A Universe From Nothing (part 2)

Transcript A Universe From Nothing (Part 2)

By nothing I don't mean nothing; I mean nothing.

Nothing is nothing—nothing is nothing—nothing is nothing.

By nothing I don't mean nothing; I mean nothing.

The answer is nothing isn't nothing anymore.

Let's calculate the energy of nothing where there's nothing else—nothing is nothing.

That's sounds ridiculous.

So there's nothing there. If that nothing weighs something, and we know the answer.

Kevin Harris: Welcome to Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig. I'm Kevin Harris. This podcast is about – you guessed it – nothing. Well, okay, we're continuing to look at Lawrence Krauss' new book A Universe From Nothing, and we're doing this by listening to some interview segments that he did on his new book. So, Dr. Craig, here's what Krauss says next:

Lawrence Krauss: The Big Bang may not be the beginning of everything. Again, it could be that time itself arose out of the Big Bang and the question 'what happened before the Big Bang?' is not a reasonable question. General relativity does tell us that space and time are related to matter and when everything is incredibly dense even time itself may come into existence. But it's also equally likely that our universe is indeed . . . almost many of the ideas from modern physics suggest that our universe is one of a plethora of universes in each of which the laws of physics could be different. And, moreover, this multiverse could be eternal and there could be universes that are just now being created and other universes that are dying.

Kevin Harris: One thing that he says there, Bill, is that if time is a result of the Big Bang, concomitant with time-space universe, then there was no time before the Big Bang.

Dr. Craig: Right, exactly. It would be a meaningless question to ask “What happened before the Big Bang?” if time began at the moment of the Big Bang.

Kevin Harris: Yet, he seems to think that the multiverse will account for that. Let's continue this segment.

Lawrence Krauss: And so in that sense things are eternal, and, you know, that addresses one of these questions about a prime mover and a creator. Even if there is a creator you might say, “Well, if there's a beginning what happened before the beginning?” And that's why some people have driven to this sort of semantic cop-out which is God, which is someone or something that exists outside of time. Well, it could be that the multiverse fulfills that role, but it wasn't that scientists were driven to this because we didn’t like the idea of God. We've been driven to the idea of a multiverse because of results in physics and cosmology, and that's driven us to the idea that there are very plausible reasons to believe, as I discuss in the book, why there may be many universes.

Kevin Harris: There are two things in that segment. One is that the multiverse could account for an infinite universe. And the second thing he brought up was God's being a cop-out.

Dr. Craig: Right. Certainly multiverse theories are possible, but he's wrong, factually incorrect, when he says that the evidence is that it just as well could be eternal in the past as finite in the past. In fact that's not correct. No mathematically consistent and empirically adequate physical model of the universe is capable of being extrapolated to past infinity. The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem shows that even if there is a multiverse, Kevin, it too must have had a beginning at some time in the finite past. So the evidence is that the universe or the multiverse, any wider realms of reality you might want to consider, must have had a beginning and are not infinite in the past. In fact it's interesting, at the recent conference at Cambridge University in honor of Stephen Hawking's seventieth birthday, Alexander Vilenkin presented the results of a new paper at the conference in which he closes the door on two other attempts to avoid the absolute beginning of the universe. And Vilenkin concludes by saying, “all the evidence says that the universe had a beginning.” Now, think about that statement—all the evidence says that the universe had a beginning. It's not that the evidence for a beginning outweighs the evidence that the universe is beginningless—no. There is no evidence that the universe is beginningless. All of the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning. So while certainly these models are possible, it is simply factually incorrect to say that the evidence supports an eternal universe as much as it supports a universe which has a beginning.

Kevin Harris: He kind of put a damper on the birthday party there because many who were in attendance don't like the idea.

Dr. Craig: Well, Hawking certainly didn't like the idea. [1] He issued a pre-recorded statement at the conference saying that if there was a creation event then we would have to appeal to religion and the hand of God. And then Vilenkin comes along with this paper.

Kevin Harris: I know, it's like he jumped out of a cake and said, “Guess what? [laughter] The universe had a beginning and so did the multiverse if there is one, and happy birthday!”

Dr. Craig: And it's interesting when Krauss says that God is a semantic cop-out, and then he says the multiverse fulfills that role. I thought, yes, that's right, the multiverse is a semantic cop-out as much as God. [laughter] For many atheist physicists the multiverse is a sort of God substitute.

Kevin Harris: Surrogate.

Dr. Craig: Yes, I was talking to one philosopher recently who was at a conference dealing with fine-tuning, and when he came back he said to me, “Bill,” he said, “you've got to understand when these fellas talk about the multiverse this is their way of doing metaphysics without using the G-word.” You don't have to use the G-word, God, to do metaphysics. You just talk in terms of multiverse. So really the multiverse is a semantic cop-out as much as God is.

Kevin Harris: And they give it the same superlative attributes of God—it's awesome, it's wonderful, it's mysterious, it's beautiful. This has captivated my own son's imagination—the beauty of the universe. And what he's trying to put together is whether it can actually be beautiful and awesome apart from God.

Dr. Craig: Ah, I think the beauty of the universe redounds to the glory of its creator. I marvel when I see these photos from the Hubble telescope; this fantastic cosmos in which we have our being. And I think it bespeaks the greatness and the majesty of God. The question is, if the universe began to exist and there was not anything before it then how did the universe come into being? It seems to me you have to postulate some sort of a transcendent, immaterial, non-physical reality to bring the universe into existence. So that far from being a cop-out, the appeal to God is very plausible, I think, in light of the evidence.

Kevin Harris: The interviewer on this particular interview isn't himself an atheist. I think he catches this God substitute thing because he brings up later in this interview, as we'll hear, well, are we just using a multiverse of the gaps type argument? Let's finish this segment here.

Lawrence Krauss: What's interesting is that there are many different theories, many different ideas, from inflation, which really is well-motivated based on everything we can see, which naturally predicts many different universes, to even string theory which is less well-motivated but does suggest there may be extra dimensions in which there could be other universes. And so from many different directions physics is being driven in that regard.

Dr. Craig: Multiverse theories attempt the marriage between inflationary cosmology and string theory, both of which remain extremely speculative boundary areas of science. But the important thing is, Kevin, that even given an inflating universe that uses string theory for its fundamental physics such a universe cannot be eternal in the past. I mentioned earlier the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem which shows that any universe or multiverse which on average is in a state of cosmic expansion throughout its history cannot be infinite in the past but must have a past spacetime boundary. So one can be perfectly open to inflationary models of the universe and its marriage with string theory and even multiverse scenarios, none of this serves to establish the past eternality or infinity of the universe. Quite the contrary it was these very theories, these very inflationary models, that revealed that an inflationary universe cannot be extrapolated to past infinity.

Kevin Harris: Bill, my observation of this is that quite often scientists, atheistic naturalistic scientists in particular and spokesmen, say basically one thing that I hear over and over and over: science, quantum theory and things like that show us things that are counter-intuitive all the time.

Dr. Craig: I think that's about all that the skeptic can say. The arguments, I think, are good arguments, and so all you do is simply bite the bullet and say, yeah, I accept these absurd conclusions even though I don't have an answer. And it seems to me that that's really the cop-out. There's nothing in quantum theory that would justify you, I think, in accepting results that would seem to be absurd like a Hilbert's hotel or the idea that you could traverse an infinity one step at a time. [2] There's just nothing there that's parallel to something like that.

Kevin Harris: Yeah, all these spokesmen, they won't even drive past Hilbert's hotel [laughter], much less check into it and see if it makes sense. They won't even go past it. It's like, “Oh, well, let's stick to the science.”

Dr. Craig: I'm happy to stick to the science when I'm talking to scientists.

Kevin Harris: Well, of course, but there's two prongs of this.

Dr. Craig: Yes, right; fair enough.

Kevin Harris: I mean, you've got to deal with the science of the kalam, and you've also got to deal with the philosophy of the kalam.

Dr. Craig: Right, and my main reasons for believing in the finitude of the past are philosophical, not scientific. The way I present the evidence is that the scientific evidence is a confirmation of a conclusion already reached on the basis of philosophical argument.

Kevin Harris: Let's go to this next segment from Lawrence Krauss:

Lawrence Krauss: I'm amused that people keep redefining their definition of nothing whenever I point out that nothing can create something. But they always want to sort of define nothing as that which something can never come from, and that's sort of ridiculous, semantically. I think if you asked philosophers years ago 'what is nothing?', they'd say empty space and nothingness. But then when you show that that can create something they say, 'well, that's not really nothing, because space exists;' and then I could show, well, maybe the laws of physics that we now understand tells us that even space itself can be created from nothing. And they say, 'well, that's not nothing because the laws, the potential for existence, is there. And then I could argue based on multiverse ideas that maybe even the laws of physics arise spontaneously. And moreover I think it's kind of silly to say that potential for existence is different than nothing, that that's the same as existence. If there's no potential for existence then not even a creator can create, I assume. And moreover, as I argued in the book a little graphically, I think the potential for existence is very different than existence. I mean, as I point out, the fact that I walk near a women implies the potential for creating life, but that's very different from creating it.

Kevin Harris: There's an attempt, it seems, to define nothing, that we no longer hold nothing to be what nothing used to be.

Dr. Craig: Well, this is an incredible segment that you just played, Kevin, because here he accuses others of constantly redefining the word nothing, when that's the project in which he is engaged. People like Leibniz and others who posed the question 'why is there something rather than nothing?' knew what they meant by nothing. Nothing is a term of universal negation—it means, not anything. It's Dr. Krauss who wants to redefine the word nothing to mean something, like the quantum vacuum or a state of affairs in which classical time and space do not exist. It is he who is engaged in the project of redefinition of nothing. So this is, I think, just completely wrong, and it illustrates, again, that he's not answering the same question that Leibniz asked when he said 'why is there something rather than nothing?' Dr. Krauss is redefining the terms. Now, it's also very interesting when he says the potential for existence is different than existence. The point is that potentialities lodge only in things that exist. So, for example, the potential for having a child lodges in the fertility of that woman and his own fertility to impregnate her, but you can't have potentiality in non-being. Non-being has no properties; it has no potentialities. So the very fact that he's talking about the potential for the existence of a universe shows that he is talking about something. He's not talking about nothing. He's talking about something that has potentialities and powers. And therefore this just underlines, again, that fact that he's not dealing with the fundamental metaphysical question 'why is there something rather than nothing at all?'

Kevin Harris: What do you think he meant when he said hastily there in that segment that if there were not even any potential then a creator couldn't even create?

Dr. Craig: Ah, good point. I think what he's saying is that for the universe to come into being there has to be the potential for the universe existing. Now, that, I think, lodges, against the idea that the universe popped into being uncaused because there is no potentiality for the universe's existence prior to it if the universe is all there is. If there is no transcendent cause of the universe then there is not anything prior to the beginning of the universe and therefore no potentiality for the universe to exist. So how in the world could the universe come into existence if there wasn’t even the potentiality of its existence? The theist has an answer to that question by saying that the potential for the existence of the universe lay in the power of God to create it. God has the power to bring a universe into being and therefore there is the potentiality for the universe to exist, [3] and it lodges in the creative power of God.

Kevin Harris: This really highlights that even naturalists, metaphysical naturalists, atheists, non-theists, believe that something has to be eternal. There is something eternal because the universe can't come from nothing; they seem to agree with that.

Dr. Craig: Yes, I think you're right, Kevin. This argument for potentiality is counter-productive for Dr. Krauss because it really does show, as you say, that the universe can't come from nothing, whereby nothing we mean not anything, because there is no potentiality in non-being. And so by saying there needs to be the potential of the universe's existence he is postulating some sort of an eternal reality which is responsible for the universe that we see, in which the potential of our universe lay.

Kevin Harris: Being that there's general agreement among theists and non-theists that there is something potential, what are our options, then, as we've discussed before?

Dr. Craig: Well, I think it would be either some sort of a transcendent, timeless, spaceless, non-physical reality, or that the material matter and energy out of which the universe is made are eternal; that they never began to exist, they've just always been there.

Kevin Harris: Well, that's what so many want. They want there to be some kind of a pre-matter or pre-space that accounts for matter as we know it in space.

Dr. Craig: Although, and I think this is worth emphasizing, even postulating the eternality of matter doesn't answer Leibniz's question because Leibniz's question doesn't assume that the universe began to exist. Leibniz is very explicit about this. He says, even if the universe is eternal in the past you can still ask the question 'why is there an eternal universe rather than nothing?' That doesn't go to explain why something exists – in this case an eternal something – rather than nothing at all. So you're still driven back to some sort of metaphysically necessary being which must exist. Now, the fact that the universe did begin to exist I think just makes it all the more difficult for the naturalist to say that the universe exists necessarily or without reason because then he has to maintain not merely that the universe is eternal and contingent, but that the universe is contingent and popped into existence for no reason whatsoever a finite time ago—which seems metaphysically absurd.

Kevin Harris: Yeah. I mean, eternal matter makes more sense than that—doesn't it?

Dr. Craig: Oh, yes. I think so; that's right.

Kevin Harris: How in the world could matter be eternal, Bill? I mean, matter is made up of parts, it's contingent, it's molecules in motion.

Dr. Craig: Well, that gets into all the philosophical arguments against the infinity of the past. It's a very paradoxical notion, that matter and energy or the series of events in the past could regress infinitely in the past and never have a beginning.

Kevin Harris: Could we short-hand by saying that matter is contingent? I mean, just observe it.

Dr. Craig: Well, I think that virtually everybody does agree with that, Kevin. Even those who think that the universe is eternal in the past and that matter and energy have always been here would recognize that they're not metaphysically necessary, that it's contingent. You could have had a very different universe composed of an entirely different set of quarks or strings or whatever, or you could have had a universe operating by completely different laws of nature. The idea that this universe and the matter and energy we see are metaphysically necessary is a view that scarcely anybody believes in, especially scientists because they work with these alternative models all the time.

Kevin Harris: So we're back to Leibniz then.

Dr. Craig: Yes.

Kevin Harris: And you start hearing descriptions, 'oh, okay, well it's a super-matter.' And when you start hearing things that indicate a super-matter you're starting to move over into the theist's side of the column.

Dr. Craig: Sure, then it's just another name.

Kevin Harris: We have some more segments of this interview with Lawrence Krauss in our next podcast, and you don't want to miss it. Thank you for joining us, we'll see you next time. [4]

Transcript A Universe From Nothing