I am reading the Anti-Dühring by Engels, in it he proves the false arguments of the person who the book is named after. Engels goes from a varied array of subjects from philosophy, to biology, chemistry, physics, and so on.
At some point, Engels, while correcting Dühring, speaks about the theories of the beginning of existence and points out that Dühring is a supporter of creationism, e.i.: that there was a point where there was only nothing (absolute rest) and that out of this nothing, something came to be (motion). The only logical conclusion to an outlook like the one proposed is the existence of a God, which Düring rejects.
My question would be as following, what is the Marxist take on this, because if we assume the previous mentioned, we need to either accept the existence of God, or to believe there is some sort of unknown scientific law that allows the creation of motion out of absolute rest. Both seem very unlikely.
A third option is that time and matter have always existed since infinity, and that they will keep on existing until infinity. Which is the option that makes the most sense from the point of view of dialectical materialism.
From my understanding, though, neither of these three theories can be understood as “bad infinities” (in the Hegelian jargon), since they do not represent a contradiction in itself.
Do we have scientific proof that further discredits any of these three possibilities?
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t get why the creation of the universe matters at all to materialism. Even if we assume that everything came from nothing, so what? It was a one-time thing billions of years ago that happened under circumstances that will never be recreated so I don’t understand why people talk about it as if the validity of materialist thought depends on it.
People that try to discredit Marxism by talking about the big bang remind me of those freaks that argue that women don’t deserve civil rights because lobsters have hierarchies. Or the people that say we shouldn’t move past capitalism because monkies occasionally steal from each other.
I don’t see how it could have any bearing on material analysis of human history
Well, it’s just that this is pretty related because dialectical materialism is based on the idea that matter is in constant movement and that it undergoes a series of cyclical contradictions that make it evolve around time, this idea is then applied to the understanding of history of human society in the form of historical materialism.
If we assume that something came from nothing, then we are kind of accepting the idea of a God, for motion cannot be achieved through rest. Everything could change the way reality exists depending on a few factors.
Personally I do not think it disproves dialectical materialism, because it is scientifically confirmed that everything is in constant motion under current conditions of universal expansion, it works because it is proven by praxis that dialectical and historical materialism provide a correct analysis of the history of human society. I just find an interesting topic because it also starts playing with theories and science of quantum physics and so on. For example we could understand reality as time and matter advancing in a vector of the same direction, while “negative time” and antimatter advancing in the same vector of opposing direction, which are both the product of the Big Bang, which could then came to be the singularity that caused Big Bang once the universe starts its contraction. This would, I think, support the idea that time and matter are infinite and deny the idea of a creationist perspective, which would support the non existence of God and be compatible with dialectical materialists analysis.
I’m not trying to disprove it, but these are interesting philosophical questions that Marx, Engels, etc, had, and which would be helpful to solidify our understanding of reality and create better analyses.
Edit: There’s the possibility of an unknown law of physics which could produce movement out of absolute rest possible, too.
If we assume that something came from nothing, then we are accepting that in one (1) very extreme and specific situation the normal rules of our reality didn’t apply. Or rather, that our current understanding of reality doesn’t properly account for how the universe was 13+ billion years ago.
I struggle to understand how this single instance can be extrapolated into the idea that stuff can just be conjured into existence on the regular. And I really struggle to understand how any of this is relevant to the US fighting Russia, or rail workers going on strike, or the persecution of queer people, or…
Imo, everyone that seriously engages in this thought experiment has lost the plot. Besides, it’s not like either possibility for how the universe was created is a satisfying answer.