Lawrence Krauss and Stephen Hawking have both written that science has explained how the universe can come into existence 'out of nothing'. They do this by claiming that the laws of physics can be eternally existing, and so all of space, time, matter and energy can derive from them. This is the worst kind of BS, as it is simply speaking out of both sides of one's mouth. For whatever the laws of physics amount to, they are not 'nothing'. You cannot explain how something can come from nothing by showing how something can come from something. What's more, and Hawking well knows this, whether the laws of physics are eternally existing is a controversial statement. For the Big Bang Theory is simply this: the farther one looks out on the universe, the smaller and hotter the universe will look, until one reaches a certain point beyond which no information can be gleaned. The universe expanded and cooled as time went on. That is the first and simplest part of the Big Bang Theory. The universe exists as a singularity, and so beyond a certain point, we can receive no new information about the universe. This is the second and more difficult part of the theory.
We don't know what happened before the universe began expanding and cooling, and indeed we probably cannot know. Scientists form beliefs about this stuff based on mathematics and certain epistemic values. But belief is not knowledge. There can be no doubt that one can be completely rational and consistent without belief in God, by appealing to eternally existing physical laws as the foundation upon which all other things exist. But one cannot appeal to those eternally existing laws and then claim one believes the universe came 'from nothing'. One is denying the universe did, indeed, come from nothing.
Theologians on the other hand point to the Big Bang Theory as some point at which the universe 'began'. They then posit God's existence as a first cause. But the BBT doesn't SAY that the universe began at some certain point. It simply says that there is a point beyond which we cannot KNOW anything, because the universe is a singularity. People like Hawking, who is one of the fathers of the modern BBT, believe that something DID exist before the Big Bang: eternally existing physical laws. You may think that the term 'before' doesn't apply because the Big Bang began time, but this stems from a misunderstanding about physics: at a quantum level, relativity doesn't apply, and quantum events are describable in terms of absolute time. Appealing to the Big Bang as some 'beginning' for the universe shows a gross misunderstanding of how physics works and what the BBT actually says.
Take as an example: some physicists believe that there are universes inside of black holes. And indeed, our own universe may be inside a black hole in another universe. This is a strange theory, and you may think it sounds absurd, but the mathematics works and so some scientists think it is a viable theory. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But the point is that there are ways of understanding the BBT that make room for an eternally existing universe, if one uses the term universe to mean "the sum of all of physical reality".
The eternality of the physical universe doesn't really have much bearing on whether God exists. For the universe can be eternal, and still supervene on God. The question is one of metaphysical contingency and necessity, not of causal priority. God doesn't have to some how 'precede' the universe for the universe to be in need of God for it's existence. The question is whether the laws of the universe are contingent or necessary. Do they stand in need of explanation or not? Answering this question is a matter of feeling and intuition, and it isn't clear which is right. There is certainly no scientific way to adjudicate the problem. There are some matters that require choice: one cannot run from taking responsibilities for one's beliefs. This is true even in highly abstract and philosophical issues. One should not seek to yoke up the trappings of science to flee from them.
For more on this, see this post:
No comments:
Post a Comment