Don Page is one of the world’s leading experts on theoretical gravitational physics and cosmology, as well as a previous guest-blogger around these parts. (There are more world experts in theoretical physics than there are people who have guest-blogged for me, so the latter category is arguably a greater honor.) He is also, somewhat unusually among cosmologists, an Evangelical Christian, and interested in the relationship between cosmology and religious belief.
Longtime readers may have noticed that I’m not very religious myself. But I’m always willing to engage with people with whom I disagree, if the conversation is substantive and proceeds in good faith. I may disagree with Don, but I’m always interested in what he has to say.
Recently Don watched the debate I had with William Lane Craig on “God and Cosmology.” I think these remarks from a devoted Christian who understands the cosmology very well will be of interest to people on either side of the debate.
Open letter to Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig:
I just ran across your debate at the 2014 Greer-Heard Forum, and greatly enjoyed listening to it. Since my own views are often a combination of one or the others of yours (though they also often differ from both of yours), I thought I would give some comments.
I tend to be skeptical of philosophical arguments for the existence of God, since I do not believe there are any that start with assumptions universally accepted. My own attempt at what I call the Optimal Argument for God (one, two, three, four), certainly makes assumptions that only a small fraction of people, and perhaps even only a small fraction of theists, believe in, such as my assumption that the world is the best possible. You know that well, Sean, from my provocative seminar at Caltech in November on “Cosmological Ontology and Epistemology” that included this argument at the end.
I mainly think philosophical arguments might be useful for motivating someone to think about theism in a new way and perhaps raise the prior probability someone might assign to theism. I do think that if one assigns theism not too low a prior probability, the historical evidence for the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus can lead to a posterior probability for theism (and for Jesus being the Son of God) being quite high. But if one thinks a priori that theism is extremely improbable, then the historical evidence for the Resurrection would be discounted and not lead to a high posterior probability for theism.
I tend to favor a Bayesian approach in which one assigns prior probabilities based on simplicity and then weights these by the likelihoods (the probabilities that different theories assign to our observations) to get, when the product is normalized by dividing by the sum of the products for all theories, the posterior probabilities for the theories. Of course, this is an idealized approach, since we don’t yet have _any_ plausible complete theory for the universe to calculate the conditional probability, given the theory, of any realistic observation.
For me, when I consider evidence from cosmology and physics, I find it remarkable that it seems consistent with all we know that the ultimate theory might be extremely simple and yet lead to sentient experiences such as ours. A Bayesian analysis with Occam’s razor to assign simpler theories higher prior probabilities would favor simpler theories, but the observations we do make preclude the simplest possible theories (such as the theory that nothing concrete exists, or the theory that all logically possible sentient experiences occur with equal probability, which would presumably make ours have zero probability in this theory if there are indeed an infinite number of logically possible sentient experiences). So it seems mysterious why the best theory of the universe (which we don’t have yet) may be extremely simple but yet not maximally simple. I don’t see that naturalism would explain this, though it could well accept it as a brute fact.
One might think that adding the hypothesis that the world (all that exists) includes God would make the theory for the entire world more complex, but it is not obvious that is the case, since it might be that God is even simpler than the universe, so that one would get a simpler explanation starting with God than starting with just the universe. But I agree with your point, Sean, that theism is not very well defined, since for a complete theory of a world that includes God, one would need to specify the nature of God.
For example, I have postulated that God loves mathematical elegance, as well as loving to create sentient beings, so something like this might explain both why the laws of physics, and the quantum state of the universe, and the rules for getting from those to the probabilities of observations, seem much simpler than they might have been, and why there are sentient experiences with a rather high degree of order. However, I admit there is a lot of logically possible variation on what God’s nature could be, so that it seems to me that at least we humans have to take that nature as a brute fact, analogous to the way naturalists would have to take the laws of physics and other aspects of the natural universe as brute facts. I don’t think either theism or naturalism solves this problem, so it seems to me rather a matter of faith which makes more progress toward solving it. That is, theism per se cannot deduce from purely a priori reasoning the full nature of God (e.g., when would He prefer to maintain elegant laws of physics, and when would He prefer to cure someone from cancer in a truly miraculous way that changes the laws of physics), and naturalism per se cannot deduce from purely a priori reasoning the full nature of the universe (e.g., what are the dynamical laws of physics, what are the boundary conditions, what are the rules for getting probabilities, etc.).
In view of these beliefs of mine, I am not convinced that most philosophical arguments for the existence of God are very persuasive. In particular, I am highly skeptical of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, which I shall quote here from one of your slides, Bill:
- If the universe began to exist, then there is a transcendent cause
which brought the universe into existence. - The universe began to exist.
- Therefore, there is a transcendent cause which brought the
universe into existence.
I do not believe that the first premise is metaphysically necessary, and I am also not at all sure that our universe had a beginning. (I do believe that the first premise is true in the actual world, since I do believe that God exists as a transcendent cause which brought the universe into existence, but I do not see that this premise is true in all logically possible worlds.)
I agree with you, Sean, that we learn our ideas of causation from the lawfulness of nature and from the directionality of the second law of thermodynamics that lead to the commonsense view that causes precede their effects (or occur at the same time, if Bill insists). But then we have learned that the laws of physics are CPT invariant (essentially the same in each direction of time), so in a fundamental sense the future determines the past just as much as the past determines the future. I agree that just from our experience of the one-way causation we observe within the universe, which is just a merely effective description and not fundamental, we cannot logically derive the conclusion that the entire universe has a cause, since the effective unidirectional causation we commonly experience is something just within the universe and need not be extrapolated to a putative cause for the universe as a whole.
However, since to me the totality of data, including the historical evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus, is most simply explained by postulating that there is a God who is the Creator of the universe, I do believe by faith that God is indeed the cause of the universe (and indeed the ultimate Cause and Determiner of everything concrete, that is, everything not logically necessary, other than Himself—and I do believe, like Richard Swinburne, that God is concrete and not logically necessary, the ultimate brute fact). I have a hunch that God created a universe with apparent unidirectional causation in order to give His creatures some dim picture of the true causation that He has in relation to the universe He has created. But I do not see any metaphysical necessity in this.
(I have a similar hunch that God created us with the illusion of libertarian free will as a picture of the true freedom that He has, though it might be that if God does only what is best and if there is a unique best, one could object that even God does not have libertarian free will, but in any case I would believe that it would be better for God to do what is best than to have any putative libertarian free will, for which I see little value. Yet another hunch I have is that it is actually sentient experiences rather than created individual `persons’ that are fundamental, but God created our experiences to include beliefs that we are individual persons to give us a dim image of Him as the one true Person, or Persons in the Trinitarian perspective. However, this would take us too far afield from my points here.)
On the issue of whether our universe had a beginning, besides not believing that this is at all relevant to the issue of whether or not God exists, I agreed almost entirely with Sean’s points rather than yours, Bill, on this issue. We simply do not know whether or not our universe had a beginning, but there are certainly models, such as Sean’s with Jennifer Chen (hep-th/0410270 and gr-qc/0505037), that do not have a beginning. I myself have also favored a bounce model in which there is something like a quantum superposition of semiclassical spacetimes (though I don’t really think quantum theory gives probabilities for histories, just for sentient experiences), in most of which the universe contracts from past infinite time and then has a bounce to expand forever. In as much as these spacetimes are approximately classical throughout, there is a time in each that goes from minus infinity to plus infinity.
In this model, as in Sean’s, the coarse-grained entropy has a minimum at or near the time when the spatial volume is minimized (at the bounce), so that entropy increases in both directions away from the bounce. At times well away from the bounce, there is a strong arrow of time, so that in those regions if one defines the direction of time as the direction in which entropy increases, it is rather as if there are two expanding universes both coming out from the bounce. But it is erroneous to say that the bounce is a true beginning of time, since the structure of spacetime there (at least if there is an approximately classical spacetime there) has timelike curves going from a proper time of minus infinity through the bounce (say at proper time zero) and then to proper time of plus infinity. That is, there are worldlines that go through the bounce and have no beginning there, so it seems rather artificial to say the universe began at the bounce that is in the middle just because it happens to be when the entropy is minimized. I think Sean made this point very well in the debate.
In other words, in this model there is a time coordinate t on the spacetime (say the proper time t of a suitable collection of worldlines, such as timelike geodesics that are orthogonal to the extremal hypersurface of minimal spatial volume at the bounce, where one sets 
) that goes from minus infinity to plus infinity with no beginning (and no end). Well away from the bounce, there is a different thermodynamic time 
(increasing with increasing entropy) that for 
increases with 
but for 
decreases with (so there becomes more positive as becomes more negative). For example, if one said that is only defined for 
, say, one might have something like
the positive square root of one less than the square of . This thermodynamic time only has real values when the absolute value of the coordinate time , that is, 
, is no smaller than 1, and then increases with .
One might say that begins (at 
) at 
(for one universe that has growing as decreases from -1 to minus infinity) and at 
(for another universe that has growing as increases from +1 to plus infinity). But since the spacetime exists for all real , with respect to that time arising from general relativity there is no beginning and no end of this universe.
Bill, I think you also objected to a model like this by saying that it violates the second law (presumably in the sense that the coarse-grained entropy does not increase monotonically with for all real ). But if we exist for 
(or for 
; there would be no change to the overall behavior if were replaced with 
, since the laws are CPT invariant), then we would be in a region where the second law is observed to hold, with coarse-grained entropy increasing with 
(or with 
if ). A viable bounce model would have it so that it would be very difficult or impossible for us directly to observe the bounce region where the second law does not apply, so our observations would be in accord with the second law even though it does not apply for the entire universe. I think I objected to both of your probability estimates for various things regarding fine tuning. Probabilities depend on the theory or model, so without a definite model, one cannot claim that the probability for some feature like fine tuning is small. It was correct to list me among the people believing in fine tuning in the sense that I do believe that there are parameters that naively are far different from what one might expect (such as the cosmological constant), but I agreed with the sentiment of the woman questioner that there are not really probabilities in the absence of a model. Bill, you referred to using some “non-standard” probabilities, as if there is just one standard. But there isn’t. As Sean noted, there are models giving high probabilities for Boltzmann brain observations (which I think count strongly against such models) and other models giving low probabilities for them (which on this regard fits our ordered observations statistically). We don’t yet know the best model for avoiding Boltzmann brain domination (and, Sean, you know that I am skeptical of your recent ingenious model), though just because I am skeptical of this particular model does not imply that I believe that the problem is insoluble or gives evidence against a multiverse; in any case it seems also to be a problem that needs to be dealt with even in just single-universe models.
Sean, at one point your referred to some naive estimate of the very low probability of the flatness of the universe, but then you said that we now know the probability of flatness is very near unity. This is indeed true, as Stephen Hawking and I showed long ago (“How Probable Is Inflation?” Nuclear Physics B298, 789-809, 1988) when we used the canonical measure for classical universes, but one could get other probabilities by using other measures from other models.
In summary, I think the evidence from fine tuning is ambiguous, since the probabilities depend on the models. Whether or not the universe had a beginning also is ambiguous, and furthermore I don’t see that it has any relevance to the question of whether or not God exists, since the first premise of the Kalam cosmological argument is highly dubious metaphysically, depending on contingent intuitions we have developed from living in a universe with relatively simple laws of physics and with a strong thermodynamic arrow of time.
Nevertheless, in view of all the evidence, including both the elegance of the laws of physics, the existence of orderly sentient experiences, and the historical evidence, I do believe that God exists and think the world is actually simpler if it contains God than it would have been without God. So I do not agree with you, Sean, that naturalism is simpler than theism, though I can appreciate how you might view it that way.
Best wishes,
Don
Don
I just read through my last reply to you, not responded to as yet, and owe you a further explanation/correction at one point.
“You also said:
“I would believe that platonic abstractions, such as mathematical theorems, can be truths within the abstract platonic realm, but if one takes `final truth’ to apply only to the concrete realm of the world, then I think no abstract platonic truth can imply any concrete truth.”
I agree , but that was not my intended meaning for final truth. I don’t see this concrete world as an embodiment of absolute truth, maybe not even in the logical/mathematical sense. ”
That is garbled and compressed. I think I lost my train of thought while trying to remember HTML! What I meant to say is that ‘final truth’ for me is not in the proposition that it implies a physical manifestation, rather that it is immutable for absolutely everything. Therefore this world/cosmos embodies/obeys platonic abstractions, though perhaps it does not embody all the math(s) which could be considered components of that category of abstractions. And those abstractions themselves I am inclined at the minute not to see as finally immutable anyway, as I have said. Regardless of that, that they are almost certainly incomplete is obvious.
Simon,
You wrote:
“To be fair, I do not know what Krauss says about philosophical nothing vs physical nothing (or anything else he said or wrote firsthand).”
Therefore, with respect, I don’t see why you are still contending the subject.
To paraphrase what has been acknowledged in above comments though– Krauss doesn’t care as much about the philosophical “nothing” but, when addressing “nothing,” generally is speaking to the physical “nothing.” I don’t see how this would then be much a relevant topic for you to continue with (and if you did, I would suggest grab his book first).
With all due respect (), in terms of sheer probabilities, it is far more likely that I have simply won this debate with Don Page than any of you guys winning the lottery in the next 3 weeks.
Given that Christianity is a religion that considers itself to be the only right one, such a statement is both necessary and appropriate. I would be glad to clarify why.
I was reading the Vakkali Sutta just earlier today after a post by another person on the Buddhist Debate Group. In every possible way, the Buddha seems like a modern, normal type of a guy (http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn22/sn22.087x.wlsh.html). Christ – not so much. This is based on a very sympathetic reading of the Bible. About as sympathetic as is possible.
The main reason for this is that experiments can be designed with a power so high with even 40 to 50 observations can yield. In less than the time it took for me to read the comments posted since I posted last (set C1), I have been able to carry out experiments which prove quite conclusively that Jesus’ claim of walking on water was false.
Given this fantastic result, I would encourage other people to also abandon the Christian faith since it would be more time optimal for them to do so than to read this debate. Set C1 is smaller than the complete set of comments in this post. Furthermore, I am a very fast reader, and unless you are able to read as fast me, the chances are that it would save you time to simply run the experiments for yourself and verify that objects heavier than water cannot float.
* even 40 to 50 observations can yield results that are highly, highly unlikely to be violated.
Note that in this time, I include not only the time to read the comments (t1) but also the time taken for people to make their posts (t2). This discussion has run into several weeks now. “t1 + t2” is of the order of several weeks, considerably more time than it would take to simply run the experiments.
Josh
Of course I was wrong to state that I had not read Krauss directly; I read his New Yorker article link provided by TY. I have not read any of his books. Merely opining that Krauss attempted to make a lot of atheistic mileage in the article, based on data that looks erroneous a few months later, and by using questionable philosophical precepts. (He used the tentative polarization data to suggest that we were starting to penetrate empirically much further back in cosmological big bang time). I stand by that. Even if he had succeeded, his reductionism would have been very far from final. Seems to me the only finally successful outcome of materialist reductionism is ‘we got to philosophical, conceptual, theological, regular, mall-query, nothing. That won’t happen. I agree though that he has, according to Aron Wall, and unavoidably, separated his three different physical ‘nothings’ from his theological/philosophical nothing. So he has proven ‘nothing ‘ (philosophical/theological/regular variety) about that ‘nothing ‘ (same variety) . I also stand by that unless Aron Wall is misrepresenting Krauss’ position in his blog at http://www.wall.org/~aron/blog/a-universe-from-nothing/
which I doubt.
Josh
The reason I’m continuing with the different ideas of ‘nothing’ is because I want to understand, or at least garner opinions, on the relationship between God and platonic truth as held by theists of a scientific/philosophical disposition. I guess throwing spanners at Krauss is an unnecessary part of that process, but I quite enjoyed it, and it’s mileage for the theists. Sorry.
Simon,
Why fret over a single quote by a single atheist unless it contributes something new and productive to the larger conversation? Krauss was likely counting some chickens before they hatch there, but that has little bearing on the larger conversation or the main points discussed here.
Moreover, if you DID still want to talk about Krauss’s views on “nothing,” you owe the civil courtesy of actually reading his book on it before pursuing judgements. Basing arguments off of a review is in poor taste, even more so as the review you cite of Aron Wall’s wherein he acknowledges that he also has not even read the book (at the end of the article) and was basing arguments off of a short talk and another review. Primary sources are great things ya’know!
Having read the book myself, I would argue that Krauss was simply trying to get across the point that “a universe from [any kind of] nothing” is getting less and less outlandish in the context of modern physics, but even if I’m wrong on that in my reading, Krauss is no high priest of atheism despite what the media might make it appear (though I am thankful for his activism).
If you really are interested in the platonic truths you’re talking about (I’m not sure what you mean there?) stick to those arguments.
Sorry if that sounded scathing by the way (it wasn’t intended), I’m just trying to push us away from what can easily be a black-hole of quote-mining apparent authority figures and the endless reviews/re-reviews of people thinking that Krauss’s book should have talked about their own preferred view of nothing. I think we should be far more interested in specific arguments themselves and only reference such texts as they advance the discussion.
Josh
Platonic truth includes mathematics, as concepts not requiring a concrete realization. Wiki ‘Platonism’ if interested.
The Krauss discussion has a bearing on Platonism, because he is a naturalistic reductionist and reducing the physics of the cosmos completely to one set of platonic truths, i.e. some mathematics covering absolutely all physical contexts in our cosmos, would be a very significant point on the road to naturalistic reductionism. Krauss’ ‘nothings’ are all mathematical, and his ‘nothing #3′ is an attempt to get to this reductionist point. I can’t see any further stage other than getting to absolute, philosophical, nothing, which won’t happen.
I was also letting TY and anyone else interested know that Krauss’ data for the New Yorker article he referred to was out of date. This article is a couple of years after the Aron Wall post about the ‘nothing’ book. I cannot, as you say, comment on the overall nature of this book.
Simon,
I understand Platonic ideals; I just didn’t see the link you were wanting to draw. Material reductionists, by the way, are probably not going to care very much about such an absolute, philosophical nothing. Arguably they will even find it a nonsense concept. If you are concerned with the absolute, philosophical nothing, you’re probably better off reading the philosophers, though if you want some discussion on the idea that we shouldn’t even care about such a “nothing,” the material reductionists might have something to say about that.
Personally, I think the whole topic is indeed “Much Ado About Nothing.” There’s no reason to assume that the philosophical “nothing” was the antecedent or default state, matter of even being possible, and we obviously have found no example of it.
Much more interesting to discuss is “What does exist?” and “Why [this] rather than [that]?”.
Josh
To me the interesting thing is that one can conceive of ‘nothing’ and know full well that the Krauss ‘nothings’ are ‘nothing’ of the sort, as Kashyap suggested.
As Kashyap noted, if the professor had been direct upfront and declared his nothing was plain physical nothing, who would have bought his book?. So in this sense I agree with Josh that it’s much ado about nothing that backfired royally on Professor K. But in another sense, the ado was worthwhile (that’s Simon’s point). At least, readers of this post, especially those who bought the book, now have an accurate understanding of the “nothing”, and that in itself is a plus. Armed with this knowledge, do you think those who hadn’t bought the book and wanted to would still buy it? Or would those who wanted to read the book would still want to? Maybe, for other parts of the book but not for a theory that has the potential of radically reshaping physics.
All,
I guess I just thought all this was covered a good few comments ago…
Carry on, and maybe I’ll catch up with what’s intended.
For the record:
“From JimV’s comment, it’s fair to say that some non-theists (the overwhelming majority?) believe the universe is inexplicable.”
That is not what I said. For example, “I don’t know what dark matter is made of” or “I don’t know of any compelling explanations for what dark matter is made of” does not mean dark matter is (completely and forever) inexplicable or that some atheists believe that dark matter is inexplicable. Not having some knowledge or belief is not the same as believing the knowledge does not exist or believing the negative of the belief. Zero does not equal -1. Another example of this sort of misinterpretation is to claim that non-theism is different than atheism (a shorter way of writing non-theism, using standard etymology where a- means without or lacking, as in asymmetry).
What I did say means I don’t know any compelling explanation for the origin (if there was one) of quantum mechanics. As I have said many times before, as for the god-hypothesis being an explanation – it isn’t, because it lacks any explanatory details or scientific verification. (E.g., why did god invent quantum mechanics, when did it invent it, what were things like before then, how did it implement it?) You might just as well say it happened and you don’t know why or how, although “god did it” is shorter. “Why not?” is even shorter, but still not an explanation in my sense of the word.
Re: Dr. Krauss’s book, “A Universe from Nothing”
I read Dr. Krauss’s book, and learned something from it. I expected, from my layman’s knowledge of science, that it would present evidence for universes forming from quantum mechanical principles plus inflation, i.e., our current scientific consensus of natural law, which is what I think it did; with the further interesting idea that no net energy is required, nor seems to be present in our universe. That is what the title conveyed to me. Another way of saying it might be that given the natural laws as our best minds have conceived them from empirical evidence, there need be nothing further of a miraculous nature required to produce a universe like our own (anticipating another misunderstanding, one might argue that specific details might be statistically unlikely somehow but not that they are impossible). (Too long for a book title, I like Dr. Krauss’s better.) I was not expecting it to be a book of philosophy, wouldn’t have bought it if I had, and would have felt cheated if it had turned out to be about philosophy rather than tangible things.
As an experiment, I am now going to look at the reviews at Amazon and estimate how many reviewers felt cheated by the title. Currently, there are 808 reviews (reviews on Amazon are solicited and accepted by Amazon from those who have bought the item from Amazon). Of those, 55% gave it 5 out of 5 stars, 73% gave it 4 or 5 stars, and 85% gave it 3, 4, or 5 stars. If this sample is representative (I myself did not write a review when solicited), most people who bought the book did not feel the title was misleading. No doubt many people who did not buy the book might claim the title is misleading but since they did not buy the book they have no grounds for feeling cheated.
Since we are only repeating ourselves at this point I have a rule to only check comments here once or twice a week, hence the delay in this response. I would not like to be part of the cause of these comments reaching infinite redundancy, creating a singularity which would then create a new universe (out of nothing much).
Which reminds me to thank Josh and Richard. “Much ado about nothing” was another good phrase from Josh, and I thought Richard’s example of the Bayesian analysis of the child’s story, while not the only argument of this nature on this thread, was the best and most concrete one. It also raised the issue of how one weighs the possibility of unverified facts being made-up or mistaken, given the story-telling/exaggerating nature of humanity, and the number of examples from recent news stories of first reports being mistaken – which in a mostly oral society would become traditional before being recorded into history.
JimV said
“It also raised the issue of how one weighs the possibility of unverified facts being made-up or mistaken, given the story-telling/exaggerating nature of humanity, and the number of examples from recent news stories of first reports being mistaken – which in a mostly oral society would become traditional before being recorded into history.”
I take the point that to base a worldview on an ancient story, simply taking it at face value, with no other factors considered, would probably be a little crazy. But I still say that the hole in history fits the canonical story. Also the cohesion between canonical Jesus and the Bible as a whole, and its fit with what I see in humanity is a big factor. Some really don’t even begin to see this (I think of the late Christopher Hitchens and snippets from a book of his I read recently. He did not seem aware of any basic theology at all on things like law versus grace, or the Sinai covenant versus the New Covenant. This is common with atheists. They are often so dismissive of theology they are totally blind to the ignorance of some of their statements.)
Someone said ‘either Jesus was God or his scriptwriter was’. So how the message came is not so important; its cohesion is the issue. It is like error correction performed on a transmission of unknown error rate.
On people like Krauss, E.A. Burtt said that it was a mistake to ‘make a metaphysics out of your method’. Attempting to do so I see as following from our pursuit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil from Genesis 3. Science is one part of the human systems of thought that attempt to delineate good and right, evil and wrong. Our systems of thought certainly have their uses in context, but ultimately produce ‘babel’ or confusion. Conversely, inherent in the word ‘metaphysics’ is the concept of ‘beyond’.
TY asked (May 21, 2015 at 7:12 pm) how I would “restructure the syllogism to make the argument good”:
1. Every contingent being or fact must have a cause or explanation.
2. Such causes cannot run into an infinite regress.
3. Consequently, there must be a First Cause.
4. Obviously, the First Cause must itself be uncaused.
5. This means that it must be a necessary rather than a contingent being (because of (1). This necessary being is what is meant by God.
I must admit that I do not see Premises 1 and 2 as very plausible unless one takes the view that what is necessary is what exists in the subset of broadly logically possible worlds that is just the subset with the actual world as the single member. Then everything in the actual world would be viewed as `necessary’ (maybe saying it is `actually necessary’), in which case nothing would be contingent in the philosophical sense of being neither necessary or impossible (taking `impossible’ to be what does not occur in the actual world).
Then Premise 1 would be vacuously true, as there would be no contingent beings or facts, so with no causes for needed for them one would also avoid violating Premise 2. Premise 3 would not really be a consequence, since there would not need for there to be any causes, but one could still postulate that there is a First Cause, as I might say God is. One could take the definition of a First Cause to be such that Premise 4 holds. I think Premise 5 would then follow, though one might debate as to whether “This necessary being is what is meant by God.”
Another comment I have on such arguments is that even if one uses some different notion of `necessary,’ if all of God is necessary, it would seem to me that that should include His creative activity, so I would have thought all of creation would also be necessary. One might object that it might be possible for God to have created something else instead, but then this aspect of God, or of God’s choice, would not seem to be necessary, so then it is not clear to me that the entirety of God is necessary.
I quoted Burtt because TY and myself have to own up to having a private conversation by e-mail, and he pointed out a response to Krauss that quoted Burtt. Perhaps stating the obvious to commenters here, the word ‘metaphysics’ does imply limitations in physics, and that is what we are seeing with this ‘nothing’ business.
We have ‘apparatus’ or ‘means’ in our humanity to gain insights into external reality through various paradigms. The paradigms, such as science, mathematics, logic, history, physiology, artistic and poetic expression, even emotional response such as pleasure, peace and happiness, and intuition and attraction, are very broad in terms of mode of operation and of ‘data set’.
I am convinced personally that God speaks through all of them, but not completely through any one of them. I don’t think the scientific method, of primary concern here, especially as practiced by us mortal humans (with our, for me, God-defined limitations), is sufficient in isolation to show us all we can know about origins (and God). It is merely one (powerful) way of examining the ‘data set’ of creation and our consciousness.
Josh, you made several comments (May 21, 2015 at 7:36 pm) that I wanted to comment on, but my conference on the Black Hole Information Loss Paradox here in Kyoto last week and this week have kept me very busy, plus going for a 25-30 km hike up Mt. Hiei and back to my lodging near Kyoto University this past Saturday.
You asked, “do you think that, if god exists, his existence should be objectively convincing? And also, would you personally want to ascribe to such a tremendous ontological claim if he wasn’t objectively convincing?”
I think we have to deal with the evidence we have. The evidence that I have, combined with my prior probabilities, make the existence of God convincing to me, though I can see that the evidence that others have, combined with their priors, may not make it convincing to them. In this way I would recognize that the evidence is not universally objectively convincing.
It seems to me that both theism and atheism are tremendous ontological claims, neither objectively convincing to everyone. Maybe one could argue that agnosticism would be the more honest approach, but if I were to act in an agnostic way about everything I am not absolutely certain about (e.g., whether to plan for a tomorrow that I cannot prove will come), I would be paralyzed and not do anything. So I choose to make what I think is the best choice based on the strong but uncertain evidence I have for the existence of God and for Jesus Christ as His Son. I would miss out on many blessings of following Jesus if I let the fraction of doubt that I do have paralyze me from making a decision to follow Him.
On the “frequentist approach by borrowing from Spinoza’s philosophy— recognizing that there’s only one way for “nothing” to be, and so the probability of it being actualized against an infinite number of “somethings” is infinitely small,” I would say this is contrary to Occam’s razor of assigning the highest prior probabilities to the simplest hypotheses. “Nothing” seems to be the simplest possible hypothesis, so I would assign it a prior probability of 1/2, but of course it does not fit observations at all, so its posterior probability is zero.
Josh, you also noted, “Given our current tools of logic, the “truth” must be either an infinite regress, circular, or a brute fact(s).” I haven’t thought deeply whether these are the only options, but among them I would think that the truth is a set of brute facts. I personally take God to be the ultimate Brute Fact, the uncaused Cause of all else that is concrete, by which I mean not broadly logically necessary.
Don
Seems most formal definitions of mathematical platonism, e.g.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism-mathematics/
include a reference to independance, i.e. no intelligent agents. So you are right, mathematics is independent (and since it is also abstract, presumably immutable) by definition, based on the term we have used.
I would say that this independence is certainly true for us as intelligent agents, but it may not be for God. My tentative position would be described formally, according to the Stanford article, as a form of anti-nominalism for mathematics, i.e. it is real and abstract but not independent. Interestingly, there are several forms of this philosophy for mathematics.
Don,
I wanted to clear away some potential semantic pitfalls before responding:
1) When I say “objectively convincing” I mean “given the best data available to us currently, all individuals would come to said conclusion upon judging that data if acting as rationally and honestly as possible.” Of course we have no way of proving something like this to be true, but by posing it this way I can better get at the level of certainty you think is needed. Of course, I would agree that absolute certainty is unnecessary, thus I pose it as convincing. Another way you might read it is “Would you expect it necessary that there be enough solid evidence to convince all individuals on Earth so long as they acted rationally and honestly to their best measure?”.
2) You said that “It seems to me that both theism and atheism are tremendous ontological claims, neither objectively convincing to everyone.” In pop culture these days, “atheism” as a word has tended to be disjointed from the otherwise positive, strong ontological claim that “there are no gods.” This is evident even in the more strident atheists such as Dawkins. Agnosticism is increasingly being taken as less a stance of neutrality, and more an ultimate inability to have knowledge either way. Of course people waffle on these terms (see the wikipedia pages for added confusion!), but it’s probably best to discuss atheism as simply “a lack of belief in god” as many ascribe it. There’s no positive claim in this of course, and thus it is a tougher nut for the theist to crack. Such atheists don’t demand ultimate certainty to sway their views either (at least not necessarily), but rather just don’t see a convincing reason to.
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That semantics rant done, I’d like you to re-adress my question on whether you expect the big ontological claim of theism to be objectively convincing or not if you would. I think your current response, now given the clarified semantics, would need be recast since we need not worry about qualms over absolute certainty and we are assuming a hypothetical where everyone has access to the utmost of evidence.
Also, I wanted to comment on where you said “I would say this is contrary to Occam’s razor of assigning the highest prior probabilities to the simplest hypotheses….“Nothing” seems to be the simplest possible hypothesis.” This is extending the razor for more than its viable use. Occam’s is meant as a means to choose between competing hypothesis when they both make equal predictions. In this case, a philosophical “nothing” makes no predictions nor does it help explain our current universe, so Occam’s doesn’t work. It’s tempting to apply Occam’s universally, but it’s really only effective when you have multiple theories that each explain the data.
Also, I would agree that, were god true, he would likely be a brute fact. He would seem, however, to be a pretty big and complicated brute fact. I personally hope for a simpler one, but of course I might be quite disappointed. If you’re interested in reading more about the unfortunate logical options we have for whatever ultimate truth(s) may be, I might suggest reading up on the “Münchhausen trilemma”. Very interesting, infuriating stuff.
As always, enjoy the workshop. Firewalls, black holes, and such have been interesting reads for me, so I would count yourself in a privileged profession and trip!
Don
Trusting your workshop is productive, and hoping you find time and inclination to respond. I have written rather a lot above, some is a bit repetitive. At least it has helped me clarify my thoughts. I finally read William Lane Craig on platonic mathematical objects and their challenge to divine aseity here: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/god-and-the-platonic-host
This may be one you have already cited.
Good stuff. I like to see C.S. Lewis praised. But I can’t agree that mathematics is figurative, at least not in the exact same sense as figurative language. The latter uses inconsistent ‘figures of speech’ and so lacks precision, immutability and consistency, all things mathematics has like little to nothing else.
Craig, like me, obviously sees the need to negate independent Platonic entities, but also plays down the ‘realist’ option of creation of ‘real, abstract facts’ by God; certainly as far as mathematics is concerned. I do not fully understand the difference in his thinking between ‘real abstract facts’ and ‘non-real figurative entities’. He says that in order to create properties, and presumably by extension conceptual constructs like mathematics, God must already posses them, and there is therefore a circularity in the logic. This seems to rule out this approach for Craig. However some properties, Biblically speaking, are clearly inherent in God, rather than created by him, such as love (1 John 4v8). God is love. He extends that property, in part, by creation of beings carrying a vestige of it (Luke 11v13). So it seems to be possible for God to confer an abstract concept or property he already possesses. The properties are inherent in God and are extended from him rather than created. This is a variant on the ‘who created God?’ question. Who created God’s properties? Answer: ‘No-one. They are inherent in God and we observe them because he extended them to us.’ This view seems to violate neither ‘creation from nothing’ or God as ‘uncaused cause’.
So maybe logic and mathematics are attributes of God, and he has extended part of them to us, illustrating them in physics and the creation.
I had a related brainstorm. Since euclidean geometry, the one we experience, is only one of several possible geometries, then maybe our total system of mathematics is only one of several total mathematics-type systems, each with internal cohesion. Or is it too much caffeine?
Another thought. We have a word ‘ineffable’. Its existence tells us that words have a limit in expressing things. Is there a mathematical equivalent, for us at least?
Josh comments on May 26, 2015 at 7:41 am: “In pop culture these days, “atheism” as a word has tended to be disjointed from the otherwise positive, strong ontological claim that “there are no gods.” This is evident even in the more strident atheists such as Dawkins. Agnosticism is increasingly being taken as less a stance of neutrality, and more an ultimate inability to have knowledge either way.”
In a debate with the Archbishop of Canterbury in February 2012, Dawkins told the Church of England head that he prefers to call himself an agnostic rather than an atheist. He said he cannot be sure God does not exist. Enjoy this video (part of an hour + long debate: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9102740/Richard-Dawkins-I-cant-be-sure-God-does-not-exist.html. (Make yourself a pot of tea if you’re going to watch the whole debate.)
Dawkins has a 7-point scale: 0 = sure God does not exist. 7 = not sure God does not exist. He says he’s not the 50-50 type agnostic and he’s an agnostic 6 (or 6.999999). But even if only in the limit, Dawkins is a 7, it is still reasonable to ask what is it (specifically) that gives pause for caution? What key considerations make the Dawkins of the world feel more comfortable as “skeptics” rather than an “atheists”? Or is Dawkins just a good hedger?
Josh, just curious as you mentioned Dawkins: on which point of the 7-point scale do you fall?
Those last two points are a bit esoteric. Maybe need another medication other than caffeine. Poor Don. Sorry. And they work hard in Japan.
TY,
You bring up an excellent example of the semantic quandaries I was mentioning. So Dawkins is heralded as one of the world’s “leading” (popular) atheists, and yet he would prefer to be labelled as agnostic. And yet he has argued for the philosophy behind the slang (and unnecessarily derogatory) term of “militant atheism.” And yet, per definitions, these are not mutually exclusive (you can, of course, be an “agnostic atheist”). And yet he also would prefer that none of these labels be necessary or applied at all!
The problem is that these terms have been evolving, likely due to the increase in adherents and dealing with the baggage associated with the terms. We now have strong atheism (ontologically claiming there are no gods), weak atheism (“I have no sufficient cause to believe in god”), apatheism (not caring), ignosticism (thinking the question is a bit meaningless due to a lack of defining “god”), strong agnosticism (we can not know whether god exists or not, period), weak agnosticism (“I don’t know whether god exists or not, but I could conceivably know”), antitheism (antagonistic towards belief in god), nontheism (an intended catch-all term)……….. You get the point.
Keeping up with the current definitions in vogue is a bit of a pain, and you can easily catch popular atheists waffling about on them. Right now, if we’re including Dawkins and some others as atheists though culturally, then it’s a reasonably inclusive term, though we’ll see how long that lasts.
Regardless though, the main arguments afoot are not ontological claims that “there are no god(s)” (at least not when you dissect them far enough), and I feel theists would have an easier time dealing with such a bold claim. Much more tough to deal with is someone who’s just not convinced by the evidence (of which I would anecdotally argue is most of us).
As for why Dawkins is not sure, well I don’t see why you would expect him to be? I’m not certain that triceratops do not still exist within the South American tropical forests. I’m pretty darn certain they don’t, but not completely. Same deal as far as I understand you. If it’s really just the specifics of that uncertainty that interest you, it will first be the fact that the individual can not personally examine all possibilities with limited resources in limited time. Beyond that, I think you’re just running into deep and immensely subjective waters.
As for answering your question of Dawkin’s scale, it would depend entirely on what god we’re talking about. If I took the scale at face-value, I’d probably register somewhere between a 6 and 6.9 or so against the Christian god (though really you’d need to even define which “Christian” god it is as there’s such differing dogma). If we broadened it to any god at all, my numbers would lower but I don’t know how much. Granted this scale stuff is all my quick, uncritical answer.
@Somite:
How likely would you say it is…in your option? (More than 50%, apparently.)