A Universe From Nothing (part 3)

Transcript A Universe From Nothing (Part 3)

Kevin Harris: Welcome to Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig – I'm Kevin Harris – as we continue to discuss The Universe From Nothing. It's the new book from Lawrence Krauss—A Universe From Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing. I want to remind everyone to go back to some past podcasts where we've discussed Dr. Craig's debate with Dr. Krauss and many other issues that we're discussing here. We're listening to some segments of an interview concerning this new book from Krauss, and in the constraints of our podcast we're going to deal with what Krauss is saying about his book. And he says the following:

Lawrence Krauss: This is one of the arguments I make – nothing is unstable. By nothing I mean that nothing is unstable. You can't expect nothing to hang around forever without creating something. And the more fascinating question might be not 'why is there something rather than nothing?' but 'why is there nothing rather than something?' But if there were you wouldn't be around to ask the question.

Interviewer: The anthropic principle?

Lawrence Krauss: Yeah, and moreover it suggests that something is profoundly important and we are in a state that is going to persist forever. But as I also show the far future of the universe will be quite different. And my friend Christopher Hitchens, who was originally writing the forward for the book before he become too ill, has pointed out that nothing is heading straight towards us on a collision course, and if we wait long enough the universe will quite easily revert to nothing again. And so the answer to 'why is there something rather than nothing?' might be, well, just wait.

Kevin Harris: Well, we need to unpack some of that, and see if we can untangle some of that web. I'm not trying to be detrimental to Dr. Krauss, but I do see so many, well, I see so many philosophical problems with this nothing hanging around, and eventually this nothing can do something.

Dr. Craig: Exactly. I think that this clip illustrates so well this misuse of the word nothing in Dr. Krauss vocabulary. When he says things like, “nothing is unstable.” Now, what that means in English is that everything is stable. Not anything is unstable, everything is stable—if you say nothing is unstable. Similarly, when he says 'nothing is profoundly important.' What that means is that there's not anything that is really profoundly important; everything is relatively insignificant or not profound. But he's using the word nothing as a kind of entity. He reifies it or “thingifies” it into a thing. He nominalizes nothing, and that's just a mistake, Kevin. That's like the old Abbott and Costello routine – “Who’s on third?” Nobody's on third. Well, how did he get on, was it through a walk or did he hit his way on? Well, neither one, there was an error and that's how nobody got on third. It's just the wrong-headed reification of the word nothing into being something. So when he says that nothing is unstable he doesn't mean everything is stable, what he means is that the quantum vacuum, this sea of roiling energy, is unstable and will produce some sort of material universe given enough time. So he's obviously talking about something, not nothing. And the point that he makes here, Kevin, is actually very supportive of why the universe had to have a beginning. Because this quantum vacuum state is unstable it cannot have persisted for infinite past time. It would decay and would spawn a universe. So you have an old problem, here. This is a sort of naturalistic equivalent of the old question 'why didn't God create the universe sooner?' Why didn't the quantum vacuum spawn the universe sooner? If it's unstable it cannot persist for infinite time. The answer is that the quantum vacuum state itself had a beginning, and that's why the universe is not infinitely old. So the idea that it can't hang around forever is quite correct. And illustrates exactly why these universes that postulate the existence of our universe in some sort of a quantum condition can't be extrapolated to past infinity, they're unstable and cannot exist for an infinite amount of time. But when he says things like 'just wait,' that 'nothing is heading straight toward us,' again, clearly that illustrates that he's talking about something, [1] a condition, say, of empty space or something like that, but it's not nothing.

And in fact, by the way, I have to say this, his claim that in prior generations philosophers and scientists would have thought that empty space is nothing is demonstrably incorrect—that is just patently wrong. Isaac Newton and Newtonian physics held that time and space are absolute entities which would exist if they were entirely empty. Even if there were no matter and energy and no events whatsoever Newton believed that absolute time would roll on and that absolute space would exist. So Dr. Krauss simply shows his ignorance here of classical physics in saying that it would have been claimed that empty space is nothing. That is just incorrect. Newton and Newtonian physics most certainly did conceive of absolute space as something, even if it were completely empty.

Kevin Harris: He talked about the universe eventually returning to the state that it was in the beginning if the heat death of the universe is correct.

Dr. Craig: Right, I think what he means there is that if the universe continues to expand in this accelerating fashion our local cluster of matter will become increasingly marooned and isolated so that eventually we will no longer be able to see the stars at all, or other galaxies. We won't see anything, even with our instruments. And so we will appear entirely alone as though we were in a universe that was completely devoid of any other matter or existence. And I think that's what he means when he says that nothing is heading towards us, again obviously misusing the word nothing because the universe is still out there. It's just so far away we wouldn’t be able to detect it.

Kevin Harris: Here's his next segment.

Lawrence Krauss: Aristotle just didn't know how the world worked, and that's what I find amazing, that somehow the philosophical musings of Aristotle can be compared to the results of modern science. There's no comparison. Philosophy to a large extent, certainly theology, has been impotent because, you know, it's alright to muse about these things. But he didn't know about the existence of atoms or the existence of quantum mechanics or, as I say, the fact that in some sense there are other stars and planets in the universe, that there are other galaxies. In order to make consistent philosophy, if you wish, you have to understand how the world really works, and you don't get that by just persisting with the same sterile philosophical discussions about existence. You ask the questions of how things work and you test it. And that's why science has progressed whereas certainly theology hasn't.

Dr. Craig: Of course Aristotle’s physics have been overtaken by subsequent developments in science. That's the nature of science. So no one would look to Aristotle for knowledge of the physical world. But in his debate with me Dr. Krauss attacked Aristotelian logic, that somehow Aristotle's logic is defective, and he doesn't see why we should listen to that. Well, that's just incredible. Aristotelian logic has nothing to do with empirical facts, it has to do with logical forms of inference. For example, “All As are Bs; C is an A; therefore C is a B.” That is perfectly valid reasoning that is not overtaken by modern science.

Now certainly there have been modern developments in logic, as well. Logicians have moved beyond Aristotle's syllogistic logic to doing what is called sentential logic, which is what's called first order propositional logic, it is the logic of individual propositions. So, for example, we can analyze the logical structure of a statement like “All As are Bs” as being “For any X, if X is an A then X is a B,” and we can analyze the logical structure of a universally quantified statement such as Aristotle dealt with. But that doesn't overthrow syllogistic reasoning. Aristotle's logic is still as valid as ever.

Now, I want to affirm what Dr. Krauss said, that consistent philosophy requires a knowledge of how things work. And I think he's got this straw man that he's attacking here of philosophy that is done somehow in abstraction from and ignorance of contemporary scientific knowledge of how the world works. That's not the way philosophers do their work. Today philosophy of physics, for example, is a burgeoning field of philosophy. There are whole journals – like Philosophy of Science, or The British Journal for Philosophy of Science, or International Studies in The Philosophy of Science [2]  – which are devoted to the interface between physics and science and philosophical questions posed by science. Similarly, there is philosophy of biology today. There is philosophy of psychology. Almost any area of study you pick there will be a philosophical component of that field which will analyze the presuppositions and fundamental assumptions of that field, make important conceptual distinctions, and then derive logical implications and ramifications from that.

Kevin Harris: It undergirds everything—doesn't it?

Dr. Craig: It does, really, Kevin—everything. And as I've said before, the man who claims to have no need for philosophy is the man who is most apt to be deceived by it. And we see that illustrated in spades in Dr. Krauss' book where he is unable to make clear conceptual distinctions between nothing and something, and so gets into incredibly muddled thinking, using the term nothing as though it were a substantive term for something, which is just wrong-headed.

Kevin Harris: His attitude really seems to come through on this, too, when he says, “If you must use philosophy at least do it in conjunction with good scientific evidence.” And he said, “Philosophy, if you will.” So there's still this denigration of philosophy.

Dr. Craig: There's a sort of scientism, I think, that permeates his thinking. He thinks that philosophers, and theologians as well, don't really do anything or know anything, and he fails to understand the philosophical component of his own field—physics.

Kevin Harris: Bill, I don't know what to draw from this – it's one of those things that keeps me up at night, too – and that is he talks about how Aristotle was ignorant of the things that we now know. But Dr. Krauss knows and even admits that one day he will be in the same position as Aristotle and he will be the ancient unlearned man. And so there's this ever-increasing knowledge that goes on forever and just wait around. Like Texas weather, if you don’t like it wait around fifteen minutes and it will change – if you don't like this theory, wait a while, it will be debunked anyway. He talks about how string theory is the old leisure suit hanging in the closet (that's my words). I mean, he says this is really kind of going out of vogue and things like that, and being replaced by some of the newer models. What are we to make on a practical, personal, existential level of this “everything we now know will be overturned?”

Dr. Craig: Yeah, I think that's wrong. What we discover, I think, is that scientific theories have limits of application, and within those limits they still work. So, for example, Newtonian physics still works; it's still valid within its area of application, which would be low velocity physics. It's only when you get to high velocity physics that you're going to need to introduce special relativity. And, again, special relativity is fine; it still works for objects in uniform motion with respect to each other. But on a cosmic scale where you have accelerated motion and rotary motion you're going to need the General Theory of Relativity to deal with that. And so it's not as though these theories are overthrown, rather we've discovered the boundaries of their application. One scientist once remarked to me that he didn't really have confidence in a theory until it was falsified. Because once it was falsified that defined the limits of its application where he knew then that it could be confidently used to give reliable results. So I thought that that was rather an interesting take on this issue – that it was when the theory was finally shown to break down that he had the most confidence in it within its area of application.

Kevin Harris: That really answers it—I will get some sleep now. [laughter] The limits of application. Let's go to the next segment.

Lawrence Krauss: I think that it's unfortunate that departments of theology exist in universities because, as I've discussed with theologians this very question, I've asked them to give me an example of any contribution to human knowledge in the past five hundred years that is coming from theology. And the answer I always get is “What do you mean by knowledge?” Well, you know, if I ask a biologist or psychologist or chemist or a historian even that question, they wouldn't give me that answer. They'd give me a concrete answer. And I think it's just sterile fields that really aren’t appropriate for modern scholarship.

Kevin Harris: Okay, get rid of all the theologians in the universities and the philosophers.

Dr. Craig: Yeah, this is incredible hubris. I don't know which is more galling, Krauss' question or the answer of those theologians to him. It's easy, Kevin, to give examples of theological knowledge. [3]Theology, for example, tells us what God is like. Theology tells us that God is a personal being, that he's omnipotent, omniscient, morally perfect, that he loves us. Theology tells us how to come into a personal relationship with God. It tells us who Jesus Christ was and what he did on our behalf. Now, someone like Dr. Krauss, of course, won't regard this as knowledge, but that's his problem. He just rejects this knowledge. But I don't. I think that this is theological knowledge which is given to us by God.

Now, he might say, but this isn't empirical knowledge, this isn't knowledge of the world. Well, so what? It's not science, it's theological knowledge. And, in fact, theology does give us some knowledge of the empirical world. For example, theology tells us that the universe began to exist, that the universe is not eternal in the past, there was a beginning of the universe. And that prediction has been verified by modern science. You'll remember Robert Jastrow's book God and The Astronomers. Jastrow was the head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies for NASA, and at the end of his book God and The Astronomers he has this wonderful image. He says, “the scientist has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak, and as he pulls himself over the final rock he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” For centuries theologians knew and predicted the universe had a beginning, and this has now only been discovered by scientists. Similarly, theology says that the universe will not in fact suffer heat death; that these scientific projections in the future will not actually come to pass. God will bring about the end of the spacetime universe before the human race is able to go extinct and perish in the heat death of the universe. So that is, again, empirical knowledge that is given to us by theology. And the fact that Dr. Krauss rejects that is his problem. That's not to say that theology is not a scientia or a science, a source of knowledge. It is. And it gives us a great deal of knowledge.

Kevin Harris: Well, it gets down to this, Bill, and you've heard it too. It's the old adage there can be no progress in philosophy. It's just the same warmed over things over and over and over and over again, and in theology there is no progress, or philosophy. And I bet Dr. Krauss would believe that based on what he's saying. But of course there is progress in philosophy and new insight?

Dr. Craig: Oh, sure. Think of the problem of evil, for example, and the important work that's been done on that by contemporary analytic philosophers. Or the ontological argument. Alvin Plantinga – almost every area he has touched he's brought new insights and advanced the philosophical discussion of these important questions.

Kevin Harris: Sure, and theology would clarify things like the “omni” attributes, that omnipotence would only extend to what is logically possible, what power can do, and so on and so that's progress in defining omnipotence.

Dr. Craig: Yes, in our day there has been considerable progress made in understanding these various properties like omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, moral perfection and so forth. And Dr. Krauss, I think, just rejects that because he's an atheist.

Kevin Harris: There's one more segment here in this podcast from Dr. Krauss:

Lawrence Krauss: Our picture of the future has dramatically changed. One of the reasons I wrote the book is because of the most revolutionary and remarkable discovery in modern science that empty space has energy, and that the dominate energy in the universe is contained in empty space. And by that I mean if you take a bit of space and get rid of all the particles and all the radiation so there's nothing there, that empty space weighs something. It's truly remarkable. And, moreover, general relativity implies that if you put energy in empty space its gravity is repulsive, not attractive. It will cause the expansion of the universe to speed up, not slow down; and that's exactly what we're seeing. And that discovery which is inexplicable – we don't know why empty space has energy – but if it persists it will change the future completely. It will change our picture of the future of the universe completely, that the universe won't be slowing down, as I've pointed out, it will be speeding up, and eventually all the galaxies we now see outside our own cluster will be receding from us faster than the speed of light and will be invisible and the far future will be very, very different than we once thought.

Dr. Craig: In this segment, Kevin, I think Dr. Krauss gives his case away of trying to explain something from nothing, because here it's very evident that he's talking about empty space filled with energy. And that is what he means by the word nothing. So his slip is showing, so to speak, here, and we see that in fact the project of the whole book, to explain why there is something rather than nothing, is really a failure. [4]All he does is explain why our form of the universe exists rather than a quantum vacuum state which is its earlier condition. But he doesn't explain why that quantum vacuum state exists or why there is anything rather than nothing.

Kevin Harris: What sort of things have we talked about in past podcasts that can shed some light on where we are here in relation to this book, our response to this book?

Dr. Craig: Well, I think one of most important lessons to learn, Kevin, is that we need to be very, very critical when we hear scientists on popular television shows and in popular magazine articles and books talking about very difficult high level theories in metaphorical terms, like using the word nothing as a substitute for the quantum vacuum. They inevitably appeal to these metaphorical word pictures which are grossly misleading. I think one of the overriding lessons to learn from this is that the proper understanding of the word nothing is that this is a term of universal negation – to say nothing means not anything. So if we say the universe came from nothing, we don't mean that it came from something, and that was nothing. What we mean is the universe did not come from anything. If we say there's nothing in the refrigerator, I mean there is not anything in the refrigerator. If I say, I saw no one in the hall, it means I did not see anyone in the hall. If I say John is nowhere to be found, I mean he is not to be found anywhere. These are simply terms of universal negations, and it is a mistake that will lead to muddled thinking and wrong conclusions, such as to “thingify” or reify these terms into substantives as though they were referring to something that has this label nothing on it. That, I think, is one of the overriding lessons.

And I suppose, finally, I would say that the lesson also to be learned is that the evidence that the universe had a beginning is very good – indeed all of the evidence that we have today suggests that the universe is not eternal in the past but had an absolute beginning. And that raises in spades the question of what brought the universe into existence. Since the universe cannot simply appear uncaused there must be a transcendent, non-physical reality beyond space and time which brought the universe into being. [5]