Does William Lane Craig Misuse Science?

KEVIN HARRIS: The Majesty of Reason podcast, hosted by Joe Schmidt, has responded to one of our recent podcasts on the kalam cosmological argument. You’ve been a guest on that podcast. It is over 2 hours long, but let's pick out some of the excerpts of their key responses. First, I'd like to remind our viewers that the evidence from the expansion of the universe is only one part of your case in support of the premise that the universe began to exist.

DR. CRAIG: Yes, that's right. We mustn't forget, for example, the scientific evidence based upon the thermodynamic properties of the universe, the generalized second law of thermodynamics, and Wall’s theorem. Then, in addition to the scientific confirmation, we have the two philosophical arguments for the finitude of the past that I offer, and more recently arguments by people like Rob Koons and Alex Pruss for causal finitism. So the support for the second premise of the argument that the universe began to exist is very weighty. Now, I have not listened to this entire podcast. I have only seen the excerpts you've picked. So if some things go unresponded to, I hope that our listeners will be tolerant of that and that the responses that we do offer to these clips will be helpful.

KEVIN HARRIS: And there's more on question of the week number 912. If you'd like to pursue this more, you addressed a lot of this on question of the week number 912 at ReasonableFaith.org so everybody can check that out.^[1] This first clip is Joe Schmidt and his guest Dr. Daniel Linford and Phil Halper talking about Hawking and the latest consensus. Here's the first clip.

Everyone agrees that it's the singularity theorem that gives you the justification for the beginning of the universe, and the singularity theorem can't be trusted. Now Hawking was saying, “Well, I still think there's a beginning” but you have to unpack why does he think that. I've been in his office, and I've interviewed him, and I've spoken to his colleagues. I think the reason is that he interprets the Hartle-Hawking model as still having a beginning, and so he thinks there is still a beginning in quantum cosmology. But what you have to understand is that there's lots of different competing quantum cosmologies, and they don't all say the universe has a beginning. Alright? As we said, the beginning of the Hartle-Hawking model is in imaginary time anyway which Craig cannot buy into. So, yeah, it's extremely problematic for Craig.

Yeah, and there's currently no expert consensus among cosmologists and physicists about which of those models is the correct one. Right?

That's right.

KEVIN HARRIS: Well, by my count, three things there: the singularity theorem, Hawkings’ interpretation points to a beginning, but there's no consensus on the models.

DR. CRAIG: These matters are all discussed in Jim Sinclair’s and my article on the kalam cosmological argument in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. Anyone who wants to study the arguments in support of the second premise really needs to look at that article by Sinclair and me. Now, as Sinclair explains in that article, the Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems have certain very general conditions that one can deny in an effort to avoid the beginning of the universe. In our article Sinclair lists the classes of models that deny the conditions, and then he assesses their viability. The Hartle-Hawking model that he mentioned is an exercise in quantum cosmology that affirms the second premise – the beginning of the universe. It was very interesting that in his interview with Stephen Hawking, Hawking doubled down on that fact and said that his model does imply that the universe began to exist. But the Hartle-Hawking model doesn't do anything to explain the beginning of the universe. I, myself, sat with James Hartle in his office at the University of California Santa Barbara and he said to me that the model does not in any way show that the universe could have come into being without a cause from nothing. So the Hartle-Hawking model itself is supportive of that second premise. Now, of course there's no consensus on which specific model of the universe with a beginning is true, but the relevant point is that no model with an infinite past is mathematically and physically tenable. So the true model (whichever it turns out to be) will belong to the class of models that has a beginning.

KEVIN HARRIS: Here's the next clip. Linford questions your use of the singularity theorems and classical spacetime. Next clip.

Craig will admit that, yes, we don't know that the universe began in a singularity, and then he wants to go on to say that nonetheless we somehow do know the universe began. I don't understand this on two levels. One level, I don't understand is that he uses the singularity theorems to try to support what he's saying, and on the other hand I don't understand it because the only reason at all that anyone thinks that these various physical models give us a beginning is because they have things like singularities in them. Once you give up those results, once you say we can't trust the singularity theorems because they were produced in the context of, for example, classical space times, but we know that there has to be some quantum gravity theories so that space time isn't actually classical, well, then it's the same moment when you give up any justification you've had for thinking that there was going to be a physical theory that told you about the beginning of the universe in the first place. It's just sort of bizarre that he wants to somehow make himself a road in between these results.

KEVIN HARRIS: How are you using the various singularity theorems to support your view, Bill? And what about classical space time?

DR. CRAIG: There's nothing bizarre here. The singularity theorems make it clear that under more and more general conditions an initial cosmological singularity is inevitable. For example, the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem makes an advance on the Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems by having only one condition on which the beginning of the universe is physically necessary. Now, you can avoid the singularity by denying that one condition of the BGV theorem, but Sinclair and Vilenkin emphasized that the resultant models are faced with a plethora of problems that preclude there being physically reasonable models. In fact, the most recent work on the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem from just last August shows that you've basically got only three options of classes of models. These are discussed in question of the week 912. Carballo-Rubio and his colleagues in their article “Geodesically complete universes” from August of 2024 show that all viable singularity-free classical geometries must feature either: (1) a bouncing universe where the universe contracts and then bounces back to a new expansion or, (2) an emergent universe where the universe lies dormant from eternity past and then a finite time ago suddenly begins to expand, or (3) an asymptotically emergent universe in which the beginning of the universe is pushed back to minus infinity. None of these classes of models is physically reasonable. So we can be relatively sure that the correct model will belong to that class of models that obeys the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem and features a beginning and a finite past.

KEVIN HARRIS: In this next clip, they talk about the probability of beginningless cosmological models, and they offer a challenge. It's clip number three.

What is to me a really crucial central point which is just the following. Craig in many of his papers, and sometimes these are co-authored with people like James Sinclair, argues that no particular cosmological model (that is no particular beginningless cosmological model) is probable. So we don't need to go through Craig's entire argument to show that no individual beginningless cosmological model is probable. We already knew that, and that anyone who has their ear on the ground in physics and understands what it is that physicists are interested in and what they're currently working on knows that. There just is no beginningless cosmological model that is probable. And, likewise, there's no cosmological model with a beginning that's probable. No cosmological model is probable. So the whole discussion shouldn't be about whether or not we have any specific cosmological model that's probable. We already know there isn’t one.

The challenge for Craig – tell us which cosmological model you think is probable. The very early universe – expansion from a hot dense state, but something that happened maybe before inflation, if inflation happened.

Something beyond just traditional Big Bang cosmology, something that doesn't look like it was just written down in the 1950s. If you can do that, that would be interesting and impressive but it also involves him putting his neck out on the line.

KEVIN HARRIS: Alright. Several things there, and the challenge is for you to show which current model is probable.

DR. CRAIG: The challenge is misconceived, but it is so in a philosophically interesting way. The question is: which classes of models are physically tenable? Models featuring an infinite past are physically untenable. They cannot be right. By contrast, models with a beginning are at least physically tenable such as the Vilenkin model or the Hartle-Hawking model. The evidence can thus rule out certain classes of models without indicating which one of the remaining tenable models is the most probable one. To give a homey analogy to make this clear, imagine that the police are investigating who murdered the Master of the House, and suppose that the evidence rules out that somebody outside the household committed the murder. We know on the basis of the evidence that the murderer was someone within the household, but the evidence doesn't yet determine which member of the household murdered the Master. Now, to give a scientific example closer to the beginning of the universe, consider physical mechanics. The evidence rules out Newtonian mechanics. The evidence supports some theory of quantum mechanics. Now, as yet we don't yet know which specific theory of quantum mechanics is correct. We need more evidence, but we can be very confident that the correct theory of mechanics will be a quantum mechanics. It's similar with models of the origin of the universe. The evidence rules out pretty decisively beginningless models, but we don't yet know which model with a beginning is correct. Further exploration is needed to proceed to figure out which one of these is best supported by the evidence. The point I'm making can be expressed a bit more technically by saying that relative to a body of evidence a more general hypothesis is much more probable than a more specific hypothesis. As one adds more and more specifics to a hypothesis, it becomes less and less probable relative to the same body of evidence. The general hypothesis “the universe began to exist” is vastly more probable than its negation even though the evidence is insufficient to show which specific model with a beginning is the true one.

KEVIN HARRIS: Let's check out this next clip. Linford brings up your theological views on God and time. Clip number four.

The only last point I want to make here is that we have purely philosophical reasons for thinking that the BGV theorem has no importance for whether the universe has a beginning, and that Craig thinks that God entered time a finite time into the past. Craig also thinks that God is beginningless. Therefore Craig thinks that there are things that have a finite past that have only existed for finite time and yet are beginningless. The BGV theorem at most tells us that the universe has been around for a finite time, but given Craig's own theological view it's just false that if something has been around for finite time that that alone would suffice for showing that it had a beginning. So Craig needs to take an extra step. He needs to show us with a convincing argument what the extra condition is to add to having a finite past that suffices for having a beginning, and then he needs to show that the universe satisfies that condition, whatever that condition is.

KEVIN HARRIS: So can you take the extra step that he's asking for?

DR. CRAIG: I've already taken it. In deducing the properties of the first uncaused cause, I've argued that no physical entity can exist timelessly and changelessly and therefore the cause of the universe must be an immaterial, transcendent being. Now it's true that something can exist for only a finite time and yet be beginningless if it exists timelessly without the universe, but no physical entity can exist timelessly, and therefore the origin of the universe cannot be out of a quiescent universe that is causally prior to time.

KEVIN HARRIS: Here's the final clip. Joe talks about his frustration with defenders of the kalam. Clip number five.

It's very frustrating when I see some defenders of the kalam say that each model featuring a beginningless past has various problems afflicting it, as if this isn't also true of all the models featuring a beginning. This is precisely why there's still active live debate and massive disagreement among professional cosmologists and physicists and whatnot concerning which model of the cosmological history of the universe is correct. So I just think apologists and people interested in the kalam need to stop pretending that there is some sort of consensus that the standard Big Bang model of the universe is just the correct and final word and our universe began 13.8 billion years ago. There's far more disagreement than such people let on.

KEVIN HARRIS: Well, he's back to the consensus thing, sounds like.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. I'm really sorry to see that Joe Schmidt has been so taken in by these two fellows to think that a defense of the premise that the universe began to exist requires one to prove that a particular model with a beginning is correct. Joe, as a sophisticated philosopher, should know that logically that simply is not the case. It can be very probable that the universe began to exist even though any specific or particular model within that class cannot yet be said to be probable. Now, this attack on Christian apologists is also really ad hominem. Alexander Vilenkin is not a Christian apologist. Vilenkin is one of the world's most eminent cosmologists, a professor at Tufts University, and this is what he has to say. I'm going to quote from Vilenkin,

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.^[2]

KEVIN HARRIS: Dr. Linford talked about your work with James Sinclair in this podcast. Are there any plans on more co-writing with Jim Sinclair or Luke Barnes?

DR. CRAIG: No, but I do remain in consultation with both of them on these matters of cosmology, and they have been a tremendous help to me.

KEVIN HARRIS: As we conclude today, what do you think about the accusation in Joe's podcast that you misuse science. And, by the way, that's also the title of his podcast: “William Lane Craig misuses science.”

DR. CRAIG: If I'm guilty of misusing science then the very same accusation must be made of Alexander Vilenkin since I'm saying exactly the same thing that he says. But, obviously, such an accusation lodged against an eminent cosmologist would be absurd.

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