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?
The idea of god doesn’t really address the problem of creation because it simply pushes the question out. God is necessarily a complex and volitional entity that requires at least as much explanation as our own universe. Where does god come from is just as big a question as where does the universe come from.
My view is that the only reasonable position is to accept that the greater universe has to be infinite in every sense. It cannot have a beginning or an end, it cannot be contained within anything. I think a good way to think of it is as a fractal like a Mandelbrot set. It’s a complex and infinite structure with emergent order within it.
These kinds of things are incredibly unintuitive to us because everything we experience is finite, our intuition is therefore to think in finite terms.