Recently, Sean Carroll (cosmologist and atheist, whom I have met a couple times at physics events) and St. William Lane Craig (philosopher and Christian apologist) had a debate about this topic:
"God and Cosmology: The Existence of God in Light of Contemporary Cosmology."
Transcript, Video, Carroll's post-debate reflections, Craig's: One Two Three
(Warning: when the debate transcript says something like 10500, it really means 
. Apparently whoever (or whatever) transcribed it doesn't understand scientific notation.)
Several readers have asked me to comment on this debate, and I plan to write more than one post doing so.
Let me just say first that I am not particularly interested in the question of who "won" this debate (between two people whom I both respect). The existence of God does not, of course, depend on any particular person's ability to effectively argue for (or against) him. I'd rather just make some opportunistic comments based on what the participants said. What limited comments I have about the debate as a debate I will try to confine to this post.
William Lane Craig is a skilled debater who has done his best to keep abreast of Modern Cosmology. This is commendable, but it was inevitable that his depth of knowledge in Cosmology was not as great as Carroll, who works on this subject professionally. And often it showed. That is why Craig had to rely mainly on a lot of quotes from famous physicists such as Alex Vilenkin—and sometimes this backfired, as in the case of Alan Guth, who apparently believes that the universe is eternal.
Since the topic was limited to Cosmology, Craig was unable to bring in any other types of evidence for the existence of God, besides those related to the Cosmological or Fine-Tuning Arguments. In other debates, Craig has focused more on the evidence for miracles (such as the Resurrection of Jesus), which personally for me is much stronger evidence for the existence of God than anything coming from Cosmology. For me, if Modern Cosmology is sufficient to get people to even wonder, "Is there maybe somebody who did that?" that's enough to start with—so long as it makes them curious enough to start exploring other lines of evidence, based on History or personal experience.
In other words, it's not necessary for Cosmology by itself to get people to a belief in God. What matters is the cumulative case from Cosmology plus everything else. If there are puzzling things such as fine-tuning which might be explained by God, and might have a different explanation (e.g. the multiverse), to me the most natural response seems to be to keep an open mind about all possible explanations. But that would imply, that at least the existence of God is not absurdly unlikely (so far as Cosmology is concerned). And if a person gets that far, then when they examine historical evidence or religious experiences, at least they won't do so with a giant presupposition in favor of Naturalism that requires them to explain away practically anything.
Assuming they are rationally consistent, that is. Most people, if you try to argue for some proposition X that they don't want to believe in, will ask only whether the argument is so compelling as to force them to believe in it. If not—if they can think of any possible way to defeat or evade the argument—they will act as though the argument has no force at all. They are like the fearsome Barghest of legend, a monstrous black dog which can only be killed with a single blow. If you do not strike hard enough to kill, then all of the damage is transferred from it to you. (At least, that's how it works in Pendragon, the Arthurian Roleplaying System.) With such people, if they can find any clever loophole in your argument—even if it involves totally speculative new physics—the next day they will say that the argument was refuted and provides no evidence for X at all. This makes it impossible to make a cumulative case argument.
Anyways, I thought Craig did a pretty good job of sticking to the restricted topic of Cosmology. Carroll somewhat less so, when he said:
If theism were really true there’s no reason for God to be hard to find. He should be perfectly obvious whereas in naturalism you might expect people to believe in God but the evidence to be thin on the ground. Under theism you’d expect that religious beliefs should be universal. There’s no reason for God to give special messages to this or that primitive tribe thousands of years ago. Why not give it to anyone? Whereas under naturalism you’d expect different religious beliefs inconsistent with each other to grow up under different local conditions. Under theism you’d expect religious doctrines to last a long time in a stable way. Under naturalism you’d expect them to adapt to social conditions. Under theism you’d expect the moral teachings of religion to be transcendent, progressive, sexism is wrong, slavery is wrong. Under naturalism you’d expect they reflect, once again, local mores, sometimes good rules, sometimes not so good. You’d expect the sacred texts, under theism, to give us interesting information. Tell us about the germ theory of disease. Tell us to wash our hands before we have dinner. Under naturalism you’d expect the sacred texts to be a mishmash—some really good parts, some poetic parts, and some boring parts and mythological parts.
[As an aside, there's something a bit funny here. Carroll thinks that God should have provided us with some scientific information in the Bible. The most useful scientific fact he can think of is the importance of good hygiene. And it is a fact that the most famously boring book of the Bible, the book of Leviticus, is chalk full of hygiene rules about cleanliness (embedded among other religious rituals). Fairly decent rules too, given the 2nd millennium BC context. No germ theory of disease, I admit. But highly practical nonetheless. Now, I'm not a religious fundamentalist who thinks that the Bible is a Science textbook. Nor am I an antireligious fundamentalist who thinks it ought to have been a Science textbook. But I do think it is ironic that the particular thing Carroll demands is, in some sense, present in the least-loved book of the Bible! Carroll continues:]
Under theism you’d expect biological forms to be designed, under naturalism they would derive from the twists and turns of evolutionary history. Under theism, minds should be independent of bodies. Under naturalism, your personality should change if you’re injured, tired, or you haven’t had your cup of coffee yet.
[Huh? Theism is the belief that God exists. It does not commit one to any particular view about the soul's relationship to the body. The fact that our personalities are encoded in our brains is logically independent to the question of whether God exists. Particular religious traditions might have particular views about the soul, but that's not what we're talking about here.]
Under theism, you’d expect that maybe you can explain the problem of evil – God wants us to have free will. But there shouldn’t be random suffering in the universe. Life should be essentially just. At the end of the day with theism you basically expect the universe to be perfect. Under naturalism, it should be kind of a mess—this is very strong empirical evidence.
This, however, strayed from the parameters of the debate topic. Whatever the merits of the Argument from Evil, it cannot be said that Evil is a discovery of Science. It has nothing to do with Cosmology. It is not a discovery of contemporary physics that there is random suffering, and that the universe isn't fair. (What would a scientific theory of "Justice" even look like?) Granted, the Argument from Evil is relevant to the cumulative case concerning God's existence (some of my own thoughts about that are here.) But then Craig would also be entitled to throw in historical data about Jesus and anything else that might be relevant to the inquiry.
Naturally Craig called him on it:
He is very concerned to show that God’s existence is improbable relative to certain non-cosmological data. For example, the problem of evil, our insignificant size, and so forth. The very fact that these are non-cosmological data shows that they are not relevant in tonight’s debate. I have addressed things like the problem of evil extensively, for example, in Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. So the debate tonight is not over the probability of theism versus naturalism. That would require us to assess all sorts of non-cosmological data. Rather, the question is: is God’s existence more probable given the data of contemporary cosmology than it would have been without it? And I think it certainly is.
Craig, being a skilled debater, makes sure to frame the debate question to be one which is comparatively easy to show. According to Craig's framing, he only needs to show that Theism is more plausible given e.g. our current understanding of the Big Bang Model, compared to if we didn't know these facts. This is a fairly modest ambition. It certainly seems more likely now that the universe has a beginning than it would have seemed to a materialist living 500 years ago. So if the beginning of the universe is a relevant datum for the existence of God, then cosmology provides some positive evidence. (On the other hand, if it isn't relevant, why are we even discussing whether there was a beginning?)
At times, Carroll even seems to assume that if Craig doesn't believe in Theism for scientific reasons, his views can't be based on evidence at all:
There are very few people in the modern world who become religious, to come to believe in God, because it provides the best cosmology or because it provides the best physics or biology, or psychology, or anything like that. And that includes Dr. Craig. There’s a famous quote by him that says, “The real reason, the primary reason, for believing in Christianity isn’t cosmological arguments.”
[I was unable to track this quote down, but having some knowledge of Craig's views in other contexts, I highly doubt that Craig was referring to some inarticulate leap of faith not grounded in any good evidence at all. I imagine—especially since he referred to Christianity—that he was thinking about some type of historical evidence that has to do with, say, Jesus or something. Maybe something related to the fact that he did lots of miracles, and rose from the dead, and was seen by many eyewitnesses, who themselves did several miracles, leaving a band of committed followers to this day, who sometimes do miracles in his name, including naturalistically inexplicable healings with solid medical documentation—have I made my point yet?]
I’m not mentioning this as a criticism; it is simply an observation of fact. There are other reasons to be a theist other than cosmology, and I think that is true. I think that makes sense. Most people who become religious do so for other reasons—because it gives them a sense of community, a sense of connection with the transcendent, it provides meaning or fellowship in their lives.
These subjective warm fuzzy feelings are nice and all, but it is scientism to think that they are the only thing left after we remove stuff like Cosmology. For example, History is also an evidence-driven field, and it has plenty of data supporting things like miracles. Carroll made a joke about taking into account new evidence if the roof were to fall on his head, but perhaps if Carroll does some historical investigation, there might be more subtle ways for God to make a point.
The problem is that the basis of religion in the modern Western world is theism, belief in the existence of God. I’ve tried to make the case that science undermines theism pretty devastatingly. Five hundred years ago it would have made perfect sense to be a theist. I would have been a theist five hundred years ago. By two hundred years ago science had progressed to the point where it was no longer the best theory. By a hundred years ago after Darwin it was a rout. And by these days with modern cosmology there’s no longer any reason to take that as your fundamental worldview.
I always find it interesting, that when you poke a person who makes grand claims about the philosophical implications of Science, sooner or later they end up telling one of these historical just-so stories about how things used to be completely different before Science came along.
You know the drill. Once upon a time, people used to use God to explain everything, and then one or two things got explained by Science, and then some more things got explained by Science, and now there are only two or three gaps in our knowledge, which stubborn religious people cling to in order to justify Theism, but we all know (by linear interpolation, I guess) that Science will eventually explain these things too, which is just as good as if it already had done so. (This is closely related to the infamous "God-of-the-Gaps"™ strawman, about which I will have more to say later.)
In order to tell this story properly, Carroll needs to insist that he would have been a pious religious person 500 years ago. But I'm not at all sure this is true. He didn't really present any arguments for Theism based on the Science of 500 years ago, let alone one which is refuted by our present day understanding. All he did was say why he doesn't believe in Craig's arguments (which, whether you believe them or not, are based on Modern Science, and couldn't even have been made 100 years ago, let alone 500). All that stuff about random suffering, and multiple religions, and weird stuff in the Bible, and that the universe is really big while Earth is really small, and that tiredness and drugs and physiological secretions influence the mind, was just as evident to smart people 500 years ago as it is now.
No matter how much lecturing you hear about how Science works because we can always correct our theories with new data, they seldom bother to check these supposedly historical narratives with any actual data. When you do, you usually find the story is far more complicated.
In the paragraph quoted above, the only actual Scientific revolution mentioned is that due to Darwin. The rest is left suspiciously vague (for example, I'm not sure from the description what exactly is supposed to have happened 200 years ago, that made Theism "no longer the best theory").
In fact, for the most part it's pretty unclear what the implications of scientific theories are for or against Theism. Take for example Maxwell's equations. One could try to argue that: 1) lots of stuff is described by equations, 2) Maxwell's equations mean that one more thing is described by equations, 3) therefore probably everything is described by equations, 4) God is not an equation, therefore 5) God does not exist, but this seems like a rather weak argument from induction, not something that "undermines theism pretty devastatingly". It's not like anyone in the 1500's was saying that magnetism couldn't be understood except as a special miracle of God, and then St. Maxwell showed they were all wrong.
There's a reason, therefore, why people fixate on Darwin. Darwin's theory of Evolution really did remove one possible argument for the existence of God: namely that an act of special creation was necessary to explain the existence of each individual species, and its close adaptation to its environment.
Of course, the removal of a particular argument for God's existence isn't the same as disproving Theism. In particular, this argument for the existence of God was not by any means the historically most important one. In fact, you only really see people shortly before Darwin (like St. William Paley) making this argument. In medieval times, people used to think that life-forms like flies would spontaneously generate in rotting meat. Obviously, they wouldn't have thought much of Paley's view that each species needed to be created individually by God. It was only with the increase of scientific understanding that this "gap" in our understanding was noticed. Thus, to say that filling this gap refutes the ideas of the medievals (who didn't even know there was a gap here to be filled) is absurd.
What history actually shows, is not a monotonic replacement of Theology by Science, but a complicated back-and-forth process where new Science produces some new arguments for Theism (Paley, fine-tuning...), discredits others (Paley, the need for a Prime Mover rotating the outer heavenly sphere...), and so on. But that's too complicated to reduce to a tidy, one-sided historical meta-narrative, so lots of people just make up a story about Science and Religion being enemies, and stuff everything into that mold.
All of this was just picking around the edges. In the next post, I will talk more about the so-called God-of-the-Gaps™-fallacy, which both Carroll and Craig pay their obligatory disrespects to. Then I'll try to get to the actual substantive questions about whether the universe had a beginning, according to Modern Science. And whether that has any theological implications. And fine-tuning. And about Carroll's arguments that Theism is ill-defined and false. Things that relate to the actual substance of the Carroll-Craig debate. That sounds like a plan.
Well done, Sir.
Thank you St Aron (Wall) for this follow up commentary. You and the likes of St William (Craig) do a great service to theism by logical and reasonable discourse. Coming from respectable physicists as you are, the theistic arguments carry weight and credibility. I look forward to your Plan outlined in the closing paragraph, particularly (a) does the second law of thermodynamics support a finite time in the past? (b) does quantum physics provide a good argument against materialism, and (c) Boltzmann Brains.
Yes, keep up the great service of analyzing the Craig-Carroll debate (particularly the scientific issues) for those of us who aren't Reformed Epistemologists 7 days a week.
Thanks everyone, for your encouragement.
St. Aron,
If it's not too much trouble, I was wondering if you might do me the honor of giving my letter to Dr. Carroll a critique. The reason that I ask is because, after posting it to his blog, several folks took notice and one in particular asked if he could publish it on his own website. Since I do my best to spread the Truth, I want to avoid the spread of any and all false claims. Thus, if you would be so kind as to lend your expertise in these matters I would owe you a debt of gratitude. I understand that in all likelihood you have a lot on your plate; so if it takes you awhile (or if you cannot find the time at all) I'll understand. Thanks and God bless.
Dr. Carroll,
I want to thank you again for all of the thought-provoking material you produced over the two days of the conference. I say “again” because I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to thank you in person on Saturday after the conference had concluded. You might remember me--I was the really conspicuously good-looking guy who, during the Q & A on Friday and Saturday, asked you about (1) an eternal set of necessary and sufficient mechanical conditions producing a universe containing a first moment of time, and (2) the specifics of Alan Guth’s affirmation of the probable eternality of the universe, respectively. Alright, alright, I may have exaggerated the part about my good-looks a little, but in all seriousness you might possibly remember the questions. Nevertheless, it was a real privilege to shake your hand and I thoroughly enjoyed hearing your take on these interesting issues. Having familiarized myself with some of your published work, I’m well aware that you are skilled writer. But having never seen you lecture or debate, I had no idea that you would prove to be such a wonderful public speaker and formidable debater. I look forward to more of it in the future.
While I’m sure that you have entirely too much on your plate to respond to every reply on your blog, nevertheless I would owe you a great debt of gratitude if you’re able to somehow find the time to respond to this one; that is, provided it’s substantive enough to warrant a response.
In light of a recent post, you seemed to have cleared up what led to a persistent confusion for some during the debate: namely, your maintaining that a universe with a “first moment of time” isn’t necessarily one that “begins to exist.” It seems to me that you are able to consistently hold to this view because you ascribe to a tenseless or, B-Theory, of time. That is what I suspected. So if I understand you correctly, are you saying that a universe with a first moment of time doesn’t “begin to exist” because, on the B-Theory, the entire universe exists *timelessly* for all eternity as a static, 4-dimensional block? If so, is it not perfectly legitimate to inquire as to what determines that this particular statically-existing universe obtains, rather than some other one or none at all? Also, would you agree that the A-Theory of time is the much more common sense view?
Moreover, there appears to be a few points in your post-debate reflections that might be cause for reflection. First, regarding your denial of both the premises in the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA), you said,
“My attitude toward the above two premises is that (2) is completely uncertain, while the “obvious” one (1) is flat-out false. Or not even false, as I put it, because the notion of a “cause” isn’t part of an appropriate vocabulary to use for discussing fundamental physics.”
As Dr. Craig (WLC) has repeatedly emphasized, he does not claim anything near “certainty” for the truth of these premises. Rather, he merely defends the notion that they are more plausibly true than their negations; the greater the degree to which they are more plausibly true than not, the stronger the argument becomes. So while I agree that we don’t have certainty with respect to the truth of premise (2), I do believe that we have good reason to believe that it is much more plausibly true than not; which is what a good argument entails.
With respect to the notion of a “cause,” I would have to disagree with your thinking that this isn’t the appropriate vocabulary to use here. The univocal meaning employed in the KCA is “that which produces the effect.” Thus, if we were to ask, “What is the ’cause’ of virtual particles?”, we would be asking, “What ‘produces’ virtual particles?”, with the answer to which — quantum fluctuations in the vacuum — being completely legitimate. Similarly we could ask, “What is the ’cause’ of the binding of like-charged nucleons in the atomic nucleus?”, and someone could answer, “The strong force is what produces that effect.” So it seems to me that a clear definition of terms makes appropriate the use of a “cause” in this context.
With that being said, when you say that, “The Hartle-Hawking ‘no-boundary proposal’ for the wave function of the universe, for example, is completely self-contained, not requiring any external cause,” in what sense do you mean, “self-contained?” It was pointed out in [http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9712344] that,
“The problem with this model is that it ignores the 'zero-point-energy'. . . . Thus, when the 'zero-point-energy' is considered, we see that the initial state is not a point but a tiny oscillating (0 ≤ a ≤ a1) Big Bang universe, that oscillates between Big Bangs and Big Crunches (though the singularities at the Big Bangs and Big Crunches might be smeared by quantum effects). This is the initial classical state from which the tunneling occurs. It is metastable, so this oscillating universe could not have existed forever: after a finite half-life, it is likely to decay.”
Therefore it seems to me that on this model the universe has only existed for a finite duration of time. So we could still validly inquire as to what produced it (or, given the truth of the more radical B-Theory of time, what determined that *this* universe tenselessly exists rather than some other?). Moreover, why think that this model shouldn’t be treated as nonrealist in character? How does changing from a Lorentzian metric signature to a Euclidean metric imply an ontological commitment? Given the fact that the Wick rotation performed takes the real time variable “T” and replaces it with the imaginary quantity “I × T”, Hartle and Hawking are said to employ “imaginary time” in their model. How does one intelligibly give a realistic interpretation to any value of “imaginary time?”
You later go on to state the following:
“The second premise of the Kalam argument is that the universe began to exist. Which may even be true! But we certainly don’t know, or even have strong reasons to think one way or the other. Craig thinks we do have a strong reason, the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem. So I explained what every physicist who has thought about the issue understands: that the real world is governed by quantum mechanics, and the BGV theorem assumes a classical spacetime, so it says nothing definitive about what actually happens in the universe; it is only a guideline to when our classical description breaks down.”
It goes without saying that I would never claim to be any kind of subject matter expert on cosmology, especially when in comparison with your current level of expertise. However, in my novice opinion, I think it’s fair to say that last statement downplays the significance of BVG and, as far as I can tell, is false. While I agree that we can’t infer anything “definitive,” I think we can, however, make some significant inferences: given the fact that we have substantial evidence that our universe (classical spacetime) satisfies the only condition of BVG — Hav > 0 — all the way back until 10^-43 seconds, then according to [http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0110012],
“Whatever the possibilities for the boundary, it is clear that unless the averaged expansion condition can somehow be avoided for all past-directed geodesics, inflation alone is not sufficient to provide a complete description of the Universe, and some new physics is necessary in order to determine the correct conditions at the boundary. This is the chief result of our paper. The result depends on just one assumption: the Hubble parameter H has a positive value when averaged over the affine parameter of a past-directed null or noncomoving timelike geodesic.
“The class of cosmologies satisfying this assumption is
not limited to inflating universes.”
Vilenkin reiterates the point:
“A remarkable thing about this theorem is its sweeping generality. We made no assumptions about the material content of the universe. We did not even assume that gravity is described by Einstein’s equations. So, if Einstein’s gravity requires some modification, our conclusion will still hold. The only assumption that we made was that the expansion rate of the universe never gets below some nonzero value, no matter how small. This assumption should certainly be satisfied in the inflating false vacuum. The conclusion is that past-eternal inflation without a beginning is impossible.” [Vilenkin, Many Worlds in One, p. 175]
Thus, we have very good reason to think that unless the Planck epoch can avoid Hav > 0, our universe cannot be past-eternal. One possible way for this to happen is via an 'emergent universe' scenario. In discussing a model of this type, you mentioned a paper by Anthony Aguirre and John Kehayias; one that WLC cited in the debate:
“They examined the 'emergent universe' scenario of George Ellis and Roy Maartens, in which the universe is in a quasi-static pre-Big-Bang state infinitely far into the past. Aguirre and Kehayias showed that such behavior is unstable; you can’t last in a quasi-static state for half of eternity and then start evolving. Personally, I didn’t think this was worth talking about; I completely agree that it’s unstable, I never promoted or defended that particular model, and I just didn’t see the relevance. But he kept bringing it up. Only after the debate did it dawn on me that he takes the specific behavior of that model as representative of any model that has a quantum-gravity regime (the easiest way out of the 'beginning' supposedly predicted by the BGV theorem). That’s completely false. Most models with a quantum-gravity phase are nothing like the emergent universe; typically the quantum part of the evolution is temporary, and is surrounded on both sides by classical spacetime. But that’s so false that I didn’t even pick up that WLC was presuming it, so I never responded. Bad debater.”
According to that paper [http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.3232],
“We stress that we have analyzed only one version of the Emergent Universe, with a simplified model. Nonetheless, we believe that the effect that this analysis points to may be rather generic. For example, consider alternative theories of gravity. The Emergent Universe has been studied extensively in theories such as Hoˇrava-Lifshitz, f(R), Loop Quantum Gravity, and others (see, for instance, [8–11], respectively). There have also been several studies of the stability of the Einstein static universe in alternative theories (see [12], for example). However, in our framework we have, in a sense, decoupled gravity – it enters only when assessing the affect of the spreading wave-functional. Even in alternative theories in which the Einstein static universe is more stable than in standard General Relativity, we anticipate that once the wavefunctional has spread enough, the geometry must follow, and the spacetime becomes classically ill-defined as well as containing portions corresponding to singularities. Therefore, this seems like a generic (and perhaps expected, given our construction of the scenario) problem with such an eternal and precisely tuned inflationary scheme. . . .”
“. . . Models in which the field dynamics and material content are very different would require separate analysis, but may lead to a similar basic conclusion. For example, Graham et al. [14] construct static and oscillating universes with a specific non-perfect-fluid energy component that are stable against small perturbations. However, Mithani & Vilenkin [15] have shown that this model is unstable to decay via tunneling.
“Although we have analyzed only one version of the Emergent Universe, we would argue that our analysis is pointing to a more general problem: it is very difficult to devise a system – especially a quantum one – that does nothing “forever,” then evolves. A truly stationary or periodic quantum state, which would last forever, would never evolve, whereas one with any instability will not endure for an indefinite time.”
Unless I’m missing something, this paper seems to strongly support WLC’s contention: quantum instability seems to prevent *any* emergent scenario — regardless of if whether it’s an unstable state (ESS) or a metastable state (LQG) — from being past-eternal. Moreover, this notion appears to be reinforced here [http://arxiv.org/abs/arXiv:1305.3836] as well:
“A number of authors emphasized that the beginning of inflation does not have to be the beginning of the universe. The ‘emergent universe’ scenario [11–15] assumes that the universe approaches a static or oscillating regime in the asymptotic past. In this case, the average expansion rate is Hav = 0, so the condition (1) is violated. The problem with this scenario is that static or oscillating universes are generally unstable with respect to quantum collapse and therefore could not have survived for an infinite time before the onset of inflation [16–18].”
I’m just not following you here; what would lead you to say that this belief of WLC is “completely false?”
With respect to the Aguirre-Gratton model (which posits a different scenario), you said,
“In contrast, I wanted to talk about a model developed by Anthony Aguirre and Stephen Gratton. They have a very simple and physically transparent model that (unlike my theory with Chen) imposes a low-entropy boundary condition at a mid-universe 'bounce.' It’s a straightforward example of a perfectly well-defined theory that is clearly eternal, one that doesn’t have a beginning, and does so without invoking any hand-waving about quantum gravity. I challenged Craig to explain why this wasn’t a sensible example of an eternal universe, one that was in perfect accord with the BGV theorem, but he didn’t respond. It wasn’t until the talks on the following day that Craig’s teammate James Sinclair admitted that it seemed like a perfectly good model to him.”
Vilenkin also addressed this model in the last paper I mentioned, and noted:
“Even though the spacetime has no boundary in the AG model, it does include a hyper-surface on which the low-entropy (vacuum) boundary condition must be enforced by some mechanism. This surface of minimum entropy plays the role of the beginning of the universe in this scenario. . . .”
“. . . Suppose the vacuum that fills this de Sitter space is a metastable (false) vacuum and that it can decay to one or more lower-energy vacua through bubble nucleation. Suppose further that we impose a boundary condition that the entire universe is in a false vacuum state in the asymptotic past, τ → −∞. Then bubbles nucleating at τ → −∞ will fill the space, the energy in the bubble walls will thermalize, and the universe will contract to a big crunch and will never get to the bounce and to the expanding phase.”
Even if one ignores the questionable reversal of the arrow of time, this model, according to Vilenkin, still cannot plausibly be past-eternal.
Nevertheless, this post is beyond lengthy already so I’ll stop here, despite my remaining questions. As I said, thanks again for such a civil, competitive debate and I appreciate your taking the time to entertain my questions.
Dear Jack,
My critique is that your proposed letter is much too long to politely post on Dr. Carroll's blog. ;-)
But since you seem to already have done so, I'm not sure that piece of advice will help very much. I'm flattered that you should turn to me for help with scientifically critiquing your letter---I'm not offended that you asked me---but unfortunately this would require me to essentially rehash the debate an entire additional time, as viewed through the lens of your letter. It is hard enough work critiquing the debate once...
Since in your letter you made clear that you are not a professional cosmologist, I think you can reasonably expect that people will take the letter in the spirit in which it was intended, and won't assume that you are claiming any sort of infallibility for your opinions. But you could always ask the people posting it on their websites to add a disclaimer, if you think that is necessary.
[Just to clarify the situation for any visitors, on this blog I do not use the title "saint" when addressing someone in the second person, and I certainly don't require other commenters to refer to me (or anyone else, for that matter) in that way!]
Dear Aron,
Thank you for your response. I apologize for the length of the letter; I just felt it was a necessary evil in order to properly combat (what I perceived to be) false claims propagated by Dr. Carroll's post-debate reflections.
As I previously stated, I fully understand if you cannot give it a proper critique; doing so would certainly exaust a considerable amount of your free time.
My primary concern (which I should have tried to state more clearly) was whether or not the papers that I cited were relevant and appropriate as refutations for Prof. Carroll's claims; that is all that I was hoping for your thoughts on. Nevertheless, again, I understand your position and thank you again for the response.
Aron,
St. Paul wrote in (Rom. 1:16,17):”For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, 'The just shall live by faith'.”
It is reassuring to know there are respectable physicists and mathematicians like you and others (Stephen Barr, John Lennox, John Polkinghorne, just to name a few) who are not ashamed to be Christians, and who confidently profess their faith through their writings and speeches in a rigorous defence of theism and Christianity.
Keep up the good work.
I think when you like at the argument map, Craig had the better argumention
http://remingtonscove.wordpress.com/2014/02/22/w-l-craig-v-sean-carroll-god-cosmology/comment-page-1/
There was a lot of stuff like "Craig saying this , but there are models that avoid this problem". And Craig would respond that "there are other problems with such models and Carroll has to come to grips with the problem" that I didn't know how to evaluate , because I only have a layman's knowledge of cosmology.
Aron,
I discovered your blog rather randomly, but I think it's great. Regarding this debate...
I found the debate to be uncharacteristically challenging for WLC. Perhaps it was for Carroll as well, but I wouldn't know as I've not seen him debate before. I say this because Carroll has the authoritative advantage in this debate. If Craig called him out on something he wrote, or a theorem, all Carroll had to do was say "No, that's not what it's saying" and then give little to no justification. Yeah, perhaps he's right, but laymen such as me wouldn't know. We would have to just assume Carroll is correct because...he's the physicist and WLC isn't.
What I specifically found unsatisfying about his rebuttals to the Kalam's first premise (whatever begins to exist has a cause) is when Carroll said "This kind of Aristotelian analysis of causation was cutting edge stuff 2,500 years ago. Today we know better." Later he said "But crucially, both of these features of the universe that allow us to speak the language of causes and effects are completely absent when we talk about the universe as a whole. We don’t think that our universe is part of a bigger ensemble that obeys laws."
Is this accurate? If it is true, he didn't explain what scientific discovery it was that made universal causation obsolete. And if the premise is true of everything in the universe, but not of the universe itself, he also didn't explain why. It would be like saying that all written works have a cause, but literature doesn't.
He took Craig to task for asking how the universe could "pop into existence from nothing", to which Carroll responded with "It sounds as if you waited a while, and then, pop, there was the universe. But that's exactly wrong. The correct statement is that there are models that are complete and consistent in which there is a first moment of time."
Okay, so isn't the question still valid; how could the universe have a first moment in time from nothing?
Basically, what Carroll said doesn't really make sense to me, but perhaps it would to physicists. Am I missing something?
Welcome to my blog, Benard.
You make some good points. No, I don't think you're missing all that much. Carroll is really doing philosophy here, not physics, so when you ask "Is this accurate?" as though he or I were especially equipped as a physicist to answer that question, I have little more to give you. As a physicist, I certainly agree that modern day physics emphasizes finding consistent mathematical models, as compared to metaphysical or mechanical analyses of causation, but there's more than one lesson one might draw from that.
I've just written my own response to his comments here.
Aron,
Wow, your response pretty much answers the issues I raised. In the spirit of fairness, I did find that Carroll conducted himself well and I commend him for that. Unlike his fellow cosmologist Dr. Krauss, he was able to stick to the task at hand and show respect for the opposing viewpoint and the people who hold it (theism). As a result of his civility, his arguments were strengthened. He was able to fair much better than his most of the people that went before him. Craig referred to the debate as one of his most challenging, which is a huge complement for Carroll as far as I'm concerned.
I've been reading more on your site and it is a breath of fresh air. I will share it with my like-minded friends.
Benard,
I agree that Carroll conducted himself well. I hope that my numerous criticisms of specific points doesn't distract from my other assertion that I have high respect for him as a physicist who tries to think deeply about important issues, and as a communicator who can clearly ariticulate positions that I disagree with. (It's so much more pleasant to try to refute people who are clear in this way! With most people, you have to do a lot of work to explain and reinterpret their own position to make it a bit more coherent, before you can even start to respond to it.)
Aron,
From what I have read so far, it is clear that you respect both Carroll and any other of your fellow physicists whom you disagree with. I doubt that any of them would take offence if they were to read what you wrote about them.
I could be wrong, but one thing I admire about your field of work is that it seems easier than other lines of work to separate the personal views of the person from their professional contributions.
Carroll had the credentials to finally put Craig's Kalam argument to rest in real-time by pointing out the unsoundness of the second premise "the universe had a beginning." There is not sufficient evidence to accept such a premise. It was also enlightening to see Carroll get the testimony of Guth, one of the authors of the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem saying the universe probably didn't have a beginning since Craig misuses the theorem and did so in the debate.
Craig simply didn't have the credentials to go up against Carroll on cosmology. He was trounced, but it was good to air out these ideas especially since Craig uses them all the time. The person who makes the claim must provide the proof. Craig was unable to provide good evidence to support his claim that cosmology indicates the existence of a god.
"Carroll had the credentials to finally put Craig's Kalam argument to rest in real-time by pointing out the unsoundness of the second premise 'the universe had a beginning.' There is not sufficient evidence to accept such a premise."
Robert, it is true that St. Craig is less qualified to speak on matters of cosmology that Carroll, but it hardly follows that he has no knowledge of the subject or qualifications whatsoever, nor does it follow that Carroll adequately addressed his most salient points (he in fact did not). This is a textbook example of an Authoritarian fallacy. It is also true as you say, that there are viable inflationary models which allow us to get around BVG. But nearly all of those that yield eternal universes are highly contrived toy models that have little or no observational support. Of the few that are even remotely viable, the most promising is the Aguirre-Gratton model, which although it avoids past-indefinite timelike worldlines, it does in fact have a reversal of time assymetry which essentially defines a t=0 moment and past/future arrows in "opposite" directions from it. In terms of everything we know and understand about how time actually works in the universe we live in, it's far simpler and more to the point to view this as an event (or more properly, a hypersurface) from which two universes emerge and evolve in their own future directions. Aron, correct me if I'm wrong here, but to me such a model is only "past eternal" if we arbitrarily decide to redefine past and future on the side of t=0 in our past so that it runs opposite to the world we live in. I see no valid reason to do that. The only caveat here is that spacetime cannot be said to "end" here in the sense of being past-indefinite, so it's less obviously ex-nihilo.
I agree that from a cosmological standpoint past-eternal universes are possible. But the fact of the matter is that for every toy model that allows for one there are many more that render them highly unlikely, and these are supported by observational data in ways their past-eternal toy model competitors are not. You are correct to say that BVG does not irrefutably prove the universe began to exist. But at a bare minimum it, and other advances put the overwhelming burden of proof on those who deny that it did (I would recommend Aron's recent series of cosmological argument posts here). If this is an "unsound" premise for which there is "not sufficient evidence" we have to wonder what would be sufficient. Perhaps this is why Carroll restricts himself merely to asking, "Can I build a model?" Of course he can build a model... anyone can. Given the current status of observational cosmology and quantum gravity there are probably more models than there are gainfully employed cosmologists. The real question is... can he build a past-eternal model that has better observational support than those that aren't? He can't... and to date at least, neither can anyone else. Which is probably why he avoids any discussion of verifiable observational support in discussions like this. ;-)
Btw, we haven't even gotten yet to another point everyone seems to avoid... You make an issue of the fact that Craig isn't a cosmologist. Well, the origin of the universe isn't just a cosmological topic--it involves philosophy as well. And guess what... St. Craig is in fact a leading publisher philosopher, and to be blunt, Carroll is illiterate in the subject. Craig is far more well-versed in Carroll's field than he is in Craig's, and it shows.
To put all this in perspective ask yourself a simple question: What if it was religion that required a past-eternal universe and a beginning presented a huge theological problem for theists (especially Christians like Aron and I)? Let's be honest... if that were the case atheists everywhere would be wielding BVG like a mighty sword Excaliber and condescendingly bludgeoning theists silly with it. Oh, what irrational obscurantists Christians like Aron and I would be if it was we who were protecting our worldviews by clinging to a handful of contrived toy models that had no observational support whatsoever! If this isn't true--if a universe that began to exist really is such a non-issue--then why are so many atheist cosmologists today killing themselves to come up with models that avoid one--or like Krauss, equivocating on the meaning of the word nothing in an attempt to convince us that something could have come from it a finite time ago?
The reason is clear. They're afraid of a beginning... and with good reason.
Best.
Robert, Carroll did not show the second premise to be unsound and Craig did not misuse the BGV theorem and he certainly was not “trounced.” You are making claims you cannot support, unless, of course, you intend to merely appeal to Carroll’s authority. (Why does it seem skeptics have to constantly appeal to authority to present a case?)
Remember that Vilenkin still maintains that there is no good model that provides a satisfactory model for a beginningless universe (unless he’s made a more recent statement I hadn’t heard) and in this blog site Aron Wall has also concluded that the probability is on the side of a beginning. Aron’s careful analysis of the arguments demonstrates this. Even without the scientific evidence, I’ve argued that the philosophical evidence is sufficient to demonstrate a beginning to be more probable.
Also notice that Guth said he did not know whether the universe is past eternal; he said he suspected that it is and “it’s very likely eternal but nobody knows.” Maybe he was trying to be vague enough to sound like he wasn’t contradicting his earlier claims that given some reasonable assumptions there had to be an ultimate beginning. My understanding is that Guth has become involved with the Carroll-Chen model and he thinks this allows for a past eternal universe. This may be why he now more strongly “suspects” the universe is past eternal. This is pointless, however, since Craig showed that the Carroll-Chen model does have an origin point.
I'm not sure that Carroll's expectations of naturalism and theism are even coherent:
Under theism you’d expect religious doctrines to last a long time in a stable way. Under naturalism you’d expect them to adapt to social conditions. Under theism you’d expect the moral teachings of religion to be transcendent, progressive, sexism is wrong, slavery is wrong. Under naturalism you’d expect they reflect, once again, local mores, sometimes good rules, sometimes not so good.
In one breath, he complains that religion is too malleable; in the next he complains that it didn't anticipate one particular culture (ours) at one particular time! There is quite simply no reason on naturalism or theism to regard 20th century Western "progressive" values as being one whit less a set of "local mores" than those of the most hierarchical, patriarchal, authoritarian culture in history.
He's also historically ill informed:
Under theism, minds should be independent of bodies. Under naturalism, your personality should change if you’re injured, tired, or you haven’t had your cup of coffee yet.
The medievals would have given him an incredulous stare over this one. I'm sure that he knows all about the theory of the four humors when medieval bashing time comes along, but he never suspects that they would have rejected the "angel-stapled-to-an-ape" cartesian model on that basis.
David,
Angel stapled to an ape? HA! That's the funniest put-down of Cartesian dualism I've ever heard!
I think you're right that his ethical expectations of Theism aren't particularly coherent or consistent. But this does raise some interesting questions on the degree to which we can make inferences based on our own moral ideas.
I don't accept the "Whig" theory of history shows inevitable moral progress on all fronts. However, I do think that taken as the whole there has been some significant moral improvement throughout history, especially but not exclusively in cultures influenced by Christianity and the Enlightenment.
In order to make any moral judgements at all we need a place to stand from, and I don't think it is crazy to evaluate a purported religous revelation based on its general conformity with morality, so long as we bear in mind that (a) there is no good reason to expect that our present culture has correct moral beliefs in EVERY RESPECT, something which would really be a heck of a coincidence, that we have just now acquired the correct moral beliefs about everything, and (b) there is no point in having a religion unless we are prepared to accept that God knows better than we do about certain things. (It always amazes me how modern people can be so damn sure that the Sexual Revolution was a good thing...)
On a somewhat more revisionist / liberal note, Carroll does not seem to be taking into account the possibility that God might have (in certain respects) accomodated his message to the moral sensibilities of those he was talking to. It was hard enough to get the ancient Israelites to accept a culture-building project based around Ethical Monotheism (with its attendant obligation to shun polytheism and idolatry, and work for justice for the poor and oppressed); it's not that surprising that on other issues God merely limited the worst abuses in other areas. When Christ came, then he required monogamy and rasied the status of women, etc. But it was clear from Genesis onwards, that God values women as people and wants to have a relationship with them, as well as with the men... If Theism is true, we are all a work in progress!
Saying someone is illiterate of philosophy but an expert in cosmology is like saying someone is illiterate of astrology but an expert in astronomy. Lame. To be blunt, a lot of philosophy is bullshit.
Dunce,
"A lot" is very different from "all". There is no legitimate subset of astrological predictions, whereas there are some legitimate philosophical arguments.
Any argument that all philosophy is BS is automatically self-undermining, because that argument would itself be a philosophical argument, and would therefore refute itself.
In any case, someone illiterate in philosophy would hardly be in a good position to tell which stuff is BS and which isn't.
Dunce, as soon as a physicist opens their mouth to start talking about something that isn't a part of a mathematical model - as soon as issues of interpretation or the "nature of reality" get brought up - they're going to be doing philosophy. The only question is whether they'll recognize that fact, be well informed about philosophy, and make a conscious effort to do philosophy well, or ignore that fact, speak about something they don't understand, and let a hodgepodge of unexamined philosophical intuitions get mingled in with what they say about science in such a way that neither they nor their listeners will be able to sort out the physics from the philosophy.
Dunce,
It's been said that if someone claims metaphysics is nonsense, he's just a brother metaphysician with a rival theory!
interesting thoughts. why do you think that miracles are better evidence of god than cosmological arguments? at most you can get to is that there is an event we can not currently explain. done. how do you make the leap to be able to justify that a god did it, and that it's your particular god?
as far as the kalam, premise one is completely flawed. it is an equivocation fallacy, trying to equivocate causation necessary for things starting out by the transformation of matter, which we have observed, with causation necessary for the emergence of matter. it is a category error, and until such time that we have even a single example observed of matter emerging needing a cause, we do not have to bother ourselves with premise one.
wlc is very dishonest. he constantly switches arguments to personal incredulity arguments, and says things like "i just don't see how that could happen" and the like. carroll pointed out this at least once, that wlc's lack of imagination or ability to think of something is not really a counter argument. even more dishonest of wlc is that when pressed about if all his arguments were negated, and scientific evidence emerged against them, he would not change his beliefs, because none of the arguments he proposes are the reason why believes.
@jp, i don't think the term metaphysician makes sense, since it is metaphysics, and people who deal with physics are physicists, not physicians. wouldn't it be metaphysicist?
louis,
What, you think the rules for English suffixes are supposed to make sense? ;-)
It looks like the term "metaphysician" is actually OLDER than the term "physicist". And that nobody says "metaphysicist".
Presumably my job is called "physicist" because "physician" was already taken.
(As for your other comment, I'll respond to it later.)
louis,
You are entitled not to believe the first premise of the kalam argument if you don't think it is plausible. (I myself think that there are other versions of the Cosmological Argument which are more plausible.)
But that does not mean that anyone who disagrees with you is dishonest. Philosophy is hard! Since a lot of metaphysical arguments come down to intuitions about the universe, appealing to personal incredulity is not completely off-base, even if there are stronger forms of argumentation. I actually agree with you that he's putting a bit more rhetorical weight on this than it can bear, but accusing somebody of dishonesty is a pretty serious thing and I don't think you should do it casually. Nor do I see how it is dishonest to say: "I think that argument A provides evidence for conclusion X, but even if A were refuted I would still personally believe it because of this other reason B", especially if one is open about that when asked.
As for what we can deduce from miracles, I think it really depends on the context. If, for example, a man blind from birth suddenly recovers his sight for no reason that we can tell, then that is just an inexplicable mystery. But if it happens right after somebody prayed for his eyes to be opened in the name of Jesus, then it starts to suggest a possible interpretation of why it happened.
The Undertermination of Theory by Data is a classic problem that also affects Science. For example, after St. Kepler, it was still compatible with all observations to hold that all the planets go around the Earth, it's just that geocentric models were a lot more complicated. So, we should select the best hypothesis that explains the data.
If you haven't read any of the Gospels recently, go and read one. (St. Mark's is the shortest, and also very likely the first to be written. Note that there is good evidence that the original text ended at 16:8.) Suppose hypothetically, for the sake of argument, that the historical claims described in this book--Jesus healing people, claiming to be the Son of God and teaching about his Father, being killed and then rising from the dead---occurred just as written. Wouldn't you say that this is good evidence that God exists and that Jesus had some special relationship with him?
(What is this talk about my particular god? All monotheistic religions agree that there is only one God. We disagree about who speaks for him, and how best to describe him, but agree on his existence and many of his attributes.)
Of course there are always going to be alternative explanations. Maybe advanced aliens were visiting Earth, and decided to play a trick on humanity. I just do not think that is the most natural interpretation of the data. And certainly there is a lot more relevant data here, in terms of total information content, then in the very basic facts about the universe on which Cosmological Arguments depend.
Louis,
Causality deals with how the contingent existence of things, or actuality, is either maintained or changed from one state to another by the actualization of innate potentials for such (the formal terms are act and potency). Effects that follow their causes temporally and continue to exist apart from them are said to be accidentally ordered (e.g. - sons and daughters that have continue to have their own existence apart from their parents). Those which maintain their state of existence only while their causes are actualizing them as said to be essentially ordered (e.g. - music that exists only while a musician is playing his/her instrument). What you refer to as "the transformation of matter" and "the emergence of matter" both involve the actualization of contingently existing states of being, and as such are well within the purview of causal inquiry. There is no "category error" here... you're using word games to create a false dichotomy.
While I find much of value in the kalam argument, I agree with you that it isn't as strong as St. Craig makes it out to be. It rests on a few premises that although defensible are on rather shaky ground, and like Aron I believe there are much better cosmological arguments. I also agree that he could've made his case for the first kalam premise a lot better... for the most part he merely asserted it when he could've offered a number of formal arguments. But that said, if anyone is being disingenuous here it's Carroll, not him, and in multiple ways. For starters, speaking of it in the debate Carroll tells us that,
"The problem with this premise is that it is false. There’s almost no explanation or justification given for this premise in Dr. Craig’s presentation. But there’s a bigger problem with it, which is that it is not even false. The real problem is that these are not the right vocabulary words to be using when we discuss fundamental physics and cosmology. This kind of Aristotelian analysis of causation was cutting edge stuff 2,500 years ago. Today we know better. Our metaphysics must follow our physics. That’s what the word metaphysics means."
Virtually every word of this is incorrect. Aristotelian analyses of causation were never superseded by philosophers--they were discarded during the Enlightenment by scientists and anti-religion activists like the Philisophes for reasons that had more to do with fashion and political correctness than anything else. To this day they continue to be actively pursued fields of inquiry in analytic philosophy that among other things, have given rise to a growing school of thought called Essentialism (which is beyond the scope of this discussion). But more to the point here, is that Carroll of all people should've known this. Unlike most atheistic scientists today, he actually has some background in philosophy and has rightly criticized many of his colleagues (e.g. - Laurence Krauss and Neil DeGrass Tyson) for their cavalier ignorance of philosophical issues. So it would appear that he's either forgotten much of his undergraduate philosophy education, or more insidiously, is deliberately ignoring it. IMHO, Carroll is a great cosmologist and an eloquent and fair-minded speaker, so I sincerely hope it's the former. But it's difficult to see how someone of his pedigree could so conveniently unlearn this much. Even if we give him the benefit of a doubt on that, he carefully avoids the larger subject of causality as it's treated within analytic philosophy and redefines it to include only the accidentally ordered efficient causes which happen to fall within the realm of his chosen profession. To wit,
"Therefore, when you find some event or state of affairs B today, we can very often trace it back in time to one or a couple of possible predecessor events that we therefore call the cause of that, which leads to B according to the laws of physics. But crucially, both of these features of the universe that allow us to speak the language of causes and effects are completely absent when we talk about the universe as a whole."
In other words, he allows for causality involving the contingent states of existence of any particular thing/s in the universe, but not for the ultimate of such--the beginning of the contingent existence of the universe itself. This is a textbook example of a Taxicab fallacy--follow your axioms wherever they lead... until they stop giving you the answers you want, at which point you conveniently dispense with them. To say that causes and effects are absent from "the universe as a whole" presumes that the universe is the whole, which begs the very question that was being debated in the first place.
There's a term for things beginning to exist without causes... it's called magic. Anything is possible in fairy tales, and illusionists dazzle audiences by making rabbits "begin to exist" in hats before pulling them out. Dress this sort of thing up in suitably scientific rhetoric, apply it to the universe as a whole... and presto! The ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card!
Ironic, isn't it? Atheists like Carroll presumptuously dismiss miracles as quaint, bucolic superstitions... and then, without missing a beat turn around and defend bibbity bobbity boo magic as "science." :-)
Sean Carroll's comments about what you would expect under theist vs. observation is relevent to the debate. It speaks to the predictive and explanatory power of the theory. Science is about creating models to best fit the data. Carroll was explaining why theism does not fit the data we have.
Similar to how William Lane Craig uses the fine-tuning argument. (This is wrong for other reasons)
Lucas,
Ordinarily I would agree with you. But to meaningfully discuss what's expected from theism vs. observation one must be at least minimally trained (as in high school if not beyond) in theology, comparative religion, philosophy of religion, and in the case of Christianity, Biblical history and text criticism. Forgive me for being a little blunt, but Carroll's comments during the debate and elsewhere make it abundantly clear that he's functionally illiterate in all these fields and more. As I mentioned above, he does have some background in philosophy, and to his credit has called out the recklessness Philistinism some of his colleagues have displayed toward the subject. But his background seems not to have covered metaphysics or philosophy of religion, which are the two most relevant specialties.
And it shows... his statements during the debate were based entirely on silly caricatures and superficial generalizations that were not only breathtaking in their presumptuousness, but vague enough to be virtually useless from the standpoint of "predictive and explanatory power." He also made several remarks regarding Aristotelian metaphysics and the metaphysics of causality that wouldn't have gotten past any high school student in the relevant areas. His writings are even worse on all of these points and more.
Carroll is a great cosmologist and a compelling and enjoyable public speaker as well. And he raises many valid points that theists need to address. But he's in no position to address why theism "does not fit the data we have" until he has at least some clue as to what theism actually is. He does not. Best.
Scott,
I didn't know that there was such a thing as High School level "textual criticism" or "Aristotelian metaphysics". Not in the USA, anyways... I think this hyperbole is unfair to Carroll. He is certainly more informed about these issues than most people are, even if he did say a few silly things. Many people with more theological education have said even sillier things.
Lucas,
One problem is that many of Carroll's "predictions" aren't really predictions of Theism. For example, there is no particularly good reason on Theism why the mind should be impervious to coffee, or why religious believers should be impervious to social influence. That really has nothing to do with whether the cosmological evidence points to a Creator of the physical universe.
But also, St. Craig agreed with the statment that non-cosmological considerations are important for evaluating the truth of Theism! He said quite explicitly that this "would require us to assess all sorts of non-cosmological data" (including of course the historical evidence for miracles such as the Resurrection of Jesus). The topic of the debate was restricted, not because these things aren't relevant, but because there is only so much time in a given evening and a debate is more productive if it stays focused on a single topic.
Aron, again I agree. While I did try to point out Carroll's background in philosophy as compared to many of his atheist colleagues, that was hyperbole on my part and perhaps more unfair to his background than I intended. My larger point was simply that in his presentation he made a number of direct and indirect points that anyone with the requisite background in Aristotelian metaphysics would've known better than to make, and it showed. As for textual criticism, the point there was that his statements about theology in general (and Christianity in particular) were dumbed down to a point that showed he had no real desire to take those subjects seriously (which would've required at least some attempt at exegesis). IMHO, Craig's case would've been a lot stronger if he'd called him on those things, and it's regrettable that he didn't. That's all. :-)
I didn't haven't watched the whole debate yet. I may have listened to the full debate on a podcast before but if I did its been so long that I forgot most of what I heard. However, I stumbled across a short video where an atheist lauds Carroll for doing a good job dismantling WLC's arguments specifically the Kalaam Cosmological argument. It is Carroll's comments on that, that I want to address. I appreciate that you know and respect Carroll perhaps if I knew him better I could respect him as well, but as it stands right now I cannot really respect him. I will extend to him the same amount of respect that I would have for any average human but certainly cannot hold him in high esteem due to his outright silly arguments.
He speaks about the multiverse and describes how it works and I am left asking why he is describing something that he has 0 evidence for? No one has ever observed the multiverse or if they have they weren't able to relate it to us or show any proof for it. Yet Carroll said things like "there is a definite history of the multiverse and you can make predictions." Is there now? What evidence do you have for it? What empirical data do you have to support the multiverse theory? He has none, instead, he makes an assumption about it in order to prove the earlier assumption that the universe might be eternal. So somehow making a series of baseless assumptions somehow constitutes a good argument now? Really?
Furthermore, WLC admits (though perhaps not in this specific debate) that his arguments are based on probabilities. He looks at the data and chooses whatever has the most explanatory power to account for the data. I try to do the same and at the end of the day, the multiverse and the eternal universe theories completely lack explanatory power for all the why questions that we have. Such as why do atoms stay together rather than fly apart? Why do they attract one another to form bigger and better things that end up becoming something more than just the sum of their parts? Now a physicist like Carroll would probably give a scientific answer to these questions. Unfortunately for him, his scientific answer would answer "what causes this" or "how that happens" rather than "why it happens." And that is the fatal flaw in the materialist/naturalist worldview. They can never answer the why. All they can do is try to persuade us that the why isn't important (as someone tried with me earlier today) But that is nothing but an assertion and an opinion and it doesn't hold any weight with any real thinkers. This is especially true I think considering how many atheists like Krauss, for example, say that whats wrong with Theism is that it makes us stop questioning? Really because we seem to be the only ones concerned with answering the why questions.
Alright, my rant is over. Thanks for your time. I hope that if anyone reads this it will cause them to just stop and think things through a little more and not fall for the empty and silly arguments based on nothing that Mr. Carroll made.
David,
When people talk about the multiverse making "predictions", they usually mean things like Steven Weinberg's anthropic prediction of the order of magnitude of the cosmological constant.
Basically, the idea is that the vast majority of universes that contain life would have a CC in a specified range. There are some serious questions about whether the rules for making such predictions are well defined. But it was at least a "prediction" in the sense that Weinberg made it before the CC was actually discovered (even if he might have just gotten lucky).
Another possibility is that even if the multiverse cannot be directly tested, it might be implied by other ideas (like string theory and eternal models of inflation) which could in principle make testable predictions. Physicists do have some good reasons for taking those 2 ideas seriously (even though there is no proof of either). However, I certainly agree with you that many physicists are way too confident given the lack of direct experimental evidence!
Also, good point about how Naturalism "stops" as many or more questions as Theism does.
LOL at Carroll making very unscientific speculations throughout the presentation. Tell me again, how we can surmise that the universe we know had a beginning but somehow there is a larger universe that spawned this universe that is eternal? And yet, this other speculative universe is an unguided materialist entity of some unexplained sort that existed from all eternity without spawning the universe we can detect, but yet somehow, this universe just came into being at a point in the past and not 2 seconds earlier, 2 days earlier, 2,000,000,0000,0000,000,0000 trillion years earlier?
When science gets over its skis, you have to call them on it and Carroll got called on his very unscientific musings.
Craig and the BVG/cosmology. Wall getting it wrong http://www.wall.org/~aron/blog/thoughts-on-the-carroll-craig-debate/
There seems to be a rather odious personality flaw in a majority of physicists. It manifests in an inability to accept any criticism/debate from those outside ‘the Cabal’, or results in anger from anyone who does not bow before all and everything that they say.
A perfect example of this is philosopher D. Z. Albert who pointed out in a NYT review of “A Universe from Nowhere”, that the philosophical/theological conclusions Krauss took from some, in some sense very speculative, physics were not just weak but completely wrong and his philosophical/theological opponents were completely right. For his troubles Albert was vilified as ‘just a philosopher’ by Krauss and some other physicists and found himself disinvited from a scheduled talk. The faults of Krauss’s book were echoed by other philosophers of physics, including the stanch atheist Tim Maudlin. The Quaker George Ellis also pointed out that, very politely, that Krauss was dead wrong.
Krauss did, finally, move from his stance of “the intellectual bankruptcy of much of theology and some of modern philosophy” and “philosophers don’t understand science, philosophers have to listen me I don’t have to listen to them; to a “by nothing I meant the physicist’s nothing (a quantum vacuum)”. Fine. However, he and Dawkins described the book as the death of religion. I am also confused, as no book that I have read has described a particleless relativistic quantum field as ‘nothing’. If there are books that do this please let me know, however it is still an appalling use of language.
Krauss had a number of debates with William Lane Craig a few years back. He criticized Craig for “not understanding the science” both in regards to Craig’s understanding of the BVG theorem and Craig’s criticisms of the models that could evade the consequences of the BVG. In his review Krauss wrote “Craig does not understand the physics” before making a scientific blunder. The review is here https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/lawrence-krauss-response-and-perspective/ along with Craig’s response. The link to the original bit by Krauss no longer works as it was, wisely in my opinion, taken down.
Krauss then later, in a debate in Australia, produced a highly redacted e-mail from Vilenkin which altered the main points of Vilenkin’s communication. The whole story is here https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/honesty-transparency-full-disclosure-and-the-borde-guth-vilenkin-theorem/
Notice that Vilenkin’s objections to Carroll-Chen (which is now dead) and the Aguirre-Gratton model are similar to those of Craig’s years before Craig received this e-mail. Now you may disagree with Vilenkin/Craig on these matters but this does not mean that Vilenkin and Craig don’t “understand the physics”. Also note that Vilenkin makes it clear that Craig has always presented the BVG correctly.
Sean Carroll always said that Craig does not understand the physics and only has a popular understanding of the BVG. You, Aron Wall takes the same approach
“William Lane Craig is a skilled debater who has done his best to keep abreast of Modern Cosmology. This is commendable, but it was inevitable that his depth of knowledge in Cosmology was not as great as Carroll, who works on this subject professionally. And often it showed. That is why Craig had to rely mainly on a lot of quotes from famous physicists such as Alex Vilenkin—and sometimes this backfired, as in the case of Alan Guth, who apparently believes that the universe is eternal.”
This paragraph, apart from being rude and totally untrue, falls at the first hurdle. Craig does not rely on quotes from Vilenkin, he understands the theorem very well and has written on the theorem in several peer review publications and papers. In fact, Craig’s understanding of the theorem is the same as mine and Vilenkin’s. Perhaps Vilenkin himself, is relying on “ a lot of quotes from famous physicists such as Alex Vilenkin”.
Craig has also written on the possible ways in which the BVG can be violated – time reversal models, emergent universes, eternal prior contraction and finds them largely mathematically inconsistent, extremely implausible or are not describing a real spacetime at all – in effect toy models. Guth was, from what I can gather, thinking of a time-reversal model. How does this back-fire on Craig? How does this show that Craig relies on quotes? If Guth is correct, which I very much doubt, how does this show that Craig fails to understand? All the BVG exclusion models, which are all little more than toys at the moment, show is that, if true, physical reality is not on average expanding and the BVG theorem only applies to the expanding part of the universe. Do you really think that Hoyle/Gold/Bondi did not understand General Relativity when they promoted the Steady State Theory? ALL the evidence we have points to a beginning of the universe and that is without bringing in philosophical objections. Coming up with toy models that are often internally self-contradiction or don’t correspond to reality is not a counter.
Jeff Hester who debated Craig recently, also claimed that Craig does not understand the physics. Jeff’s video is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lT227dkoRxs&t=101s
Luke Barnes makes a comment, and makes exactly the same complaint that I do – Craig is not merely quoting “from authority”.
Here is Craig’s e-mail (redacted here) I am sure he would love to be corrected on a mistake that he has made. You have published papers with Vilenkin, perhaps you should e-mail him and explain how Craig and, seemingly Vilenkin, has misrepresented the BVG.
By the way what do you think philosophers of science do all day? See around in a circle humming? Philosophers of science usually have a better conceptual understanding of the science they are studying than working scientists.
This mess can only have resulted from one of three possibilities;
1, Most physicists flock together and will engage in distortions and ad hominin attacks on those who cross them, irrespective of the truth of the claims. Krauss, Carroll, Stenger, Hester, Wall seem to fall under this category.
2, You, Aron Wall do not understand the BVG. In the few pieces of you that I have read you, at times, seem to misunderstand what ‘classical’ means in the BVG. Classical in the BVG means one in which concepts of causality, time and space are not obliviated. Not classical in respect to a space time described by general relativity. Carroll also moves between one understanding to another, contradicting himself. Craig made this point in the debate as well as correcting an error in Carroll’s on paper. Vilenkin made the same points in a letter to Scientific American.
3, You were having a bad day.
In either case you owe Craig an apology or at least an explanation as to what part of the science Craig gets wrong. I am not going to resort to Brothers in Christ stuff. This is about truth – something I care very much for. You should too.
Mark,
Wow, that is a surprisingly ungracious interpretation of what I wrote!
These accusations are obviously false since I agreed with many of St. Craig's criticisms of Carroll, and said so. I'm guessing your problem was that I said anything minimizing about Craig at all.
And it's not really an insult to say that Craig doesn't have the same extensive depth in cosmology that Carroll does, just as Carroll does not have the same extensive training in philosophy that Craig does. This is the expected situation when a physicist debates a philosopher, and it shouldn't be an insult to either of them to point it out. I know less about biology than most biologists, and most biologists know less about physics than I do. That's how it works.
I've also criticized Krauss for his silly claims about nothing, so I don't know why you are trying to lay what he does to my account.
This is a bizarre projection since I'm pretty sure I wasn't angry when I wrote any of this review.
Let me unpack this very explicitly for you. The language of theoretical physics is mathematics. So I'm not going to say that somebody fully understands a physics idea unless they would be capable of explaining it in equations. If you look at the BGV article, you can see that their paper has about a dozen numbered equations in it, plus more embedded in the text. If you have never worked through this proof yourself, you have no right to go around lecturing people about how they "don't understand the BGV theorem".
As far as I can tell, in his oral and written presentations, St. Craig explains the conclusion of the BGV theorem with words, mainly quotations by eminent physicists such as Vilenkin and others. He's done as good of a job of checking to make sure these verbal explanations are accurate as anyone could reasonably expect, and there is nothing wrong with him writing academic papers in which he uses the conclusion of the BGV theorem to argue for further philosophical conclusions. But it's not the same as understanding the mathematics, or being able to prove the result oneself (which is necessary if you want to know whether it applies in a situation different from the one originally intended). (If you can find a blog post or published article written by St. Craig in which he explains the equations mathematically, with reference to tensor calculus, then I will retract my claim that he relies on quotations by others.)
An explanation that is phrased in terms of words alone is usually going to be misleading in one way or another. Even when the verbal explanation is as precise as one can manage, if one asks a questions about it that the original set of words weren't designed to answer (like, what counts as a beginning), one would normally have to go back to the equations to see how to answer it.
If I insist on this point it's not because I'm part of an "odious cabal" who wants to protect the reputation of physicists at any cost. It's because you really do have to know the relevant math to understand some of these ideas well. I'm sorry, but that's how it is. Most of the physicists I know are more than happy when non-physicists take the time to try to learn what physics is all about, as long as they don't start claiming to have revolutionized the subject even though they haven't learned the math.
The BGV theorem does not depend on the specific equations of motion postulated by Einstein, but it does rely on the existence of a Lorentzian signature metric
(which plays a critical role in the derivation in the BGV paper), with respect to which we wish to measure the duration of geodesics. The existence of a metric is, I think, a stronger statement than merely the existence of "concepts of causality, time, and space", and could easily not be the right description of spacetime in full quantum gravity. As Vilenkin says in one of the very articles you link to:
However, if you had read the entire comments section under my only post with BGV in its title, you would have seen that I explicitly state that:
which sounds approximately like the assertion you were looking for.
For someone who supposedly cares about not slandering people, you seem to be dishing it out right and left in the comment above. For example, it's pretty unfair to state that the majority of my professional colleagues (most of whom are not bloggers, and try to stay out of fights like this) have an "odious personality flaw" based on your reaction to the writings of a very small number of outspoken individuals, who don't represent the community as a whole. Why don't you start by being the change you want to see in the world, and apologize yourself?
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> This, however, strayed from the parameters of the debate topic.
I think you missed the point of this section of Carroll's argument. He was making the general point that theism is not a good theory because it isn't well defined. It predicts fine tuning, sure, but it also predicts a bunch of other stuff we don't observe. And those lack of observations can easily be explained away because theism isn't well defined - for any given observational data, theism fits that data. Thus Bayes' theorem says we haven't gained any probability for theism when we observe data that "fits".
"Fifth, and most importantly, theism fails as an explanation. Even if you think the universe is finely-tuned and you don’t think that naturalism can solve it, theism certainly does not solve it. If you thought it did, if you played the game honestly, what you would say is, “Here is the universe that I expect to exist under theism. I will compare it to the data and see if it fits.” What kind of universe would we expect? I’ve claimed that over and over again the universe we would expect matches the predictions of naturalism not theism. "
...
"Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “But I can explain all of that.” I know you can explain all of that—so can I. It’s not hard to come up with ex post facto justifications for why God would have done it that way. Why is it not hard? Because theism is not well defined. That’s what computer scientists call a bug, not a feature."
…
“But again that misses the point of my argument. I was not actually putting forward these as strong predictions of theism. I was making the point that there are no strong predictions of theism. It’s not that there should be no evil in the world if God exists, it’s that you can always wriggle out of the prediction that there should be no evil in the world if God exists. That’s why it’s not a good theory of the world generally, that’s why it’s not a good cosmological model, particularly.”
Eric,
I am aware of the way in which Carroll framed his argument.
The fact remains that it was a off-topic Gish Gallop, an excuse to fit in as many random arguments for atheism as possible, even though it would have been quite difficult for St. Craig to respond to them all adequately, without deviating from the topic of the debate (which I'm sure he would have been more than happy to do in another context, for example in another debate for which those questions were on-topic). Gish Gallops are unsporting, because they detract from the goal of a good debate which is to cover the arguments in greater depth, rather than to exploit the format of the debate to "win" by raising questions which can't easily be adequately answered within that format.
A large number of weak arguments can't substitute for one strong argument. The fact that Carroll goes on to say "I can explain all that" suggests that even Carroll doesn't find any one of these arguments to be particularly strong. Yes, Carroll goes on to draw the moral that Theism is undefined, but that moral only follows from what he said if it is in fact true that most of the elements of his Gish Gallop withstand critical scrutiny as plausible implications of more predictive versions of Theism (I think for the most part they are based on serious misunderstandings; for example, historically most Theistic philosophers have not been Cartesian dualists).
The one relevant point here for Cosmology is that (with, as you say, the possible exception of fine tuning) Theism is unable to predict the specific features of which model of cosmology to use. I agree with that. However, I think St. Luke Barnes objection to this is absolutely devastating, namely that if we compare apples-to-apples, Naturalism (considered as a philosophical position on par with Theism) is also unable to predict in advance any specific features of which model of cosmology to use. At most, Naturalism predicts that there should exist some mathematical model for cosmology, but not which one specifically (with the possible exception that it should not be fine tuned). In this particular respect, Naturalism is almost equally unpredictive.
As a worldview... This is the steaming pile of all of them. If they did as much research on themselves they'd see at what rate it's been abandoned even by some of its loudest supporters - yet they're soooo sure & they never accept even the simplest of points made against them
Why? It's simple.
Who consents to their own doom? Who says, yes, that makes sense but I'll be doomed anyway. If you're never going to accept Christ, you simply cannot and will not accept a single argument because it leads directly to your destruction. It's like no other topic. You lose this argument, and you've decided to never turn, you lose everything.
Carroll's 3rd graders list of the world where theism is true is no more than this...
1) If Billy were God he would include germ theory in the bible
2)Germ theory is not in the bible
3) Therefore, Billy is not God
Its beyond childish, yet this is a man who has put his brain on display as something we should come and behold.
That he actually had a hilariously naive wish list pawned off as legitimate logical argument is a perfect demonstration of the bar room reasoning that's actually behind his worldview. But even worse it shows once again how out of their depth these atheists are outside of the classroom. The great thinkers throughout history would have absolute shock on their faces if they heard it.
Excellent!!