My article in the Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity, which asks “Does the Universe Need God?” (and answers “nope”), got a bit of play last week, thanks to an article by Natalie Wolchover that got picked up by Yahoo, MSNBC, HuffPo, and elsewhere. As a result, views that are pretty commonplace around here reached a somewhat different audience. I started getting more emails than usual, as well as a couple of phone calls, and some online responses. A representative sample:
- “Sean Carroll, servant of Satan…”
- “God has a way of bring His judgement to those who mock Him… John Lennon stated “Christianity will end, it will disappear.” Lennon was shot six times after saying that… Marilyn Monroe said to Billy Graham after Graham said the Spirit of God had sent him to preach to her: “I don’t need your Jesus”. A week later she was found dead in her apartment.”
- “See you in hell.”
- “Maybe GOD is just a DOG that you will meet when you are walking on the Beach trying to figure out how to get sand out of your butt crack.”
I admit that last one is a bit hard to interpret. The others I think are pretty straightforward.
A more temperate response came from theologian William Lane Craig (a fellow Blackwell Companion contributor) on his Reasonable Faith podcast. I mentioned Craig once before, and here we can see him in action. I’m not going to attempt a point-by-point rebuttal of his comments, but I did want to highlight the two points I think are most central to what he’s saying.
One point he makes repeatedly — really the foundational idea from which everything else he has to say flows — is that a naturalist account of the form I advocate simply doesn’t explain why the universe exists at all, and that in my essay I don’t even try. Our old friend the Primordial Existential Question, or Why is there something rather than nothing?
I have to admit I’m a bit baffled here. I suppose it’s literally true that I don’t offer a reason why there is something rather than nothing, but it’s completely false that I ignore the question. There’s a whole section of my paper, entitled “Accounting for the world,” which addresses precisely this point. It’s over a thousand words long. I even mention Craig by name! And he seems not to have noticed that this section was there. (Among my minor sins, I’m happy to confess that I would always check first to see if my name would appear in someone else’s paper. Apparently not everyone works that way.) It would be okay — maybe even interesting — if he had disagreed with the argument and addressed it, but pretending that it’s not there is puzzling. (The podcast is advertised as “Part One,” so maybe this question will be addressed in Part Two, but I still wouldn’t understand the assertion in Part One that I ignored the question.)
The idea is simple, if we may boil it down to the essence: some things happen for “reasons,” and some don’t, and you don’t get to demand that this or that thing must have a reason. Some things just are. Claims to the contrary are merely assertions, and we are as free to ignore them as you are to assert them.
The second major point Craig makes is a claim that I ignored something important: namely, the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin singularity theorem. This is Craig’s favorite bit of cosmology, because it can be used to argue that the universe had a beginning (rather than stretching infinitely far backwards in time), and Craig is really devoted to the idea that the universe had a beginning. As a scientist, I’m not really devoted to any particular cosmological scenario at all, so in my paper I tried to speak fairly about both “beginning cosmologies” and “eternal cosmologies.” Craig quotes (misleadingly) a recent paper by Audrey Mithani and Alex Vilenkin, which concludes by saying “Did the universe have a beginning? At this point, it seems that the answer to this question is probably yes.” Mithani and Vilenkin are also scientists, and are correspondingly willing to be honest about our state of ignorance: thus, “probably” yes. I personally think the answer is “probably no,” but none of us actually knows. The distinction is that the scientists are willing to admit that they don’t really know.
The theorems in question make a simple and interesting point. Start with a classical spacetime — “classical” in the sense that it is a definite four-dimensional Lorentzian manifold, not necessarily one that obeys Einstein’s equation of general relativity. (It’s like saying “start with a path of a particle, but not necessarily one that obeys Newton’s Laws.”) The theorem says that such a spacetime, if it has been expanding sufficiently fast forever, must have a singularity in the past. That’s a good thing to know, if you’re thinking about what kinds of spacetimes there are.
The reason I didn’t explicitly mention this technical result in my essay is that I don’t think it’s extremely relevant to the question. Like many technical results, its conclusions follow rigorously from the assumptions, but both the assumptions and the conclusions must be treated with care. It’s easy, for example, to find examples of eternally-existing cosmologies which simply don’t expand all the time. (We can argue about whether they are realistic models of the world, but that’s a long and inconclusive conversation.) The definition of “singularity in the past” is not really the same as “had a beginning” — it means that some geodesics must eventually come to an end. (Others might not.) Most importantly, I don’t think that any result dealing with classical spacetimes can teach us anything definitive about the beginning of the universe. The moment of the Big Bang is, if anything is, a place where quantum gravity is supremely important. The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin results are simply not about quantum gravity. It’s extremely easy to imagine eternal cosmologies based on quantum mechanics that do not correspond to simple classical spacetimes throughout their history. It’s an interesting result to keep in mind, but nowhere near the end of our investigations into possible histories of the universe.
None of this matters to Craig. He knows what answer he wants to get — the universe had a beginning — and he’ll comb through the cosmology literature looking to cherry-pick quotes that bolster this conclusion. He doesn’t understand the literature at a technical level, which is why he’s always quoting (necessarily imprecise) popular books by Hawking and others, rather than the original papers. That’s fine; we can’t all be experts in everything. But when we’re not experts, it’s not intellectually honest to distort the words of experts to make them sound like they fit our pre-conceived narrative. That’s why engagement with people like Craig is fundamentally less interesting than engagement with open-minded people who are willing to take what the universe has to offer, rather than forcing it into their favorite boxes.
@Guido
Pompous? That’s hilarious, I would apply pompous to people who prevent medical science reducing a huge amount of suffering because they think it goes against the will of some great mysterious god’s plan. Or a pompous person who needs a punch in the face is someone who would describe abortion as murder, because they know the mind of god or whatever shit they would argue.
Returning to the discussion after being absent a while… Paul in #104 says:
“I don’t go around proudly proclaiming that I’m agnostic about invisible gremlins in the walls and berating people who don’t see a reason to believe in the gremlins for their arrogance, yet apparently we’re supposed to see agnosticism about gods as the most fair minded position. The teapot and FSM examples are supposed to point out that this is silly” and suggests a Google search that leads to some claims that agnosticism is special pleading.
Something bothered me about that argument, and it has finally occurred to me what that is. It all hinges on the boundedness of the question. If we ask, “Is there a teapot in orbit around the Sun, between the orbits of Earth and Mars”, we have a question that is bounded in every way. We can all agree (presumably) what a teapot is, and what it means to be in such an orbit. There are very specific bounds, and if we did an exhaustive search within those bounds, we’d have an answer. Of course, an exhaustive search isn’t feasible (with today’s tech anyway), but it’s possible to imagine settling the question. Barring such settlement, we can only fall back on the prior probability of such a thing existing, and conclude from the laws of physics (and no known human history of putting a teapot into interplanetary space) that the odds against finding such a thing in such a relatively small space are astronomical.
Expand the scope to figurative teapots, and a very relaxed (i.e., wrong) definition of “in orbit around” that allows apparent motion due to Earth’s rotation, and we would have to say that there definitely is a teapot, albeit not at the required distance. Changing the bounds of the question changes the answer.
Turning to the question of the existence of the FSM, we’d need a clear characterization that would allow us to agree when FSM has been found, and also clarification of where it can be expected to be found. On the first point, I’d be surprised if we didn’t find one or more schisms in Pastafarian beliefs — for example, between those who wear the strainer and those who don’t. And on the second point — Is the FSM near Earth? Somewhere in the Milky Way? Anywhere in the Universe? Maybe not in the Universe but out there in the multiverse? The farther out the bounds are pushed, the more unanswerable the question becomes.
That is why such a poorly bounded question as “Does God exist?” can be met with a shrug by agnostics, and it doesn’t constitute special pleading. Put some bounds on it by asking, “Is there an immaterial (supernatural/metaphysical/spiritual) being that can interact with the natural world”, and I would bet that many agnostics would have more definite views. Does that make us atheists, or are we still agnostic? If this bounded question is what is actually meant by the unbounded one, then I guess the former is true, but I suspect the meaning can vary from asker to asker.
Well, I’ve already referred to set theory twice in this thread, so here goes again: Ask a set theorist if measurable cardinals exist. Some will say it depends, some will say yes (because they like the consequences of these and larger sets existing), but they should all concede that it is fair to remain agnostic on the question (it can’t be shown from the usual axioms — ZFC — that they exist; and there is no known inconsistency of such cardinals with ZFC). Now ask if such a cardinal exists in the constructible universe, and they will tell you, flat out, “No”. But the constructible universe is also a valid model of ZFC. All that has changed about the question is the bounds.
So WL “Genocide” Craig (that’s how Dawkins has been referring to this guy lately
and I’m trying to do my part in spreading it around given that Craig IS a disgusting genocide apologist), complains about Carroll’s tone and how he is “disappointed that Carroll cannot have a collegial discussion of these important questions but feels the need to resort to snide, personal attacks in his closing paragraph”. Really?
In case anyone is tempted to agree with this abominable hypocrite, who frequently whines about how mean the New Atheists are and how impolite it is to call believers ‘delusional’, while at the same time having no problem (and is actually infamous for) regularly making snide comments, and personal attacks on his opponents, like putting up slides during his debate with Bart Ehrman, and elsewhere, titled “Ehrman’s Egregious Error” and “Bart’s Blunder”, check out this short YouTube clip “William Lane Craig and the Meaning of Ad Hominem Attacks”. There Craig is confronted by a student concerning his hypocrisy on that matter since apparently he has no problem characterizing the late Christopher Hitchens as “weaselly, oily and lacking in intellectual substance”. (Kind of like the perfect projection, another thing Craig is infamous for). The response of the oily weasel Craig?– he stands by all of those remarks. He goes on to insist that they’re not ad hominem attacks (despite the fact that no one ever said they were, but misdirection and distortion are two of that snake-oil salesman’s favorite tactics) and at most they were “just impolite”! Of course when Craig is being exposed as a shameless charlatan and basically a fundy (as Robert Price does in his excellent article on Craig’s apologetics and fundamental dishonesty “By This Time He Stinketh: The Attempts of William Lane Craig to Exhume Jesus”), his usual response is NOT that this is just impolite, rather he cries about how it’s just ad hominem and so on.
One can definitely understand the position of Richard Dawkins that Craig is unworthy of debate (of course, Craig and his teenage fans always misconstrue exposing him as a hack and a waste of time as itself being a “debate”, hence hypocritical; but then, Craig has managed to poison the minds of a fair number of people). A whole book can be written providing evidence for just how disingenuous, insincere, hypocritical, sneaky, crazy (the guy actually believes Satan literally exists and is out to get you!), wicked (God can take life as he sees fit, and when he orders the Israelites to start butchering men, women and children, that’s not only right, but constitutes the Israelites moral duty!), utterly shameless (see below), anti-intellectual and fundamentalist (the guy had admitted that even if ALL the evidence were to turn against his faith, he’d remain a Christian because the Holy Spirit in his heart trumps ALL arguments and evidence!– ” Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence, then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter, not vice versa!”) , etc., etc.
Here’s small example of Craig’s usual manner of conducting himself:
During his debate with Hitchens, the above quote about the Holy Spirit was brought up by Hitch, yet later on during the debate, addressing the issue of evolutionary theory leaving no room for the Divine, Craig said that “you have to feel a little sorry for the atheist, he can’t follow the evidence where it leads!”(due to his commitment to materialism). Still later on, he went so far as to urge Hitchens to become a Christian by saying “If Mr. Hitchens is a MAN of GOOD WILL he’d follow the evidence where it leads, and all evidence tonight has been on the side of theism”!
Now, only when one realizes that those utterances were made by a man who insists that no amount of evidence could (and should) convince him he’s wrong about his faith, hence he will not follow the evidence where it leads, if it leads away from Christianity, and therefore by his own definition is not a “man of good will”, one can fully appreciate just how utterly shameless and hypocritical Craig is; indeed, pathologically so. I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if his work and debates become of prime interest to MDs (certainly not to philosophers, let alone to scientists): who knows, he might even get a medical condition named after him. (“Craig Syndrome”?)
Sadly, too many people are oblivious to Craig’s true colors, and by agreeing to seriously engage him, they give him the credibility he needs and is desperate to get in order to be taken seriously. (Clearly putdowns like “Why I refuse to debate William Lane Craig” by Richard Dawkins do not count: in fact that’s how unscrupulous charlatans likes Craig should be dealt with, who, by the way, always provide the necessary arsenal in terms of crazy nonsense–the Holy Spirit trumping all evidence, and God having the right to be a homicidal maniac–to fend off charges of cowardice, as it happened in the case of Richard’s refusal to debate. If only he knew the half of it…) Indeed, Craig and his fans always boast about how he’s debated some of the most prominent scientists and philosophers, therefore what he says must be worthy of an engagement. I’m sure Krauss would never make that mistake again; unfortunately it took him two hours with Craig one on one to realize that he’s been duped, and that he’s essentially lost the debate the moment he agreed to share a stage with the most contemptible of religious apologists. I don’t think Krauss’s experience is unique in this regard.
In Schopenhauer’s posthumous tracts one can find an aphorism known as «a conversation from the year 33»:
-Have you heard the latest news?
-No, has something happened?
-The world is redeemed!
-Excuse me?
-The good Lord has put on a human form and traveled to Jerusalem, and has let himself be executed. An thus he has simply tricked the devil and redeemed us all!
-That is truly wonderful!
http://wordofman.blogspot.no/2008/08/christianity-tenth-plague.html
banve, chill out. Take a break. Geez.
Dr. Carroll, that’s it? You say to the question of God: “probably not, but who knows, really?” This is the New Atheism we hear so much about and this is its answer: probably not? Probably? You’re going to rule out of court the faith of billions of people because there “probably” is no God? You expect people to take this seriously?
Here is William Lane Craig’s response: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/sean-carrolls-reply-to-the-rf-podcast
What does Dr. Carroll say to WLC’s reply?
Hi!
Knowing what a great physicist and academic Sean Carroll is, I must say that his response to William Lane Craig deeply disapponts me.
There doesn´t seem to be any wish in Carroll to sincerely engage with Lane Craig and his arguments. Instead we get a Dawkins-like (Dawkinsian?) reply that basically boils down to Carroll not believing Craig to be worthy of debate because he is only a philosopher, and therefore by default doesn´t know what he is talking about.
This may be what Carroll genuinely believes, but I must say, after reading Lane Craigs full response to Carrols response, that I dont feel confident that Carroll is giving us any sort of unbiased account of the implications of the BGV-theorem or where current mainstream cosmology is at.
This lack of confidence could easily be mended if Carroll would to choose to engage in genuine, good-natured debate with a fellow academic, to the benefit of us lay-people who are genuinely curious and not just looking to affirm worldviews we already hold.
Alas, until that happens, I cannot help but smile when I read the last sentence of this reply to Lane Craig:
“That’s why engagement with people like Craig is fundamentally less interesting than engagement with open-minded people who are willing to take what the universe has to offer, rather than forcing it into their favorite boxes.”
I would invite Carroll to look up the word “irony”.
Sincerely
Andreas M.
“engage with Lane Craig and his arguments”
Why should Sean Carroll engage Craig’s nonsense? The guy is but a Christian apologist who has no scruples abusing any scientific discovery that seems even remotely supporting his Iron Age dogma. I very much doubt that Craig actually harbors any illusions about how he and his ilk is perceived and how much credibility he has in academia, where the kind of believes that evangelicals generally hold–the Bible is the inerrant word of God, Satan literally exists and is out to get the good Christians, Jesus, the son of God, was born of a virgin, turned water into wine, walked on water, raised people form the dead, and was himself raised from the dead, and so on– are seen as so crazy and disreputable, that in normal circumstances (that is, not living in a society where for historical reasons, such beliefs are still not widely seen as a symptom of perhaps mental illness) such a person wouldn’t be trusted holding even a mop job.
The attitude of the prominent scientists like Carroll, Dawkins, Krauss and Coyne towards people like WL “Genocide” Craig is common. That’s why he’s so desperate to get them to take him and his worthless arguments seriously. Having lived in Europe for a number of years, where Craig complains “it’s hard for the Gospel to even get a fair hearing”, he’s no doubt come to realize that living in a society where his brand of Christianity is seen on par with unicorns and tooth-fairies and is worthy of just as much respect (let alone public debates), and is dismissed as crazy nonsense right of the bat, is the worse case scenario for him and his religion; hence his pronouncements that Christianity is a fair game: from anyone else this might indeed be seen as open-mindedness, but not from someone who’s stated point blank that his mind is firmly closed because the witness of the Holy Spirit trumps all evidence and arguments, In fact, Craig holds the position of the average fundy– ‘there’s nothing you can say to me, no arguments or evidence you can bring forward that would change my mind’.
I submit that if there’s anything worse and more obscene than a fundamentalist, it is one with intellectual pretenses. It’s not everyday that one sees a person who had set out to demonstrate the reasonableness of Christianity, as Craig does in his ill-named “Reasonable Faith” book, and present arguments and evidence in support, commit the most spectacular instance of an intellectual suicide in the very first chapter by arguing that reason (and arguments and evidence) have only a “ministerial” role and in case of a collision with the dogmas of Christianity (and the Holy Spirit, which has a “magisterial” role) the latter takes precedence over the former! He writes how he confided to one of his professors “If somehow through my studies reason is to turn against my faith, SO MUCH THE WORSE FOR REASON!” Again, this anti-intellectual fideist nonsense is written in a book called “Reasonable Faith”!
So Craig is not interested in honest, open-minded assessment of the evidence (he’s made that abundantly clear), but in rationalizing the dogmas of his religion while desperately trying to avoid the conclusion of atheism which he bemoans as “unbearable”, “unlivable” and “with no hope” (no emotional issues there). In light of that, there’s no mystery about his confession that when he became “born again” he knew it will be forever and there will be no coming back.
The bottom line: Carroll is absolutely right, I would say obliged by common decency, to refuse to engage this disgraced hack on any level apart from pointing out he’s hack. Engaging, let alone debating, him and his ‘work’ is not just a complete a waste of time but really an insult.
To banev:
Carroll writes: ” I mentioned Craig once before, and here we can see him in action. ” You can press a link Carroll has put under “once before”, and read a blog entry from April last year, where Carroll talks about Lane Craigs debate with Krauss.
Here, among other things, Carroll writes: “We should be good at presenting our arguments, and ready to do so. Craig is wrong about many things, but he’s not an out-and-out crackpot like Hugh Ross or Ken Ham. A good debate could be very interesting and helpful to thoughtful people who haven’t yet made up their minds.”
I agree with Carroll when he writes this, so what has changed from April last year to September this year?
Secondly, even if Lane Craig was a Christian fundamentalist of the worst sort, that has absolutely nothing to do with the cosmological arguments he puts forth.
Best,
Andreas
And still I ask, “What does Dr. Carroll say to WLC’s reply?”
C:
Yes, I agree. I would very much like to see Dr. Carroll’s response to WLC’s reply (fuller version posted at http://www.reasonablefaith.org/sean-carrolls-reply-to-the-rf-podcast), particularly regarding the import of the BGV theorem. I don’t think Dr. Carroll can leave that hanging without readers concluding that Craig is correct about that.
I am just amazed at how modern scientists think that simply because they are physicists or biologists or whatnot, they are also fine philosophers by default.
The level of hubris never stops to amaze me. Just watch a couple of debates with W.L.Craig with any scientist, and see how filled are the scientists’ arguments with, say, genetic fallacies. No wonder these scientists make no major discoveries in science. Leibniz observed quite rightly when he said that he didn’t expect a person to make major discoveries in math if math is all that person does.
Until modern scientists learn to do good philosophy (and for that they, obviously, first need to learn philosophy), the world will be stuck with incremental discoveries in science, and small, evolutionary advancements in technology.
At best philosophy is just formalised common sense. Usually it leaves out the common sense.
I would, however, like to see Carroll’s counter response to Craig’s response. Better yet I would like to see a debate between Craig and Carroll. Somebody must be able to defeat Craig in a debate. It can’t be that hard.
Until modern scientists learn to do good philosophy (and for that they, obviously, first need to learn philosophy), the world will be stuck with incremental discoveries in science, and small, evolutionary advancements in technology.
[citation needed]
You gotta love the sheer hubris of a theologian lecturing a Caltech physicist on what constitutes a tenable theory of cosmology, particularly in light of the fact – pointed out by Carroll in the original post – that absent a working theory of quantum gravity, we’re not really in a position to make too many assumptions about the origin of the universe in the first.
Mike, go back and read WLC’s point again.
Mike D: “You gotta love the sheer hubris of a theologian lecturing a Caltech physicist on what constitutes a tenable theory of cosmology…”
Since Blackwell has vouched for both Carroll’s and Craig’s qualifications by publishing them on these topics, I don’t think the issue can be closed down just by citing Dr. Carroll’s credentials (particularly since this is an area where cosmology and philosophy overlap). Craig’s post needs a substantive response, so that if he is wrong on the scientific consensus regarding eternal cosmologies, or the import of the BGV theorem, we can see an argument to that effect.
I look up to both of Carroll and Craig, and am myself very interested in cosmology and philosophy. I want to study astronomy/physics when I finish high school, and I read alot of cosmology books on my free time. And one of the questions that got me interested was the question of whether the Universe had a beginning or not, and if this may have philosophical implications. I now think cosmology warrants the view that the Universe, as Vilenkin says, probably had a beginning. I, personally, think this has theistic implications, and have made videos and written about it.
First, to those here trying to dismiss either Craig or Carroll — just stop. Carroll and Craig are both really smart people who know what they’re talking about. I will admit that I’m biased, as a theist who thinks cosmology warrants the view that the Universe has a finite past, but to those claiming that Craig doesn’t know what he is talking about regarding cosmology and doesn’t cite papers, well here, let’s look first at one footnote in one section of a book he co-authored with Quentin Smith (Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology), published by Oxford University Press. Craig do cite sources and can handle at least some of the math involved in cosmology:
“There has been some controversy over the value of the red-shifts as distance indicators. (For a synopsis of the debate, consult George B. Field, Halton Arp, and John N. Bahcall, The Redshift Controversy, Frontiers in Physics (Reading, Mass.: W. A. Benjamin, 1973). A lucid history of the dispute may also be found in Daniel Weedman, ‘Seyfert Galaxies, Quasars and Redshifts’, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, 17 (1976), 227 – 62.) Pointing to various discrepancies in the ref-shift data, especially those from quasi-stellar objects (QSOs), some have argued that some other factor may account for the observed red-shifts. But the weight of the evidence supports the expansion hypothesis. Bahcall enumerates siz observational tests which the theory of red-shifts has passed, as well as three successful predictions of the theory. (Field et al., The Redshift Controversy, 77 – 9, 108.) According to Lang and his colleagues, the uncertainty concerning QSO red-shifts is due to small sampling, and the QSO slope, when correctedm us cinoarable to that of galaxies. (Kenneth R. Lang, Steven D. Lord, James M. Johanson, and Paul D. Savage, ‘The Composite Hubble Diagram’, Astrophysical Journal, 202 (1975), 583 – 90.)
The discrepancies of red-shifts among closely related stars, moreover, do not suffice to overturn the Doppler effect theory, according to P.C. Joss, D.A. Smith, and A.B. Solinger, ‘On Apparent Association among Astronomical Objects’, Astronomy and Astrophysics, 47 (1976), 461 – 2- See also D. Willis and R.L. Ricklefs, ‘On the Redshift Distrivution of Quasi-stellar Objects’, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 175 (1976), 65p – 70p; M. Rowan-Robinson, ‘Quasars and the Cosmological Distance Scale’, Nature, 262 (1976), 97 – 101; Richard F. Green and Douglas O. Richstone, ‘On the Reality of Periodicities in the Redshift Distribution of Emission-Line Objects’, Astrophysical Journal, 208 (1976), 639 – 45. In the early autumn of 1976 an international astronomical conference held in Paris devoted itself largely to a debate of the red-shift controversy. The resylts of this important conference are published in the International Astronomical Union Colloquium, 37, Déclages vers le rouge et expansion de l’universe (Paris: Edition de Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1977). According to Peebles, there is no serious competitor to the expansion hypothesis, and he lists seven points in favour of an expanding universe: (1) the red-shifts from galaxies, (2) the frequency shifts of radio lines, (3) the fact that Hubble’s law fits a homogeneous and isotropic universe, (4) the harmony of theory and observation, (5) the fact that the Hubble time coincides with the age of stars and the elements, (6) the presence of the black body background radiation, and (7) the fact that relativistic corrections to stellar magnitudes brings these into harmony with the theory. (Peebles, Physical Cosmology, 25 – 7.) Most of these points will be explained later, but this seems the best place to list them all.”
(W.L. Craig in Craig, W.L. & Smith, Q. (1995) Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology, Oxford University Press, pp. 37 – 38)
“(. . .) In the metric for spacetime, the spatial geometry is dynamic over time:
ds² = – dt² + R(t) (dr² + r²(dθ² + sin²θdΦ²))/(1 + kr²/4)²
In this equation, called the Robertson-Walker line element, t represents
cosmic time, the proper time of a fundamental observers. It is detached
from space and serves to render space dynamic. The geometry of space is
thus time-dependent. The factor R(t) determines that all spatial structures
of cosmic proportions, for example, a triangle demarcated by three galactic
clusters or fundamental particles, will either shrink or stretch through
the contraction or expansion of space, in this case into a similar smaller
or larger triangle. The boundary condition of homogeneity precludes other
geometrical changes such as shear, which would preserve the area but not
the shape of the triangle. The condition of isotropy further precludes that
the triangle should be altered in such a way as to preserve both its area
and shape while nonetheless undergoing a rotational change of direction.
Thus, in a Friedmann universe there are certain natural symmetries related
to the dynamic geometry which serve as markers for the foliation of spacetime
and the assigning of a cosmic time parameter. Of course, there are other
cosmological models which do not involve homogeneity and isotropy and so may
lack a cosmic time altogether. Cosmic time is thus not normologically necessary,
and its actual existence is an empirical question.
Secondly, cosmic time is fundamentally parameter time and only secondarily
coordinate time. Physical time can be related in two quite different ways
to the manifold in which motion is represented. If it is part of that manifold,
then it functions asa coordinate. If it is external to that manifold, then it
functions as a parameter. In Newton’s physics time functioned only as a parameter.”
(Craig, W.L. (2001) God, Time, and Eternity, Kluwer Academic Publishers, p. 209)
The only reason I’m quoting him is because I’m tired of hearing comments to the effect that he, as a philosopher, has not read up on cosmology. He is quite involved with physics, especially with cosmology and relativity, as that has bearings on the philosophy of time, and the question of whether the Universe may have had a beginning or not. In terms of philosophy of time, the atheist philosopher Quentin Smith, who have also worked in the philosophy of physics and cosmology, writes about one of Craig’s books,
“William Lane Craig is one the leading philosophers of religion and one of the leading philosophers of time. In this book, he combines his expertise in these areas to produce an original, erudite, and accessible theory of time and God that will be of great interest to both the general public and scholars. It is a rewarding experience to read through this brilliant and well-researched book by one of the most learned and creative thinkers of our era.”
But you may dismiss him as ‘simply a philosopher’. Well, the quantum cosmologist Don Page, which I think is a friend of Carroll, have written this about Craig,
“Although my philosophical predilections often differ from Dr. Craig’s (as they do from those of everyone else I know), I have found that he is very knowledgeable about science and current cosmological ideas. He provides interesting insights into their implications for our shared Christian beliefs.”
Or why not take the prominent cosmologist George F.R. Ellis (who is a big inspiration to me when thinking about cosmology. I enjoy his papers and lectures very much), who like Smith liked the same book;
“The nature of time is a continuing source of puzzlement both to science and in everyday life. It is also an important issue in theological understandings of the nature of God. In this interesting book, Professor Craig tackles this complex set of topics in a clear way. His discussion of the interrelated scientific, philosophical, and theological issues clears up many previous misconceptions and proposes a plausible understanding of the relation of God to time and eternity that many will find helpful.”
George F.R. Ellis in specific, along with the cosmologists Kirchner and Stoeger, even cites two of Craig’s books in a paper that partially addresses problems with actualized infinities. They write,
“Finally, it is worth emphasizing that actual physically realized infinities lead
to a variety of apparently irresolvably paradoxical, if not contradictory results
(see Craig 1993) in thought experiments, such as those involving adding to
and borrowing books from a really infinite library, or putting up new guests in
an already fully occupied hotel of an infinite number of rooms. In fact, just
the notion of a completed infinite set seems to underlie some of the disturbing
paradoxes of set theory (see Craig 1993 for a brief discussion and references).”
(Ellis, Stoeger, Kirchner (2006) Multiverses and Cosmology: Philosophical Issues, p. 17: http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0407329)
A reference to two of Craig’s books can be found in the references of the paper.
Call me whatever you want. I’m just tired of stupid claims that Craig does not know much about cosmology, or that Craig should be silent on the topic as a philosopher. He knows quite a bit of cosmology, and especially for not being a physicist/astronomer.
Putting that aside now, I think we can focus on the arguments themselves, and not whether this or that person have the right to talk about a specific topic.
Ed: Agnostics are cowards?
With 100,000,000,000 stars in a galaxy, and around 100,000,000,000 galaxies in a universe thats over 13,000,000,000 years old, and possibly just one of billions of universes, for anyone to suggest an orbiting teapot doesn’t or hasn’t existed is just plain absurd.
I would suggest your position is the untenable one, a position born of arrogance.
We know of one world that contains life. We are unable to see any other world that contains life, we can’t contact other galaxies, we can’t contact other universes (if they exist) and don’t know what took place before the big bang.
Cowardly? I would suggest its the only reasonable answer.
The emails Sean got is a direct window into arrogance, hate and intolerance practiced by those who profess a loving God.
I would further suggest that I lean towards the non existence of God, because if there was a God I’m pretty sure he would have struck down most televangelists with wrathful lightening.
Starting with the faith healers who steal money from the ignorant.
see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scandals_involving_evangelical_Christians
Finally, if there is a God, an omnipresent all seeing all knowing omnipotent God, I’m pretty sure he could make his presence known without having to resort to poor likeness of a bearded mans face on a grilled cheese sandwich.
I would also think he could stop babies from dying of cancer or dying from a thousand other things.
Bnlathering, it doesn’t matter how many universes there are. There could be 100000000000000000000000000000^10000 universes for all we know. The problem, though, is that they all still require a beginning. Even Dr. Craig himself has said that it’s possible we are in a multi-verse and he has no problem with that theory. As Dr. Vilenkin/Craig/Ellis/etc and others have stated, they all still require a beginning.
Dr. Carroll writes:
“…some things happen for ‘reasons,’ and some don’t, and you don’t get to demand that this or that thing must have a reason. Some things just are.”
That may very well be true, but, as Dr. Craig points out in his 3rd podcast, this is only so for metaphysically necessary entities. So far as I can tell, Carroll hasn’t explicitly endorsed the proposition that the universe is metaphysically necessary (the way some abstract objects or God is a metaphysically necessary entity). If this is so, then the principle of sufficient reason applies (again, as Craig eloquently discusses) in order to give an account of the origin and existence of the universe. It would certainly be convenient for Carroll to consider the principle of sufficient reason “optional”; convenience, however, is not a luxury serious epistemology provides for.
Speaking of seriousness, I wish to record for Dr. Carroll that no serious thinker will ever be impressed by argumentum ad hominem. Students of this debate have long grown tired and numb by relentless efforts to attack William Lane Craig’s character in place of his carefully developed arguments. I can’t for the life of me understand why someone of your credentials would ever publish a personal attack in response to a qualified critique of your work. Having recorded this observation, I will go on to say that a carefully constructed response to Dr. Craig’s objections would still be well-received by the serious thinkers amongst us. Many, including myself, would surely profit from such a move on your part.
> It would certainly be convenient for Carroll to consider the principle of sufficient reason “optional”; convenience, however, is not a luxury serious epistemology provides for.
Carroll’s quoted statement looks like he does not accept the PSR. So why should Carroll accept the it? So he can be considered a “serious” epistemologist?
> no serious thinker will ever be impressed by argumentum ad hominem
As a way of avoiding Craig’s substantive arguments, I agree that saying “Craig is not an expert, he’s a cherry picker” is unacceptable. But Carroll has tried to address some of those arguments.
Craig’s fond of ad hom statements himself (“when a person refuses to come to Christ it is never just because of lack of evidence or because of intellectual difficulties: at root, he refuses to come because he willingly ignores and rejects the drawing of God’s Spirit on his heart” and so on), though he does not generally use them in debates in front of the undecided, just as a way to shore up Christians against changing their minds when worrying about why their atheist friends are not convinced by their terribly compelling arguments. Still, I think that sort of thing, plus his previous statements about reason and the Holy Spirit, might lead some not to consider him a serious epistemologist.
Anyway, I think that it’s acceptable to point out that someone is filtering the evidence as a warning that listeners need to research further rather than take what they say as gospel (but not as fully general argument against people you don’t like). The key phrase to google is “What Evidence Filtered Evidence?”
You are correct, Mr. Wright, that Dr. Carroll does not have to accept the PSR. This would purchase him the ability to assert some brute facts as givens, but this does come at a steep cost: How to avoid the problem of arbitrariness. Dr. Carroll writes in his article Does the Universe Need God? the following:
“States of affairs only require an explanation if we have some contrary expectation, some reason to be surprised that they hold. Is there any reason to be surprised that the universe exists, continues to exist, or exhibits regularities? When it comes to the universe, we don’t have any broader context in which to develop expectations” (11).”
At first glance, this doesn’t actually seem to be an outright denial of the PSR, though it may be said to be a weaker form of it. I think it is fair to interpret this statement as a sympathetic attitude toward at least the sentiment behind the PSR on Carroll’s part. If that is so, I don’t think we can excuse him of the burden to defend his position on the origin of the universe by accepting his claim that it “just is.”
Considering his line of demarcation over demand for reasons–the degree of surprise within a state of affairs–I think there is good grounds for resisting his conclusion. He says we don’t have any broader context in which to develop expectations about the origin and existence of the universe. On the contrary, though, we do have a broader context in which to develop expectations: namely, modal reasoning. This is to say, we can entertain concepts of necessary and possible existence. Given that the universe exists, it is an open question whether it exists only possibly or necessarily. If the former is true, then it is, contra Carroll, surprising that it exists. If it is the latter, then it is not surprising. Thus, unless Carroll defends the view that the universe is a necessarily existing entity, his own standard appears to require an explanation on his part of why it exists rather than not. If he does in fact hold that the universe is a necessarily existing entity, it would be helpful if he would say so unequivocally to clear up any confusion.
Finally, Mr. Wright, even if we grant that Dr. Craig is guilty of argumentum ad hominem (though it’s not obvious to me that the quote you mention is ad hominem, at least not the abusive variety, even though I disagree with Craig’s quoted statement), that doesn’t excuse Dr. Carroll’s use of it in the least. All that would show is that two men are guilty of poor argumentation rather than just one.