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Questions on Matter, Energy, and Nothingness

April 25, 2011     Time: 00:15:21
Questions on Matter, Energy, and Nothingness

Transcript Questions on Matter, Energy and Nothingness

 

Kevin Harris: Thank you for joining us on the Reasonable Faith podcast as we put Dr. William Lane Craig back on the hot seat and answer some questions that we've been getting. I'm Kevin Harris. Bill, thank you for being with us. And we have a question here concerning the kalam cosmological argument. This writer says,

Dr Craig, I've been a long time defender of the kalam cosmological argument, but recently encountered an objection to the KCA for which I do not have a fully satisfying answer. If the kalam cosmological argument succeeds in proving the universe has a cause it follows by logical inference that the cause must be immaterial, timeless, spaceless since matter, time and space came into being with the universe. Immateriality, non-spatiality and timelessness are negative descriptors that describe the absence of some positive reality, not the presence of a positive reality—similar to darkness being the absence of light, and cold being the absence of heat. They describe what is not, not what is. Why then should we attribute these descriptors to the cause of the universe as if they were properties had by that cause, and describing the nature of that cause. They only tell us what the cause is not like, not what it is like.

Is looking at something's negative attributes inappropriate?

Dr. Craig: Well, not at all in this case because we've already made a positive existential conclusion, namely that a cause of the universe exists. So we're not just talking about nothingness here; we're talking about an entity that actually exists, a cause of the universe. And then to add the additional information that is provided by these negative descriptions, that this cause is itself uncaused, that it is timeless – it doesn't exist in time – that it is spaceless, and therefore transcends the universe, are very informative descriptions. These are valuable insights into the nature of this causal entity that brought about the universe. So the fact that these properties in and of themselves are negative in that they tell us that it's uncaused, timeless, spaceless, and immaterial is in no way to diminish their importance—this is enormously informative to learn that the cause of the universe, this positive existential reality, doesn't exist in time and space and is immaterial and itself uncaused. That's very important.

Kevin Harris: It serves as further description.

Dr. Craig: Right, it informs us a great deal about what kind of an entity we're talking about, to learn these things.

Kevin Harris: So it'd be okay to say: “This is Joe, and he is a carpenter, but he's not a Presbyterian? [laughter]

Dr. Craig: Right. That would tell you something more about him. Or suppose you said: “This is Joe, and he's penniless . . .”

Kevin Harris: Well, that's me.

Dr. Craig: “. . . and he's uneducated,” [laughter] and so forth. Those would be negative properties but you'd learn a lot more about Joe.

Kevin Harris: This questioner goes on to say,

More importantly, if this has no positive ontology it calls into question the ontic status of the purported cause of the universe. After all, what is the ontological difference between some entity x that is immaterial, spaceless and timeless, and absolutely nothing at all?

Dr. Craig: Well, very simply, the first one can be the cause of the universe, and the second one can't be the cause of anything, because nothingness has no causal powers, has no properties at all. So we've already answered the question “What is the difference between this being and nothingness?” when you make the inference, therefore there exists a cause of the universe—that is an existential affirmation, and therefore already, if you know nothing else, this is differentiated from a state of nothingness.

Kevin Harris: Another question that we have on the same lines, Dr. Craig, is,

Dear Dr. Craig, one of the objections which has been raised to the kalam cosmological argument that is out there on the internet is the first law of thermodynamics—the rule that matter and energy can only be rearranged, or in other words matter is neither being created nor destroyed.

Dr. Craig: Right.

Kevin Harris: “That disproves the first premise of the kalam.”

Dr. Craig: The “Whatever begins to exist has a cause.”

Kevin Harris: I've heard this before.

Dr. Craig: That's bizarre—I mean, how would that possibly disprove the premise that everything that begins to exist . . . in fact that would be right in line with the first law of thermodynamics, the conservation of energy and mass.

Kevin Harris: Because the definition gets misconstrued of the first law of thermodynamics, that matter cannot be created nor destroyed. [1] In other words, it's eternal, matter is eternal because it's neither being created nor destroyed.

Dr. Craig: I think that what he means to say is that it's inconsistent with the second premise, that the universe began to exist, because somebody who affirms the eternality of matter and energy would agree that everything that begins to exist has a cause. There's an infinite regress of causes and effects – right? – in line with the first law. So what . . . I think he's misstated it.

Kevin Harris: It'd be the second premise, then.

Dr. Craig: Yes, it would be the second premise that would ostensibly be called into question by the first law, which is the conservation of energy and mass. And we better hope that this law is not incompatible with the truth of the second premise, that the universe began to exist, because if that were the case, Kevin, that would mean that the first law of thermodynamics is in conflict with Big Bang cosmology, which affirms the beginning of the universe, time and space, matter and energy. Now, why don't cosmologists regard the first law as violated by the standard Big Bang theory? The reason is because the first law of thermodynamics is a law of nature, and therefore is a physical law that only applies within the arena of spacetime. But it doesn't apply to the origin of the arena itself. The first law of thermodynamics doesn’t govern before the beginning of the universe or the causal conditions that would bring the universe into being, or apply outside the arena. It only applies once the arena is in place and exists. And then within that arena energy and mass are conserved. And that's why cosmologists who affirm the standard Big Bang model aren't troubled by the fact of an initial beginning and origin of the universe at which all matter and energy come into being, and then are conserved from that point on.

Kevin Harris: Once again, it's a matter of definition here. The first law would only apply to the matter and energy that is, that is here. But it's misconstrued to say, since matter and energy is neither being created no destroyed it must be eternal.

Dr. Craig: That's the inference, but that's a faulty inference.

Kevin Harris: Yeah, that's a faulty inference because of all the reasons you just gave us.

Dr. Craig: And the point here to make, Kevin, I think, is that this is not a religious or theological point we're making here. This is a religiously neutral question that faces any secular cosmologist who thinks that the universe had an absolute beginning. He needs to answer this question, “Wait a minute, doesn’t this violate the first law?” And the answer is no for the reason that we just gave. So this isn't a theological special pleading of any sort. This is the standard approach of contemporary cosmology to this question.

Kevin Harris:

Your refutation of this laughable objection has seemed to have hit a nerve in the atheist community on the internet sites that I haunt, as they have tried to defend this objection by saying you created a straw man, and equivocated your position. They say using “I began to exist” is misleading because “I” is a misleading use of philosophy, since it addresses a form of matter in a particular way, which is merely rearranged. It has also been proposed you equivocated the beginning of the universe with the rearrangements of matter and energy.

Dr. Craig: Slightly different objection—I suppose it's related. And that is the objector here seems to think that because things that begin to exist have material causes that preexist them and that therefore nothing begins to exist. And I point out that that is absurd. It confuses a thing with the matter of the stuff of which the thing is made. And even if the matter of which a thing is made, which constitutes it, preexists, that doesn’t imply that the thing itself therefore is eternal and doesn't begin to exist. And the example I gave was myself. I have not always existed. If you think that because the matter of my body has always been around that therefore I have always been around, then I want to know where was I during the Jurassic age? What was I doing at that time? Did I actually exist prior to my conception? This is clearly absurd. It would be crazy to think that I existed from eternity prior to my conception, even if the stuff of which my body is made has always been around.

Now, I take it that the answer that is being proposed here by those on the internet is to say that I'm equivocating here because I am just matter arranged in a particular way, [2] and it rearranges. Now, this is very interesting, Kevin. I think that what's happening here is the objector is jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. What he is now saying is that there really is no such entity as “I,” that in fact what I call myself is just an arrangement, it's just particles arranged in a certain way. And those particles have always existed and been arranged in different ways, and now they're arranged as Bill Craig. So what this view is called is actually – there's a name for this view in philosophy – it's called mereological nihilism. Mereological nihilism—this is the view that there really are no composite objects, that there really are no such things as chairs and tables and people. Rather they're just particles of matter arranged chair-wise, or table-wise, or people-wise. In other words what this view implies is the radical view that I do not exist. The reason that I never began to exist, on this view, is because I don't exist at all. I don't exist now. And I would submit that that is even more implausible than the previous position that they held, that there are no such things as people, and in fact there is no such thing as myself. On this view there's no such things as dinosaurs, no such thing as planets, no such thing as people, and there is no such thing as myself. I do no exist on this view, which to me, I think, is just crazy.

Kevin Harris: Yeah.

Dr. Craig: And it's certainly crazier than thinking that there is a distinction between an object and the stuff of which the object is made. It is far more plausible to think that I exist even though the material particles making up my body existed prior to my existence. So, right, you can avoid the absurdity of saying that I existed prior to my conception my denying that I ever exist, including that I exist now. You can do that if you want. But I think that you've only made matters more implausible and affirmed a philosophical view that is so radical and implausible that it will not commend itself, I think, to very many. Now, as for the universe, the question then would arise: well, why think that the universe, then, is not just a particular rearrangement of matter and energy? Well, that's a very fair question, and that's addressed in contemporary cosmology. In contemporary cosmology that is the question that's asked. Is matter and energy eternal in the past, has it always been there, or did it come into being? And the model that has dominated the twentieth century since the twenties is that matter and energy are not thought to be eternal – as was previously believed – but that matter and energy, all matter and energy, physical space and time themselves came into being at the moment of the Big Bang. Now, this may have been at a singularity, or it may have been a non-singular beginning, as in the Hartle-Hawking no-boundary proposal. But there isn't any contemporary model in astrophysics that enables you to extend the material universe into the infinite past. There's no successful model that does that. So, sure, these folks can raise the question quite legitimately, and the answer in contemporary cosmology has been pretty decidedly that the universe is not simply a rearrangement of eternally existing matter and energy, but rather that all matter and energy and physical time and space themselves had a beginning.

Kevin Harris: You mentioned mereological nihilism. What is mereology? What is that the study of?

Dr. Craig: Oh, mereology is the study of wholes and parts—how things are composed of parts. And believe it or not there's a whole metaphysical field of study that's devoted to the study of wholes and parts. And what this view suggests is that there are no objects composed of parts. There are no composite objects. And so there are just particles, simples, just particles and these are arranged in different ways, but there are really no such things as dinosaurs or horses or people or chairs. These things don't really exist.

Kevin Harris: Wow, who thought that up? [laughter] Great answers, Dr. Craig. Thank you very much. And thank you for listening, if in fact you do exist. If this podcast played and there was no one to hear it, would it make a sound? You can get more answers at our question and answer archives at ReasonableFaith.org – some common questions, not so common questions – so go there when you get a chance. And we'll see you next time on Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig. [3]