctuations are not necessitated by causation, then neither is God. The truth is that in theory, that could very well be true. However, the difference lies within getting to the point where it would be reasonable to make such a conclusion. You see, this isn't just about two hypothetical situations being theoretically possible. One is based on evidence and the scientific method, the other is based on faith. In order for us to be able to determine which is based on what, we must analyze the contexts for each scenario.
My point was to warn people about the very important differences between scientific vocabulary and 'normal' or philosophical vocabulary. I never even mentioned God in that original post at all. Nor did I try to argue that quantum fluctuations are not necessitated by causation, quite the opposite, see the bolded below. What I tried to do was highlight why the word causation may not be the most accurate word for expressing the scientific meaning, but that even under the classical definition it could still fit.
For a particle to emerge from the quantum vacuum necessitates the existence of those physical states, but such conditions are not sufficient for the particle to exist (in terms of guaranteeing the event's occurrence). The appearance of the particle might be spontaneous and unpredictable, but not uncaused in the classical sense.
Back to you.
To say that virtual particles have likely always existed is not blind faith, it is a logical conclusion based on empirical evidence that has not been refuted by counter-evidence thus far. There is no evidence to date to suggest that there was ever a time when nothingness did not contain virtual particles. So to explain what gave rise to quantum fluctuations in the first place would be to presume that there was a point in time where nothingness did not have quantum fluctuations. Again, there is no evidence to suggest that that has ever been the case.
When you say logical here, I think what might be more accurate is 'reasonable'. I may be overthinking this, but logical carries connotations of formal argument and binary states for conclusions. There is a difference between 'you must conclude' and 'you could conclude'. Let's assume that I am overthinking that point and deal with the substance.
Unfortunately this is impossible to succinctly respond to because we're implicitly getting into A and B theories of time here (and thus getting into natural logical impossibilities depending on our frame of reference) and you're misusing the word nothingness again in an important way that I don't care to retread. We would also do well to distinguish between metaphysical evidence and observational evidence, which I brought up before, and whether we're talking about evidence for quantum mechanics versus quantum cosmology. To imply that theories of quantum cosmology have the same kind of robust observational evidence as other scientific subjects, or to conflate QM with QC as if they are interchangeable, is simply disingenuous.
And more to the point, well, I hate to break it to you but you are still committing the error of question begging as it relates to the central point of the discussion (which was not about the plausibility of certain models of the universe's origin). But don't take my word for it, here's noted physicist and cosmologist Alan Guth's rather cheeky phrasing of the issue:
“In this context, a proposal that the universe was created from empty space is no more fundamental than a proposal that the universe was spawned by a piece of rubber. It might be true, but one would still want to ask where the piece of rubber came from”
Some more talk from Guth about the origin of physical laws:
"One theory is that there are no laws of physics, that there are only properties of matter," Guth says. "According to this view, if there is no matter, then there are no properties."
"If you bang two electrons together with enough energy, you produce protons. If there are no independent laws, then all the properties of protons must somehow be 'known' by the electrons. By extension every elementary particle must carry around enough information to produce the entire universe. I find that difficult to believe."
Guth adds that quantum theory holds that objects can appear and disappear according to specific laws, and the behavior of an absent object is just as predictable as the behavior of a present one.
"If laws are just properties of objects," he says, "how can those laws continue to operate when the object is not really there?"
Now I would like to think that you don't think Guth is advocating for God or religious thought by merely expressing these ideas or lines of reasoning. And even if he was, the possible motivations or implications of theories or criticisms does not necessarily bear on their validity. Hawking for example, has been pretty upfront about his preference for certain models precisely because they avoid the theological implications in the Standard Models but that doesn't mean we toss them out.
I'm not going to address the rest of your post because it's contingent on assuming I'm making a religious argument and it's merely a continual rephrasing of an issue we already tried to express to you without success. You are free to have the last word however.
