Doctrine of Creation (Part 7): Objections to <em>Creatio ex Nihilo</em>

Objections to Creatio ex Nihilo

Objections to Creatio

Let's now turn from objections to ex nihilo to objections to the creatio part of the formula. These objections are just the opposite of the objections that we just looked at. These objections maintain that coming into being ex nihilo is easy. No cause is needed for the universe's beginning to exist. So these objections challenge the principle ex nihilo nihil fit. They claim that things can come into being from nothing without any sort of cause. How might they defend this?

Consider this objection. If the universe began to exist, then it must have come from nothing. But that's quite plausible, since there are no constraints on nothing, and so nothing can do anything, including producing the universe. (Yes, this objection is really out there on the Internet.) How might we respond to that? This objection, I think, is hopelessly confused about the use of the word “nothing.” When it is rightly said that nothing preceded the universe, one doesn't mean that something preceded it, and that was nothing. We mean that it was not preceded by anything. Imagine then the following dialogue between two people who are discussing the Second World War:

Here the objector seems to be guilty of reifying nothing into an actual thing. Nothingness isn't even anything, and therefore it has no properties and no powers. So it is wholly misconceived to say that it produced the universe. Rather, to say the universe was caused by nothing is to say that the universe wasn't caused by anything, that it had no cause. That, I think, is metaphysically absurd, and that's why the causal principle is one of the oldest and most widely recognized truths of metaphysics.

Next objection: Quantum physics proves that things can come from nothing. Lawrence Krauss, who is a prominent quantum physicist, in our debate in April of 2011 said the following,

How might we respond to this objection? Scientists who contend that physics can explain the origin of the universe from nothing seem to have an outrageously naive grasp of the English language. The term “nothing” is a term of universal negation. It is not a referring term. It's not a singular term. It means “not anything.” So, for example, if I say, I had nothing for lunch today, I mean I did not have anything for lunch today. If the theologian says that God created the universe from nothing, he means that God's creation of the universe was not out of anything. The word “nothing” is, to repeat, simply a term of universal negation meaning “not anything.” There's a whole series of similar words of universal negation in English. “Nobody” means “not anybody.” “None” means “not one.” “Nowhere” means “not anywhere.” “Never” means “not ever.” But because the word “nothing” is grammatically a pronoun we can use it as the subject or direct object of a sentence. By taking these words not as terms of universal negation but rather as words referring to something we can generate all kinds of funny situations. If you say, I saw nobody in the hall, the wiseacre says, Oh yeah. He's been hanging around there a lot lately. Or if you say, I had nothing for lunch today, the wiseacre says, Really? How did it taste? These sorts of jokes are as old as literature itself. In Homer’s story of Odysseus, Odysseus introduces himself to the Cyclops as “Nobody.” One night Odysseus puts out the Cyclops’ eye. His fellow Cyclopses hear him screaming in pain and they yell to him, What's the matter with you, making so much noise that we can't sleep? The Cyclops says, Nobody is killing me! Nobody is killing me! And they say, If nobody is attacking you, then you must be sick, and there's nothing we can do about it!

In Euripides’ version of the story, we have a sort of Abbott and Costello Who's On First? routine:

Why are you crying out, Cyclops?

Nobody has undone me!

Then there is no one hurting you after all.

Nobody is blinding me!

Then you're not blind.

As blind as you!

But how could nobody have made you blind?

You're mocking me. Where is this Nobody?

Nowhere, Cyclops!

The use of these words like “nothing,” “nobody,” and so on as substantive terms referring to something is a joke. How astonishing then it is to find that some physicists whose native tongue is English have used these terms precisely as substantive terms referring to something. For example, Lawrence Krauss, again, has said with a straight face,

“There are a variety of forms of nothing . . . and they all have physical definitions.”[2]

“The laws of quantum mechanics tell us that nothing is unstable.”[3]

“70% [of] the dominant stuff in the universe is nothing.”[4]

“There's nothing there, but it has energy.”[5]

“Nothing weighs something.”[6]

“Nothing is almost everything.”[7]

All of these claims take the word “nothing” to be a singular term referring to something, such as the quantum vacuum or quantum mechanical fields. These are physical realities and therefore clearly something. To call these realities “nothing” is at least misleading and guaranteed to confuse laypeople. At worst, it is a deliberate misrepresentation of science. Such statements do not even begin to address, much less answer, the question of how the universe could come into existence from nothing.

In his review of Krauss’ book, A Universe from Nothing, David Albert, a very eminent philosopher of quantum physics, explains:

Albert concludes, “Krauss is dead wrong and his religious and philosophical critics are absolutely right.”

I'd like to go on now to a third objection, which is a different proposal as to how the universe could come into being from literally nothing. This proposal comes from the very prominent astrophysicist and cosmologist Alex Vilenkin of Tufts University. Vilenkin has been persistent in arguing that the scientific evidence makes it virtually unavoidable that the universe began to exist. The theorem that Vilenkin helped to craft that shows the beginning of the universe is called the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem (for short, the BGV theorem). The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem states that any universe which is, on average, in a state of cosmic expansion over its history cannot be infinite in the past but must reach a past space-time boundary.

Vilenkin, interestingly enough, is aware of the kalām cosmological argument. I have met Vilenkin and corresponded with him. He has actually interacted with the kalām argument in print. In response to the claim that the beginning of the universe requires a supernatural cause he says the following:

So what is Vilenkin's proposal here? What does he have in mind when he says that quantum cosmology will do just as well in explaining the origin of the universe from nothing? Well, in an article published in the online magazine Inference in the fall of 2015 Vilenkin explains his proposal.[10] Let me walk you through it step by step. Vilenkin writes,

Here I think he means to say “something.” I think this is a slip on Vilenkin’s part. “The conservation of energy makes it impossible to create something from nothing.” He cannot mean it makes it impossible to create nothing from nothing, because he's just quoted  Lucretius that nothing can be created from nothing. So I feel quite certain that this was a slip of the pen here and what Vilenkin means to say is the conservation of energy makes it impossible to create something from nothing.

Now, what is he talking about here? Well, he says in the first sentence that modern physics can explain the origin of the universe in such a way that the beginning of the universe doesn't require a cause, and then he quotes the ancient Roman philosopher Lucretius. Lucretius was a Roman philosopher who lived during the first century before Christ. He wrote a book called De Rerum Natura – On the Nature of Things. In De Rerum Natura Lucretius argued that it's impossible for something to be created from nothing. Vilenkin accurately quotes Lucretius in the second sentence – “nothing can be created from nothing” and by the word “nothing” here Lucretius is using the word properly. He is not using it the way Krauss did as a singular term referring to something. What Lucretius meant is that it's impossible for anything to be created from nothing; so that nothing at all (not anything) can be created from nothing, according to Lucretius. And then Vilenkin gives his own reason for thinking this, appealing to the modern law of the conservation of energy, which says that energy can be neither created nor destroyed; that in every process the energy is conserved and therefore energy cannot be created or destroyed. Vilenkin says the conservation of energy would make it impossible to create something from nothing because then you would have energy created, which is impossible according to the conservation of energy.

Now in the second paragraph Vilenkin goes on to say there's a loophole in this reasoning. He's going to dispute Lucretius’ claim, and this is what he has to say:

So what he's saying is that the energy that's associated with the gravitational field is negative energy, whereas the energy that's associated with matter is positive energy, and it's possible that these two cancel each other out exactly, with no leftover – that the positive and negative energy exactly cancel each other out, so that on balance the total energy of the universe is zero. Then he goes on to say,

What he has in mind here is a closed space like the surface of a sphere. This spherical surface is finite, and if the universe is like that (if the universe is like the surface of a sphere – the three-dimensional analogy to the two-dimensional surface of a sphere)--, then, he says, the total energy has to be zero. This is exactly what happens in such a closed universe in which the universe or space is like the surface of a sphere. He says,

So if our universe is not open geometrically (if it's closed geometrically like the surface of a sphere, which is finite), then he says, necessarily, general relativity requires that the positive and negative energy balance each other out, and so the total energy of the universe is zero. All right. What's the implication of that? Well, the third paragraph:

It wouldn't violate the conservation laws because the total energy of the universe is zero, and so, he says, there would be nothing to prevent the universe from popping into being from nothing.

Then he goes on to say,

However remote the probability, given the laws of quantum mechanics, any process or event that is not ruled out (that is, not forbidden by these conservation laws) will happen sooner or later.

So he concludes,

It just happens.

Well, now, I think this is a terrible argument! Let's grant for the sake of argument the supposition that the positive energy associated with matter is exactly counter-balanced by the negative energy associated with gravity, so that on balance the total energy of the universe is zero. We’ll grant that for the sake of argument. Vilenkin's key move comes with the claim that in such a case, “There is nothing to prevent such a universe from being spontaneously created out of nothing.” Now think about that. There is nothing to prevent such a universe from being spontaneously created out of nothing. This claim is a triviality. Necessarily, if there is nothing, then there is nothing to prevent the universe from coming into being. By the same token, if there is nothing, then there is nothing to permit the universe to come into being. If there were anything to prevent or to permit the universe’s coming into being, then there would be something, not nothing. If there is nothing, then there is nothing, period. As our British friends would say: full-stop.  The whole argument is misconceived in presupposing that in order for it to be metaphysically impossible that the universe originates out of nothing, there needs to be something to prevent it, which is simply wrong. The absence of anything to prevent the universe’s coming into being doesn't imply the metaphysical possibility of the universe’s coming into being from nothing.

To give an illustration. If there were nothing, then there would be nothing to prevent God's coming into being without a cause. Right? If there were nothing, then there would be nothing to prevent God's coming into being without a cause. But that doesn't entail that such a thing is metaphysically possible. It's metaphysically impossible for God to come into being. It is necessarily true that God cannot come into being, with or without a cause, even if there were nothing to prevent this because nothing exists.

Vilenkin, however, infers, “No cause is needed for the universe’s coming into being because the conservation laws would not prevent it.” According to quantum mechanics, any process which is not strictly forbidden by the conservation laws will happen. His argument here assumes that if there were nothing, then both the conservation laws and quantum physical laws would still hold. If you think about it, that's far from obvious. In the absence of anything at all, it's not clear why the laws governing our physical universe would hold. Why would the conservation laws and the quantum mechanical laws be valid if there were truly nothing?

But in any case, why think that, given the laws of quantum mechanics, anything not strictly forbidden by the conservation laws will inevitably happen? For example, the conservation laws do not strictly forbid God's sending everybody to heaven. But I don't think that gives great grounds for optimism about people's salvation. Neither do the laws forbid God's sending everybody to hell, in which case both outcomes will occur. That's logically impossible because they are logically contrary universal generalizations. It cannot be the case both that everybody goes to heaven and everybody goes to hell, and yet neither of these is strictly forbidden by the conservation laws, and so they should both happen. We can make the same point non-theologically as well. The conservation laws do not strictly forbid something's coming into existence; but neither do they forbid nothing’s coming into existence. But both cannot happen. It's logically absurd to think that because something is not forbidden by the conservation laws, it will therefore inevitably happen.

Finally, Vilenkin's inference that because the positive and the negative energy in the universe sum to zero therefore no cause of the universe’s coming into being is needed is difficult to take seriously. This is like saying that if your debts exactly balance your assets, then your net worth is zero and therefore there need be no cause of your financial situation. Vilenkin would, I hope, not agree with Peter Atkins that because the positive and negative energy of the universe sum to zero, therefore nothing exists now and so, to quote Atkins, “Nothing did indeed come from nothing”[11] because nothing exists, according to Atkins. As Descartes has taught us, I, at least, undeniably exist, and so something exists. Christopher Isham, who is Great Britain's premier quantum cosmologist, has pointed out that even if the positive and negative energy of the universe sum to zero, there still needs to be what he calls “ontic seeding” in order to create the positive and negative energy in the first place, even if on balance its sum is zero.[12]

That brings us to the end of today's lesson and our discussion of objections to creatio ex nihilo.[13]