#773 Physicists & Philosophers Reply to the Kalam Cosmological Argument (Pt IV)

Dr. craig’s response

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A

In today’s final excerpt we treat, first, the thermodynamic evidence in support of the beginning of the universe, then, second, the causal premiss that whatever begins to exist has a cause. Some brief discussion ensues as to the nature of this first cause before concluding. As usual my responses are printed in blue italics.

D. SECOND SCIENTIFIC CONFIRMATION

NARRATOR: The big bang doesn't prove the universe had a beginning, only that it evolved from a very hot dense state. But when it comes to physics, the kalam advocate has another card to play – the second law of thermodynamics. The second law states that entropy, which is roughly a measure of disorder, increases with time. And so the argument goes: if the universe were eternal into the past we would already be in a maximal entropy state. Since we aren't, the universe can't be past-eternal. This also related to the mystery of why the big bang was in a surprisingly low- entropy state. But what if the universe were infinite?

ALAN GUTH: Perhaps we're living in a physical system where there's no maximum possible entropy. Suppose the entropy can just grow forever, and an eternally inflating universe looks like such a system although nobody really knows for sure how to define the entropy of an eternally inflating universe. But if it's the case that entropy can grow forever then any state is a state of low entropy because it's low compared to the maximum which is infinite.

Response: The puzzle of our universe’s initial low entropy condition, which is universally recognized, cannot be so easily dismissed. The problem doesn’t presuppose that there is a maximum entropy for the universe. It is enough that compared to today the initial entropy was astonishingly low.

39:42: ABHAY ASHTEKAR: What we need to consider is not just the entropy of matter but also entropy associated with horizons, so to say the gravitational entropy. In the contracting branch, because the dynamics is different from Einstein's theory, a horizon develops but it grows extremely rapidly. This entropy dominates completely the entropy of matter. Therefore the entropy is really growing very rapidly but then at the bounce the geometry is such (which is a non-trivial statement) is such that in fact the area of this horizon becomes infinite. And then after that the horizon simply disappears. So, if you like, what one has to do is to reset the entropic clock in a certain sense at the bounds.

Response: This amounts to nothing more than a description of what happens in his model. It goes no distance toward showing that the model is plausibly the true description of the universe. The producers of this video do not seem to understand that it is not enough simply to float a theoretical model; one has to provide evidence for it.

PREMISE 1: WHATEVER BEGINS TO EXIST HAS A CAUSE

NARRATOR: These are just two of many potential solutions to this entropy problem which are explained in our film series “Before the Big Bang.” The fact that there are several options tells us entropy does not prove a beginning. What if the universe did have a beginning? In the 1970s, Edward Tryon claimed the universe might arise as a quantum fluctuation of the vacuum. But this still raises the question – where did the vacuum come from? In 1982, Alex Vilenkin suggested that if space itself was treated quantum mechanically it could quantum tunnel into existence. He titled his proposal, “Creation of universes from nothing.”

WILLIAM LANE CRAIG: Now, sometimes skeptics will respond to this point by saying that in physics subatomic particles – so-called virtual particles – come into being from nothing. This skeptical response represents, I believe, a deliberate abuse of science. The theories in question have to do with particles or the universes originating as a fluctuation of the energy contained in the vacuum. The vacuum in modern physics is not what laymen understand by “vacuum” – namely nothing. Rather, in physics the vacuum is a sea of fluctuating energy governed by physical laws and having a physical structure. To tell laymen that on such theories something comes from nothing is a distortion of those theories. Properly understood, “nothing” does not mean just empty space. “Nothing” is the absence of anything whatsoever, even space itself. How silly then when popularizers say things like “nothingness is unstable to quantum fluctuations” or “the universe tunneled into being out of nothing.”

Response: Right; I’m speaking here of vacuum fluctuation models like Tryon’s.

ALEXANDER VILENKIN: When we say nothing in this context “coming from nothing” we don’t mean quantum vacuum. It's actually what Tryon meant. And here we have a state without space completely. So there is no vacuum.

Response: Vilenkin’s quantum cosmological model is different than Tryon’s, whatever the latter may have meant. The old vacuum fluctuation models are now obsolete, having been refuted, but Vilenkin’s model remains on the table.

NARRATOR: But if the universe did quantum tunnel into existence, what caused it?

ALEXANDER VILENKIN: Many quantum mechanical processes do not require a cause. So, for example, if you have a radioactive atom, we know that it will decay. But you cannot tell when. So there is a half-lifetime. For example, you can tell that in a year the probability for this atom to decay is 50%. Then the year has passed, it didn't decay, the probability for it to decay the next year is still 50%. Eventually it will decay. But if you ask why did it decay at that particular moment there is no reason. There is no cause. So quantum mechanical processes like this are uncaused and the spontaneous creation of the universe is of the same nature.

Response: Notice that Vilenkin just assumes here the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics according to which quantum indeterminacy is ontic rather than merely epistemic. There is no justification for this. There are, moreover, at least ten different physical interpretations of quantum mechanics which are empirically equivalent and some of which are fully deterministic. So this is not a proven counterexample to the metaphysical principle that whatever begins to exist has a cause. I’ve responded to Vilenkin’s claims about physics’ being able to explain how something can come into being from nothing here: https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/existence-nature-of-god/creation-ex-nihilo-theology-and-science and here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfBsENcJYx8

 ARIF AHMED: The notions of quantum mechanics place severe pressure on our everyday ideas of causality. You might say, well, there are some interpretations of quantum mechanics that allow for causality and determinism, and it's true there are. But then there are other interpretations that don't.

Response: Right; so quantum mechanics is not a proven counterexample.

NARRATOR: Since the kalam asserts that everything that begins to exist has a cause, its defenders carry the burden of proof to show causalities maintained in quantum mechanics.

Response: No, I provide three arguments in support of the causal principle. To defeat it the objector has the burden of proof of showing that there is a proven counterexample to the principle.

44:22: ALASTAIR WILSON: So the different interpretations of quantum mechanics do differ a lot in terms of the role of causality. Start with the Bohm interpretation or Bohmian mechanics or the pilot wave theory. That is the most like classical mechanics when it comes to causality. Causality is deterministic and cause necessarily follows effect according to the law. A bit of a more of a deviation from the classical approach to causality comes in collapse series, dynamical collapse theories or the GRW approach. And these theories have irreducible randomness in the way the world turns out. So an effect need not necessarily follow a cause – a given cause could lead to many effects with different probabilities of each one and there would be nothing in the world that explains why one effect happens rather than another. Any of them could have done. It was just random. And so that weakens the link between cause and effect. Instead of being ironclad necessity, it's probability. The cause makes the effect more probable. And I think that's a big change to the role of causality. But there's a bigger change still potentially to the role of causality in the many-worlds interpretation or the Everett interpretation. People often call that a deterministic interpretation in that they say we have the quantum state of the universe and deterministically there evolves a multiverse – a system of many parallel worlds. But there's an open question as to whether we should call that process causation or we should call that causality. My own preferred approach to understanding many worlds has it that causality is a process that goes on within each individual world but not outside or between them. So causation is an emergent process that emerges along with the individual worlds but is entirely contained within them. And that is perhaps an even bigger change to the concept of causation because it means it's non-fundamental. It's not part of the deep structure of reality. It’s not a concept that’s even really properly applicable at the level of the whole universe.

Response: This account nicely illustrates how uncertain the correct physical interpretation of the mathematical equations of quantum mechanics is. Notice, too, that the causal principle of the kalam cosmological argument is deliberately formulated so as to allow the possibility of uncaused events; what it precludes is things (substances) coming into existence without a cause.

ALEXANDER VILENKIN: In the Copenhagen interpretation, things are acausal simply because it's kind of built in the nature of interpretation. You have a wave function describing your atom and then the wave function collapses in the course of measurement resulting in some of the outcome probabilistically. And there is no cause how you choose these things. In the case of many worlds, this wave function describes an ensemble of universes and in different members of the ensemble in different universes you get all possible outcomes of your measurement. Simply, you don't know which universe you are in and which universe you end up in is also an acausal kind of process.

Response: Aha! Here Vilenkin explicitly acknowledges his assumption of the Copenhagen Interpretation. But notice that he does not provide any justification for thinking that indeterminacy is ontic rather than merely epistemic.

47:12: DANIEL J. LINFORD: In defense of the argument's first premiss, Craig makes use of the de Broglie–Bohm theory, also known as pilot wave theory. And in defense of the argument's second premiss, Craig makes use of neo-Lorentzianism. Now, at least amongst physicists, both the de Broglie–Bohm theory and neo-Lorentzianism are considered to be fringe and disreputable. Therefore, although Craig might seem to be simply appealing to common sense or to mainstream science, Craig is actually appealing to theories that do not enjoy wide philosophical or scientific support.

Response: This isn’t quite right. The de Broglie-Bohm pilot wave interpretation of quantum physics is simply an illustration of the fact that a mathematically consistent and empirically adequate deterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics is available. It needn’t be true to serve that purpose, although it must be said that this interpretation seems much more plausible than the Copenhagen Interpretation when it comes to cosmology, in light of the so-called measurement problem. As for a neo-Lorentzian interpretation of relativity theory, which enjoys the support of some eminent physicists, I’ve already explained that the kalam cosmological argument does not depend upon its truth. Rather it is my preferred interpretation for explaining how God relates to time. In the video’s attempt to marginalize these theories, what tends to get overlooked is the fact that they are both scientifically unimpeachable.

47:47: ARIF AHMED: I think one of the basic lessons you can learn from an advanced science of any sort is that common sense and intuition only takes you so far. And beyond a certain point you really can't trust it. Russell once made the argument that since physics is really a systematization of our commonsense approach to the world, his argument was if common sense is true then physics is true, and if physics is true then common sense is false, therefore common sense is false.

Response: Ha! The problem is that this goes no distance toward proving that it is metaphysically possible that things can come into being uncaused out of nothing.

NARRATOR: If something could come from nothing then why doesn't this happen all the time? Why don't tigers just appear in our living room?

ALEXANDER VILENKIN: In quantum mechanics many things are possible that are not possible in classical physics. And, indeed, in principle you can have very strange things happening like objects coming out of thin air. A lump of matter in principle can turn into a tiger and quantum mechanics will not tell you that this is absolutely impossible. But if you try to calculate the probability of this happening it will be pretty low. If you think of the quantum creation of the universe, it is a tiny microscopic universe, right, that has to pop out of nothing. If you calculate the probability of this happening, I should say that conceptually interpreting this probability is a little difficult, but still if you do the calculation you find that it is far more probable than having a tiger materialize in front of you.

Response: The low probability of such remarkable quantum physical transitions has nothing to do with the possibility of something’s coming into being uncaused out of nothing. Something’s popping into existence from nothing is not governed by physical probability. The idea of a probability of something’s coming into being from nothing is meaningless, since there is no physics of non-being.

49:24: ARIF AHMED: The argument that something can't come from nothing or perhaps it'd be better to say something won't ever come into existence following nothing isn't really confirmed by our everyday experience because in our everyday experience we don't ever experience a nothing and check it to see whether something can or can't come from it. So there's no argument at all, I think, on the basis of what we've observed in everyday life at all to think that something can't come from nothing.

Response: Such a reply is badly misconceived. The inductive evidence in support of the causal principle appeals to our observation of things that begin to exist and noting that there are causes for them. The Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics claims to provide evidence for some exception to this inductive evidence, but, as I say, that interpretation is highly disputable and so not a proven counterexample to the inductive evidence.

NARRATOR: It isn't just quantum mechanics that divides thinkers about the nature of causality. Philosophers are equally unsure of its merits.

49:57: ALASTAIR WILSON: So, causation is a classic philosophical topic in the sense that there's no agreement about it at all, and there hasn't been ever.

Response: Oh, oh, oh, what he means is that there is no consensus concerning a philosophical analysis of causation, either that an analysis can be successfully given or even should be given. The metaphysical principle that out of nothing, nothing comes has been nearly unanimous in western philosophy since Parmenides.

ARIF AHMED: There's lots of schools of thought about what causality is. At the one extreme we've got a view like that of Russell which you might call the limitivist theory of causation according to which really there isn't any such thing as causality. Russell said if you look at the physics – certainly the physics of his day and I think it's plausible to say about physics today as well – it consists of equations versus differential equations and these relate states of a system at various times or at the same time but they don't mention causal relations at all. And Russell's view was that the more developed a science is, the less appeal there is to causality in it. At the other extreme or at least some way towards the other extreme you've got views like the counterfactual theory which says that A causes B means that if A hadn't happened then B wouldn't have happened. But there are complications with trying to work out what exactly that (what's called the counterfactual) is supposed to mean. And that might in turn appeal to causality. So it may not even be a full account of causality at all. Or even further along the line you might have a full-blown sufficiency account of causation according to which A causes B means that A somehow makes or forces B to happen. And in between these extremes there are all kinds of different theories. So it's a bit implausible if you assume, as the kalam argument does, that whatever begins to exist must have a cause on the basis of our intuitive conception of what causality is. The intuitive conception of causality is vague and it covers a whole range of different things and you really have to be clear about which one you mean more precisely before that argument can be given any force.

Response: Oh my, the kalam cosmological argument doesn’t even attempt to offer a philosophical analysis of causation, nor does it need to in order to maintain its conclusion. I’m sympathetic with the view that it is a primitive relation.

3. THEREFORE, THE UNIVERSE HAS A CAUSE

NARRATOR: If the universe had a beginning, it's hard to see how it could have a cause. After all, we tend to think of causes happening before their effects. But if time began with the universe then there was no “before” so how could God have caused it?

Response: Lol! I thought we were just told that there is no agreement on the nature of causation and that common sense cannot be trusted.

WILLIAM LANE CRAIG: And I frankly just don't understand why people think that causality is a temporal relationship. For example, philosophers talk all the time about cases of simultaneous causation where the cause and effect occur at the same moment of time. Immanuel Kant gave the example of a heavy ball resting on a pillow causing a depression in the pillow. Now, the ball and the pillow could have existed from eternity past.

ARIF AHMED: This seems like the admission of something that's existed for a past eternity so it may be that Craig by using this example is allowing (and he may or may not consistently be able to allow) that something's existed for a past eternity.

Response: Kant’s example is intended to be an illustration of simultaneous causation. Neither I nor many other philosophers see any reason to think that a cause has to be temporally prior to its effect; indeed, it is difficult to see how it could be prior to but not simultaneous with its effect. If simultaneous causation is possible, then God’s causing the universe to come into being is simultaneous with the universe’s coming into being (what could be more obvious?).

52:29: NIAYESH AFSHORDI: In physics literature there is no such thing as simultaneous causation. So the notion of causality in physics always has a chronological nature that basically the cause should precede the effect. And in this particular example of the world with the pillow, if you just look at things as they are at one instant, then you cannot really make any statement about causality but if you look at the history of what preceded what basically you put a ball somewhere and then its effect propagates with the speed of sound through the medium and the pillow basically accordingly reacts to that.

Response: Obviously, physical influences are propagated by finite velocity signals. But the effect will not come into being until the signal actually contacts the patient entity (i.e., the recipient of the signal). At any instant prior to that point, the signal could be intercepted and the effect would not be produced. In any case, divine causation is not mediated by transmission of physical signals.

ARIF AHMED: It's quite unclear what it means to say that one thing causes another if you lose the sort of context of space, time, and the laws of nature. One very obvious reason for this is that many accounts of causation either explicitly or implicitly make reference to the laws of nature. Many of them also make reference to time, for instance Hume's own definition of causation was that the cause must precede the effect in time and must be next to it in space or there must be a chain of adjoining events in space. So we really can't make any sense of what it means for something to be a cause of another thing without time or space any more than we can make sense of what it means for something to have a color or to have a shape or a size outside of notions like time and space. The notion of causality doesn't have the kind of purity of a notion let's say like number or logical notions which do make this sort of extra-spatial, extra-temporal sense. And for that reason, to posit a cause of the universe that's outside of space and time, as the kalam argument must if it's going to prove anything like the divinity that people like Craig would want it to prove, seems to be stretching the notion of causality far beyond any of its uses that we can actually comprehend.

Response: Hang on! I thought we were just told that there is no accepted analysis of causation and that common sense is false. Once again the video’s producers are trying to have their cake and eat it, too. I myself see no reason that there cannot be a timeless cause, but in any case the hypothesis now under discussion is not timeless causation but simultaneous causation, which is unproblematic.

ALASTAIR WILSON: Some concepts only make sense when applied within the universe or within some parts of the universe. I mean, if you ask how much something costs, some table or some chair, then that makes perfect sense and there's a good answer. If you ask how much the universe costs, that doesn't really make sense because you can't step outside the universe to buy it. It could be very similar with cause and effect. Cause and effect is something that operates inside the universe. It just doesn't make sense to step outside the universe and ask what causes it. Cause and effect is something that happens within the universe, not to it.

Response: I find this claim utterly implausible. The causal principle is a metaphysical principle which applies to reality as such (being does not arise from non-being) and not a natural law like the laws of thermodynamics or the law of gravity, which apply only within the universe. I suspect that what we see showing here is a subtle scientism that reduces everything to what science tells us and rejects any metaphysics that is not merely an extension of science. Do I need to say that such scientism is scientifically unprovable and nothing more than a philosophical prejudice?

NARRATOR: We've seen that many cosmologists favor a bouncing cosmology which may be eternal into the past. Others favor a universe that had a beginning from a spontaneous fluctuation. Another class of models suggests that solutions to Einstein's equations that allow time travel into the past known as closed timeline curves could enable the universe to create itself.

Response: Ha! Our narrator never met a cosmological model that she didn’t like (unless it involves a beginning!). The question is not the existence of theoretical models. The question is their mathematical consistency and empirical adequacy. There is no model that meets those conditions and is past eternal.

55:13: WILLIAM LANE CRAIG: This is clearly impossible for in order to create itself the universe would have to already exist. It would have to exist before it existed, which is a self-contradiction.

ARIF AHMED: It may be inconsistent for Craig to say that on the one hand causes do not have to precede their effects in time but then on the other hand dismissing the idea of a self-created universe on the basis that a self-created universe would have to precede itself in time.

Response: Fair enough; the point is that in order to bring itself into existence at t = 0, the universe would have to already exist at t = 0, if not before. Seriously, is this now the alternative to theism?

NIAYESH AFSHORDI: So a self-creating universe may appear to be a contradiction if you imagine a linear direction of time because if you have some cause that leads to our universe then that cause should precede the effect. But if you have a circular time then there is really no notion of cause and effect and because of that there is no contradiction because basically all you have is a consistency condition between what happens at one era and what happens at the prior era or future era because they all just lead to each other. And as long as those consistencies hold there is no contradiction.

Response: Whoa, I thought that my espousal of Bohmian quantum mechanics and neo-Lorentzian relativity was untenable because such theories are “fringe and disreputable.” But this? See Jim Sinclair’s discussion of the Li-Gott model featuring closed time-like loops in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. For my part, I reject such models as metaphysically impossible because on a tensed theory of time, according to which temporal becoming is real, the universe would come into existence from nothing, since at the time of its origin its future states in no sense exist.

ALASTAIR WILSON: You might have the whole closed timeline curve and at that level causality is not an appropriate concept but if you focus on individual segments of the curve you might have unidirectional cause and effect just restricted to that particular segment. And so we're right to think in terms of causality at the local level; when we zoom out, causality as such ceases to apply. We can still do physics. The fact that our intuitive understanding of cause and effect ceases to apply at the global level – that doesn't stop us writing down equations that would describe that system.

Response: Here we see clearly the assumption of a tenseless theory of time, such that the whole four-dimensional spacetime loop exists tenselessly. I think such models are metaphysically impossible, but don’t despair—“we can still do physics!” Yes, and assess such models physically, too; see Sinclair’s critique.

NARRATOR: In order to assert the universe must have been created by an agent with free will, Craig uses an argument from the medieval philosopher al-Ghazali which asserts the universe must have arisen spontaneously and the only example of spontaneous action is that of a free agent, something we supposedly know from our everyday experience of the world.

Response: Well, not exactly. The point rather is that the only way to get a temporal effect with a beginning from a permanent, changeless cause is if that cause is a personal agent endowed with freedom of the will and so able to produce an effect without any antecedent determining conditions.

ALASTAIR WILSON: I mean I think it's a pretty good argument. It's just that the premisses we no longer tend to accept in the modern conception of the world. The standard view of quantum physics is that it's not deterministic after all; that most interpretations of quantum mechanics have some indeterminism in them and the most popular approach to understanding free action tends to be compatibilist. It sees free action as compatible with the laws of physics, indeed enabled by the action of the laws of physics. So al-Ghazali’s argument was pretty good given the assumptions he was making. It's just that I don't think we now have any reason to accept those assumptions.

Response: Ah, here we come back to the point quoted from Aguirre and Kehayias in QoW #772 that a quantum state can’t endure changelessly from eternity and then suddenly produce a new effect a finite time ago. So quantum indeterminacy won’t do the trick here. Notice, too, Wilson’s misunderstanding of compatibilism, which is the view that “freedom” is compatible with your being completely determined in everything you do.

ARIF AHMED: If you're in the game of appealing to everyday observations then there's all kinds of things you can say that would be unhelpful to the kalam argument. For instance, we observe that every event has been preceded by another event, but clearly the kalam argument can't allow for that. We observe that everything that comes into existence has a material cause if it has a cause at all, but again the kalam argument can't allow for that. We observe that all agency, for instance all intelligent agency, is material, but again the kalam argument can't allow for such things. So everyday experience furnishes all kinds of generalizations that are inconsistent with the conclusion of the kalam argument. And it's just arbitrary to choose the generalizations that you like from everyday experience and ignore the ones that don't fit with your conclusion.

Response: I deny that we observe that every event is preceded by another event or that every intelligent cause is material. The principle that everything that comes into existence has a material cause, if it has a cause at all, is, indeed, powerfully supported by inductive evidence, but it gets defeated by the evidence for the beginning of the universe, which cannot have a material cause.

CONCLUSION

NARRATOR: To summarize the kalam cosmological argument is based on an outdated view of mathematics and an outdated view of physics. Mathematicians don't deny infinity and physicists no longer believe the big bang is the beginning. The argument assumes our everyday experience of causality must hold true even when there is no space or time but then claims an immaterial mind made the universe from nothing which is completely contrary to our everyday experience. In short, the kalam cosmological argument is unsound.

Response: Oh, pul-ease! The first philosophical argument for the beginning of the universe is based on modern Cantorean set theory, arguing that if there were an actually infinite number of things various metaphysical absurdities and even logical contradictions would ensue. In contrast to intuitionistic mathematics, the argument does not deny the mathematical legitimacy of the concept of the actual infinite but rather employs it. The second philosophical argument is rooted in a tensed theory of time, which I have defended at length. As for the two scientific confirmations of the universe’s beginning, it is laughable to allege that an argument appealing to cutting edge work in astrophysical cosmology and constantly updated in light of it is based on outdated physics. Many contemporary scientists do believe in the beginning of the universe, even as they explore models aimed at falsifying that prediction. The video’s producer does not seem to understand that the universe’s having a beginning does not imply that it begins at a singularity, as it does in the standard model. Finally, the causal premiss of the argument is based on both metaphysical arguments and inductive evidence and is in accord with, but not simply based on, common sense. Thus, the video’s conclusion is overdrawn.

I am genuinely grateful to the many scientists and philosophers who took time to be interviewed for this video. This sort of vigorous debate can only raise the visibility and influence of the kalam cosmological argument. Unfortunately, the script was determined by the producers in advance. What we observe in this video is not an objective investigation but rather a polemical piece consisting of mutually inconsistent, often irrelevant, and increasingly desperate objections aimed at undercutting the kalam cosmological argument. There is no genuine interest displayed in learning whether and/or how the universe began to exist. All that matters is perceiving loopholes. As the video proceeds, increasingly bizarre and implausible scenarios are suggested for avoiding the beginning of the universe, without any attempt whatsoever at their evaluation. When it gets to the point that in order to avoid the argument’s conclusion we are advised to believe instead in circular causation or spontaneous generation ex nihilo, then we know what the desperation is really all about, namely, avoiding theism at all costs.