Christian historian Dr. Wallace Marshall and I are debating whether or not enough evidence points to the existence of a god. For background and format, and Dr. Wallace’s opening statement, see entry one. For subsequent entries, see index.


That the Evidence Points to Atheism (II)

by Richard Carrier, Ph.D.

Dr. Marshall now focuses on the KCA: originally presented here; I responded here; with his follow-up here.

The Problem

Marshall claims his premises are more probably true than not. But he did not respond to my demonstrations to the contrary. To save space, please refer to what I already said and cited in support of these points:

  1. Time cannot logically have a cause. Causes are by definition located in time. Therefore Marshall’s proposed cause is logically impossible.
  2. A cause cannot exist nowhere and still exist; nor can a cause exist at no time and still exist. Therefore Marshall’s proposed cause is logically impossible.
  3. Evidence our universe began is not evidence time began. Marshall confuses these.
  4. Causal laws cannot exist in the absence of a structural cause of such laws; ergo it’s logically impossible for such a structure to itself require a cause. Therefore, Marshall’s claim that all existence must have a cause is false; only after something exists, can it manifest and thus obey causal laws.
  5. A disembodied mind is the least likely cause of anything, being (1) scientifically implausible, unprecedented, and nowhere in evidence; it’s even contradicted by evidence (enumerated in my prior reply); and being (2) far more complex than scientifically plausible causes that are far simpler in content. Therefore, the latter are more probable.

Without any rebuttal to these points, Marshall’s argument fails.

Nothing as Cause

Neither Hume, Slezack, or Marshall gave any valid reasons justifying their assertions that only nothing can come from nothing. By contrast, I’ve demonstrated it’s logically necessarily the case that if there was ever any logically possible nothing-state (call it a “minimum state”), it would not be governed by causal laws, as when there is nothing, there are by definition also no laws governing what will happen to it.

As I also show, when this is the case, a virtually infinite multiverse necessarily follows as an inevitable consequence. Because “nothing,” being governed by no laws, is unstable; lawless and therefore random.

A lawless “minimum state” at an empty zero point of spacetime is vastly simpler a cause than a disembodied supermind; it predicts more observations; and the effects follow necessarily as a consequence of the model, requiring no further postulates, unlike God, which requires postulates as to structure, abilities, and motives nowhere in evidence. This minimum-state is therefore more probable.

All of Marshall’s reasons for maintaining his principle to the contrary are just restatements of the same one: that it “is a universally verified, and never falsified, principle of experience.” But that is experience within a structured universe subject to causal laws (the very reason why we don’t see spontaneous creation anymore and adopting the principle to explain things within our universe is so fruitful); therefore this observation does not apply to states lacking such structure. His evidence is thus invalid.

A Quantum Vacuum As Cause

Marshall argues the first cause “cannot be a prior or early (quantum) state of the universe, because the above philosophical arguments would apply.” But those arguments only related to past eternal models. The quantum vacuum theory is a past finite model. Marshall presented no arguments against it. In fact all Marshall’s cited authorities agree it’s viable (including Vilenkin). [1] As it posits far fewer, and all far simpler, initial conditions than any god theory requires, it’s far more probable.

A Past Eternal Existence

Marshall misquotes Krauss and Hawking; he mistakes their statements about the visible universe as about states prior; they actually say the opposite of what Marshall claims. In Marshall’s own linked examples, Krauss explains why Vilenkin is wrong, and answers “No” to Craig’s question whether the only viable cosmological models today are past finite. [2] Even the Hartle-Hawking model lacks a beginning: it is loop eternal. [3] Marshall also misquotes Guth; mistaking something Guth said about one model, as about all models; e.g., the Guth-Carroll model is bi-eternal. [4]

But more importantly, Marshall falsely claims “none of [the currently viable cosmological] models has been successfully extended to past eternity.” Many do. Such as the Ali-Das model [5] and the Wetterich model. [6]

All arguments (such as by Vilenkin) that a sequence of universes must be past finite actually entail the existence of nearly infinite universes and thus are multiverse theories, as demonstrated by Leonard Susskind; Vilenkin agrees. [7] (Refuting Dr. Marshall’s Fine Tuning argument.) They also all depend on an assumption not in evidence: that the laws of physics would remain constant between transitions (we have good reason to believe they don’t); and they all ignore a basic principle of probability theory: that as events approach infinity, all probabilities approach 1.

It is a known fact that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is only probabilistically true: given time, a Boltzmann event (a massive reduction in entropy) will inevitably occur—resetting the entropy state, refuting Vilenkin’s claim this is impossible (Vilenkin never addresses this). [8] This is also inevitable as a consequence of quantum mechanics: the quantum probability of a spontaneous Big Bang event regardless of entropy state is minute but not zero; and since all nonzero probabilities approach 100% over time, an infinite series of quantum Big Bangs is logically unavoidable by any argument Vilenkin can deploy. [9]

Marshall is also wrong about mathematics. Silverman only said infinities “need not exist in reality,” not that they cannot; that infinity is not called a real number (it is not a member of the set of reals) does not mean infinite sets do not exist. And because the existence of infinite sets does not depend on anyone’s ability to count them, Marshall’s argument from counting is invalid. Marshall also incorrectly says “mathematicians have long understood that you run into all kinds of contradictions if you try to suppose the actual existence of an infinite number of things.” False. Hilbert failed to demonstrate his paradoxes entailed contradictions; and Bertrand Russell had already demonstrated such conclusions invalid.

Hence most mathematicians no longer support Hilbert’s conclusion. Even Marshall’s own cited source repudiates it. [10] As Bertrand Russell explains, “the similarity of whole and part could be proved to be impossible for every finite whole,” but “for infinite wholes, where the impossibility could not be proved, there was in fact no such impossibility.” After providing the requisite proofs, Russell concludes that the usual “objections to infinite numbers, and classes, and series, and the notion that the infinite as such is self-contradictory, may thus be dismissed as groundless.” [11]

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Such is my second reply.

Continue on to Dr. Marshall’s response here.

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Endnotes

[1] See the interview with Alex Vilenkin in “Before the Big Bang 9: A Multiverse from Nothing?” (particularly timestamps 8:21ff. and 15:04ff.).

[2] Look at the exchange between Craig and Krauss at timestamp 55:50.

[3] Read Hawking’s paper in its entirety.

[4] See the interview with Alan Guth in “Before the Big Bang 4: Eternal Inflation & The Multiverse,” timestamp 34:28; and Lee Billings, “2 Futures Can Explain Time’s Mysterious Past,” Scientific Ametican (8 December 2014).

[5] Ahmed Farag Ali and Saurya Das, “Cosmology from Quantum Potential,” Physics Letters B 741 (4 February 2015): 276–79.

[6] C. Wetterich, “Eternal Universe,” Physical Review D 90.4 (2 April 2, 2014).

[7] Leonard Susskind, “Was There a Beginning?MIT Technology Review (27 April 2012); and see, again, the interview with Alex Vilenkin in “Before the Big Bang 9” (particularly timestamp 21:07ff.).

[8] As explained in Sean Carrol, “Why Boltzmann Brains Are Bad,” to appear in the forthcoming Current Controversies in Philosophy of Science (2019). See also my discussion in The God Impossible.

[9] See Sean Carroll and Jennifer Chen, “Spontaneous Inflation and the Origin of the Arrow of Time,” ArchivX 2004, leading to Sean Carroll’s book on the subject, From Eternity to Here (2010).

[10] Indeed Hilbert’s position is refuted in the very introduction to the collection of essays Dr. Marshall cites, as co-written by the renowned mathematician and philosopher Hilary Putnam (see Philosophy of Mathematics, pp. 6-11; Hilbert’s essay therein is an old speech from 1925 included only as a foil).

[11] Current mathematical opinion: Rudy Rucker, Infinity and the Mind: The Science and Philosophy of the Infinite (1982), e.g., p. 296; N. Ya. Vilenkin, In Search of Infinity (1995), e.g., pp. 50-69; quotation and demonstrations: Bertrand Russell, The Principles of Mathematics, 2nd ed. (1938), esp. § 3.23 and all of § 5 (e.g. 5.43). See also the expert commentaries cited in endnote 6 to my first reply in the Carrier-Wanchick debate, and the reference entries: “Is there really such a thing as infinity?” from the University of Toronto Mathematics Network; “Infinity” from the History of Mathematics Archive; and “The Infinite” from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and “Continuity and Infinitesimals” from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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