Here is the video from my debate with William Lane Craig at the 2014 Greer-Heard Forum. Enough talking from me, now folks can enjoy for themselves. First is the main debate and Q&A:
"God & Cosmology" - 2014 Greer-Heard Forum
It took a while for the Saturday talks by Maudlin, Collins, Rosenberg, and Sinclair to appear on line, but I’ve posted them here.
The magic of Google(us homicide rate historical):
The US murder rate has fluctuated between 5-10 per 100,000 people in the last century. No order of magnitude changes in either direction.
1900 – rate about 8 per 100,000
1920s – rate up to 10(alcohol prohibition?)
1950s – low of around 5
1980s – rate up to about 10
2012 – rate of 4.7 – around the lowest over the last century
The current US homicide rate is still a lot higher than other developed countries(Europe, Japan are around 1).
The estimated US historical rate has definitely dropped since colonial days. The estimate then is about 25- 30 per 100,000.
{comment re: concluding panel discussion} Got as far as the red suspenders guy saying “conscientiousness” is better explained by theism than science. Boggles. Where do you find these people? Theism, by definition, is belief without the rigor of supporting evidence or mathematical logic or sober reasoning. That’s why we call the high tenets of theism, dogma. Criticism of dogma is not welcome because it weakens the power of the authority from which it came (bible, pope, witch doctor, local temple oracle). However, scientific principle is based on repeated experimental observations by objective third parties that confirm the principle in question and a welcoming attitude toward insightful critique.
Sean, I understand you don’t consider sainthood a great honor. Unfortunately, I’m certain you will be canonized for divine indulgence (patience) well beyond the bounds of mortal cosmologists.
Comparing homicide rate in U.S. against those in other countries is totally irrelevant to the present discussion in the argument of theism vs atheism! High homicide rate in U.S. has nothing to do with theist or atheistic population. The murderers are not killing other people because of religious differences! They are not following religious commandments! The rates are high because of stupid politics of lack of gun control, background checks etc. They are killing because of drug wars, crazy people getting their hands on guns unlike other countries etc. These factors have nothing to do with religion.
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In response (which probably he will never read) to Aaron at February 28, 2014 at 7:49 am:
I think most atheist scientists are clear about what they mean by nothing and have defined it (e.g., Dr. Krauss in his book), but perhaps not since I haven’t checked them all, but unquestionably some have, such as Dr. Stengler, who makes the following point (my paraphrase): if “nothing” means not only no material substance but no laws, then what is to prevent laws from forming, i.e., “total nothingness” is unstable. That is, if you want to assert that “nothing can come from nothing” you are asserting that nothingness itself includes that law – and you can’t have it both ways. Either nothingness does or does not include any laws. And if it doesn’t, nothing prevents it from spontaneously degenerating into something.
JimV: Laws are not physical “things,” they don’t exist as things exist. They carry no energy as even the quantum vacuum does, and there exist no physical laws—in our minds—concerning physical laws.
Baron: The value of justice is a wonderful example of a biologically evolved value. Read the relevant literature. A recent, much publicized, experiment with 6-months-old babies has demonstrated that they prefer dolls that behave nicely than ones that behave meanly.
Gnome: What clearly constitutes a good explanation is one that obeys Ockam’s Razor to the utmost.
Suppose a theory that just lists the results of all possible experiments with great accuracy and compare it to another, not an equivalent one, just as general and accurate, but based on a small set of differential equations rather than on a huge list.
An omnipotent god, who can create anything and everything just by will, is an explanation of the first kind, because it entails an infinite list.
Regarding BVG, keep in mind that there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to suggest that the universe does not satisfy the *only* necessary condition of BVG (Hav > 0), provided that we average H over the time from the end of the Planck epoch (t = 10^-43) up to the present (more specifically: for the temporal interval t* comprising the duration of continual time t > t = 10^-43, then: Hav[t*] > 0). On the other hand, we absolutely do have strong empirical evidence that corroborates Hav[t*] > 0. As Vilenkin affirmed, *all* of the evidence we have suggests this. It should be realized that nothing in this paragraph should be controversial. Everyone, Sean Carroll included, should agree that our universe has most certainly been, on average, in a state of cosmic expansion ***subsequent to t = 10^-43***. I want to make my point clear: insofar as we are talking about the average Hubble rate of the time *since* the Planck epoch, BVG is without a doubt satisfied. This is exactly what WLC has always argued; it wasn’t as though he was ignorant of the possible loopholes! That is why Guth does not in any way undermine his understanding of BVG by making the claim that the universe might be eternal. No, the real question is, How realistic are those purported loopholes?
Dr. Carroll, like so many others, enjoys appealing to quantum mechanics in order to avoid the impending force brought on by the inevitable implications of BVG. In vacuum fluctuation models, the expanding universe is merely one of an indefinite number of mini-universes comprising the greater Universe-as-a-whole. Thus, the beginning of our universe doesn’t really represent an absolute beginning, but merely a change in the eternal, uncaused Universe-as-a-whole. However, these models face a deep internal incoherence: according to such models, it is impossible to specify precisely when and where a fluctuation will occur in the primordial vacuum which will then grow into a mini-universe. Within any *finite* interval of time there is a some non-zero probability of such a fluctuation occurring at any point in space. Thus, given *infinite* past time, mini-universes will eventually be spawned at every point in the primordial vacuum, and, as they expand, they will begin to collide and coalesce with one another. Therefore, given infinite past time, we should by now be observing an infinitely old universe, not a relatively young one. As WLC stated in the debate, if the vacuum were sufficient to produce the universe, it would have done it infinitely-long-ago.
Moreover, contrary to what Dr. Carroll asserted throughout the debate, what’s crucial for naturalism isn’t to be found in any assessment of the merits of a *particular* cosmogonic model. Rather, the really relevant issue lies at a much broader, more fundamental level: naturalism necessarily must invoke *only* material entities and mechanical processes to explain the data; the spatiotemporal realm, on naturalism, is all that exists. Thus, it is absolutely foundational for naturalism to explain how an eternally existing set of necessary and sufficient *mechanical* conditions, could give rise to a temporal effect. In other words, it must answer the question, How could the cause of the universe exist from *eternity* past, and yet, the universe only begin to exist a *finite* time ago? You see, if the causal conditions that are sufficient to produce the effect are in place, then, so too should be the effect!
It’s easy to see this fact with a simple illustration: the necessary and sufficient conditions to account for water’s freezing is sub-zero temperature; if the temperature is sub-zero, then any water around will necessarily be frozen. Now think about this: If the temperature were sub-zero ***from eternity past***, wouldn’t any water that was around be *eternally* frozen? Would it not be impossible for the water to *begin* to freeze merely a finite time ago? Indeed, how could causally sufficient mechanical conditions (sub-zero temp.) for the production of an effect (water’s freezing) be eternally in place, and yet, the effect not be co-eternal with the cause? How can the cause exist without its effect?
Another way of seeing the severity of this dilemma is by reflecting on the different types of causation. For instance, there is what philosophers call “state/state causation”: the effect is some state of affairs (e.g., a ceiling fan rotating with constant angular velocity) produced by some other state of affairs (e.g., the switch being in the “on” position). In contrast, we have what’s known as “event/event causation”: the effect comes in the form of some event (e.g., the rotational motion of the fan undergoes a constant rate of deceleration until its angular velocity reaches zero. In other, simpler words: it stops.) which is caused by some other event (e.g., my Wife’s excercising her causal powers to alter the position of the switch from the “on” to the “off” position). The significance here is that in the former type, the cause/effect relationship between the two states could exist eternally; if the switch is eternally in the “on” position, then the fan will eternally rotate at a constant rate.
However, in the case of the origin of the universe we have a peculiar case of what appears to be “state/event causation.” Namely, the effect that we are trying to explain is the origin of the universe (an event); but given the fact that nothing in the spatiotemporal realm existed prior to that first moment, what follows is that it’s logically impossible for whatever ultimately produced our universe to be, itself, also an event. How so? Because events, by their very nature, must have a temporal connotation — an “event” is an occurance; an instance of *something*. Thus, if *nothing* existed — no space, time, matter, or energy — then there could not have been any events. Moreover, since the universe’s coming into being at t = 0 simply is the *first* spatiotemporal event, it follows logically that there can be no time t* prior to t = 0 at which an event occurs. Therefore, the dilemma confronted is the need to provide a plausible account of how a past-eternal state of affairs, could give rise to a first, temporal event; in what intelligible way can naturalism account for state/event causation?
While this dilemma is fatal for naturalism, it is no dilemma at all for theism. The contrast here is due to the fact that theism has at its disposal the explanatory resource of “agent causation.” You see, the only way in which a temporal effect could originate from an eternal, changeless cause would seem to be if the cause is a personal agent who eternally chooses to create an effect in time. A changeless, mechanically operating cause would produce either an immemorial effect or none at all; but an agent endowed with free will can have an eternal determination to operate causally at a (first) moment of time and thereby to produce a temporally first effect. Therefore, the universe is plausibly regarded to be the product of a Personal Creator, who I happen to call “God.”
Jack Spell:
1) What was the theists’ argument before BVG and before Hubble’s discovery? Were they still naturalists then?
2) How dare one presume that the philosophical musings of the fallible human imagination, molded by evolution to help us survive and reproduce in our everyday environment, apply to such off-beat circumstances?
3) Granted that the universe is past-finite, I’d say I don’t know what preceded and how it came about; I’d say that I don’t presume to force my logic on such a question when I can’t even force it on the two-slit experiment. I’d say there’s a gap, and that I expect WLC and his flock to honor his commitment, in the debate, “No god-of-the-gaps here.”
4) Raise your eyes from digging into the details of this debate—look at the scene entire. When I do, it seems a time machine has taken me back to the 13th century to watch quaint scholasticists debate the Kalaam argument, or, for that matter, the number of angels that can dance on a point of a needle.
5) Incidentally, the Kalaam argument was rejected already in the 12th century [e.g., Maimonides, “A Guide to the Perplexed,” Book I, 75-76, (1187-1191)] on grounds that all it proves is that the world was created by something—not necessarily by the god as we wish him to be. (Why not the Devil? Why not the evil sorcerer Hoompah Baloompah?)
Del
“What was the theists’ argument before BVG and before Hubble’s discovery? Were they still naturalists then?” This question seems irrelevant – a theist would simply reply that these more recent discoveries are in agreement with the previously existing theistic view of the origins of the universe.
“How dare one presume that the philosophical musings of the fallible human imagination, molded by evolution to help us survive and reproduce in our everyday environment, apply to such off-beat circumstances?” This point is redundant because self-refuting – the viewpoint of metaphysical naturalism which Sean espouses is no more or less “the philosophical musings of the fallible human imagination, moulded by evolution to help us survive and reproduce” than Lane Craig’s position of theism. If you were to apply this argument rigorously, then any statement about the universe, beyond the most basic description of directly observable physical events, would be equally subject to the same caveat – but it seems that you wish to apply the caveat of human fallibility to ideas which you disagree with, and not those which you are in agreement with.
“Incidentally, the Kalaam argument was rejected already in the 12th century [e.g., Maimonides, “A Guide to the Perplexed,” Book I, 75-76, (1187-1191)] on grounds that all it proves is that the world was created by something—not necessarily by the god as we wish him to be. (Why not the Devil? Why not the evil sorcerer Hoompah Baloompah?)” This is a good argument against the latter stages of Craig’s argument, but it isn’t much use to a naturalist, since it accepts the argument as valid up the point where the precise nature of the cause is delineated – a universe created by the devil or the evil sorcerer Hoompah Baloompah would still refute the naturalistic viewpoint.
tristan: Wrong on all counts.
## Of course I know that theists were such before BGV and Hubble, and would remain such even if a viable past-eternal theory comes along. My point is that they shouldn’t celebrate the science when it suits them and ignore it when it doesn’t. That’s more like litigation practice.
## Science is not supposed to rely on that fallible imagination, but to construct models amenable to testing by experiment and observation, and to draw conclusion using infallible mathematics, not handwaving or even “pure rational reasoning.” It’s an argument like “all that becomes must have a cause” that cannot fit in a naturalist thinking on the observable universe as a whole.
## Of course the Hoompah Baloompah argument is of no use to naturalists, and I’ve never heard of any of them using it. But the fact that you turned it against naturalism, as if “it accepts the argument as valid up the point where the precise nature of the cause is delineated,” only serves to show that for theists it’s all a matter of litigation-type tactics.
Sean, I have a math question (by the way, I’ve taken some graduate level differential geometry, but never any GR ):
As far as I can tell, the BGV theorem says that, assuming the average expansion rate is positive (I don’t know what expansion rate is defined as, but I assume it’s some parameter buried in the metric?), then all geodesics must be past incomplete.
My question is whether this is equivalent to there being an earliest time. Is is possible that, while all geodesics are incomplete, there is no earliest time? I am picturing (non-rigorously) a kind of ‘infinite pan-flute’ universe, where each pipe of the pan-flute (~geodesic) has a finite length, but the pan-flute extends arbitrarily far down. This is a fuzzy notion, and perhaps this is an annoyingly ill-posed question, but I’m asking it non-the-less.
Basically, are there geometric/relativistic principles that make ‘past-incompleteness’ of each geodesic equivalent to ‘first moment in time’?
Thanks!
Del.
“My point is that they shouldn’t celebrate the science when it suits them and ignore it when it doesn’t.” If that is your point, then you would need to show precisely what science (ie empirically verified data) theists are ignoring in order to make theism tenable. Until you do that, you are merely saying that theists cannot appeal to science because they are theists.
“Science is not supposed to rely on that fallible imagination, but to construct models amenable to testing by experiment and observation, and to draw conclusion using infallible mathematics, not handwaving or even “pure rational reasoning.” Two points about that. First of all, my point was that metaphysical naturalism and not methodical naturalism (science in the practical, testable sense more or less as you describe it) is as much a product of the fallible human imagination as theism is. (Arthur C. Danto defines metaphysical naturalism as “a species of philosophical monism according to which whatever exists or happens is natural in the sense of being susceptible to explanation through methods which, although paradigmatically exemplified in the natural sciences, are continuous from domain to domain of objects and events. Hence, naturalism is polemically defined as repudiating the view that there exists or could exist any entities which lie, in principle, beyond the scope of scientific explanation.”) Now, metaphysical naturalism as so defined cannot come under your definition of science, because its chief assertions cannot really be tested or experimentally verified – it is the philosophical assumption that all things that could ever be MUST be amenable to the current investigative methodologies of a tribe of mammals whose brains were cobbled together in a spit of cosmic time in order to rut and avoid falling off cliffs with a reasonable ratio of success. Now, THAT strikes me as a truly arrogant belief, but we’ll let that pass. The issue of testing and verification is what is crucial here, and brings me to my second point. Of the theories advanced by both Lane Craig and Sean Carroll to account for the origins and ultimate nature of the universe, NEITHER can at present be empirically tested and verified or falsified. That is, until such time as the models advanced by Carroll can be rigorously tested, they no more fulfill your rubric of what science is than Craig’s Transcendent supernatural cause. Hence, we have two opposing visions of how the universe comes to be, both buttressed by philosophical assumptions which cannot be tested or falsified (theism in Lane Craig’s case, metaphysical naturalism in Carroll’s) and both offering scenarios which cannot at present be tested or falsified.
“It’s an argument like “all that becomes must have a cause” that cannot fit in a naturalist thinking on the observable universe as a whole.” This is a very complex and difficult question, and I personally don’t have as much faith in the power of my mammalian brain to pronounce so emphatically on it.
@jack spell “but an agent endowed with free will can have an eternal determination to operate causally ” This is just wishful thinking.
“if the vacuum were sufficient to produce the universe, it would have done it infinitely-long-ago”. It may be that an infinitely ancient vacuum (or whatever) has created an infinite number of universes. Ours is just one of an infinite series. Or any number of other possible explanations. To keep jumping to ‘deity’ as an explanation is simply not warranted.
nick– The problem is that it’s very hard to rigorously define a “singularity” in spacetime, since the singularity itself is not part of the spacetime. Geodesic incompleteness is generally taken as a good informal guide, but you have to be careful. In de Sitter space, for example, in some coordinates the spacetime appears to be geodesically incomplete (if you only look at some geodesics), but that’s just a coordinate artifact. I suspect you could not construct a spacetime that appeared incomplete for all geodesics unless there really was a singularity, but I don’t know a proof.
Interesting! Thank you, I’ll read into it some more. I actually recently bought your “Spacetime and Geometry” book. It’s time I sit down and do some exercises 🙂
Sean,
I just wanted to say that it was a pleasure to watch your debate with Craig. If there was any pummeling, this time it was Craig who’ll have to recuperate.
—
Jack Spell,
As a non-physicist, I can’t say anything at all about the merits or demerits of Sean Carroll’s cosmogonic models, and I suspect you’re not really in a position to evaluate them either. That said, all the equations in your post (I see you’ve dumped the same thing on a few different fora online…), strike me as so much window dressing on some pretty classic theistic casuistry. Whatever cosmological models anybody comes up with, the theist will *always* claim that the naturalistic explanation is insufficient, because somewhere or another, explanations will always come to an end. But he’ll do so at a steep cost–and at the very least, the price is intelligibility.
You claim, for instance, that “the only way in which a temporal effect could originate from an eternal, changeless cause would seem to be if the cause is a personal agent who eternally chooses to create an effect in time.” What kind of an explanation is this? Has anyone ever seen an “eternal, changeless cause” before, let alone a changeless person who “eternally chooses”? (Once again, language on a very, very exotic holiday.) While common sense apparently has its work cut out for it when it comes to modern physics in general and cosmogony in particular, none of the things you or I might have trouble imagining–say, a “state/event cause” in an “eternal past” of some kind resulting in the “first moment” –is improved upon by positing entities or agents whose very definitions are incomprehensible.
Sorry to tell you, but any paradoxes or lacunae in cosmology are only “no problem” to theism by fiat. But then argument by fiat is what apologetics always boils down to.
Allan,
When you say that my arguing for a free agent who possesses an eternal will to create a temporal universe, “is just wishful thinking,” understand that this statement, as it currently stands, is merely your subjective opinion. Responding to an argument simply by calling it “just wishful thinking” is not a refutation of any sort; you’re going to have to do better than that. What reasons can you give that will demonstrate why my claim could not be taken as a perfectly coherent one?
On the other hand, there is no difficulty confronted in demonstrating the coherence of what I’ve proposed. On a relational view of time, God would exist changelessly and timelessly prior to the first event, creation, which marks the beginning of time. Furthermore, a personal God need not experience a temporal succession of mental states. He could apprehend the whole content of the temporal series in a single eternal intuition, just as I analogously apprehend all the parts of a car in a single sensory intuition. God could know the content of all knowledge — past, present, and future — in a simultaneous and eternal intuition. Therefore, in virtue of His omniscience, God’s choices are not events, since He neither deliberates temporally nor does His will move from a state of indecision to decision. He simply has free determinations of the will to execute certain actions, and any deliberation can only be said to be explanatorily, not temporally, prior to His decrees.
You’ll remember the dilemma confronted by any attempt to explain the origin of the universe; one must account for state/event causation. As I argued in my last post, such an account of the origin of the universe will work *only* for agent causation, for only a libertarian agent could interrupt the static reign of being of the First Cause sans the universe. It is for that reason that we should conceive of the First Cause as personal.
Unlike your “objection” to my proposal of agent causation where you didn’t even attempt a refutation, you do attempt to provide one in the form of a possible way that an infinitely-old quantum vacuum have spawned our universe. You write,
“It may be that an infinitely ancient vacuum (or whatever) has created an infinite number of universes. Ours is just one of an infinite series. Or any number of other possible explanations. To keep jumping to ‘deity’ as an explanation is simply not warranted.”
For starters, I never “jumped” to anything; I laid out and defended a case for how and why agent causation is imminently plausible as an explanation for state/event causation. But let all that pass. Let’s talk about your alleged explanation. I’ll ignore for the moment the incoherence of your positing the existence of a series of universes whose number is actually infinite. Let’s just suppose that were somehow coherent, and focus on the vacuum itself. Let me repeat, if at *every* point in the vacuum there is some positive probability — no matter how small — that it will undergo a fluctuation in a *finite* interval of time, then, in an *infinite* interval of time, *every* point will have spawned a universe. Besides the fact that all of them will have collided and coalesced — which does not in any way agree with observation — the fatal flaw lies in the incoherence of thinking that our universe could have somehow only been spawned only a finite time ago. Let’s sharpen this up a bit:
We know from the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics that any closed system will eventually come to be in a state of thermodynamic equilibrium, in which no useful energy will exist. We also know that if our universe continues in a state of expansion, eventually it will suffer a cold, dark, death, due to the fact that the distance between all matter will be astronomical. Now, tell me: if in some finite interval of time every point in the vacuum will spawn a universe, and that universe will expand to a state of heat death, why are we not *now* in a state of heat death? If all that will happen in some finite amount of time, then, given that there has been an infinite amount of time like you claim, why are we not already in a state of heat death?
This isn’t dilemma isn’t the product of some unfounded speculation. Look to the literature:
According to the paper [http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.3232],
“We stress that we have analyzed only one version of the Emergent Universe, with a simplified model. Nonetheless, we believe that the effect that this analysis points to may be rather generic. For example, consider alternative theories of gravity. The Emergent Universe has been studied extensively in theories such as Hoˇrava-Lifshitz, f(R), Loop Quantum Gravity7, and others (see, for in- stance, [8–11], respectively). There have also been several studies of the stability of the Einstein static universe in alternative theories (see [12], for example). However, in our framework we have, in a sense, decoupled gravity – it enters only when assessing the affect of the spreading wave-functional. Even in alternative theories in which the Einstein static universe is more stable than in standard General Relativity, we anticipate that once the wavefunctional has spread enough, the geometry must follow, and the spacetime becomes classically ill-defined as well as containing portions corresponding to singularities. Therefore, this seems like a generic (and perhaps expected, given our construction of the scenario) problem with such an eternal and precisely tuned inflationary scheme. . . .”
“. . . Models in which the field dynamics and material content are very different would require separate analysis, but may lead to a similar basic conclusion. For example, Graham et al. [14] construct static and oscillating universes with a specific non-perfect-fluid energy component that are stable against small perturbations. However, Mithani & Vilenkin [15] have shown that this model is unstable to decay via tunneling.
“Although we have analyzed only one version of the Emergent Universe, we would argue that our analysis is pointing to a more general problem: it is very difficult to devise a system – especially a quantum one – that does nothing “forever,” then evolves. A truly stationary or periodic quantum state, which would last forever, would never evolve, whereas one with any instability will not endure for an indefinite time.”
Moreover, this notion appears to be reinforced here [http://arxiv.org/abs/arXiv:1305.3836] as well:
“A number of authors emphasized that the beginning of inflation does not have to be the beginning of the universe. The ‘emergent universe’ scenario [11–15] assumes that the universe approaches a static or oscillating regime in the asymptotic past. In this case, the average expansion rate is Hav = 0, so the condition (1) is violated. The problem with this scenario is that static or oscillating universes are generally unstable with respect to quantum collapse and therefore could not have survived for an infinite time before the onset of inflation [16–18].”
Again, if the causal conditions (an unstable quantum vacuum, with every point in space of which having a positive probability that it will spawn a universe in any finite interval of time) sufficient to produce the effect (the heat death of our universe) are in place, why is not also the effect?
DEL says:
Yes, morals are objective descriptively, but I’m saying they are not objective prescriptively I don’t disagree that we can show what the morals of a population are, we just can show what moral statements are true. Like, we can describe someone’s favorite ice cream flavor as chocolate, but that doesn’t mean that chocolate is objectively the best flavor. Sean has written a lot on the issue of morality and its relation to science, and I agree with what I’ve read by him. For example, start here
Science, Morality, Possible Worlds, Scientism, and Ways of Knowing | Sean Carroll
Augustine1938 says:
Having seen about a couple dozen of his debates, I think it’s fair to say that deception is Craig’s stock in trade. Sure, he talked to Vilenkin because he was going to be debating Krauss and then Carroll. Good for him. Yet, it doesn’t make his argument that BGV shows a beginning from absolute nothing a fair interpretation of the paper. If you don’t like the word quotemine, it’s still just his own unfounded assertion, one that at least two authors of the papers disagree with him on. It’s just a bad argument.
That just begs the question of when science is no longer appropriate and metaphysics is. There is just no sound argument that metaphysics is necessary to fill the gaps in cosmology. Kalam is fundamentally circular, it contains unproven premises.
And it’s hard to take metaphysical arguments seriously from theologians. Especially when they want to argue that there ever was a state of absolute nothingness, as though that’s a self-evident proposition. Because it seems to me a much more solid metaphysical intuition that such a state is much more unlikely than that there always was something. Even the theologian will say there was always their God.
And again, it’s not like these cosmological arguments for god ever convinced hardly anyone to believe in a god. They are not hard to see through, unless you’re already a believer. They are post hoc rationalizations, following belief. Craig himself didn’t become Christian because of the same arguments he promotes, he says he became Christian because he met a nice Christian girl who inspired him to it.
sean summed up the debate with his quote from david lewis: “i do not know how to refute an incredulous stare.”
Lucy Harris: I have a difficulty assigning a truth value to moral statements. How does one demonsrate that such a statement is true or false? Consequently, I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I think that the most fundamental moral values are neither true nor false nor statements—they are just out there. (More precisely, in there, kind of biological software.)
Hi Sean,
First of all I enjoy all your work – as a scientist and then as a cosmologist.
I have a question for you: how you can take it? How you can debate with such (excuse me but I don’t know how else should I put it) irrational people?
You know there are moments when I think that even these guys (creationists) don’t believe the stupid things that they say they believe.
How you could even have a normal conversation with guys like W L Craig?
Please enlighten me! 🙂
Thanks Sean!
Thanks for talk about real things not … one’s imagination! 🙂
LUCY: “Yet, it doesn’t make his argument that BGV shows a beginning from absolute nothing a fair interpretation of the paper.”
Ok, I can find where Craig says the BGV shows that “the universe began to exist” (i.e., buttresses the second premise of the Kalam). I can’t find where he says that the BGV theorem in and of itself shows that this beginning was from absolute nothingness.
It is after taking the bare conclusion from BGV that the universe began to exist that he asks “what caused it to begin to exist?” He then attempts to answer this by drawing out the implications of the BGV theorem. If such implications are not falsifiable using the scientific method, they are metaphysical (whether those implications are being analyzed by either a physicist or a philosopher). Please let me know where I am wrong here–I am open to correction.
Everyone responding to my previous comment is proving my original point by contesting the possibility of “absolute nothingness.” You all want to denying that such a notion is impossible or inconceivable. In my opinion, that is a reasonable conclusion. So don’t think I’m getting down on you all for towing that line.
However, because I don’t find it conceivable that the quantum vacuum or field(s) (which are governed by a rich set of mathematical laws) can just exist eternally with no explanation at all, I’m inclined to believe that something brought those “things” into existence. The kind of something that could be a candidate for such an effect would have to be (at least) transcendent, timeless, immaterial, and enormously powerful.
While I admit God is probably not the only option as such a cause. Other indicators such as fine-tuning, objective moral law, and consciousness tip me in the direction of what is classically referred to as GOD.
While I agree that Krauss and Carroll do in fact explain what they mean when they say nothing, they do it in the fine print. That is to say they are happy to use the word “nothing” in pop-press, when they know the average schmo thinks they mean “absolutely nothing”. While such a tactic is provocative, is less than transparent.
Krauss and Carroll don’t believe that something can come from absolutely nothing. So, I don’t see why they need to piggyback on (or redefine) the term “nothing”. Just say what you mean…mainly “Absolute nothing is impossible, something has always existed, and the universe came from that something.”