Curiosity With Stephen Hawking

Transcript Curiosity with Stephen Hawking

Kevin Harris: Welcome to the podcast of Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig. I'm Kevin Harris. We're talking about a recent Discovery Channel program called Curiosity. Dr. Craig, these are various programs on various topics. Obviously we want to talk about the one with Stephen Hawking on the existence of God.

Dr. Craig: Yes, it was their lead program for the launch of the series.

Kevin Harris: One of the things that he says is, he asks a question at the beginning of Curiosity: “Is God's existence a question for science?”

Dr. Craig: I don't think that the existence of God is a question for science. I don't think that God is a scientific hypothesis. The way I would understand the relationship between theology and science is multi-faceted. I think that there are a number of ways in which theology and science relate. But with respect to asking the question 'Does God exist?' I think what science can do, Kevin, is to provide evidence for a premise in an argument leading to the conclusion that God exists. So God is not himself a scientific hypothesis, nor is the proposition God exists a scientific hypothesis. I think what science does is it can support a premise in a philosophical argument that leads to the conclusion that God exists.

Let me give you an example. In the fine-tuning argument for the existence of a cosmic designer, the three explanations for the fine-tuning would seem to be physical necessity, chance, or design. Now physical necessity can be weighed scientifically, and Richard Dawkins, for example, in his book The God Delusion argues on scientific grounds that the best explanation of the fine-tuning is not physical necessity. Similarly, chance is a hypothesis that can be assessed scientifically, and Roger Penrose in his book The Road to Reality argues on scientific grounds that the fine-tuning of the universe is not best explained by chance. So that eliminates those two alternatives which would leave the third, namely, design. So this would be an example of where science could provide evidence for the truth of a premise in an argument which would then lead to a theistic conclusion.

Kevin Harris: Hawking really wants this to be a scientific question, and basically says that it is meaningless. If it can't be discovered through scientific means, well, then it's a meaningless question.

Dr. Craig: Yes, I think that's the hidden agenda. They appear to be paying to theism a compliment by regarding it as a scientific hypothesis when in fact, Kevin, this is a terribly reductionistic view of the world and of truth, to think that anything that cannot be proved scientifically is either meaningless or unjustified to believe in. And we should never acquiesce in that kind of scientistic epistemology. That kind of scientism is self-refuting and far too restrictive to be a plausible criterion for knowledge.

Kevin Harris: He asks, “Who or what controls the universe?” When I see that I realize that there are two components to that question. One would be the initial starting or setting in motion these things, and then the other would be God's very eminent, primary, and direct interaction in the universe. And he thinks that somehow if we can show that God is not pulling all the strings all the time, that these are by natural laws, then God doesn't exist.

Dr. Craig: Yeah, that was a surprise to me, frankly, Kevin, in this program. In his book Hawking takes a more modest line. What he says is there's no need for a creator and designer. But in this Curiosity program he actually says: “therefore I think that atheism is true.” He actually thinks that this is a disproof of God's existence. And I think that's, well, that's really grossly exaggerated. This at most would prove that you wouldn't need God to explain the design or origin of the universe. But it in no way constitutes a proof that God does not exist.

Kevin Harris: Didn't seem to consider any kind of secondary causation or indirect act of God.

Dr. Craig: Yeah, I understand what you're saying, Kevin. [1] In other words you're saying that God's acting as the primary cause both for the creation and the ordered continued control of the cosmos doesn't mean that he has to be interfering in the web of secondary causes that are operating immanently in the universe according to the laws of nature. And I think you're quite right about that. I do think God does periodically intervene in the web of secondary causes, and those are called miracles, and I see no reason at all to think that miracles do not or cannot happen. But as you point out even if God chose not to intervene in the web of secondary causes that doesn't mean that he isn't the primary cause that stands behind them, keeping them in being, and setting up the laws of nature in the first place.

Kevin Harris: Right, and that just seems glaringly absent in this analysis.

Dr. Craig: Yeah, well, I think it's extremely unsophisticated, and it's based on this reductionistic epistemological scientism which is just indefensible, really. I mean, suppose, for example, I have a moral argument for the existence of God. That would be completely closed to the scientific method, and yet I could have moral grounds, say, for believing in God. And that wouldn't have anything to do with miraculous interventions.

Kevin Harris: Now, Professor Hawking does anticipate that one would ask, “Then who started it all? Where did this stuff come from?” So he does address that later on.

Dr. Craig: Right, and that's one prominent form of the cosmological argument called the kalam cosmological argument.

Kevin Harris: They went through a very impressive sequence next with the Vikings on the boat—very well done.

Dr. Craig: Yes, it was well filmed.

Kevin Harris: And how that a wolf-god is responsible for the eclipse, and if they shout at it then it will go away, and in their ignorance they attributed things to Thor, and so on. Now, the implications there are what?

Dr. Craig: Well, I think that it's the old god of the gaps sort of reasoning. That God was being used to plug the gaps in scientific knowledge and so as the gaps are closed the need for God is eliminated. I think that's supposed to be the thought.

Kevin Harris: Yeah, kicks out the wolf-god in the sky when we understand what causes an eclipse.

Dr. Craig: Yes.

Kevin Harris: Extrapolate from there that this applies to the God of the universe.

Dr. Craig: Right. You know, it struck me, Kevin, as I watched that sequence, I thought to myself: how different the ancient Hebrews thought of God compared to these pagan myths. They demythologized nature. They didn't think that there were all these deities haunting nature and controlling it and making it do things. They thought that behind the whole creative order lay the supreme God of the universe. And it was quite a different view than this sort of mythology that was represented in that sequence of the program. So I thought Hebrew monotheism really stood apart from, for example, Norse mythology.

Kevin Harris: Next, the program really takes a propaganda twist, in my view, in that it says it takes courage – and Hawking says it takes courage – to discover the workings in the universe. And it uses such terms are 'liberation' and 'bold.' In other words, if you will stand in the face of any kind of supernatural explanation you're being bold, it's liberating, and you're being courageous.

Dr. Craig: Well, Kevin, in my view the whole program was an unvarnished piece of propaganda. I was really quite shocked at how . . . it wasn't just one sided, it was propagandistic. The examples that it shows were carefully selected to represent a particular point of view. It gave a very distorted image of the relationship between science and Christianity down through the ages. I thought it was just blatant propaganda, and anybody who didn't see that, I think, is extremely naïve.

Kevin Harris: And the building falling on Pope John's head—Pope John the twenty-first.

Dr. Craig: You know, that was really over the top. That was just tasteless, I thought. That was really in poor taste, where it says that the laws of nature caused the roof of the building to collapse crushing this man under the debris, and it even showed his hand under the debris as it killed him. I mean, it was in such poor taste. I was really quite shocked at the program.

Kevin Harris: Well, Hawking asks two questions at this point. Laws of nature will tell us whether we need a God at all, and a sub-question: [2] what role is there for God if the laws of the universe conflict with the concept of God? And so, again, we're back to the inner-workings of the laws of nature and God's direct intervention.

Dr. Craig: Yes, he's still looking for the god of the gaps.

Kevin Harris: Okay. Obviously we would expect at this point for Professor Hawking to explore Galileo and the fact that the earth is not the center of the universe. I hear this a lot—we are insignificant, more insignificant than we thought. And somehow this flies in the face of theism. I fail to see how us not being in the very center of the universe or of the center of the galaxy or the solar system would somehow negate God. Now, it might negate some preconceptions about our position; but not God.

Dr. Craig: No, it has absolutely nothing to do with whether there's a creator of the universe. And in fact this Aristotelian view that the earth was at the center of the cosmos, from my conversations with medievalists, this did not mean that mankind and the earth occupied a place of prominence and honor in the universe. On the contrary, because in Aristotelian physics heavy things sink, this really represented the idea that we were kind of the low sink-hole of the universe. We were at the center of the universe where all the heavy stuff kind of fell in, and we were in the pit, as it were, of the whole universe. So this wasn't in the minds of these ancient thinkers who thought that the earth lay at the center of the cosmos, a way of showing the honor and dignity of man and the centrality of human existence at all. This is apparently a modern misunderstanding.

Kevin Harris: We have talked about the god of the gaps, Bill, more times than there are molecules in the universe. But Professor Hawking does say that each discovery further removes the need for God. And that is that typical god of the gaps. He says that in 1985 he met with the Pope at a conference and the Pope, according to Hawking, said “it's okay to study the workings of the universe, but we should not ask questions about its origins—that belongs to God.”

Dr. Craig: See, I don't believe that. I don't believe that the Pope actually said that. That is not the representation that I have heard of that Vatican conference. I think that this is a propaganda stick spin on all of these events that is being represented in this program.

Kevin Harris: Well, Hawking goes on to say, “I can't do that; my curiosity is too heavy. I must continue to ask questions.”

Dr. Craig: Yeah—the champion of free thought.

Kevin Harris: And he says, well, okay, and there are only three ingredients to make a universe. They are, number one: matter; number two: energy; number three: space. Now, Einstein has shown that matter and energy seem to be in the same category or the same thing, and so that's only two things, two ingredients in the cookbook that we need for a universe. What about those two or three ingredients?

Dr. Craig: Well, I think that what he's preparing the ground for is the view that our material universe that we observe today is a fluctuation of the energy that is in space. On quantum theory space is filled with this low grade vacuum energy, which is locked up in space, and this energy is a sea of rolling activity, particles fluctuating in and out of existence. And the idea here is that the material universe could be a fluctuation of the energy in the vacuum. So I think this is what he's attempting to lay the groundwork for.

Kevin Harris: Okay. So a spontaneous Big Bang occurs, and then we have matter, energy and space. And he says, “nothing caused the Big Bang.” It was a spontaneous event.

Dr. Craig: Well, this is where, I think, the confusion begins to come in. When certain scientists talk about the quantum vacuum they refer to it as nothing, and thereby mislead laypeople because they're using the word nothing in an equivocal way—they do not mean non-being, they do not mean nothing. What they mean is this space, this empty space, filled with vacuum energy. And it is this that can fluctuate spontaneously into a material form of the universe, so that it's just a complete misrepresentation to say that this explains how the universe came out of nothing. [3] It's just the transformation of the universe from one form to another. Now what's important to understand, Kevin, is that this quantum vacuum hasn't existed forever. As you trace the expansion of the universe back in time, the quantum vacuum itself came into being at the Big Bang. So that the origin of the universe remains to be yet explained. And this explanation of how the universe transitions from one form to another is a later stage than it's absolute origin, which is posited in Hawking's own model. In his own model the universe is not infinite in the past, but had an absolute beginning a finite time ago. So this is one of the most egregious misrepresentations of science to unsuspecting laymen that occurs in the popular literature today; and that is this equivocal use of the word nothing to represent the quantum vacuum of vacuum energy filling space. So in effect when he says 'these are the ingredients you need to make a universe' you've already got the universe there; you've got the energy and you've got the space. And yet, the question is: well, where did those come from? You're not explaining the origin of the universe.

Kevin Harris: He at this point describes negative energy and positive energy and its role in the Big Bang, and also how that negative and positive energy allowed for this expansion.

Dr. Craig: Yes, see, this is another one of these slights of hand that he's attempting to do here – the idea of these fluctuations of the energy in empty space I spoke of. The idea here is that if the universe is composed of positive energy and negative energy, and these exactly balance out, then the sum total of energy is zero, and so the universe wouldn't have to collapse back again into the vacuum state, it could continue to exist and continue to expand. So this doesn't do anything to explain the origin of the universe. It starts with the quantum vacuum in space, which as I said cannot be eternal in the past; it itself had an origin. What he's talking about is how a fluctuation of the energy can occur to form a universe who's sum energy is on balance zero. Now, the idea that because the energy of the universe balances out that therefore nothing exists is absurd. This is like saying that if I go on a round-trip journey where the return leg exactly retraces the out-bound leg then my net motion is zero, therefore I haven't gone anywhere. That is how silly this bookkeeping trick is. You still need to have a cause of the origin of the positive and the negative energy in the first place, even if on balance their net sum is zero.

Kevin Harris: Well, the illustration was a man digging a hole. And I'm thinking: okay, well, we've still got the dirt to contend with. [laughter]

Dr. Craig: You've got the hole. The hole is real; you could fall into it – right? – and the dirt is real, and there was a man. You know, the analogy is so counter-productive for him. There was a man, an agent, a personal agent, who dug the hole, and pushed the dirt over there. So there was an agent who was the cause of this displacement, even if on balance the volume of dirt exactly equals the volume of the hole. Nevertheless there was a cause, an agent cause, which brought them into being.

Kevin Harris: Yeah, and he was acting on pre-existent material.

Dr. Craig: That's true, too. That's right—and acting on pre-existent material. So it is a good illustration of his point, but it shows why his point is so irrelevant to the origin of the universe out of nothing. What it illustrates is the need for, as you say, the pres-existent material plus an agent who is the ultimate cause of everything. It really is an illustration we as theists ought to be using.

Kevin Harris: Yes, and I've often complained about the limitations of our models—we can only do our best. But model after model, illustration and the animation in Curiosity was of the Big Bang exploding into space, and you can watch it as an outside observer. And, now, a layman who doesn't understand the Big Bang is going to say, “Well, I can see how that would happen. You got all this space and all this whirling stuff and this for some reason began to expand or blew up or things like that.” [4] And so, again, our models are limited. And I don't even think Professor Hawking would have really ultimately approved the way [it was portrayed]. They even had the sound effect, like it was a firecracker that lit the fuse.

Dr. Craig: Yeah, and the Big Bang is not an explosion into a pre-existing space. It is the expansion of space itself and ultimately space shrinks down to – in the standard model at least – a singularity before which there's no space, no time, no matter, no energy, and therefore represents the origin of the universe from literally nothing, not just from a quantum vacuum.

Kevin Harris: Bill, can you comment on his use of the illustration of black holes, how a clock would slow down as it was sucked into the black hole.

Dr. Craig: Yes, I can comment on that, Kevin. That was sheer window-dressing for a very unsophisticated unscientific argument against God's being the cause of the origin of the universe. It was irrelevant to the argument itself, it merely leant an air of sophistication to the argument. What the argument is really saying is this: a cause is always temporally prior to its effect. The cause occurs before the effect. But when you have a beginning of time there is no before – right? – because it's the very beginning of time. Therefore the beginning of time cannot have a cause. And this was Hawking's main argument against theism in this program.

Kevin Harris: He put a bow on it with this. This was the killer argument that was the climax.

Dr. Craig: This was the killer—that's right. The stuff about the positive and negative energy was just to get the material universe out of the quantum vacuum, but that doesn't explain the origin of the universe absolutely. Where did the vacuum energy and the space come from? To do that he has to appeal to this unscientific philosophical argument based on the assumption that causes precede their effects in time, and that therefore an origin of time cannot have a cause. And the problem with that argument is the assumption that causes have to proceed their effects in time. There's no justification for that. Causes can be simultaneous with their effects. Some people would even argue you might have a timeless cause of a temporal effect—that's not my own view, but that needs to be discussed. Or maybe time didn't originate at the beginning of the universe. Maybe there's a kind of metaphysical time prior to the origin of the universe in which God exists. So it was a very superficial non-scientific argument that was really quite sophomoric, and yet this was, as you say, the real crowning cap of his case for atheism.

Kevin Harris: Yeah, it was. And, Bill, what I want to understand is, what is it about a black hole that illustrates this? I hear this a lot.

Dr. Craig: Well, the illustration is that in a black hole you come to a point where you have a boundary to spacetime. There is an edge so to speak to space and time in a black hole. And similarly if you trace the expansion of the universe back in time it is like an object under gravitational self-collapse. It's sort of like a black hole in reverse. So as you go back in time it's like everything shrinking down to finally a boundary point to space and time before which space and time did not exist, and therefore it represents an absolute origin of the universe. Now I want to hasten to add, Kevin, that it was very curious to me, in this Curiosity program, that Hawking wasn't defending his own model of the universe, which is a non-singular origin to spacetime. He was defending the old standard model in this program, that the universe goes back to an initial singularity, like a black hole, from which the universe emerged. And that one fairly cries out for theism because, as I say, you reach this boundary point at which space, time, matter and energy came into being, and if something can't come out of literal non-being there must be a transcendent cause beyond the universe, beyond space and time, which brought the universe into being in the first place. If you deny that then you've got to just bite the bullet and say being spontaneously arose from non-being, for no reason whatsoever, which, I think, is worse than magic.

Kevin Harris: Bill, as we close today I want to reiterate once more his final argument. [5] He put it in these words: “If there was no time then there would be no time for a creator to create; that a creator would require time.” Once again in lay-terms that's what he's saying. There's no time for a creator to create—there's no creator.

Dr. Craig: Right, and that assumes that a cause must come temporally prior to its effect, rather than be simultaneous with its effect. It assumes that you can't have a timeless cause of a temporal effect, and it assumes that there wasn't a sort of metaphysical time prior to the origin of physical time. So in all of these ways the argument is just based upon assumptions which have never been justified. [6]