Kirk Durston takes on Larry Krauss on whether the universe could come from nothing

_{Denyse O'Leary

July 14, 2021

Big Bang, Intelligent Design}

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Readers will remember Larry Krauss from a number of contexts. Here’s Kirk Durston:

Did “nothing” create the universe?

Could it?

Comments

Is anyone prepared to argue that utter non-being has plausible causal adequacy to be source of the observed cosmos? On what grounds that do not amount to utter absurdity? KFkairosfocus_{July 15, 2021
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@ chuckdarwin Lol Grammatical errors can happened to the best of us And sometimes the computer likes to choose the wording for us It’s called a mistake Mistakes happen But believing in nonsense, using word play to support your nonsense and redefining definition of “nothing” to support the that nonsense is not a mistake That’s willful blind ignorance trying to stamp out a view they don’t agree with because of bias A mistake is forgivable Krauss’ willful ignorance is not Btw ChuckyD “Why ‘absolutely nothing at all’ Isn’t that a grammatical error to have the apostrophe there, all I did was copy n paste what you typed By the way I admit, I suck when it comes to grammar only because I’m lazy and don’t like to proof read.AaronS1978_{July 15, 2021
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By resorting to critiquing spelling, Chuckdarwin concedes that Krauss has nothing to offer.OldArmy94_{July 15, 2021
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George Ellis mentions that Krauss believes in "a bubbling vacuum". People who believe in "a bubbling vacuum", (i.e. virtual particles, quantum foam, and/or zero point energy), usually point to the Casimir Effect as supposedly definitive proof for "a bubbling vacuum".
What is the Casimir Effect? The Casimir effect is a small attractive force that acts between two close parallel uncharged conducting plates. It is caused by quantum vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field. The effect was predicted by the Dutch physicist Hendrick Casimir in 1948. According to quantum theory, the vacuum contains virtual particles which are in a continuous state of fluctuation (see physics FAQ article on virtual particles). Casimir realised that between two plates, only those virtual photons whose wavelengths fit a whole number of times into the gap should be counted when calculating the vacuum energy. The energy density decreases as the plates are moved closer together, which implies that there is a small force drawing them together. https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Quantum/casimir.html
Yet, the Casimir Effect is not definitive proof for "a bubbling vacuum". Far from it. As the following article states, ““Casimir effects can be formulated and Casimir forces can be computed without reference to zero-point energies.,,, In fact, the description in terms of van der Waals forces is the only correct description from the fundamental microscopic perspective,[20][21] while other descriptions of Casimir force are merely effective macroscopic descriptions.”
Relativistic van der Waals force Alternatively, a 2005 paper by Robert Jaffe of MIT states that “Casimir effects can be formulated and Casimir forces can be computed without reference to zero-point energies. They are relativistic, quantum forces between charges and currents. The Casimir force (per unit area) between parallel plates vanishes as alpha, the fine structure constant, goes to zero, and the standard result, which appears to be independent of alpha, corresponds to the alpha approaching infinity limit,” and that “The Casimir force is simply the (relativistic, retarded) van der Waals force between the metal plates.”[18] Casimir and Polder’s original paper used this method to derive the Casimir-Polder force. In 1978, Schwinger, DeRadd, and Milton published a similar derivation for the Casimir Effect between two parallel plates.[19] In fact, the description in terms of van der Waals forces is the only correct description from the fundamental microscopic perspective,[20][21] while other descriptions of Casimir force are merely effective macroscopic descriptions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect#Relativistic_van_der_Waals_force
Krauss, and other atheistic materialists simply have ZERO empirical evidence for ‘a bubbling vacuum’. In fact there is much evidence that argues against its existence.
GRBs Expand Astronomers’ Toolbox – Nov. 2009 Excerpt: a detailed analysis of the GRB (Gamma Ray Burst) in question demonstrated that photons of all energies arrived at essentially the same time. Consequently, these results falsify any quantum gravity models requiring the simplest form of a frothy space. http://www.reasons.org/GRBsExp.....ersToolbox Quantum Foam Paper Suggests Einstein Was Right About Space-Time Being ‘Smooth’ – January 2013 Excerpt: It appears Albert Einstein may have been right yet again. A team of researchers came to this conclusion after tracing the long journey three photons took through intergalactic space. The photons were blasted out by an intense explosion known as a gamma-ray burst about 7 billion light-years from Earth. They finally barreled into the detectors of NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in May 2009, arriving just a millisecond apart. Their dead-heat finish strongly supports the Einsteinian view of space-time, researchers said. The wavelengths of gamma-ray burst photons are so small that they should be able to interact with the even tinier “bubbles” in the quantum theorists’ proposed space-time foam. If this foam indeed exists, the three photons should have been knocked around a bit during their epic voyage. In such a scenario, the chances of all three reaching the Fermi telescope at virtually the same time are very low, researchers said.?So the new study is a strike against the foam’s existence as currently imagined,,, “If foaminess exists at all, we think it must be at a scale far smaller than the Planck length,” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/10/quantum-foam-einstein-smooth-space-time_n_2449734.html Confirming Einstein, scientists find ‘spacetime foam’ not slowing down photons from faraway gamma-ray burst (Update) – Mar 16, 2015 Excerpt: Albert Einstein formulated the general theory of relativity, one of the theory’s basic assumptions: the idea that all light particles, or photons, propagate at exactly the same speed.,, The researchers analyzed data, obtained by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, of the arrival times of photons from a distant gamma-ray burst. The data showed that photons traveling for billions of years from the distant burst toward Earth all arrived within a fraction of a second of each other. This finding indicates that the photons all moved at the same speed, even though different photons had different energies. This is one of the best measurements ever of the independence of the speed of light from the energy of the light particles.,,, One of the attempts to reconcile the two theories (Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity) is the idea of “space-time foam.” According to this concept, on a microscopic scale space is not continuous, and instead it has a foam-like structure. The size of these foam elements is so tiny that it is difficult to imagine and is at present impossible to measure directly. However light particles that are traveling within this foam will be affected by the foamy structure, and this will cause them to propagate at slightly different speeds depending on their energy. The fact that all the photons with different energies arrived with no time delay relative to each other indicates that such a foamy structure, if it exists at all, has a much smaller size than previously expected. “When we began our analysis, we didn’t expect to obtain such a precise measurement,” said Prof. Tsvi Piran, the Schwartzmann University Chair at the Hebrew University’s Racah Institute of Physics and a leader of the research. “This new limit is at the level expected from quantum gravity theories. http://phys.org/news/2015-03-einstein-scientists-spacetime-foam.html NASA telescopes set limits on space-time quantum ‘foam’ – May, 28. 2015 Excerpt: At the smallest scales of distance and duration that we can measure, spacetime—that is, the three dimensions of space plus time—appears to be smooth and structureless. However, certain aspects of quantum mechanics, the highly successful theory scientists have developed to explain the physics of atoms and subatomic particles, predict that spacetime would not be smooth. Rather, it would have a foamy, jittery nature and would consist of many small, ever-changing, regions for which space and time are no longer definite, but fluctuate.,,, Chandra’s X-ray detection of quasars at distances of billions of light-years rules out one model, according to which photons diffuse randomly through spacetime foam in a manner similar to light diffusing through fog. Detections of distant quasars at shorter, gamma-ray wavelengths with Fermi and even shorter wavelengths with VERITAS demonstrate that a second, so-called holographic model with less diffusion does not work. “We find that our data can rule out two different models for spacetime foam,” said co-author Jack Ng of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. “We can conclude that spacetime is less foamy than some (quantum) models predict.” The X-ray and gamma-ray data show that spacetime is smooth down to distances 1,000 times smaller than the nucleus of a hydrogen atom. http://phys.org/news/2015-05-nasa-telescopes-limits-space-time-quantum.html Troubled Times for Alternatives to Einstein’s Theory of Gravity – April 30, 2018 New observations of extreme astrophysical systems have “brutally and pitilessly murdered” attempts to replace Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Excerpt: All attempts to directly detect dark matter and dark energy have failed, however. That fact “kind of leaves a bad taste in some people’s mouths, almost like the fictional planet Vulcan,” said Leo Stein, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology. “Maybe we’re going about it all wrong?”,,, “The business of alternative gravity theories is a messy one,” Archibald said. Some would-be replacements for general relativity, like string theory and loop quantum gravity, don’t offer testable predictions. Others “make predictions that are spectacularly wrong, so the theorists have to devise some kind of a screening mechanism to hide the wrong prediction on scales we can actually test,” she said. https://www.quantamagazine.org/troubled-times-for-alternatives-to-einsteins-theory-of-gravity-20180430/ Stephen Hawking Says Nothing Existed Before Big Bang; Christian Astrophysicist Hugh Ross Responds – By Michael Gryboski – Mar 5, 2018 Excerpt: Ross responded that while Hawking was correct that “time has a beginning,” nevertheless “the beginning of time demands a Causal Agent capable of creating time independent of time. It is not enough to simply speculate that imaginary time also exists.”,,, ,,,the (quantum fluctuation) model that Hawking is proposing for the origins of the Universe is problematic in light of modern astronomical observations.,,, “Recent observations showing that the images of distant quasars and blazars are not blurry, but rather are sharp, constrain the size of these quantum space-time fluctuations. The fluctuations are not large enough to escape the need for a Creator who creates space and time or for the universe to have a finite age.” https://www.christianpost.com/news/stephen-hawking-nothing-existed-before-big-bang-christian-astrophysicist-hugh-ross-220309/
So once again, we see that the supposed scientific evidence that Atheists rely on to support their worldview simply does not exist save for in their unrestrained imaginations.
2 Corinthians 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;
bornagain77_{July 15, 2021
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Chuckdarwin quips that "At least Krauss can spell,,," Maybe so, but alas, Krauss apparently can't do basic arithmetic, (which is, needless to say, a major shortcoming for anyone who claims to be an expert in theoretical physics)
2+2=5? (Lawrence Krauss vs William Lane Craig) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOrlIOm6eGM
Here are a few previous refutations of Krauss
On the Origin of Everything - ‘A Universe From Nothing,’ by Lawrence M. Krauss By DAVID ALBERT - MARCH 23, 2012 Excerpt: "Krauss seems to be thinking that these vacuum states amount to the relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical version of there not being any physical stuff at all. And he has an argument — or thinks he does — that the laws of relativistic quantum field theories entail that vacuum states are unstable. And that, in a nutshell, is the account he proposes of why there should be something rather than nothing. "But that’s just not right. Relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical vacuum states — no less than giraffes or refrigerators or solar systems — are particular arrangements of elementary physical stuff. The true relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical equivalent to there not being any physical stuff at all isn’t this or that particular arrangement of the fields — what it is (obviously, and ineluctably, and on the contrary) is the simple absence of the fields! The fact that some arrangements of fields happen to correspond to the existence of particles and some don’t is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that some of the possible arrangements of my fingers happen to correspond to the existence of a fist and some don’t. And the fact that particles can pop in and out of existence, over time, as those fields rearrange themselves, is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that fists can pop in and out of existence, over time, as my fingers rearrange themselves. And none of these poppings — if you look at them aright — amount to anything even remotely in the neighborhood of a creation from nothing." He goes on to sum up the situation with the following sentence: "But all there is to say about this, as far as I can see, is that Krauss is dead wrong and his religious and philosophical critics are absolutely right" David Albert has a doctorate in Quantum Physics and he teaches at Columbia http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/a-universe-from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-krauss.html?_r=1 Not Understanding Nothing – A review of A Universe from Nothing – Edward Feser - June 2012 Excerpt: A critic might reasonably question the arguments for a divine first cause of the cosmos. But to ask “What caused God?” misses the whole reason classical philosophers thought his existence necessary in the first place. So when physicist Lawrence Krauss begins his new book by suggesting that to ask “Who created the creator?” suffices to dispatch traditional philosophical theology, we know it isn’t going to end well. ,,, ,,, But Krauss simply can’t see the “difference between arguing in favor of an eternally existing creator versus an eternally existing universe without one.” The difference, as the reader of Aristotle or Aquinas knows, is that the universe changes while the unmoved mover does not, or, as the Neoplatonist can tell you, that the universe is made up of parts while its source is absolutely one; or, as Leibniz could tell you, that the universe is contingent and God absolutely necessary. There is thus a principled reason for regarding God rather than the universe as the terminus of explanation. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/06/not-understanding-nothing Scientists Should Tell Lawrence Krauss to Shut Up Already - Edward Feser - September 28th, 2015 Excerpt: From the point of view of the main arguments for God’s existence, it is a mistake to think that the place to look for evidence of God is within the domain investigated by science. Rather, the place to look is somewhere more fundamental—at what any possible science must itself presuppose. The Rules of the Game Think of it this way: you can’t find out why checkers boards exist by looking at the rules of checkers themselves, which concern only what goes on within the game. The rules tell you how each piece moves, how the game is won, and so forth. But why are the pieces governed by these rules, specifically, rather than others? Why do any checkers boards exist at all in the first place? No scrutiny of the rules can answer those questions. It is impossible to answer them, or indeed even to understand the questions, unless you take a vantage point from outside the game and its rules. Similarly, what science uncovers are, in effect, the “rules” that govern the “game” that is the natural world. Its domain of study is what is internal to the natural order of things. It presupposes that there is such an order, just as the rules of checkers presuppose that there are such things as checkers boards and game pieces. For that very reason, though, science has nothing to say about why there is any natural order or laws in the first place, any more than the rules of checkers tell you why there are any checkers boards or checkers rules in the first place. Thus, science cannot answer the question why there is any world at all, or any laws at all. To answer those questions, or even to understand them properly, you must take an intellectual vantage point from outside the world and its laws, and thus outside of science. You need to look to philosophical argument, which goes deeper than anything mere physics can uncover. http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/09/15760/ Is Lawrence Krauss a Physicist, or Just a Bad Philosopher? By John Horgan | November 20, 2015 Excerpt: That brings me to South African physicist George Ellis. When I interviewed Ellis last year, I asked him if Krauss’s book answers the question posed by its subtitle. Ellis responded: Certainly not. He is presenting untested speculative theories of how things came into existence out of a pre-existing complex of entities, including variational principles, quantum field theory, specific symmetry groups, a bubbling vacuum, all the components of the standard model of particle physics, and so on. He does not explain in what way these entities could have pre-existed the coming into being of the universe, why they should have existed at all, or why they should have had the form they did. And he gives no experimental or observational process whereby we could test these vivid speculations of the supposed universe-generation mechanism. How indeed can you test what existed before the universe existed? You can’t. Thus what he is presenting is not tested science. It’s a philosophical speculation, which he apparently believes is so compelling he does not have to give any specification of evidence that would confirm it is true. Well, you can’t get any evidence about what existed before space and time came into being. Above all he believes that these mathematically based speculations solve thousand year old philosophical conundrums, without seriously engaging those philosophical issues. The belief that all of reality can be fully comprehended in terms of physics and the equations of physics is a fantasy. As pointed out so well by Eddington in his Gifford lectures, they are partial and incomplete representations of physical, biological, psychological, and social reality. And above all Krauss does not address why the laws of physics exist, why they have the form they have, or in what kind of manifestation they existed before the universe existed (which he must believe if he believes they brought the universe into existence). Who or what dreamt up symmetry principles, Lagrangians, specific symmetry groups, gauge theories, and so on? He does not begin to answer these questions. It’s very ironic when he says philosophy is bunk and then himself engages in this kind of attempt at philosophy. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/is-lawrence-krauss-a-physicist-or-just-a-bad-philosopher/
bornagain77_{July 15, 2021
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At 7:06 into video: “Why ‘absolutely nothing at all’ caused the origin of the universe is nonesense:” At least Krauss can spell………..chuckdarwin_{July 15, 2021
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Universe created by Nothing.... Materialism/Darwinism ... such a stupid non-sensical religion ... Could there something more stupid to believe in ?martin_r_{July 14, 2021
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Thinking of Krauss's stupid book, I'm reminded of this riddle: What's greater than God? More Evil than the devil? Wealthy people need it? Poor people have plenty of it? And if you eat it, you'll die? -QQuerius_{July 14, 2021
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Brilliant video! Lawrence Krauss doesn't understand Nothing. "Nothing" is non-existence. Something else that has the property of non-existence is the Easter Bunny. So, it's logically equivalent to assert that the universe was caused by the Easter Bunny as it is to claim it was caused by nothing. Another one of his videos that I also enjoyed was What Caused God? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaRsb23BZ1o -QQuerius_{July 14, 2021
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