Aristotle explained how objects in the sky move laterally whereas objects here on Earth move vertically, but how did it all start? The philosopher needed his Prime Mover to avoid an infinite regress in motion. The Unmoved Mover initiated motion without any prior motion. Isaac Newton overthrew Aristotle, but while the physicist’s new laws explained cosmic motion, they did not explain how the cosmos originated. For that a Creator was needed. Immanuel Kant provided an early version of how the cosmos could have evolved, but he remained in awe of the moral law within. Charles Darwin explained how the species, including any so-called moral laws, evolved, but how did life begin? Did not the Creator breath to life “a few forms”? In the twentieth century evolutionists explained how life could begin, but cosmologists discovered that the universe itself had a beginning. Did not that mean there was an Initiator? Now finally in the twenty first century cosmologists such as Lawrence Krauss explain how even the universe and its natural laws could have originated. It is the ultimate example of something from nothing. Read more
7 Replies to “That “Inexorable March of Science” Has Finally Reached its Goal”
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CH:
I hear your point, and though I do not wish to get into all the debate points, one thing is central.
“Something from nothing” is always problematic.
Now, I know I know, here is Ehtan Siegel of Science Blogs in partnership with Nat Geog, inadvertently illustrating the problem:
See the inadvertent switcheroo?
A space-time continuum, at whatever scale, is plainly not genuinely nothing.
But by imagining that — by virtue of wearing the lab coat — one can redefine something as nothing and add an adjectival prefix: physical, one has nothing, one then thinks one can pull a cosmos out of the hat, as if by magic.
Not so.
In the relevant sense, nothing is non-being: no matter, energy, space, time, information, mind, ideas, etc. Therefore, no properties or capacities. An empty blackboard, write a zero, then erase it then erase the board and the space in which the board is. (That is the error in the above.)
Nothingness, classically, is what rocks dream of — as, rocks do not dream.
Nothing, then, cannot be a credible causal matrix from which something comes.
That is, if you appeal to a speculative high-energy quantum vacuum in which there are nano-scale fluctuations, that is not nothing. If you appeal to the forces summed up by laws of gravitation etc, that is not nothing.
Space is not nothing.
A vacuum is not nothing.
Nothing is what rocks dream of.
It is therefore a reasonable first premise of scientific thought, that nothing — non-being — is not a credible appeal as a causal root of being.
So, we can safely say that if something now is, a cosmos with us in it, something always was, with capacities that can credibly account for a cosmos with us in it.
Is it some form of matter-energy in space-time, as an eternal entity? That was what was once thought via what was called the Steady State cosmological model.
It collapsed.
We are stuck with a cosmos that appears strongly to have had a beginning 10 – 20 BYA.
That which begins, is contingent, there is some enabling factor that once set allows emergence.
So, there is something beyond our observed cosmos.
Oscillating models, inflationary bubbles, etc etc all point to that.
The issue is, that at that point we are beyond empirical observation, and we have crossed over into philosophy, unannounced and perhaps unrecognised. Which, means that we have no right to exclude any serious alternative, including that it is not merely something beyond, but at root — even through a multiverse — someONE.
Multiply that by a cosmos that appears fine tuned for C-chemistry, aqueous medium, gated metabolising automaton, molecular nanotech, self replicating, code using cell based life, and we have some relevant empirical facts that point to contrivance.
Not of some small thing, but of a whole universe.
No wonder, Sir Fred Hoyle went on record:
It is time for us to rethink.
KF
PS: Feser’s comment on the concepts restated in the clip from Segal.
oops; Ethan.
In the following video, Anton Zeilinger, arguably the best experimentalist in quantum physics today, goes over the double slit experiment with Morgan Freeman:
In the preceding video Dr. Zeilinger states:
Of course, all this ‘quantum weirdness’ is revealed to us by physicists trying to explain why the wave collapses in the double slit experiment simply by us simply observing it. Materialist, of course, are at a complete loss to explain why conscious observation should have any effect at all on material reality. Whereas the Theist is quite comfortable with consciousness having a central role in the experiment. But rather than the mainstream atheists/materialists accepting falsification for their worldview from the double slit experiment, they invented the unverifiable many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics to try to ‘explain it away’. A view of reality that drives atheistic naturalism even further into epistemological failure than it already was and is (Boltzmann’s Brain; Plantinga’s EAAN). To make it even worse for materialists, further advances in the experimental techniques of Quantum Mechanics, experimentation which, by the way, could care less if the atheist is able to maintain his prior worldview or not, have only dramatically underscored this ‘weirdness’ that is highlighted by the double slit experiment:
As well, as with any robust theory of science, there are several different ways consciousness is confirmed to be ‘central’ to reality by quantum mechanics:
There are several other lines of evidence for QM omitted for the sake of brevity. But to the main point, besides all this evidence being completely contrary the atheist’s/materialist’s starting philosophical presuppositions, it is interesting to note just how tightly all this evidence fits into the Theist’s starting philosophical presuppositions. For prime example:
The argument from motion is known as Aquinas’ First way. (Of note, St Thomas Aquinas lived from 1225 to 7 March 1274.)
Or to put it much more simply:
As well, not only is motion dependent on a “Prime Act”, i.e. on a ‘first mover’, but quantum non locality provides empirical confirmation for the ancient philosophical argument for ‘being’, for ‘existence’ itself!
As a Theist, finding Quantum Mechanics to fit hand in glove to what was postulated centuries before in philosophy is, of course, something to be very excited about. But even as someone who tries to be unbiased, a person who believes in the objectivity of science to reveal truth to us about reality, I can only wonder as to what sinister motive would drive a atheist, who claims to believe in ‘rationality’ over and against superstition, to fight so hard against what has become so obvious from our science?
To continue on, even though Quantum Mechanics takes precedence over the space-time of General Relativity as to being a more complete description of reality,,,
,,,It seems that most Atheists, at least the ones I’ve interacted with, will not even accept the overwhelming substantiating evidence for Theism which is coming from looking at the space-time of the universe itself:
And as with the First Mover argument, philosophy had also reasoned, centuries before a beginning of the universe was even discovered, that the universe must have a beginning, or a ‘Uncaused Cause’, to explain why it came into being,,
And please note the Philosophical arguments, and scientific discoveries, were made independent of statements made in the Bible:
Music and verses:
Supplemental notes:
OT: On today’s irony update, we discuss how the goose-stepping methods of Jerry Coyne and PZ Myers demonstrate their dogmatism by successfully calling for the censorship of Rupert Sheldrake’s TED Talk on the subject of dogmatism in science. The punchline: the subject of the TEDx Talks series was about challenging existing paradigms.
The Skeptico discussion between Rupert Sheldrake and Alex Tsakiris: 207. Rupert Sheldrake Censored by TED Conference’s Anonymous Scientific Board
Rupert Sheldrake’s censored TEDx Talk
Science Set Free: 10 Paths to New Discovery – Rupert Sheldrake