Does the beginning of the universe require a cause?
| May 22, 2018 | Posted by News under Big Bang, Cosmology, Intelligent Design, Mathematics, Philosophy, Physics |
Alexander Vilenkin
A philosophical question to wake you up. A reader directs our attention to a 2015 piece by cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin at Inference Review (2015):
THE ANSWER to the question, “Did the universe have a beginning?” is, “It probably did.” We have no viable models of an eternal universe. The BGV theorem gives us reason to believe that such models simply cannot be constructed. More.
He offers the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin (BGV) theorem by way of evidence:
Loosely speaking, our theorem states that if the universe is, on average, expanding, then its history cannot be indefinitely continued into the past. More precisely, if the average expansion rate is positive along a given world line, or geodesic, then this geodesic must terminate after a finite amount of time. Different geodesics, different times. The important point is that the past history of the universe cannot be complete.
An outline of a mathematical proof of BGV is appended to the article.
Vilenkin goes on to assert that
Modern physics can describe the emergence of the universe as a physical process that does not require a cause.
He explains,
If all the conserved numbers of a closed universe are equal to zero, then there is nothing to prevent such a universe from being spontaneously created out of nothing. And according to quantum mechanics, any process which is not strictly forbidden by the conservation laws will happen with some probability.
A newly-born universe can have a variety of different shapes and sizes and can be filled with different kinds of matter. As is usual in quantum theory, we cannot tell which of these possibilities is actually realized, but we can calculate their probabilities. This suggests that there could be a multitude of other universes.
He concedes,
The theory of quantum creation is no more than a speculative hypothesis. It is unclear how, or whether, it can be tested observationally. It is nonetheless the first attempt to formulate the problem of cosmic origin and to address it in a quantitative way.
William Lane Craig
Apologist William Lane Craig takes issue with the argument (2017):
Grant the supposition that the positive energy associated with matter is exactly counter-balanced by the negative energy associated with gravity, so that on balance the energy is zero. Vilenkin’s key move comes with the claim that in such a case “there is nothing to prevent such a universe from being spontaneously created out of nothing.” Now this claim is a triviality. Necessarily, if there is nothing, then there is nothing to prevent the universe from coming into being. By the same token, if there is nothing, then there is nothing to permit the universe to come into being. If there were anything to prevent or to permit the universe’s coming into being, then there would be something, not nothing. If there is nothing, then there is nothing, period.
…
Vilenkin, however, infers that “no cause is needed” for the universe’s coming into being because the conservation laws would not prevent it and “according to quantum mechanics, any process which is not strictly forbidden by the conservation laws will happen.” (Vilenkin assumes that if there were nothing, then both the conservation laws and quantum physical laws would still hold. This is far from obvious, however, since in the absence of anything at all, it is not clear that the laws governing our universe would hold.) But even granted that the laws would still hold, why think that, given the laws of quantum mechanics, anything not strictly forbidden by the conservation laws will happen? … the conservation laws do not strictly forbid something’s coming into existence, but neither do they forbid nothing’s coming into existence, but both cannot happen. It is logically absurd to think that because something is not forbidden by the conservation laws, it will therefore happen.
Finally, Vilenkin’s inference that because the positive and negative energy in the universe sum to zero, therefore no cause of the universe’s coming into being is needed is hard to take seriously. This is like saying that if your debts balance your assets, then your net worth is zero, and so there is no cause of your financial situation! More.
We likely haven’t heard the last of this question but it is nice to see it debated outside of the three-ring circus of crackpot cosmology.
See also, other philosophical questions; Did the universe never have a chance?
Does the size of the universe sweep us toward atheism?
Philosopher: If there is something rather than nothing, questions around God cannot be ignored Waghorn: “Firstly, that on the most plausible demarcation criterion for science, science is constitutionally unable to show theism to be a redundant hypothesis; the debate must take place at the level of metaphysics. ”
Is zero even?
Absolute zero proven mathematically impossible?
Is celeb number pi a “normal” number? Not normal. And things get worse. Surely this oddity is related in some way to the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.
Durston and Craig on an infinite temporal past . . .
Physicist David Snoke thinks that Christians should not use the kalaam argument for God’s existence
and
Must we understand “nothing” to understand physics?
Why is space three dimensions anyway? Why not six? A new theory is offered. They want to test their theory? What a great idea! In an age of wars on falsifiability, that’s a refreshingly new/old idea.
45 Responses to Does the beginning of the universe require a cause?
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This is wrong: the reality is more nuanced. If something is not forbidden by the conservation laws, then presumably that means that it has a non-zero probability of occurring. In that case, as the sample space increases, the probability of it not occurring approaches 0. A wrinkle is that for some processes the expected “time” to occurrence may be infinite, but I’m not sure that is relevant here.
Bob O’H,
Are Unicorns forbidden by conservation laws?
Andrew
Cause and effect is the bedrock of the scientific method; the creation of hypotheses and the conclusions drawn from experiments depend upon the notion that cause and effect can be observed. Science rendered irrational by atheism has now gone so far as to reject the very bedrock of the scientific method — cause and effect — in order to defend atheism. Vilenkin’s “Modern physics can describe the emergence of the universe as a physical process that does not require a cause.” is a striking example of this irrationality. Let me explain:
From nothing, nothing comes. By nothing is meant the absence of space, time, matter, energy, and the laws of both classical and quantum physics. The list includes the laws of physics because if there is no time, space, matter or energy, there are no laws governing the behavior of that which doesn’t exist. Consistent behavior being observed is precisely described and becomes a law of physics. Such laws themselves don’t and can’t do anything. They only exist in a mind’s comprehension of the consistent behavior.
Stephen Hawking’s assertion that “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing” demonstrates the confusion. A law of gravity did indeed exist before the Universe, but only in a mind; in this case it existed in a preexisting Mind’s comprehension of what would be the consistent effects of the curvature of spacetime.
It becomes more evident all the time that Max Planck got it right:
Cause and effect is still in effect. The natural Universe – time, space, matter, energy, and the laws of physics — had a beginning. That beginning had a cause. Its cause had to be a supernatural one because the natural didn’t exist yet and is what was brought into being.
“Modern physics can describe the emergence of the universe as a physical process that does not require a cause.”
I am not a trained philosopher or cosmologist. But I have enough life experiences to see when someone is trying hard to ignore possibilities they don’t want to consider, or are totally ignorant of other logical arguments. Many (most?) cosmologists are not at all well versed in philosophy. Philosophy has much to say on issues that science pretends are in its domain, but really aren’t. A causal agent for the universe is one such issue.
Vilenkin says there may be a physical process that caused the universe. There may well be. But to say this physical process has no need of a cause is to state a philosophical thesis, not a scientific one. The argument only kicks the can down the road (physical processes have actualities and potentialities to address, as well as related contingent/necessary arguments, lack the metaphysical simplicity that philosophical arguments must attribute to a first cause, etc.).
In short, too many very bright scientists are afraid to confront the possibility of a great first cause and look to camouflage or ignore facts.
Normally, in physics, you have equations that contain variables such as m, t, d, and so forth. So I’m a bit puzzled as to how you can get a universe from an equation of nothing (i.e., there are no variables). Is he saying that 0= the universe? Or is he saying that the special equations he is using refer to absolutely nothing at all? or that there are no actual variables such as t representing time, or anything at all like that? I have to admit, this just sounds like a fancy “Emperor has no clothes” scam.
Alexander Vilenkin appeals to probabilities in quantum theory to try to get around a cause for the universe:
And yet, in the instrumentalist approach to quantum mechanics, we find that, as Steven Weinberg himself points out, “In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure, such as the spin in one or another direction. Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,”,,,
Many people may object that, due to methodological naturalism, we cannot allow agent causality into physics.
As, again, Weinberg himself noted:
Yet I hold that forsaking agent causality, via methodological naturalism, leads to catastrophic epistemological failure. For instance, if methodological naturalism is true then nobody has ever written an e-mail, the laws of physics are responsible for writing them:
Likewise, if methodological naturalism is true, then Einstein did not discover relativity but the law of physics did:
Of humorous note to methodological naturalism vs agent causality, Dr. Craig Hazen, in the following video at the 12:26 minute mark, relates how he performed, for an audience full of academics at a college, a ‘miracle’ simply by raising his arm,,
Many people may claim that methodological naturalism is just the way we do science and that it has been very productive to science, but I say HOGWASH! The Christian founders of modern science certainly did not presuppose the laws of nature to be ‘natural’ but presupposed the Agent Causality of God to be behind the laws of nature.
Moreover, the dogmatic imposition of methodological naturalism onto science, prior to any investigation being done I might add, far from being productive for science, is completely antagonistic to modern science:
Thus, although the Darwinist firmly believes he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for methodological naturalism), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, it is found that Darwinists/Atheists are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to.
It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.
As far as experimental evidence is concerned, there simply is no reason to, a-priori, via methodological naturalism, exclude the “Mind of God” from consideration in physics. In fact, I would hold that advances in Quantum Physics now demands that the infinite “Mind of God” to be considered very much a viable option.
For instance, prior to measurement, the quantum wave is mathematically described as being in an ‘infinite dimensional state’:
,, an infinite dimensional state that also takes an infinite amount of information to describe properly.
Moreover, Richard Feynman was only able to unify special relativity and quantum mechanics into quantum electrodynamics by quote unquote “brushing infinity under the rug” by a technique called Renormalization
In the following video, Richard Feynman rightly expresses his unease with “brushing infinity under the rug.” in Quantum-Electrodynamics:
I don’t know about Richard Feynman, but as for myself, being a Christian Theist, I find it rather comforting to know that it takes an ‘infinite amount of logic to figure out what one stinky tiny bit of space-time is going to do’:
The reason why I find it rather comforting is because of John 1:1, which says “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” ‘The Word’ in John 1:1 is translated from ‘Logos’ in Greek. Logos also happens to be the root word from which we derive our modern word logic.
As well, in further establishing the centrality of “Mind” in quantum mechanics, Albert Einstein was proven wrong in his claim that “The experience of ‘the now’ cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement, it can never be a part of physics.”
The ‘experience of the now’ contrary to what Einstein thought possible for experimental physics, is practically one of the primary defining attributes of quantum mechanics that makes it so ‘weird’ for people who first encounter quantum mechanics. As Scott Aaronson noted: “the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!”
The following video goes into a bit more detail of the experimental evidence that falsifies Einstein’s claims against ‘the experience of the now’ as well as the evidence falsifying his claims against free will.
As to free will in particular. Free will, like the experience of the now’, finds a deep relationship in our understanding of the universe in quantum mechanics.
As leading experimental physicist Anton Zeilinger states in the following video, “what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
Moreover, in regards to free will, it is important to point out that although free will is often thought of as allowing someone to choose between a veritable infinity of options, in a theistic view of reality that veritable infinity of options all boils down to just two options. Eternal life, (infinity if you will), with God, or Eternal life, (infinity again if you will), without God. C.S. states it as such:
And exactly as would be expected on the Christian view of reality, we find two very different eternities in reality. An ‘infinitely destructive’ eternity associated with General Relativity and a extremely orderly eternity associated with Special Relativity:
Moreover, when we rightly let the Agent Causality of God “BACK” into the picture of modern physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned, then an empirically backed reconciliation between Quantum Theory and General Relativity readily pops out for us in Christ’s resurrection from the dead:
Verses:
asauber @2:
Bob O’H,
Are Unicorns forbidden by conservation laws?
Andrew
LOL. I love it. The best way to counter the idiocy of evolutionists and materialists is to fling their fecal matter right back at them.
It seems the only way to have materialism is to just hack off causality at some point; otherwise, precedents reach back into that terrifying unknown beyond mortal reason.
Of course, materialism doesn’t handle non-causality, as causality is the mode of our understanding, and materialism is nothing more than a subset of reductions of reality to our understanding (as the special-non-special projective origin of reality (everything that can be necessarily emerges from some variety of ape-brain, of course)).
So we just factor the abominable anomaly into a set of terms, push those to the other side of the blackboard and cover one eye.
In this case, it’s the accidental universe generating field whose origin, laws, distribution and symmetries we need never consider beyond it doing what we need (because it becomes useless the moment we do).
Materialism is a bad joke that gets poorer with every retelling.
asauber @ 2 – as far as I’m aware, no.
Folks, WLC nailed it:
Nothing — non-being — has no causal capability. Were there ever utter nothing, such would forever obtain. We are seeing incoherent circles of rhetoric dressed up in a lab coat that effectively want to pull a cosmos out of a non-existent hat.
Poof-magic on steroids.
KF
I’m just a layman, but it seems to me that a Law must have Something to govern. If there is Nothing, is there even a Law of Conservation?
It’s almost as if the author is trying to make the argument that “Before the Universe, there was the Law, and the Law, by not speaking, spoke the Universe into existence”
Hummmmm?
Which begs the question, Who wrote the Law?
of related note to the Mind of God as the cause for the universe.
The Quantum Zeno Effect is particularly interesting to look at.
The ‘Quantum Zeno Effect’ is, to put it simply, an unstable particle, if observed continuously, will never decay.
The reason why I am very impressed with the Quantum Zeno effect is that Entropy is, by a wide margin, the most finely tuned of initial conditions of the Big Bang:
For another thing, it is interesting to note just how foundational entropy is in its explanatory power for actions within the space-time of the universe:
In fact, entropy is the primary reason why our physical, temporal, bodies grow old and die,,,
And yet, to repeat,,, “an unstable particle, if observed continuously, will never decay.”
This is just fascinating! Why in blue blazes should conscious observation put a freeze on entropic decay, unless consciousness, i.e. the Mind of God, was and is more foundational to material reality than the 1 in 10^10^123 entropy is?
Verses and Music:
Vilenkin’s idea seems to be:
(positive energy associated with matter) - (negative energy associated with gravity) = zero = "nothing"This can only be true if being can be something negative. This notion seems nonsensical to me. Something exists or does not exist — equals zero —, but it cannot be the case that something exists in a negative way.
One cannot make an apple “nothing” by subtracting a “negative apple.”
Negative apples is an incoherent concept.
I have a request to bornagain77 and to Barry. Large chunks of the post @15 are lifted directly from posts by the same contributor on past threads, for example here: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/an-interview-with-quantum-physicist-and-consciousness-researcher-henry-stapp/
I have long assumed this about these posts and thought to check it with google. It seems as if contributor has a master document from where big chunks are repeatedly lifted and patched in here. I’m always having to scroll and scroll to get past these posts to get to stuff that is novel. Is there some way to convince you guys that this is a drag on the discussions here?
BTW I just contributed to the website which I encourage everyone to do.
re 17: Thank you for pointing that out. I’ve noticed the same thing as well. Most of those long posts are copy-and-pastes from previously written and published documents, and often have been posted here multiple times.
groovamos, despite your grievances that I reposted something from 2014, I posted that information for newcomers who are not familiar with the material. ,,,
I find the material very informative particularly for a debate that is focused precisely on the exact cause for the universe.
This site is more than what you personally want to read. It is about educating newcomers as well.,, In fact, I hold education, not personal entertainment, to be far and away more important.
Of final note, I find it a bit ironic that the only other people who have ever griped about my (and kf’s) posts are atheists.
Strange bedfellows.
FourFaces,
Bob O’H covers himself in it. He doesn’t know the difference.
Andrew
Requests against repetition and volume in posting format to the source are valid. So is a response towards explanation and justification. I don’t feel this last portion was productive, though.
Oh hi, asauber! So why did you ask about unicorns? I assume there was a reason (other than to hurl abuse).
I like Bob.
per 19, Moreover, there is new information in the current post at 15,, new information that was not in the 2014 post (for instance the Bruce Gordon quote and the interaction free experiment).
Rather than just repeating the same stuff over and over, I seek to make my arguments stronger and stronger over time by adding better references and deleting weaker references.
And if we are going to start griping about repeating stuff, I want to air my grievances against the atheists on UD who repeat the same lies over and over again after they have been exhaustively addressed and refuted.
I would certainly like to see, not only trolling, but such repetitive trolling by Darwinian atheists, come to an end on UD.
This has not yet been confirmed by observation and testing.
ok, but what would cause utter nothing to forever obtain?
Bob O’H,
Because the Laws of Conservation didn’t prevent me from doing it.
Andrew
bornagain77 @24,
BA, you should keep posting and, repeat posts for all the reasons you mentioned. In fact, I wish you would post some of your great material on other web sites. More than once I have been in an evolution debate with atheists on other sites and wished bornagain77 would start adding devastating-to-atheists posts to the discussion.
harry @ 27: I agree entirely. Long live bornagain77.
BA77 @ 24: “I would certainly like to see, not only trolling, but such repetitive trolling by Darwinian atheists, come to an end on UD.”
Agreed. The repetitive a/mat trolling on UD is really annoying. Where’s the outrage over that? I am convinced that a/mat trolls are just haters seeking to ruin somebody else’s good experience.
Truth Will Set You Free @29, BA @24
One thing the repetitive a/mat trolling does for those following the discussion over a period of time, is to reveal the shallowness and absurdity of the a/mat position. A/mats are their own worst enemies. I think people on the fence who frequent this site soon realize the irrationality of Darwinian atheists. That is a good thing.
Although I will admit some people are so blatantly evil they shouldn’t be given a forum at all. User Zachriel appeared to me to be such a person. I haven’t seen any posts by him here in a while. Maybe the moderators saw him the way I did.
The name “Bornagain77” before a post is a hallmark of top quality.
I agree TWSYF.
Even the rare conversations that sometimes first appear to be semi-rational invariably resolve into the same stupidity.
Andrew
Well, since I usually either invoke resentment from atheists or admiration from Theists, I must be doing something, however feebly and haphazardly, right.
As to atheists constantly, and repeatedly, claiming that they see no evidence for God from science, I can only echo Wernher von Braun’s sentiment “must we really light a candle to see the sun?”
Mentioning resentment & admiration, for a start. 🙂
BA77,
I think that you are mistaking amusement for resentment. 🙂
AK, and how many times have you been banned for trollish behavior?
@LocalMinimum
“It seems the only way to have materialism is to just hack off causality at some point; otherwise, precedents reach back into that terrifying unknown beyond mortal reason.”
Oh, I think after all those devastating “But WHO MADE GOD?!?!” arguments they’re going to have to do a little better than “Nothing prevented God from existing so God was inevitable.”
And they call themselves atheists …
ScuzzaMan @ 37:
Bravo, sir! That totally escaped me.
It still irritates me that Vilenkin would appeal to quantum mechanics to try argue for a ‘spontaneous’ creation of the universe. And that Craig would, basically, play along and offer, IMHO, such a weak response.
Quantum Mechanics is simply devastating to Materialistic presuppositions. Materialism has been dead for decades and recent experimental research only reconfirms this, as this following video ‘The Death of Materialism’ shows. This video was reviewed by physicist Fred Kuttner and Richard Conn Henry. A few other physicists reviewed this but asked to remain anonymous for privacy reasons.
When you talk to some people about Newtonian Mechanics, you often get this odd blindness to the distinction between a theory as an observation about “how things behave” and a theory as a description of “why and what things are”.
For example, in pointing out that Newtonian Mechanics was once the “settled science” of its age, these people reply that NM is still very useful, on a human scale and for calculating trajectories in our world, etc, it’s accurate enough to BE useful. It’s not wrong, they will claim, within its appropriate context.
Well, true enough, as an observation of how things on a human scale behave it’s accurate enough to be useful.
As an explanation for why and what things are, it utterly fails. It was Quantum Mechanics that largely replaced it as an explanation.
Those experiments that cause problems for quantum mechanics as an observation about how things behave, likewise call into question it’s accuracy and thus usefulness as an explanation for why and what things are.
But let’s not conflate or confuse the two.
The idea that the moon has no mass when you’re not trying to measure it’s mass is hard to reconcile with, for example, it’s rather consistent orbit around our planet. Just because QM has mass problems due to observation at a very small scale, doesn’t imply what it looks like is being inferred.
And for the christian who believes in a God who created a world that consistently obeys physical laws, as an artifact of his consistent character, the logical inference is that there’s things going on that we simply do not understand, and not that there’s no such things as objective reality because a theory (QM) that we know is imperfect has problems with observation at a subatomic scale.
39:00 minute mark:
“Mass turns out not to be an intrinsic property of matter either”
– Bruce Gordon: –
The Incompatibility of Physicalism with Physics: A Conversation with Dr. Bruce Gordon
https://youtu.be/wk-UO81HmO4?t=2344
ScuzzaMan @40
It seems to me that the claim “if you do not measure the moon’s mass, it has no mass” cannot be true, given that there are so many ‘yous’ out there. However, the claim “if no one measures the moon’s mass, it has no mass” can be true.
The latter claim simply states that at least one consciousness agent — contrary to necessarily “you” — must observe matter to make it actual.
per Patrick McGuire on facebook:
“The ultimate observer: “and God saw that it was good”.”
@Origines
COULD be true, but IS IT?
I don’t think so.
And there’s something of a bait and switch between nobody observing it and nobody measuring its mass. The original point I was addressing was that mass is not objectively independent of measurement.
Folks, that which begins to exist is contingent. That which is contingent has a cause. KF