Let’s conclude our examination of William Lane Craig’s Kalam Cosmological Argument (part 1 here). His version of the argument has two premises and a conclusion:

1 Whatever begins to exist has a cause.

2 The universe began to exist.

Conclusion: Therefore, the universe has a cause.

Premise 1 sounds like common sense until you realize that William Lane Craig (I’ll call him WLC) imagines a loophole for his god. Reinterpret premise 1 with this agenda, and you see he is talking about:

• a supernatural creation (he provides no examples of a supernatural anything),
• out of nothing (he provides no examples of creation out of nothing),
• before time (which didn’t yet exist before the universe came to be)
• with “begins to exist” as a special-pleading caveat to carve out a God-shaped exception
• to the “everything has a cause” rule, which is false.

Seen this way, premise 1 loses all common-sense appeal and the Kalam argument fails, but let’s flog this dead horse and continue.

Second premise: The universe began to exist

WLC defends the second premise this way:

Let’s consider the second law of thermodynamics. It tells us the universe is slowly running out of usable energy… and that’s the point.

If the universe had been here forever, it would have run out of usable energy by now. The second law points us to a universe that has a definite beginning.

 6. The second law of thermodynamics is no ally to the apologist.

Unlike his frequent metaphysical handwavings, WLC makes a plausible argument here. If the universe is like a clock that’s running down, it can’t have been running forever.

But does WLC really want to argue that things always run down, so therefore everything must have a beginning? If so, then this must apply to God as well. (Yes, of course I know that WLC will say that God is an exception. But then I will demand evidence that such a god exists.)

It turns out that a clock is a poor analogy to the universe. The zero-energy universe theory says that if you convert everything to energy, matter and light are positive energy but gravity is negative energy. Add it all together, and the sum is zero—the universe has zero net matter and energy. Alexander Vilenkin, a cosmologist who WLC often cites, explains it this way: “The gravitational energy, which is always negative, exactly compensates the positive energy of matter, so the energy of a closed universe is always zero” (source: video @24:00). Though it seems like cheating, it takes no matter or energy to create a universe.

WLC might say that the zero-energy universe theory might be overturned with new evidence. True, but then his argument has become “The second law of thermodynamics might argue for a beginning,” which isn’t much of an argument.

7. The universe began . . . in its present form.

We don’t know what preceded or caused the Big Bang. The universe might’ve come from nothing, or it might be a rearrangement of material from another universe. (This point and point 6 may not coexist as objections.)

8. Response to Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin.

WLC frequently cites the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem (BGV) to argue for a beginning to the universe and, if you want to posit a multiverse, a beginning for that, too.

He’s such a fan that he has the following quote by Vilenkin on several pages at his web site:

It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning. (Alexander Vilenkin, Many Worlds in One [2007], p.176)

That’s powerful evidence for WLC, but if he’s such a fan, I wonder why he ignores this from Vilenkin on the very next page:

Theologians have often welcomed any evidence for the beginning of the universe, regarding it as evidence for the existence of God. . . . So what do we make of a proof that the beginning is unavoidable? Is it a proof of the existence of God? This view would be far too simplistic. Anyone who attempts to understand the origin of the universe should be prepared to address its logical paradoxes. In this regard, the theorem that I proved with my colleagues does not give much of an advantage to the theologian over the scientist.

Oops—it looks like WLC wants to pick and choose his evidence and hope that we don’t notice. (We’ll soon see that the cosmologists he cites aren’t the allies he imagines.)

Cosmologist Vic Stenger saw limitations to BGV:

I asked Vilenkin personally if his theorem required a beginning. His e-mail reply: “No. But it proves that the expansion of the universe must have had a beginning. You can evade the theorem by postulating that the universe was contracting prior to some time.” This is exactly what a number of existing models for the uncreated origin of our universe do.

In Sean Carroll’s debate with WLC (my summary here), he made clear that BGV starts with assumptions. Discard those assumptions, and the rules are different and eternality is possible. Carroll said:

BGV . . . is certainly interesting and important, because it helps us understand where classical General Relativity breaks down, but it doesn’t help us decide what to do when it breaks down. Surely there’s no need to throw up our hands and declare that this puzzle can’t be resolved within a materialist framework. (Quoted in Vic Stenger, The Fallacy of Fine Tuning, p. 130.)

In the debate, Carroll mentioned that there are over a dozen plausible models for the universe, including eternal ones.

WLC says he’s BFFs with B, G, and V, but then these guys go off and say things that WLC can’t possibly agree with. He should rethink who his allies are.

• Vilenkin says that the universe can have no cause.
• Vilenkin argues for the multiverse, which defeats WLC’s fine-tuning argument.
• Alan Guth says, “It looks to me that probably the universe had a beginning, but I would not want to place a large bet on the issue.”
• WLC likes to channel The Sound of Music and declare, “Nothing comes from nothing; nothing ever could.” But Guth says, “Conceivably, everything can be created from nothing. And ‘everything’ might include a lot more than what we can see. In the context of inflationary cosmology, it is fair to say that the universe is the ultimate free lunch.”
• And if WLC’s interpretation is compelling, I await the conversion to Christianity of his allies Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin.

Though I’m open to disconfirming evidence, it seems that WLC simply cherry-picks his evidence to cobble together a science-y argument, then stamps it with his two doctorates. He has no interest in honestly following the evidence.

He also enjoys mocking the pathetic plebes from his ivory tower. Take this defense of Kalam’s first premise:

I think the first premise that whatever begins to exist has a cause is virtually undeniable for any sincere seeker after truth. . . . It’s silly then when popularizers say things like, “Nothingness is unstable to quantum fluctuations” or “the universe tunneled into being out of nothing.” (Source: video @22:55)

WLC has no argument here, just derision. He’s not a quantum physicist, and yet he cheerfully trash-talks those who are. Note also that WLC dismisses the “popularizers,” who include the very cosmologists he cites as allies.

9. The Big Bang isn’t a beginning

Yes, the Big Bang happened, but no, that wasn’t a beginning. This is a subtle point, but it’s worth making: the Big Bang takes us back 13.8 billion years in time, but that’s not the same thing as a beginning. The Big Bang is the point before which cosmologists can’t see.

WLC might ask, “But if God didn’t create the universe, then how did it come to be?” Science is the discipline that answers questions, not religion, and science may need to say that it doesn’t know. WLC offers an argument without evidence and imagines that this forces an answer.

WLC has an answer that he’s bursting to offer, but insisting that God did it is no answer at all because it comes without evidence. Science saying that the origin of the universe is one of its unanswered questions isn’t embarrassing when there’s insufficient evidence to make a conclusion.

It’s like the world created by Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky.” Show us that toves and borogoves exist, and then we can figure out what their properties are. WLC needs to show us first that God exists. Only then can we puzzle over his properties (outside of time, omniscient, supernatural, whatever). Until then, he’s just imagining a Jabberwocky universe without evidence.

10. God has an odd relationship with time

To bypass other problems, Christian apologists tell us that God has existed forever and that he is outside of time. But what does this even mean? The physics of their argument, God as a Time Lord like Doctor Who, is metaphysical bullshit. The ball’s in their court to support their fanciful claims.

I’ll close with an apt summary by blogger Uncredible HallQ:

This is just an example of Craig’s annoying tendency to make unsupported claims and then demand his critics disprove them, and it’s an absurd way to argue. If Craig is going that way, why not just announce God exists, demand atheists prove otherwise, and be done with it?

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 10/28/15.)

Image from NASA, CC license

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World-famous philosopher William Lane Craig (WLC) is perhaps best known for his popularization of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Let’s examine it to see if it is as compelling as WLC thinks.

The argument is a Muslim variant on Aristotle’s First Cause argument (something had to be the first cause; otherwise, you have causes going back forever). WLC states the Kalam argument this way:

1 Whatever begins to exist has a cause.

2 The universe began to exist.

Therefore, the universe has a cause.

First premise: Whatever begins to exist has a cause

There is so much wrong in this brief argument that it will take two posts to explain it. Let’s begin with that first premise. WLC defends it:

Believing that something can pop into existence without a cause is more of a stretch than believing in magic. At least with magic you’ve got a hat and a magician.

And if something can come into being from nothing, then why don’t we see this happening all the time?

No . . . everyday experience and scientific evidence confirm our first premise—if something begins to exist, it must have a cause.

That’s the argument? Just an appeal to common sense? (It’s actually an effective argument against miracles—if miracles happened, why don’t we see them today? There are zero universally accepted miracles; therefore, we have no justification for believing in them. Since WLC must reject this argument against miracles, one wonders why he accepts his argument against cause-less things.)

WLC’s support for his philosophical claims often devolve into something like, “Aw, c’mon. You’ll give me that one, right? It’s obvious!” One wonders: if he’s not going to use his doctorates, maybe he should give them back.

Understand the limitations of common sense. It’s not the tool to rely on at the frontier of science. To take one example, we all know that a thing can’t be in two places at once, and yet quantum physics shows that it can. WLC handwaves a simple argument that works with people desperate for justification for their supernatural beliefs, but it doesn’t withstand scrutiny.

1. Things don’t need a cause.

Contrary to WLC’s intuition, things may indeed pop into existence without cause. That’s the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics. For example, the electron or neutrino that comes out of a decaying nucleus qualify as things that “began to exist,” and they didn’t have a cause. Just to clarify, this isn’t to say that there is a cause but we just don’t know it. Rather, it’s saying that there is no cause.

WLC will say that this interpretation might be overturned, and that’s true. But then his premise becomes, “Whatever begins to exist might have a cause,” which doesn’t make for much of an argument.

He wonders, “Why don’t we see this happening all the time?” and the obvious answer is that it applies only at the quantum level. Indeed, the universe itself was once the size of a quantum particle, so it’s reasonable to think that causelessness could apply to the universe as well.

That’s the conclusion of cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin:

If there was nothing before the universe popped out, then what could have caused the tunneling? Remarkably, the answer is that no cause is required. In classical physics, causality dictates what happens from one moment to the next, but in quantum mechanics the behavior of physical objects is inherently unpredictable and some quantum processes have no cause at all.

To see this another way, replace “Whatever begins to exist has a cause” with “Everything has a cause” and ask WLC to find a counterexample. Unless he can, he has no reason (besides supporting his agenda) to prefer his clumsier version. He can point to the Copenhagen interpretation, but that defeats his version as well.

2. We know nothing about supernatural creation.

“Whatever begins to exist has a cause” has a common-sense appeal, but the only “whatevers” that we know that began to exist (stars, oak trees, a dent in a fender, tsunamis) are natural. Why imagine that this common sense rule of thumb would apply to supernatural causes? And why even imagine that the supernatural exists? WLC doesn’t bother even acknowledging the problem, let alone resolve it.

3. We know nothing about creation ex nihilo.

The only “begins to exist” we know of is rearrangement of existing matter and energy. For example, an oak tree begins with an acorn and builds itself from water, carbon dioxide, and other nutrients. If WLC is talking about creation ex nihilo (“out of nothing”), his premise has become “Whatever begins to exist from nothing has a cause.” He wants us to accept this remarkable claim though he can’t give a single example of something coming from nothing. The common sense appeal of the premise is gone.

WLC said above, “If something can come into being from nothing, then why don’t we see this happening all the time?” If this is supposed to be an argument against creation ex nihilo, does he then not believe God created ex nihilo? He might want to pause to get his argument straight.

(As an aside, the Bible doesn’t even argue that the universe was created ex nihilo.)

4. “Began to exist” makes little sense at the beginning.

WLC wants to stretch the common sense “Whatever begins to exist has a cause” from the natural to the supernatural, from rearrangement of existing matter to creation from nothing, and from creation within time to creation before time. He’s referencing a cause before the universe has even come into existence. If WLC wants to argue for magical creation of this sort, he must provide the evidence to support this claim.

First we have the earthquake, then the tsunami. First the moving car, then the dented fender. First the collection of gas moving inward by gravity, then the star. If the instant of the Big Bang is at t = 0, where is the prior cause? There can be no cause at t = –1 if time started at t = 0. How can there be a cause that works in time before there is time?

Every example WLC can point to (like tsunamis and dented fenders) is a different kind of “begins to exist” than the one he imagines, a (1) supernatural creation (2) from nothing (3) before time began, none of which have examples.

5. We have no reason for the “began to exist” caveat.

Why is the premise not simply “Everything has a cause”? It’s just a “Get Out of Jail Free” card to bias the argument so that it will deliver the divine answer WLC wants. We don’t have myriad examples of things with beginnings, plus myriad examples of things that are without beginnings. That he wants to carve out a spot for his beginningless god reveals his agenda.

Since God is the only exception he imagines, WLC’s “Whatever begins to exist has a cause” is simply a disguised version of “Everything has a cause, except for God,” which makes it a circular argument (because it assumes its conclusion). It’s not like he gives evidence to support this remarkable claim; he just asserts it. But if that’s the game we’re playing, I suggest a new first premise: “Everything has a cause, except for the universe.” This is certainly the simpler claim, since WLC must invent a supernatural realm to support his, so Occam’s Razor is against him as well.

WLC will demand that I support my claim with evidence. My response: you first.

Concluded in part 2.

Another good source is The Scathing Atheist podcast episode “Kalam Down” @ 45:00.

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(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 10/26/15.)

Image from NASA
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In part 1, I listed a few other posts that respond to the fine-tuning argument (the physical parameters that define our universe had to be pretty much exactly what they are or else life would’ve been impossible). I also gave four innovative responses that you rarely hear. We’ll conclude with the final two.

5. Atheist Single Universe Hypothesis

Another response is Keith Parsons’ critique of the Atheist Single Universe Hypothesis (ASUH). The fine-tuning argument says that our universe is very unlikely. The multiverse is the obvious atheist response, but what do you say if the multiverse isn’t an option? That’s the ASUH.

If there is only one universe, Parsons wonders, what sense does it make to say that the constants that define that universe could be something else? How could they be anything else without other universes for them to be in? “If the universe is the ultimate brute fact, it is neither likely nor unlikely, probable or improbable; it simply is.” We don’t have billions of universes to evaluate, some designed and some natural, so that we have some probabilistic framework in which to place our own universe and evaluate its likeliness. Therefore, imagining that we can evaluate the likelihood of our own poorly understood universe makes no sense. You say our universe looks designed? Compared to what?

We must say that the values of the constants are neither probable nor improbable; they just are. In that case, as the proponent of the ASUH sees it, the only rational expectation of the values of the constants is that they will be whatever we find them to be.

ASUH supporters posit the universe and its laws as brute, inexplicable facts, but Christian apologists do the same. They posit God as a brute, inexplicable fact.

Parsons concludes by turning the fine-tuning argument on the apologist. If we’re insanely lucky to be in a life-friendly universe (according to the apologist’s thinking), there must have been a supernatural Fine Tuner to create this universe. But, by recursively applying this thinking to the Fine Tuner, the fine-tuning problem falls on the Christian. There’s a myriad of conceivable supernatural beings. Christians must marvel at our good fortune to have one who wanted humans (rather than any of the infinite number of other possible intelligent life forms) and had the power to fine tune the universe so that we’re here to seek out this Creator.

6. Evaluating all the probabilities

Is the fine-tuning argument even well formed? It weighs the likelihood of (1) the universe is all natural vs. (2) God created it, and it concludes: The probability of Hypothesis 1 is very small; therefore, Hypothesis 2 is true

Wait a minute—let’s find out the probability of Hypothesis 2 before we make any conclusions!

We’re evaluating the probability of the parameters that define our universe being natural vs. being created by a supernatural Creator without having any idea what the probability of this Creator is. And since the fine-tuning argument is trying to establish the probability of the Creator (its conclusion is typically “therefore, the Creator probably exists”), it’s circular reasoning if that’s one of the inputs to the process!

One snappy answer is to say that most people throughout history have been theists, so atheist skepticism at least loses the popularity contest. However, this unanimity falls apart when probe theists’ beliefs with the most basic questions: How many gods are there? What are their names? Why are humans here, and what is our purpose with respect to these god(s)? Pick any religion, and the majority of the world thinks that its answers to those questions are wrong.

What does the theist admit when using this argument?

Consider the theist’s desperation in advancing an argument like this. For most plausible claims of existence, we are given evidence. You want to know what “the sun” is? Just look up on a sunny day, and there it is. Some things need indirect evaluation, and for this we use instruments such as telescopes or microscopes, but this evidence can be just as compelling.

But for God, the most important thing of all, we get just a vague shadow. If God loves us and desperately wants us to know him, he would make his existence known. He doesn’t.

So—option B—we assume God’s existence (for no good reason, but ignore that for now) and say that he wants to be an enigma for his own reasons that are unknowable to us. This thinking is necessary for the fine-tuning argument. But, of course, if he wanted to be hidden, he would be so! If you’re playing hide and seek with God, you will lose. He’s God—he could leave no trace, and there would be no enigma.

That leaves only option C for the Christian: that God deliberately leaves the vaguest of clues—only enough to tease the seeker. This is rarely enough to give much confidence, so the Christian is always on edge, never quite sure whether he’s got it right or is going to hell. The Christian is like a pigeon in a Skinner experiment on intermittent reinforcement.

Mother Teresa wrote about her doubts, “The damned of hell suffer eternal punishment because they experiment with the loss of God. In my own soul, I feel the terrible pain of this loss. I feel that God does not want me, that God is not God and that he does not really exist.”

By arguing for deistic arguments like the fine-tuning argument, apologists argue for this trickster god.

The skeptical mind prefers to rest in the mystery of the visible world
without going beyond it to a further invisible mystery.
— John Hick

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 4/30/14.)

Image credit: Ed Garcia, flickr, CC

I’ve discussed the role of the multiverse in dismissing the fine-tuning argument here, here, and most recently here. This time, I’d like to look at a few less-well-known arguments.

Replacing “Science doesn’t know” with “God did it!” as this and other Christian apologetic arguments do, is simply renaming the problem. It’s only an attempt to stop the conversation; it doesn’t tell us anything new. It doesn’t answer the question but simply raises new ones: why did God create the universe? How? Which rules of physics were used, and which were broken? And so on.

1. What probability?

This argument is from Counter Arguments. If God is responsible for everything, both probable and improbable, then probability doesn’t exist. Said another way, the idea of independent events unchanged by any intelligence goes away if God is behind everything. And if there’s no probability, then the appeal to probability in the fine-tuning argument becomes impossible, and the argument collapses.

2. Would God be behind un-fine-tuned universes, too?

Imagine a different universe (Universe X) where the parameters didn’t look fine tuned for life, and life was guaranteed. How would the Christian apologist critique it?

If (hypothesis 1) they are consistent and use the same fine-tuning logic, that divine intervention would be necessary if life were very improbable, then (oops!) God was unnecessary to create life in Universe X. But if (hypothesis 2) they use the opposite logic—the more probable life, the more probable divine intervention is—then God must’ve created it in Universe X.

Which do you suppose they would go with—hypothesis 1 that God was unlikely to have created Universe X or hypothesis 2 that God was likely? They’re in the business of rationalizing their conclusion, so they would pick the one that pleases them most, and that’s possible because “God” is so poorly defined. He’s a clay sculpture that they can shape into whatever is called for so that they can continue to justify their beliefs. That’s great if they want to maintain their belief at any cost, but part of that cost is consistency (Source: Counter Arguments)

3. Coarse Tuning

This argument is from the article, “Probabilities and the Fine-Tuning Argument” by McGrew, McGrew, and Vestrup (paywall).

First, start with the fine-tuning argument. We have a handful of physical constants so carefully balanced that if any were tweaked by the tiniest amount, life in the universe would be impossible.

Imagine an n-dimensional space, with one axis for each of the different constants we’re considering. Assume that these constants can (in principle) be anything. There’s a tiny volume in this space within which life is possible, but the total space is infinite in size. What’s the probability that you’d hit the sweet spot by chance? Tiny volume ÷ infinite space = 0, so the probability is zero. And that’s the punch line for this argument: if the likelihood of randomly hitting this life-giving sweet spot is infinitesimally small, there must be a designer.

Now, imagine that the volume is actually very large and that the values that define our universe could be changed in any dimension by ten orders of magnitude, and life would still be possible. This is the coarse-tuning situation. If we’re in the middle of a sweet spot that’s this huge—it’s 10 billion on each side—who would be making the fine-tuning argument now? But the problem remains! That vastly bigger volume ÷ infinite space is still zero. The likelihood of randomly hitting this sweet spot remains infinitesimally small, but we’ve agreed that this is not remarkable. Conclusion: deducing a designer with the fine-tuning argument fails.

Said another way, the fine-tuning argument is no stronger than the coarse-tuning argument. Why then would no apologist make a coarse-tuning argument?

4. Monkey God

Physicist Vic Stenger directly confronted the fine-tuning argument with his Monkey God simulation. He took four constants from which can be computed the average lifetime of a star, the size of planets, and other traits that would predict whether a universe might allow life. His simulation randomly varies these constants within a range five orders of magnitude higher and five lower than their actual values to see what kind of universe the combination creates. His conclusion: “A wide variation of constants of physics has been shown to lead to universes that are long-lived enough for complex matter to evolve.”

We know so little about life that there is little to say about whether life would come from this complex matter, but this seems a strong counterexample.

This reminds me of physicist Sean Carroll’s observation, “I will start granting that [life couldn’t exist with different conditions] once someone tells me the conditions under which life can exist.”

To be concluded in part 2.

A universe with a supernatural presence
would be a fundamentally and qualitatively
different kind of universe from one without.
The difference is, inescapably, a scientific difference.
Religions make existence claims,
and this means scientific claims.
— Richard Dawkins

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 4/30/14.)

Photo credit: Wikimedia

This is the conclusion of a summary of the 2014 debate between philosopher William Lane Craig and cosmologist Sean Carroll. In part 1, I summarized Carroll’s response to the Kalam cosmological argument. Here, it’s a response to the other half of Craig’s argument, the fine tuning argument.

Carroll began with a compliment of sorts.

This is the best argument that the theists have when it comes to cosmology. That’s because it plays by the rules. You have phenomena, you have parameters of particle physics and cosmology, and then you have two different models, theism and naturalism, and you want to compare which model is the best fit for the data. I applaud that general approach. Given that, it is still a terrible argument. It is not at all convincing.

 1. What fine-tuning problem?

Carroll raises five points. First, he’s not convinced that there is a fine-tuning problem. Yes, changes in the parameters that define our reality would change conditions, but it does not follow that life could not exist. “I will start granting that [life couldn’t exist with different conditions] once someone tells me the conditions under which life can exist.” We don’t even fully understand life on this planet, nor do we understand it on the other planets in the universe that hold life (if any), nor do we understand it within the other possible universes (if any).

For example, is life just information processing? That raises lots of possibilities for life. “They sound very science fiction-y,” Carroll admits, “but then again, you’re the one who’s changing the parameters of the universe.”

Biologists are continually playing catch-up when studying the diversity of life. They rarely predict a novel place for life to exist and then go find it there; instead it’s “Wow! We just found complex, multicellular life in undersea thermal vents!” (or glaciers, or deep mines, or ponds full of saline or superhot or radioactive water).

2. Don’t limit God

God can do anything, and he isn’t limited by the parameters of the universe. If life were impossible naturally, God could make it happen anyway. Carroll says about theism, “No matter what the atoms were doing, God could still create life.” That means that apparent fine tuning points to naturalism, since it must do everything naturally and can’t fallback on magic. If you insist that the parameters must be just so, then you’re arguing for naturalism.

Physicist Vic Stenger made the point this way in The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning:

Certainly an all-powerful creator could have made a universe delicately balanced to produce life. But he also could have made life exist in any kind of universe whatsoever, with no delicate balancing act necessary. So if the universe is, in fact, fine-tuned to support life, it is more—not less—likely to have had a natural origin. (p. 115)

3. Illusory fine tuning

Some apparent fine tuning vanishes on closer inspection. The expansion rate of the early universe is often cited as one example of fine tuning. In fact, Stephen Hawking in his A Brief History of Time says that it was tuned to 10^–17, to the delight of apologists. What they avoid quoting is Hawking just a few pages later:

The rate of expansion of the universe [in the inflationary model] would automatically become very close to the critical rate determined by the energy density of the universe. This could then explain why the rate of expansion is still so close to the critical rate, without having to assume that the initial rate of expansion of the universe was very carefully chosen.

Carroll makes the same point when he says that the apparent fine tuning vanishes when you look to general relativity. The probability of the universe expanding as it did wasn’t 10^–17; it was 1.

4. Multiverse

Apologist Richard Swinburne isn’t on board with the multiverse. He says, “To postulate a trillion trillion other universes, rather than one God in order to explain the orderliness of our universe, seems the height of irrationality.”

He doesn’t acknowledge that we have no supernatural precedents by which to evaluate the probability of his god proposal. He doesn’t seem to know that the number of other universes isn’t the point—there are an infinite number of integers, for example, but bringing integers into a discussion isn’t infinitely complicating. He doesn’t admit that the multiverse is a prediction of well-established science (cosmic inflation). He ignores that there isn’t just one proton, one star, or one black hole—there are enormous numbers of each—so why insist that there must be only one universe?

Carroll disagrees that the multiverse is extravagant: “It’s a prediction of a simple physical model.” The multiverse hypothesis can make testable predictions. He showed a graph of the density of dark matter in the universe as an example. “You do not see graphs like this in the theological papers trying to give God credit for explaining the fine tuning because theism is not well defined.”

5. Theism isn’t the default

Even if you reject naturalism as an explanation, you can’t fall back on theism. To be taken seriously, apologists must come up with a model of a universe that one would expect with theism and then compare it to the data to see if it fits. So, what would you expect a theistic universe to look like, specifically?

Theism would predict a just-right tuning of parameters, while we find that the entropy of the early universe (to take one example) was far, far lower than it needed to be for life. Theism would predict far less matter than the 100 billion galaxies (each with 100 billion stars) in our universe. Theism would predict that life would be important to the universe; naturalism says that it’s insignificant. Theism demands that we look at the Hubble Deep Field image of thousands of ancient and incredibly distant galaxies and conclude, “This is all here because of us!”

Over and over, the data shows a universe that matches the predictions of naturalism and not theism.

Which worldview predicts best?

He went on to contrast the predictive success of theism vs. naturalism.

• Theism predicts that God’s existence would be obvious (in fact, the evidence is poor, and faith is not only required but celebrated)
• Theism predicts that religious belief should be universal; there should be just a single, correct religion (in fact, we have thousands of denominations within just Christianity, plus many thousand more other religions)
• Theism predicts that religious doctrines would be permanent (in fact, they evolve and adapt to social conditions)
• Theism predicts that moral teachings would be transcendent and progressive (in fact, Western society rejected slavery and embraced civil rights in spite of Christianity, not because of it)
• Theism predicts that sacred texts would provide practical advice like how to stay healthy
• Theism predicts that life is designed (in fact, evolution explains life’s Rube Goldberg features)
• Theism predicts a mind independent of the body (in fact, “mind” changes as the brain grows or is damaged, or even if one is tired or hungry)
• Theism predicts a fundamentally just world without gratuitous evil (in fact, the Problem of Evil is often cited as Christianity’s toughest challenge)

Carroll is quick to agree that, yes, the theist can whip up reasons to explain away any of these problems. It’s not hard because theism is not well defined and can be reshaped as necessary, like clay. Ad hoc justifications are easy to come up with, but no, that’s not a good thing.

Contrast that with science—when new data causes problems for a theory, science looks for a new theory. And that is a good thing.

The reason why science and religion
are actually incompatible is that, in the real world,
they reach incompatible conclusions.
— Sean Carroll

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 4/28/14.)

Image credit: Terry Robinson, flickr, CC

During the 1995 O.J. Simpson murder trial, talk show host Dick Cavett mused about bumping into Simpson at a cocktail party. In such a situation, he anticipated that he would say, “Well, there are so many people here who haven’t murdered anyone, I think I’ll go talk to them.”

And that’s my reaction to hearing philosopher William Lane Craig blather on about his opinions on cosmology (read: how he’s picked facts to support his conclusion). When I’m curious about the origin of the universe, I think I’ll go talk to the cosmologists.

William Lane Craig, cosmologist. Or not.

In the first place, Craig isn’t an expert on the topic. For this 2/21/14 debate, the topic was, “The existence of God in light of contemporary cosmology.” In the second place, experts are readily at hand—for example, his opponent, Sean Carroll, who earned a doctorate in Astronomy and Astrophysics from Harvard and is currently a professor at CalTech.

Craig has made clear where his truth comes from. He states in Reasonable Faith (2008):

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. (p. 48)

See what I mean about picking his facts to support his conclusion? Perhaps that also explains his unwarranted confidence in getting into the ring with someone who is actually an expert on the topic.

There’s not much to say about Craig’s 20-minute opening to those familiar with his arguments. He used two of his favorites, the Kalam cosmological argument and the fine tuning argument. One surprise was that his arguments were more remote than usual. The average Christian may have difficulty with terms like entropy, singularity, and arrow of time. Here, Craig also used, without definition, the terms cosmogonic, de Sitter space, “unitarity of quantum theory,” and Boltzmann brains.

However, I was pleased that he avoided my usual complaint, which is his using “just think about it” to introduce some bit of pop philosophy. Yes, common sense is tempting, but it’s not the final arbiter at the frontier of science. Maybe he knew that this kind of argument would be laughed down by an expert. If so, let’s remember that next time he uses such an argument when Sean Carroll isn’t around to laugh at him.

Sean Carroll’s response

Carroll began by making clear that this debate is not an ongoing one within the cosmology community. You’ll hear theories of origins debated at cosmology conferences, but there is no discussion of God as a plausible explanation.

He responded to Craig’s Kalam argument by attacking point 2, “the universe began to exist.” He noted that Craig gave no evidence to back up the claim and, indeed, there isn’t any.

The bigger problem is that the point isn’t even false since Craig doesn’t use the right vocabulary for discussing cosmology. Carroll said, “Aristotelian analysis of causation was cutting edge stuff 2500 years ago; today we know better.” Referring back to his opening point, he noted that you don’t find the words “transcendent cause” in a cosmology textbook; what you find are differential equations! There simply is no need for metaphysical baggage on top of the known physics—it is unnecessary baggage that adds nothing.

Borde Guth Vilenkin

The idea of a beginning to the universe suits Craig. He’s concerned about the naturalist who says that, even if the Big Bang were the beginning of our universe, it could have come from an eternal multiverse. To anticipate this, Craig invariably brings up the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem (BGV), which says that the multiverse did have a beginning.

Carroll responded by ticking off variant universes. A universe with a beginning but no cause? There’s a model for that. A universe that is eternal without a beginning? There’s a model for that, too—indeed, there are at least 17 plausible models.

BGV points to a beginning to the universe, but it starts with assumptions. Discard those assumptions, and the rules are different and eternality is possible. What BGV says is simply that our ability to describe the universe classically, that is, without quantum mechanics, gives out. Craig is simply wrong when he insists that BGV proves a beginning to everything.

Potpourri

It was a pleasure to see a competent physicist dismantle Craig’s uninformed cosmological dabblings. Craig cited the Second Law of Thermodynamics to support a finite universe, and Carroll responded that he’d written an entire book on the subject. About the puzzle of why the universe began with low entropy, Carroll said, “To imagine that cosmologists cannot answer that question without somehow invoking God is a classic God-of-the-gaps move. I know that Dr. Craig says that that’s not what he’s doing, but then he does it.”

About Craig’s criticism of Carroll’s own cosmological model, Carroll responded, “[Dr. Craig] says that my model is not working very well because it violates unitarity, the conservation of information, and that is straightforwardly false.” He then pointed out how Craig took a Hawking quote “completely out of context.”

I appreciated Carroll’s polite but direct approach. (I’ve written more about Carroll’s insights here and here.)

Cosmology vs. Theism

Carroll pointed out that a major problem is the very definition of theism. One theist may give a thorough definition, but then dozens (or thousands) more will give competing definitions. More to the point, theism is not a serious cosmological model. Cosmology is a mature science, and models are expected to address real issues. For example: What is the predicted spatial curvature of this universe? What is the amplitude of density perturbations? What causes the matter/antimatter asymmetry? What is the dark matter? And so on.

Theism doesn’t even try. It has nothing to offer.

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.
— Sean Carroll

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 04/25/14.)

Photo credit: brett jordan, flickr, CC