The story so far… The setting is an Intelligence Squared debate in which we have two teams: Team A, composed of physicist Lawrence Krauss and writer Michael Shermer, arguing the motion that “science refutes God” and Team B, composed of political commentator Dinesh D’Souza and physicist Ian Hutchinson, arguing against the motion.
Lawrence Krauss continued his discussion of the inhospitable universe with this ramble:
And if it were much bigger than we measure, it’s true that galaxies couldn’t form, and planets couldn’t form, and Intelligence Squared Debates couldn’t happen. So the universe appears to be here because Intelligence Squared is here. Now, that suggests religion perhaps, but the point is not that that claim of fine tuning is ridiculous because, in fact, if the energy of empty space was zero, which is a — by far a more natural value, the universe would be a better place for life to live in. We all thought it was zero when I was a graduate student, because that was a natural value. If it was zero, the universe would be a better place. In fact, you can show the value that it has now makes the universe the worst of all possible universes to live in for the future of life. So, so much for a universe created for us.
Okay, I got the vague, tongue-in-cheek reference to the logical error of assuming causality where there may only be coincidence, but after an equally vague reference to the “value of empty space” not being zero and zero being “better” for life, he arrives at a shrugging “so much for a universe created for us” as if he has given some real hard evidence.
I expected the moderator to call him on it. Barring that, I expected a sophisticated response from the physicist on the opposing team. Neither of these things occurred.
Krauss continues:
Now, once Darwin had removed the apparent need for God in evolution of life, the last bastion for God was the creation of the universe, how you can get something from nothing. And what — we’re in a remarkable situation of being in is precisely the same situation that Darwin existed in 150 years ago, namely, we have a plausible explanation of how a universe could precisely come from nothing.
Hold the phone, ET. Darwin did no such thing. Darwin’s seminal work in evolution no more removed the need for God in the creation of life than the existence of my word processor or the evolution of alphabets and words removes the apparent need for a human writer.
The explanations for how a universe can come from nothing that I’ve read so far rest upon a redefinition of “nothing” and they are not considered plausible by a majority of physicists. There’s a parallel for this in the religious world—the idea held by certain religionists that their conception of God as a glorified human being living in a physical heaven is the only plausible conception of God.
Krauss went on:
If you asked, “What would be the characteristics of the universe that came from nothing by natural laws?” it would be precisely the characteristics of the universe we observe, and it didn’t have to be that way. It could have been another way. And by nothing — and it — the — my opponents will say that by nothing, I’m not talking about nothing, but I’m talking about nothing, no particles, no radiation, no space, no time, and even no laws of physics. Our — [unintelligible] my opponents might argue that the multiverse, which our universe might have spontaneously been created in, was created by physicists because they don’t like God, because it’s eternal and exists outside our universe, those same characteristics that God is supposed to have. But it wasn’t created because we don’t like God, although I don’t like God. It was — we’d been driven to it by measurements. In fact, I don’t even like the multiverse, but I’ve learned to force my beliefs to conform to the evidence of reality.
This is a fascinating segment because Krauss wades through an explanation about what his “opponents” will say and what he means by nothing, and then makes a peculiar admission: he doesn’t like the multiverse explanation (although he likes it more than he does God) but feels he is forced to believe in it. He cites the evidence of reality for this, but has yet to offer any idea of what this evidence is.
What his argument seems to come down to is that he prefers the idea of a multiverse beyond this universe as we know it to a God that exists as Krishna suggests in a progression of statements, beyond the universe as we know it.
There is nothing more fundamental than I, Arjuna; all worlds, all beings, are strung upon me like pearls on a single thread. — Bhagavad Gita 7:7
All the visible universe comes from my invisible Being. All beings have their rest in me, but I have not My rest in them, And in truth they rest not in Me. Consider my sacred mystery: I am the source of all beings, I support them all, but I rest not in them. — Bhagavad Gita 9:4
Know that with one single fraction of my Being, I pervade and support the entire universe, and know that I AM. —Bhagavad Gita 10:42
I also have to question his assertion that a universe that arose only from randomly occurring natural laws would have the characteristics of the universe we actually live in. First of all, what is the provenance of these natural laws? Where did they come from? How did they become “laws”? Given how little we actually do know about the universe, how swiftly that knowledge is revised and how many different opinions there are about what it means, how can Krauss speak so definitively about the characteristics of the universe and what we know about it?
More fundamentally: In what way does the existence of natural laws refute the existence of a lawgiver? Krauss speaks of the “characteristics that God is supposed to have,” but misses the most primal quality—the quality of intellect and invention, a quality which various scriptures insist is the reflection of God in man. If the components of the universe manifest the characteristics of that universe, why would it be irrational to expect to find intellect in that universe or connected to it in some way?
And given the evolving state of human knowledge, is it logical to assume that we would recognize that intelligence when we encountered it?
But Krauss does not answer these questions, nor does he delve any deeper into what he means by “nothing” or how something came from it. Instead he draws his conclusions:
That’s where science differs from religion. There do remain deep philosophical and seismic questions that are unanswered, but God is not required or useful to explain any of them. And, therefore, to conclude, science has taught us that we don’t need God to create a universe, that there’s no evidence for God, that the specific sides of the claims of those who require God disagree with empirical evidence, and it’s irrational. Science refutes God, so clearly you should vote for our side.
Krauss stated his conclusions without offering any evidence as to the following:
- What he means by nothing and how something arose from it.
- In what way the universe is inhospitable to life and what he means by saying that it is.
- Where natural laws came from and how they became laws.
- Why God is an irrational proposition to explain certain empirical observations about the universe and human consciousness.
- In what way science refutes God.
This was disappointing. It was also disappointing that Krauss presented the audience with the sense that all physicists agreed with his assessments. He failed to engage with the reality that they do not, as evidenced by the fact that the man sitting across from him was not only a world-class scientist, but a scientist who had drawn different conclusions from the same set of empirical evidence and theoretical inference.
My greatest disappointment was that I would love to have seen these two scientists examining their scientific worldviews as co-equals. That didn’t happen.
Next time: Krauss claims that the laws of physics determine everything.
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Alejandro
February 8, 2013 at 4:31 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Wouldn’t the fact that the universe came from nothing
actually prove God? It would prove creatio ex nihilo. In fact, the way I see it, their “nothing” (which I agree, it’s not nothing) actually disproves God because it gives an origin to the universe that is not God. I don’t remember how it was called, I think it was quantum vacuum, correct me if I’m wrong please. If the origin of everything relies on a quantum vacuum, that would disprove God because the original cause wouldn’t be Him but that vacuum. Now you may say “but where does the vacuum come from?”, the vacuum is eternal, hence, doesn’t have a cause. But if the universe was actually originated from nothing, that would prove creatio ex nihilo, and provide the strongest evidence for God since He created from nothing.Alejandro
February 8, 2013 at 4:33 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Dang it, I didn’t know my comment would end up like that. I’m reposting it again.
Wouldn’t the fact that the universe came from nothing actually prove God? It would prove creatio ex nihilo. In fact, the way I see it, their “nothing” (which I agree, it’s not nothing) actually disproves God because it gives an origin to the universe that is not God. I don’t remember how it was called, I think it was quantum vacuum, correct me if I’m wrong please. If the origin of everything relies on a quantum vacuum, that would disprove God because the original cause wouldn’t be Him but that vacuum. Now you may say “but where does the vacuum come from?”, the vacuum is eternal, hence, doesn’t have a cause. But if the universe was actually originated from nothing, that would prove creatio ex nihilo, and provide the strongest evidence for God since He created from nothing.
Maya Bohnhoff
February 8, 2013 at 5:11 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
In what way does the Kraussian “nothing” disprove God or as you say, “give an origin to the universe that is not God?
When I start to write a book, there is nothing. But it’s not really nothing. There are letters, words, ideas (the really important part). And I take those raw nothings and make a story. And as I said, the ideation—my directed thought—is what really creates the book. Without that the letters are meaningless symbols—in fact, without my intelligence, they’re not even symbols.
Despite the cute aphorism, no number of monkeys with typewriters can write Hamlet because while they might eventually assemble all of the letters that are in a work of Shakespeare, it would not be Hamlet; it would be a random assemblage of letters and numbers.
Now, I think that raises an interesting question about how a universe can have as a component—creative intelligence—that is not inherent in the whole. Especially not in the raw components of the whole.
Now you may say where does God come from? But God is eternal and He or She or It is not the same order of being as what It creates. (Which a vacuum is). No more than I am the same order of being as the people and worlds I create for my stories. I love the way Krishna puts this when He says: “All the visible universe comes from my invisible Being. All beings have their rest in me, but I have not My rest in them, And in truth they rest not in Me. Consider my sacred mystery: I am the source of all beings, I support them all, but I rest not in them.” — Bhagavad Gita 9:4
As a writer, I “get” this because I have a similar relationship with my stories. All their visible universe comes from my being, which is invisible to the characters in the book. They see only other like creatures. They must obey the physical laws I create, but I am not bound by those laws. I am the source of my creatures and their world, but I “rest not in them”. Yet, in another way, the evidence of my existence is literally written on every page.
So, I disagree that a universe from real nothing or a universe from pseudo-nothing proves anything about the existence of God in and of itself. I believe that the greatest proof of the existence of God is the existence of the intellect that can debate the existence of God.
Alejandro
February 8, 2013 at 6:36 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
With your analogy of the typewriting monkeys (I admit, it’s cute) I disagree partially. Certainly it would take billions of years, if not much, much more, but in the end, the monkeys will eventually write Hamlet. Sure, the monkey wouldn’t understand what he wrote, but you get an understandable work out of randomness, which, applied to the real world, may mean that we don’t need God because consciousness would eventually arise anyway. It’s a random process that doesn’t require any intelligence behind it. Of course, I still think that is not a conclusive proof against God, but it certainly can be used as an argument against His existence.
With the vacuum not being of the same order of God; if God doesn’t exist, such a categorization would be meaningless. And you are still stuck with an eternal cause that originated everything else that is not God. Just like the scientific explanation of thunder disproves the existence of Thor (or at least, disproves the belief that thunder is caused by his hammer), the scientific explanation of what caused the universe may also disprove the existence of God. Now, I still think that even if the Vacuum is eternal, that may not disprove God in it’s entirety. We still can ask why anything exists. As much as Dawkins like to make fun at what he calls the “why questions”, I still think they constitute a powerful evidence on it’s own.
Maya Bohnhoff
February 9, 2013 at 8:35 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
Actually, that’s not my analogy. It’s an old sound bite that was once a favorite with atheists who insisted that the things humans do are not terribly impressive—after all, cheetahs are faster, birds can fly and a thousand monkeys with typewriters will eventually write Shakespeare. And I think you remade my point: even if the monkeys eventually recreated somewhere amid all their random typing, all the words that are in Shakespeare, they would never make up a body of work with a beginning, middle and end because meaningful structure requires understanding. It would have no meaning, because they could not invest it with meaning.
The assertion that you’d ever get an understandable work out of randomness, or that consciousness arose out of randomness is merely a hypothesis—and one I don’t think fits the facts of evolution.The fact of evolution that, for me, rules out randomness in the emergence of human intellect and inclines me to accept what Baha’u'llah and other “subject matter experts” have to say about how man came to be man, is that among all the far older creatures on this planet even those 99.9% like us genetically are unlike us intellectually.
There are no lifeforms that are “almost human”–just struggling to learn speech, or ideate based on inference, or philosophize about things they cannot see, or invent complex machines that allow them to bend the laws of physics, or guide their own evolution. The beings we call Prophets or Avatars have repeatedly told us for millennia that this capacity that makes us human is our unique ability to reflect the qualities of God. Hence, Genesis says that God created us in His image, Krishna that the soul or Atman is the spirit of God in man. Baha’u'allah puts it this way: “O SON OF MAN! Veiled in My immemorial being and in the ancient eternity of My essence, I knew My love for thee; therefore I created thee, have engraved on thee Mine image and revealed to thee My beauty..”
As a writer, I get that part about loving the creation before I create it, but the point of all this is that there is a contention going back into antiquity that our soul or intellect or whatever you wish to call it–that thing that caused the rational faculty (which Baha’u'llah calls the “first faculty”) to emerge in us and not in our nearest genetic kin. Scientists have combed through our DNA and yet cannot account for how that .1% of our DNA that’s different from the bonobos is responsible for … well, for the human faculty that makes this conversation about completely abstract concepts via a human invention, possible.
So whether you call it Vacuum or God, It must have qualities that we reflect in some small measure. It must have intelligence. Whatever we call It, whatever we imagine It to be, It is not that. Not really. Any conception we have of God is just that—a conception that we attach words to for our convenience.
I didn’t quite get what you were saying about being stuck for an explanation for other things that are not God. How so?
Alejandro
February 10, 2013 at 8:59 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
“I didn’t quite get what you were saying about being stuck for an explanation for other things that are not God. How so?”
That the quantum vacuum is the thing or explanation for the origin of the universe, and an original cause other than God.
I agree with you that humans being rational constitutes a powerful proof on it’s own, though the part where you say that scientists can’t still explain (or understand) why it is so that our DNA provides us with rational faculties strikes me to the God of the gaps arguments.
Maya Bohnhoff
February 10, 2013 at 2:32 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
I’ve seen the quantum vacuum put forth as the explanation for the origin of the universe and also gravity (Hawking and Mlodinow) but that still begs the question whence gravity? And whence the laws that govern it? Gravity is governed by physical laws; vacuum is governed by physical laws. In order to stop infinite regression, we have to hypothesize something that is NOT subject to natural laws. Something fundamentally different than the stuff we and our universe are made of and in which we swim like very smart fish.
Here’s my understanding (limited though it may be) of how all this works. There is this Supreme Spirit (per Krishna) who introduced itself to Moses as “I AM”—that is, the Absolute (per Buddha). This being in an act of will brought this universe of ours into being and set the laws of physics in motion. It is, as I understand it, neither the micromanaging God I grew up with, nor the disinterested toymaker of Cartesian philosophy. The laws this God set in motion are responsible for the evolution of galaxies, solar systems, planets, and the life on them. One of the ways in which God interacted with creation was to “invest” mankind with the capacity to know Him and reflect His attributes (understanding of course that I’m using “He” only because English lacks a personal neutral pronoun).
That doesn’t strike me as a God of the gaps argument any more than it would be a boson of the gaps argument to attribute the waggle in an observable sub-atomic particle to the agency of a currently unobservable one. The human spirit is apparent, at least by inference. So, the question arises–where did it come from and where did it get properties that are absent in the “stuff” the human body is made of?
One of the things I find interesting about all this is that even though these questions are of a fairly recent vintage, the answers offered by the Prophets go back so far they predate written language.
The Enlightenment Vision of Science and Religion #17: The First Stirrings of Atheism » Common Ground, The Blog
March 9, 2013 at 6:45 pm (UTC -7) Link to this comment
[...] of some important new atheist beliefs in a series of blogs on Common Ground (IQ1, IQ2, IQ3, IQ4, IQ5, IQ6, and IQ7). There she outlines the views of Lawrence Krauss, a physicist and a protegé of [...]