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“No God Needed” CalTech physicist responds to Uncommon Descent’s questions

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Sean Carroll

Recently, Uncommon Descent’s vjtorley posed seven questions to physicist Sean Carroll, Senior Research Associate in Physics at the California Institute of Technology. Carroll had written an article, “Does the Universe need God?” for The Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity. Now Carroll has answered the questions, and given us permission to post his response here:

1. In your article, you’ve argued that the ultimate explanation of why events happen is that things are simply obeying the laws of nature – in particular, the laws of physics. What do you mean by the term “law of nature”? Specifically, are the laws of nature (a) rules which prescribe the behavior of objects, or (b) mere regularities which describe the behavior of objects?

To this and the other questions, Carroll responds:

I wanted to thank Vincent Torley and Denyse O’Leary for the opportunity to write a guest blog post, and apologize for how long it’s taken me to do so. I’ve written an article for the forthcoming Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity, entitled Does the Universe Need God?, in which I argued that the answer is “no.” Vincent posed a list of questions in response. After thinking about it, I decided that my answers would be more clear if I simply wrote a coherent argument, rather than addressing the questions individually.

My goal is to try to explain my own thinking to an audience that is not predisposed to agree. We can roughly break people up into two groups: naturalists such as myself, who think that the best explanation we have for the universe involves physical quantities obeying laws of Nature and nothing else; and those who believe that a better explanation can be found by invoking a powerful being/designer/creator/God. (For the sake of simplicity I’m going to use “God” to refer to this notion, but feel free to substitute the more accurate description of your choice.) Obviously there are many nuances that are being passed over by this simple distinction, but hopefully it will suffice for this moment.

The dispute between these two camps isn’t one where people often change their minds at the drop of an argument. Minds do change, in either direction — but typically after extended periods of reflection, not suddenly in response to a single killer blog post. So persuasion is not my goal here; only explanation. I’ve succeeded if an open-minded person who disagrees with me reads the post and still disagrees, but at least understands why I hold my positions. (After giving an earlier talk, one of the theologians in the audience told me that I had persuaded him — not that God didn’t exist, but that the argument from design wasn’t the way to get to Him. That sort of real-time response is more than one can generally hope for.)

What I want to do is to elaborate on some crucial aspects of how science is done that bear directly on the issues raised by my article and some of the responses to it that I’ve seen. In particular, I want to talk about simplicity, laws, openness, explanation, and clarity. This isn’t supposed to be a comprehensive treatise on the philosophy of science, nor is it especially rigorous, or anything really new — just some thoughts on issues relevant to this conversation.

I will be taking one thing for granted: that what we’re interested in doing here is science. There are many kinds of consideration that may lead people to theism or atheism that have nothing whatsoever to do with science; likewise, one may believe that there are ways of understanding the natural world that go beyond the methods of science. I have nothing to say about that right now; that’s a higher-level discussion. I’m just going to presume that we all agree that we’re trying to be the best scientists we can possibly be, and ask what that means.

With all that throat-clearing out of the way, here’s what I have to say about these five issues.

Simplicity.

Science tries to capture the world in the simplest possible description. We are fortunate that such an endeavor is sensible, in that the world we observe exhibits various regularities. If the contents and behavior of the world were completely different from point to point and moment to moment, science would be impossible. But the regularities of the world offer a tremendous simplification of description, making science possible. We don’t need to talk separately about the charge of this electron, and the charge of that electron; all electrons have the same charge.

Simplicity can be quantified by the concept of Kolmogorov complexity — roughly, the length of the shortest possible complete description of a system. It takes longer to specify some particular list of 1,000 random numbers than it does to specify “the integers from 1 to one million,” even though the latter contains more elements. The list of integers therefore has a lower Kolmogorov complexity, and we say that it’s simpler. Scientists are trying to come up with the simplest description of nature that accounts for all the data.

Note that a theory that invokes God (or any other extra-physical categories) is, all else being equal, less simple than a theory that does not. “God + the natural world” is less simple than “the natural world.” This doesn’t mean that the idea of God is automatically wrong; only that it starts out at a disadvantage as far as simplicity is concerned. A conscientious scientist could nevertheless be led to the conclusion that God plays a role in the best possible scientific description of the world. For example, it could (in some hypothetical world) turn out to be impossible to fit the data without invoking God. As Einstein put it: “It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.” Alternatively, you could imagine deriving all of the physical laws from the simpler assumption that God exists. While these strategies are conceivable, in practice I don’t think they work, as should become clear.

Laws.

A “law of nature” is simply a regularity we observe in the universe. All electrons have the same charge; energy and momentum are conserved in particle interactions. A law doesn’t necessarily have to be absolute or deterministic; the Born rule of quantum mechanics states that the probability of obtaining a certain observational result is the square of the amplitude of the corresponding branch of the wave function. A law is simply a pattern we observe in nature.

As far as science is concerned, it makes no difference whether we refer to these regularities as “laws” or “patterns” or anything else. It also doesn’t matter whether we think of them as “fundamental and irreducible features of the cosmos.” They simply are; science looks for them, and finds them. Vincent asks “How can rules exist in the absence of a mind?” That is simply not a question that science is concerned with. Science wants to know how we can boil the behavior of nature down to the simplest possible rules. You might want more than that; but then you’re not doing science. He also asks why we should believe that the rules should continue to hold tomorrow, simply because they have held in the past. Again, that’s what science does. Imagining that the same basic laws will continue to hold provides a simpler fit to the data we have than imagining (for no good reason) that they will change. If you are personally unsatisfied with that attitude, that’s fine; but your dissatisfaction is not a scientific matter.

Openness.

This is probably the most important point I have to make, and follows directly on the issue of “laws” just addressed. There is a way of trying to understand the world that might roughly be called “scholastic,” which sits down and tries to reason about how the world should be. The great success of science over the last five hundred years has been made possible by throwing out that kind of thinking in favor of a different model. Namely: we think of every possible way the world could be, and then we go out and look at the world to see which is the simplest description that fits the data. Science insists that we be open to all possibilities, and let the data decide which is true.

Suppose that you are convinced that laws of nature could not exist without a guiding intelligence that formulated them and sustains them. That’s fine for you, but it’s a deeply unscientific attitude. The scientific attitude is: “We observe that there are regularities in nature. We might imagine that they are formulated and sustained by a guiding intelligence, or that they simply exist on their own. Let’s go collect data to determine which idea is a more parsimonious fit to reality.”

The primary sin a scientist can commit is to decide ahead of time that the universe must behave in certain ways. We can certainly have intuitions about what kind of behavior “makes sense” to us as scientists — theorists are guided by their intuition all the time. But the use of that intuition is to help us develop hypotheses, not to decide which hypothesis is correct. Only confrontation with data can do that.

Explanation.

Science has a complicated relationship with “Why?” questions. Sometimes it provides direct answers: Why do all electrons have the same charge? Because they are all excitations of a single underlying quantum field. But sometimes it does not: Why is there a quantum field with the properties of electrons? Well, that’s just the way it is. Which questions have sensible answers is dependent on context, and can even change as we learn new things about the universe. To Kepler, understanding why exactly five planets orbit the Sun was a question of paramount importance. These days we think of the number of planets (eight, according to the International Astronomical Union) as something of an accident.

The point, once again, is that we can’t decide ahead of time what kinds of explanations science is going to provide for us. Science looks for the simplest possible description of the world. It might be that we will eventually understand the inner workings of nature so well that we will be able to answer every conceivable “Why?” question — we will ultimately see that things simply could not have been any other way. But it is also perfectly possible that the best possible description of the world involves some number of brute facts that have no deeper explanation. This is an issue that will ultimately be decided by the conventional progress of science, not by a priori demands that the universe must explain itself to anyone’s individual satisfaction.

Clarity.

The final point I wanted to make involves the clarity of scientific hypotheses. Perhaps “unambiguity” would have been a more precise word, but it is so ugly I couldn’t bring myself to use it.

The point is that a respectable scientific theory should be formulated in terms that are so unambiguously clear that any two people, both of whom understand the theory and have the technical competence to elucidate its consequences, will always come to the same conclusion about what the theory says. This is why the best theories we have are very often cast in the form of mathematics; the rules for manipulating equations are absolutely free of ambiguity. You tell me the initial conditions of some classical mechanical system, as well as the Hamiltonian, and I will come up with the same predictions for its future evolution as absolutely anyone else wit the same information.

Earlier I mentioned that the God hypothesis could actually be simpler than a purely naturalistic theory, if one could use the idea of God to derive the observed laws of nature (or at least some other features of the universe). This isn’t idle speculation, of course; many people have taken this road. The fundamental problem, however, is that the idea of God is utterly unclear and ambiguous, as far as conventional scientific thinking is concerned.

One might object: God is simply the most perfect being conceivable, and what could be more unambiguous than that? (One possible response, not the only one.) That sounds like a clear statement, but it’s not in any sense a clear scientific theory. For that, there would have to be a set of unambiguous rules that let you go from “the most perfect being” to the laws of nature that we see around us. As I argued in my paper, this is very far from what we actually have. It is sometimes argued, for example, that God explains the small value of the vacuum energy (cosmological constant), because without that fine-tuning life would be impossible. But why does God choose this particular value? Actually it could be quite a bit larger and life would still be very possible. Why are there 100 billion galaxies in addition to the one we live in? Why are there three generations of elementary particles, when life is only constructed from the first one? Why was the entropy of the early universe enormously smaller than it needed to be to support life?

Obviously these are perfectly good questions for naturalistic theories as well as for God. The problem is that we can imagine coming up with naturalistic theories that do provide clear answers, while it’s very hard to see how God could ever do that. The problem is simple: God isn’t expressed in the form of equations. There is no clear and unambiguous map from God to a particular set of laws of physics, or a particular configuration of the universe. If there were, we would be using that map to make predictions. What does God have to say about supersymmetry, or the mass of the Higgs boson, or the amplitude of gravitational-wave perturbations of the cosmic microwave background? If we claim that God “explains” the known laws of physics, the same method of explanation should work for the unknown laws. It’s not going to happen.

It’s not clear to me that anyone who believes in God should actually want it to happen. There is a very strong tension between what scientists look for in a theory — clear and unambiguous connections between premises and predictions — and the way that religious believers typically conceive of God, as a conscious being that is irreducibly free to make choices. Does anyone really want to reduce God to a simple set of rules that can be manipulated by anyone to make clear predictions, like we can in theories of modern physics? If not, God will always remain as a theoretical option of last resort — something to be invoked only after we are absolutely convinced that no possible naturalist option can explain the universe we see.

————

Obviously these very simple points don’t come anywhere near addressing all the possible issues in this area. In particular, I haven’t made any real attempt to argue that a purely naturalistic explanation actually is a better fit to the observed universe than God or similar ideas. Instead I’ve just tried to explain the mindset of someone like me who does end up coming to that conclusion. In my paper I’ve tried to lay out why invoking God doesn’t seem to provide an especially promising explanation of the world around us. Others may disagree, but I hope this has made things more clear.

Comments
First of all Mr Carroll, I'm not going to flannel you with all that tosh about how privileged we are, etc, etc. It's a two-way street, isn't it? Also, I'm not convinced you've made up your mind yet to go to Confession before Trinity Sunday. And I know your old Irish grandmother from Tralee, i.e on your father' side, will be desolate. Shame on you! Now to the less serious matter of wrestling with the imponderables of the universe. I've forgotten what I was going to say. Wait a moment... hang on... Oh yes. If the world only appeared to be designed, but it suddenly ceased to appear to be designed, its workings concealed and presumably not measurable, would it lend itself better to the empirical studies characteristic of our narrow definition of science? I mean, should the appearances of things in nature be considered as a kind of 'red flag' for scientists? On no account, indulge any thought of subjecting anything measurable to empirical scientific study. Would you say that appearances, measurable features of things, are a kind of fool's gold, to be avoided by all serious scientists? I think we should be told. There was something else, but I've forgotten. I'll try to come back. Good day to you, Sir. PS: I think it would be an excellent idea for no one EVER to claim some argument or point adduced in support of an argument may be brilliant, but is not scientific! Is not Science! Everyone with any sense knows science is about common-sense testing, while straining out all extraneous considerations, having no bearing on the empirical OR the metaphysical, philosophical, or aesthetic, etc. Underlying assumptions will always bear on the latter, so materialist reductionism ad absurdum should be 'knocked on the head' once and for all.Axel
September 8, 2013
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Note that a theory that invokes God (or any other extra-physical categories) is, all else being equal, less simple than a theory that does not. “God + the natural world” is less simple than “the natural world.”
Is this necessarily true? What if the simple concept of God, should one fully grasp it, explains the world quite succinctly and naturally? What if God is akin to "the integers from 1 to one million" and the natural world is like 758,349? I suspect that when you start with the physical and add God as extra-physical, you will always end up with the physical being simpler, but might that not be a function of where you started?Phinehas
August 24, 2011
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@Driver In my post #3 I define nature as all of physical reality. That includes the dimension of time. In post #17, I deal with the origin of time and I show that the problem of an infinite regression does not occur in my argument. It appears that you have not thought about the problem of an infinite regression of past events. If time is a component of nature, which it is (even in M-theory), then it is impossible to have an actual countable infinite of past events, or of anything, for that matter. It follows, therefore, that nature must have a beginning to its existence and, therefore, must have been caused by something. If you are unfamiliar with the problem of actual countable infinite sets, read David Hilbert’s On the Infinite, then google Hilbert’s Hotel. You will then be in a position to understand why George Ellis mentions David Hilbert’s work in refuting the possibility of an actual infinite number of universes (see Nature, Vol. 469, 2011, page 294). I will leave it up to you to contact the TV networks, as you had suggested. @Mikio You could save yourself a lot of work if you would refrain from making stuff up, presenting it as if it is something I said, and then writing a lengthy refutation of the straw man. Here is what I agree to: 1. ‘There is a natural explanation for nature’ entails a circular argument, therefore it is false. 2. ‘There is a supernatural explanation for the supernatural’ entails a circular argument, therefore it is false. It does not necessarily follow from (1) or (2) that naturalism or the supernatural are false, as you seem to think. For (1) it depends upon how naturalism is defined. If the definition of naturalism includes the proposition that nature caused itself, then that form of naturalism is logically false due to circularity. If, however, one holds a view of naturalism that only speaks to what occurs in this universe once it exists, and does not speak to how it began to exist, then that more restricted form of naturalism could survive the circular fallacy. However, what we are discussing here is the naturalistic view that nature, itself, has a natural explanation. That form of naturalism is necessarily false, due to circularity. Surely this is not difficult to grasp. The falsity of (2) does not entail that the supernatural is false if the supernatural cause of the universe does not, itself, have a cause. See my post #17. You also seem to be falling into the trap of contending that whatever must exist must have a cause. I addressed this in post #38, and that post was addressed to you. Read the second last paragraph in post #38 so that, in the future you can distinguish between these two propositions: a) everything that exists must be caused by something (false: see post #17 & 38) b) everything that has a beginning to its existence must be caused by something (true)KD
June 21, 2011
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Well! This thread was resurrected after three days, I see, just like... well, you know. @KD You’re kidding me with this, right? You think the following is true… A. “There is a natural explanation for nature” is a circular fallacy, thus false. Therefore, it follows that naturalism is false. …but you claim the following is false… B. “There is a supernatural explanation for supernature” is a circular fallacy, thus false. Therefore, it follows that supernaturalism is false. …even though it has the exact same logical structure. And what’s your reason it’s false? Simply because YOU didn’t assert it! Ha! Well, isn’t that handy dandy! Let me ask you, do you think B would be true if someone else asserted it? I’m going to go out on a limb and say no. Your reason? You don’t actually have one. All you have is your logic-breaking double-standard you’re using which you either a) still can’t see after my showing it to you four times now and I can't make it any plainer b) you CAN see it, but won't let on because you're intellectually dishonest and you know it, but you’ve rationalized that it’s not so bad because even God would agree letting an atheist like me having the satisfaction of winning an argument would be worse c) you can see the double-standard, but don’t think you’re being intellectually dishonest because you think supernaturalists/theists having a double standard is perfectly legitimate Now if it’s “a” or “b” then we might as well call it quits right now because further effort on my part is futile. However, if it’s “c” then it gets interesting because that means you’re smarter than “a” and potentially more honest and therefore more interesting than “b”. The reasoning for “c” goes something like this: “Of course there’s a double standard because the supernatural is by definition beyond the standard of nature. So, logical fallacies don’t apply to the supernatural because the supernatural is by definition beyond earthly logic.” That ring true to you at all? Yes or no? Do you believe arguments for the supernatural are bound or unbound by the rules of logic? Regarding the third option you gave for the “origin” of the universe besides ex nihilo and infinity, I have a response for it, but I can’t tell you what it is yet because it could make you decide you don’t like the answers you had in mind for the previous set of questions and I don’t want to influence them.Mikio
June 17, 2011
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Driver: Try Lewontin et al on a priori evolutionary materialism, and the commonly met notion that to draw a design inference on empirically tested signs of design is to "give up" on scientific explanation. That is, it is being implicitly assumed that events -- even where [after many years of trying] we have no current naturalistic explanation and an otherwise plausible explanation on choice contingency aka design -- MUST have an explanation that reduces to blind chance and mechanical necessity, ac ting on matter and energy in space and time. The utter breakdown of materialistic attempts to account for the origin of cell based life, is a capital example in point. So is that of the origin of an evidently fine tuned cosmos, and arguably that of the origin of body plan level biodiveristy. A priori materialism/naturalism of the gaps, again and again. GEM of TKIkairosfocus
June 17, 2011
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The existence of nature is a given but it is also a given that natural processes cannot account for the origin of nature (which science said it had) because natural processes only exist in nature.Joseph
June 17, 2011
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It’s really sad when those who would be the first to accuse theists of committing a “god of the gaps” kind of argument are also the first to make a “nature of the gaps” kind of argument.
A "god of the gaps" argument is assertion of a positive claim of the existence of a god where there is a gap in our empirical understanding. A "nature of the gaps" argument would be an assertion of the positive claim of the existence of nature where there is a gap in our empirical understanding. That doesn't even make sense. The existence of nature is a given.Driver
June 17, 2011
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It's really sad when those who would be the first to accuse theists of committing a "god of the gaps" kind of argument are also the first to make a "nature of the gaps" kind of argument.Bantay
June 17, 2011
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Here is a copy of what I have blogged at: http://www.focusonlinecommunities.com/blogs/trueu/2011/06/16/no-god-needed-cal-tech-physicist-talks-to-id-community Carroll argues "God did it" is a poor explanation of the universe because "God" is not a simple or clear idea. Simplicity and clarity are two traits (among a dozen or so) that help us to recognize a good theory in science and in many other disciplines. Carroll seems to be unaware of the formidable Christian theological tradition that recognizes God himself as simple (and awesome) in his attributes, while also recognizing the inexhaustible complexity of God's thoughts and actions. Similarly, the concept of "me" (consider your own experience here), a person who persists through time despite changes in the material constitution of my body and the mental flow of thoughts in my mind-brain, is remarkably simple. I am agent, which is (as philosopher Angus Menuge writes) "an individual with reasons for its behavior. Agents have goals (things they desire), and produce behavior which they believe will achieve those goals." I desired to give an example of what Menuge wrote above, so I moved my fingers so as to write this sentence on my Mac. Carroll, the scientist, is also an agent. He conceives of goals and chooses means to achieve those goals, including the goal of explaining nature through the practice of science. In fact Angus Menuge's book Agents Under Fire is a book length treatment that ably answers many of Carroll's objections to intelligent design as a legitimate science. Or see Menuge's brief essay The Role of Agency in Science, which I quote in this blog. In his essay Menuge writes: "Although scientific materialists claim that science provides the reasons to be a materialist, materialism undermines the very idea of having a reason for anything. Any worldview capable of defending the rationality of science must be one that allows scientists to have identifiable reasons. Since it allows intelligent and goal-directed causes as part of nature, Intelligent Design is in the right position to do this." I urge you to read this brief pithy essay to see how he draws this conclusion. In so doing, you will have good reasons to reject many of Carroll's arguments. I will discuss one way Menuge rebuts Carroll. Reflect on the simplicity and clarity of your own continued self-identity as an agent (following Menuge's analysis of agency). Although you cannot move inferentially (rationally) from your identity as an agent to any specific conclusions about the natural world, your status as an agent is a necessary prerequisite to grasp the content of science, which consists of finding reasons for why certain explanations of nature are better than alternative theories. We can say something similar about God, but in this case God is the ultimate agent from which both the universe, and agents that interpret the universe, derive their being. By choosing to create this specific universe, as opposed to many other possible worlds, God self-limited himself in ways that (when properly understood and embraced) evokes praise from rational agents such as humans. Many intellectuals since the late Middle Ages have drawn on this theological insight to underwrite the experimental method in science. They realized that we cannot deduce the structure of the natural world from God's own eternal character, but we can imagine (hypothesize) many different ways that a rational God may have made things, and then test those ideas against observations. The very practice of experimental science assumes true "agency" on the part of humans, which is completely unsupported by a materialistic worldview (read Menuge's essay to see the support for this conclusion). If our bodies and brains-minds were the product of an unguided material process, then we would have no good reason to trust our mental capabilities to discover the secrets of the cosmos. All our brains would be selected to do (if the materialist account is correct) is to get our bodies to move in such a way as to avoid death and have many offspring. Science goes much deeper. Christianity has historically been a friend of science, and atheists like Carroll are (in practicing science today) living off of borrowed cultural capital that came from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Dr. Mike Keas Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science The College at SouthwesternMike Keas
June 16, 2011
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KD, I've read your post 3 and there is nothing there that miraculously makes the premise that nature necessarily had a cause suddenly true. If you still think your argument carries the day, then you have proven that the supernatural exists and caused our reality. This would be earth-shattering news, so you should either contact the TV and newspapers with the amazing proof, or accept that there is nothing in logic or experience that justifies the premise that nature necessarily had a cause.Driver
June 16, 2011
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@Driver With regard to your concept of nature and ‘pre-existing nature’, please see my definition of nature in post #3. @ScottAndrews The issue of an infinite regression is not just as great on both sides. Please see my semi-formal, numbered argument in post #17.KD
June 16, 2011
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Driver @48 You said "Nature is not the same thing as the universe. Pre-existing nature might have been many things that gave rise to the universe. Hypotheses include cyclic models and the ekpyrotic universe." How do you know there is something about nature that is not the same thing as the universe? That seems to me to be a relatively blind faith position, if not a proverbial back door to escape from the implications of what good science has been increasingly supporting of, that the universe actually had a finite beginning, from nothing natural. FYI, the hot big bang creation model happens to enjoy increasingly abundant support from numerous lines of evidence from astronomy and astrophysics, and the Gord-Vuth-Vilenken formulation decisively demonstrates that any expanding body (like the universe) must have a finite boundary condition, a singularity beginning...more good evidence that the universe began from nothing natural. The same cannot be said for so-called ekpyrotic and cyclic models. Your mention of "pre-existing nature" has some sense of forlorn hopefulness about it, as if you are hoping that science will someday show that there was or is something "natural" causally before the beginning of the universe. It is at this point that one departs from good science, and began an ambitious, but misguided trek into science fiction.Bantay
June 15, 2011
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SA: Nope. The evidence is that we live in a contingent cosmos, which can be further analysed as I just did over in the Lewontin quote thread, no 133:
we need to recognise that the scientific, observational evidence points to a cosmos that credibly had a beginning, and so is contingent. In turn that points on logic to a begin-ner that at root must be without external causal dependence, i.e has no beginning and will have no end as it does not depend on an external factor for its existence. That underlying necessary being is eternal in a very literal sense. And since we are dealing with the origin of the material, natural universe, the necessary being at its root is beyond that order of nature, as was pointed out previously but — as is now usual — ignored b the ever so triumphalistic adherents of the vicious circle of materialist thought as just exposed. In short, in a very literal sense, it is super-natural. Beyond nature. The fine-tuning of our observed cosmos for C-chemistry, cell based intelligent life then points — on inference to best explanation — to properties of that necessary being: powerful and intelligent enough to design and effect a cosmos. Such a necessary being sounds a lot like the God of theism. Yes. All that means is that theism is not at all the absurdly silly believe anythong in a demonic chaos irrationality in the mockingly dismissive words Lewontin so unfortunately resorted to. And in addition, the concept of a God of order making an orderly and organised cosmos is immediately deeply consistent with a cosmos that has in it lawlike regularities to the point where even random processes are generally lawlike up to some distribution or other.
What happens is that in our day, we seem to be increasingly unfamiliar with the power of logic in analysing cause and effect and contingency vs necessity of being. GEM of TKIkairosfocus
June 15, 2011
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The issue of an infinite regression of causes is just as great on both sides of the debate and therefore favors neither.ScottAndrews
June 15, 2011
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Nullasalus #12 Excellent rejoinder, that is.mike1962
June 15, 2011
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Dr. Carroll, thank you in advance for answering my question, if you do, and also, welcome to UD. If there is nothing natural independent of the universe and the so-called laws of nature upon which the universe's continued existence depends, than what, other than an extra-dimensional, non-natural, disembodied Mind, would be capable of bringing into existence of a universe that depends on such laws for its order, complexity and comprehensibility?Bantay
June 15, 2011
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If you want to argue that nature did not have a cause, then you will have to do the work to defend that, for your position is irrational.
Nature is not the same thing as the universe. Pre-existing nature might have been many things that gave rise to the universe. Hypotheses include cyclic models and the ekpyrotic universe.Driver
June 15, 2011
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@Mikio With regard to your question, ‘... can you give me one good reason why “there is a supernatural explanation for the supernatural” isn’t also a circularity and therefore false?’, the answer is that such a proposition would also entail a circularity and, therefore, be false. Fortunately, I invoke no such proposition in my two syllogisms; my reasoning is perfectly linear. With regard to what other option is there besides ‘nothing’ and ‘infinity’, one option is a supernatural mind that exists timelessly and is the ultimate reference frame within which our physical reality can exist. There is more to the argument that this, but I will wait for you to go there. @Driver Since there is a time component in both this universe, and the theoretical M-theory system, there is necessarily a beginning to physical reality. David Hilbert argued in On the Infinite, that an actual countable infinite cannot exist in reality. Hilbert’s Hotel is a famous illustration of the logical contradictions that follow from an actual countable infinite. It follows from this that past history cannot be infinite (or consist of an actual countable infinite number of constant time intervals); it must have a beginning so any space-time continuum will always have a beginning, though the beginning does not necessarily need to be a singularity; it can be extended (think of history converging to the surface of a sphere rather than a point). There is also a preponderance of evidence that the universe had a beginning. So the argument is this: 1. Whatever has a beginning to its existence must have been caused by something. 2. Nature had a beginning to existence 3. Therefore, nature was caused by something. If you want to argue that nature did not have a cause, then you will have to do the work to defend that, for your position is irrational. I say ‘irrational’ because rationality logically works from premises to a conclusion. Saying that ‘nothing’ caused the universe is simply the conclusion without any supporting premises (i.e., no rational justification whatsoever ... it is to throw ones mind out the window and abandon critical thought entirely). I’m setting you up, by the way, to invoke Lawrence Krauss’s ‘universe from nothing’. Also, saying ‘nothing’ did it is not only irrational, it is a science stopper, for if it was indeed ‘nothing’ then science has absolutely ‘nothing’ to say about the origin of nature. But if you say that, you may find yourself deriving a true conclusion from a false premise and hoist with your own petard.KD
June 14, 2011
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Who needs the explanation - the universe or you?Driver
June 11, 2011
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If the universe has no cause, then it is in even greater need of an explanation.Mung
June 11, 2011
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Clive, I am not claiming that nature had a difficulty. Rather that the assumption that nature had a cause is a faulty premise. Yes, you can hold that to be a matter of faith, but it doesn't belong in a logical syllogism. This is why the syllogism fails.Driver
June 11, 2011
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Driver,
The problem with that syllogism is that it assumes a first cause (of nature). It is just as wrong as the Cosmological Argument. If you assume that nature had a cause then what caused the thing that caused nature? It is special pleading to say that God needs no cause but nature does. There is no logical reason why that would be so.
It is logical to claim that something supernatural is not bound by the constraints of nature, it is not logical to claim that God would have the same difficulty as nature.Clive Hayden
June 11, 2011
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KD - I’m not saying that at all. I am saying that the proposition ‘there is a natural explanation for nature’ entails a circularity, therefore it is false. Well, if you’re not saying it, then you should be able to point out the errors in the lengthier translation I gave for it. But, forget it, I don't want to beat a dead horse. The fact of the matter is you’re clearly trapped by this hypocrisy question, naturally, because it’s a fatal flaw in your argument and I’ve seen it all along. Here, I’ll pose it, in yet another rephrasing, so you can fail to answer it one final time: Your argument is that "there is a natural explanation for nature" entails a circularity and is therefore false. So can you give me one good reason why "there is a supernatural explanation for the supernatural" isn't also a circularity and therefore false? Also, it is not the case that all naturalists are guilty of circularity. If, however, a naturalist attempts a natural explanation for nature, at that point he/she is assuming a circularity. That makes no logical sense whatsoever. So only naturalists who express their naturalism are guilty? So they can apparently think privately as much as they want how awesome and true naturalism is without ever violating logic via the circular fallacy? Wow. So by that reasoning I guess I can think privately and be completely convinced that I’m Zoltar, King of the Lava People from the year 2212 and not actually be delusional, but once I tell somebody, then I will be. Hmm, okay. I’m not saying that the only two possible options for the origin of the universe are ex nihilo and infinity. What other option is there? I am saying that the cause of nature is, necessarily, supernatural and timeless. I know. That’s why I said you’re only arbitrarily claiming the concept for supernaturalism for no good reason and I laid out why: because by that reasoning one could just as well claim pi is proof of the supernatural because it’s also infinite. And you had no refutation for that either. That’s okay, I understand.Mikio
June 10, 2011
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@Mikio In your post #37, I’m not saying that at all. I am saying that the proposition ‘there is a natural explanation for nature’ entails a circularity, therefore it is false. Also, it is not the case that all naturalists are guilty of circularity. If, however, a naturalist attempts a natural explanation for nature, at that point he/she is assuming a circularity. Whether SC has ever done this or not would be irrelevant to my syllogism. In your post #38, I’m not saying that the only two possible options for the origin of the universe are ex nihilo and infinity. I would see neither of them as a cause of anything. I am saying that the cause of nature is, necessarily, supernatural and timeless. Those are two attributes that logically follow from my arguments. Those are not the only two attributes, however, more could be derived if one wished.KD
June 10, 2011
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KD - Addendum: If you’re saying that the only two possible options for the Origin of the Universe, ex nihilo and infinity, are each by definition non-natural, and thus, supernatural, then you haven’t proven naturalism false whatsoever. You’ve only arbitrarily hogged those concepts like a pile of poker chips into the Supernatural camp by your baseless, semantic choosing. Just because concepts are incomprehensible to the human mind doesn’t automatically make them unnatural. By that reasoning, you might as well claim Pi is proof of the supernatural.Mikio
June 10, 2011
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KD, you said -- However, a proposition that entails a circularity is necessarily false. So you’re saying that this (more or less) is the circularity and thereby necessarily false -- Naturalism is a belief/proposition whose premise and conclusion are that only natural laws and forces (as opposed to supernatural ones) operate in the world and that nothing exists beyond the natural world. …but this somehow isn’t -- Supernaturalism is a belief/proposition whose premise and conclusion are that NOT only natural laws and forces (as opposed to supernatural ones) operate in the world and that SOMETHING exists beyond the natural world. …? How can that be? What's the crucial difference? And saying your syllogism points it out is a cop-out. You should be able to work with just those two statements. Moving on, you also said -- Your suggested Flaw #1 is irrelevant to my syllogism, for it does not depend at all on whether SC, or anyone else, is an atheist. Well, I understand that atheism and naturalism, while overlapping to a great extent, are not exactly the same thing. An atheist could believe in ghosts, for instance, which would make him not much of a naturalist. And going the other direction I suppose it’s possible for a pure, absolutist naturalist to be a theist, but only if his deity/deities were bound by natural laws and couldn’t manipulate them. Highly intelligent aliens come to mind. They could conceivably have created the universe as well using purely naturalistic means. But I digress. Anyway, out of all the sentences Carroll wrote above, the one you culled and focused on happened to include both God and naturalism and he was connecting the two… God will always remain as a theoretical option of last resort — something to be invoked only after we are absolutely convinced that no possible naturalist option can explain the universe we see. …so it looked to me like you were talking about the connection as well. This is why I coupled them as such -- “naturalist/atheist” -- with the and/or slash mark. But, apparently you were merely focusing on his phrase no possible naturalist option so you could launch into your syllogism “disproving” naturalism. Still, it was confusing to me how you could exempt Carroll of being guilty of committing naturalism’s so-called circular fallacy when he described himself as a naturalist: We can roughly break people up into two groups: naturalists such as myself… This is why I went through the trouble of pointing out how Carroll, Dawkins and indeed most atheists & naturalists are not usually absolutists on either -ism; thus, you were making a straw man attack. But I understand now that you weren’t making any claims about anyone’s level of adherency to naturalism; you were only focused on naturalism itself. So fair enough, I was wrong about Flaw #1 and withdraw it. As for your responses to Flaws #2 and #3, I’ll wait and see how you deal with the challenge in the top portion of this post first.Mikio
June 10, 2011
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@Mikio Your suggested Flaw #1 is irrelevant to my syllogism, for it does not depend at all on whether SC, or anyone else, is an atheist. Furthermore, your assumption of my notion of atheism is incorrect. Nowhere have I suggested that, if P allows that, (if X is true, then maybe God exists), then P is not an atheist. I am happy to grant your informal explanation of atheism. For Flaw #3, I assume you are referring to my statement in post #17 where I state that a proposition is false if it entails a circularity. Your proposed Flaw #3, however, is the result of a confusion between a proposition that entails a circularity, and a circularity that is used to ‘prove’ a proposition. A circular argument says nothing about the truth value of the ‘resulting’ proposition, as you have quite rightly argued. However, a proposition that entails a circularity is necessarily false. Thus, it is necessarily false that there is a natural explanation for nature. Your Flaw #2 is the most interesting, but it only applies if we grant the premise that everything, both natural and supernatural, requires a cause. I do not grant that premise, however. My underlying premise is that only whatever has a beginning to its existence must have been caused by something. I showed in my argument in post #17 that for any timeless X, it is logically impossible for X to have a beginning or a cause. In summary, your Flaws #1 & 2 do not stand and are both irrelevant to my argument. Flaw #3 does not stick, as it assumed a false premise. Thus, my syllogism still stands. Your only way out is to attempt to argue that physical reality did not have a beginning to its existence, but I will show that such an attempt fails.KD
June 10, 2011
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The problem with that syllogism is that it assumes a first cause (of nature). It is just as wrong as the Cosmological Argument. If you assume that nature had a cause then what caused the thing that caused nature? It is special pleading to say that God needs no cause but nature does. There is no logical reason why that would be so.Driver
June 10, 2011
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@KD Oops, missed one set of brackets. Here, mentally paste this in as a replacement if you don't mind: 1. Either there is a natural or non-natural explanation for the origin of [non-]nature.Mikio
June 10, 2011
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@nullasalu Addendum: Keep in mind that the external world can't just be anything; it has to be the one we're in which includes computers and such like we're communicating on now otherwise it's totally irrelevant.Mikio
June 10, 2011
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