Wondering Fair

Professor Lawrence Krauss is presently a scientific materialist’s pin-up physicist. With Richard Dawkins’ lavish praise, Krauss has been thrust into the limelight, and he is determined to use his quantum theorizing to do away with the need for a Creator. His book A Universe from Nothing is a best seller, and his one hour technical youtube presentation has been watched a staggering 1.4 million times.

Across this three part post, I’ve considered the problematic philosophy of science underlying all previous quests for eternal and unified laws apart from a Creator (part 1), and offered arguably the central scientific defeater of Krauss’s crusade, deriving from the more certain laws of thermodynamics (part 2). What, then, is left to be said of such semantic equivocations?

Well, principally this: the mystery remains. Give it all the quantum spin you want, Krauss falls short of his claim to explain how our Universe popped into existence. As Professor Neil Ormerod notes, “Scientifically he may well be correct, but it clearly does not address the question of whether something can come from nothing, but tells us how some things can come from something else (empty space, which is not really empty at all).”[1]

Even if I grant that it is theoretically possible for quantum fields to change configuration and generate particles from no particles, this does not demonstrate that it is probable, let alone that it really happened. (Just as hundreds of intelligent scientists with billion dollar labs who may one day generate life from non-living organic chemicals does not demonstrate that this actually happened by chance in Earth’s distant history.)

Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, David Albert, concurs with Ormerod and offers his own stinging book review in the New York Times:

Relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical vacuum states—no less than giraffes or refrigerators or solar systems—are particular arrangements of elementary physical stuff. … The fact that some arrangements of fields happen to correspond to the existence of particles and some don’t is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that some of the possible arrangements of my fingers happen to correspond to the existence of a fist and some don’t. And the fact that particles can pop in and out of existence, over time, as those fields rearrange themselves, is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that fists can pop in and out of existence, over time, as my fingers rearrange themselves. And none of these poppings—if you look at them aright—amount to anything even remotely in the neighborhood of a creation from nothing.[2]

I thought that Darwin made it possible to be an “intellectually fulfilled atheist.”[3] Apparently not. We still have those pesky problems of generating life from non-life, complex and real arrangements of matter from simple and virtual particles, and once again—despite Krauss’s name functioning as a materialistic mantra—how we can defy the laws of thermodynamics to get something from literally nothing.

I champion the efforts of scientists to study the material world and find solutions to problems. This legacy derives in large part from the Biblical belief in a law giver and the mandate to cultivate the world.[4] Yet supposing ‘science’ will find the answer in this case is yet another instance of naturalistic faith, and it’s more than this sceptic can bear.

I may not get all the science, and Krauss certainly is a genius, but I recognise a shell game when I see one. Theologians and philosophers have consistently defined ‘nothing’ as no-thing: nil, nada, not anything, it’s what stones dream of at night. And semantically this is clearly not what the brilliant Professor is considering. To pretend otherwise is misleading.

And it’s a good thing, too, that Krauss is wrong. Fine, dismiss the divine foot in the door to protect science’s certainty through an ongoing chain of material cause and effect. A materialist’s game as it may be, at least be consistent. If Universes can literally pop into and out of existence, how can one control for any variable? What certainty can one have of any conclusion? In what sense is this better for science than positing a stable God who providentially upholds the “regularities of nature”? I wonder, alongside C. S. Lewis, “Has it come to that?  Does the whole vast structure of modern naturalism depend not on positive evidence but simply on an a priori metaphysical prejudice? Was it devised not to get in facts but to keep out God?”[5]

Creation is contingent, and as far as I can tell, a Universe from nothing is a total load of Krauss. But, if you’re willing to believe this, then visit the enterprising folks over at www.nothing.net and read the testimonials, and I’m sure they’d be happy for your business. As for me, my money is still on God.

Dave Benson

In part 1 of this post, I reviewed the near hysteria in materialist circles surrounding Lawrence Krauss. If you want to explain how 13.72 billion years ago we got a Universe from Nothing, then Lawrence is your man. He is the latest in a long line of contenders pursuing an entirely naturalistic account of nature. And if Richard Dawkins’ Afterword has it right, Krauss is to cosmology what Darwin is to biology: “The title means exactly what it says. And what it says is devastating.”[1]

No question, this guy is brilliant: a PhD from MIT, a Professor at Yale and more recently at Arizona State University, Krauss in his spare time directs the Origins Project, dismantles Intelligent Design arguments in Ohio, discovers dark energy in outer space, and writes science editorials for the New York Times. Here we explore his latest endeavour: Krauss has apparently solved an age old metaphysical problem of the contingency of creation. Forget the Creator, for now we have particles emerging ex nihilo.

What, then, is his argument? How does something come from nothing?

In essence—and as best as I can understand—Krauss argues that the laws of quantum mechanics are eternal, and that these laws can generate particles from empty space. Before the Big Bang there were relativistic quantum fields, the arrangement of which made possible different numbers of particles in the Universe, whether none, few, many, or theoretically an infinite number. A ‘vacuum state’ is where the arrangement of quantum fields generates no particles, thus termed ‘empty space’. As the theory goes, nature abhors a vacuum state, so this unstable structure which may have existed was potentially prone (or in Dawkins’ words “is almost bound …”) to reconfigure in another field arrangement in which particles do exist. Hey presto! You now have a Universe from ‘nothing’. Again, in Dawkins’ more quotable account, “Particles and antiparticles wink in and out of existence like subatomic fireflies, annihilating each other, and then re-creating themselves by the reverse process, out of nothingness” (189).

Let me skip over the assumption that these complex, necessary and beautifully symmetrical field laws existed without cause for all eternity and mysteriously conspire to make life—which may reflect the ‘mind’ of a Creator—and press into this ‘vacuum state’ and definitions of ‘nothing’.

Krauss tries to be clear: “By nothing I do not mean no-thing, but rather nothing—in this case, the nothingness we normally call empty space” (58).[2] (Has your hermeneutic of suspicion switched on yet?)

Space is assumed and space is ‘real’. And this space is jam-packed with virtual particles which can ‘pop’ into and out of existence as quantum fields shift (70, 146, 153f. 163f.). Granted, a century ago scientists would have referred to space without matter as ‘nothing’. Since that time, however, we’ve discovered that space itself is a ‘something’, as are the laws that dictate its dance. This ‘vacuum state’ possesses significant background energy even when the space is apparently ‘empty’. And from what I can gather, all of this quantum action still submits to the first and second laws of thermodynamics.[3] (Remember back to those happy high school science classes?) That’s right, “Energy can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed” (Law I), and “In all energy exchanges in a closed system, the potential energy of the state will always be less than that of the initial state” (Law II).

Perhaps this didn’t strike you with sufficient force. My apologies. Let me try again. Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington said that “if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.” Similarly, Einstein said of classical thermodynamics that it is “the only physical theory of universal content which I am convinced will never be overthrown … .” More recently, Seth Lloyd quipped in Nature “Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes and the second law of thermodynamics.”[4]  Let’s put the pieces together.

1. Krauss’ conjectured quantum field theory is governed by the far more certain laws of thermodynamics.
2. Our Universe conserves the total amount of energy, even as this system winds down with entropy.
3. Prior to the Big Bang, Krauss’ initial postulated ‘empty space’ or ‘vacuum state’—call it what you will, and irrespective of the number of ‘real’ particles and field configuration—must therefore have possessed the same energy as our Universe today.
4. Thus, this “empty space” is not NOTHING, but SOMETHING! And this something, constantly winding down, must have at one point been entirely wound up. Before this point we still find that science necessitates a definite beginning where something truly did come into being from absolutely nothing.

Some years ago I watched a documentary on quantum physics and spirituality entitled “What the bleep do we know anyway?” It seems to me they took about ten wrong turns in the mystical direction, but the title has stuck with me nevertheless. As the Universe looks weirder at every juncture, what the bleep do we know anyway? I’m entirely open to being corrected on all of this. Perhaps I’ve joined data points best left as outliers in a jumbled connect-the-dots, drawing pictures detached from reality? But as far as I can tell, it is wise to reason from the more certain to the more abstract.

It’s something we also do in theology: apocalyptic speculation is circumscribed by clear teaching from the words of Christ, and it all must fit the overall trajectory of the canonical story. My point: any quantum speculation is still bounded by the near-canonical laws of thermodynamics. One day this may change, if enough warrants accrue. But presently, the conservation and entropy of energy is arguably a central defeater to Krauss’s theorizing.[5] In his quest for a naturalistic explanation of everything, he’s taken at least one wrong turn in the reductionist direction. All that remains now, in part 3 of this post, is to consider the word-game Krauss is playing, and why in spite of it all, God is still a physicist’s friend.

Dave Benson

If I hear one more person cite Lawrence Krauss without meaningful explanation, I’m going to explode. It began with a bombshell. Dawkins was recently debating Australian cardinal George Pell on the television program Q&A, during which he was asked point blank, “How it is that something as enormous as the Universe came from nothing?” Dawkins acknowledged this as deeply mysterious. But then he then cited Arizona State University’s esteemed physicist, Lawrence Krauss, to the effect that this dilemma has dissolved:

When you have matter and antimatter and you put them together, they cancel each other out and give rise to nothing. … Krauss is now suggesting that if you start with nothing the process can go into reverse and produce matter and antimatter.

And there you have it. Millennia of philosophical and theological speculation on why there is something rather than nothing, solved in twenty seconds with the invocation of Krauss! Since that time, Krauss has become commonplace: top-billing at the Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne, media interviews on international airwaves, and constant citation on campuses as secular students deflect talk of God with the chant of their guru’s name: Krauss, Krauss, Krauss.

Professor Krauss has even made a brief appearance on this blog! Hélder Favarin wondered out loud, If God does not exist, how could everything come from “absolutely nothing”? Thankfully  SciAwakening set him straight in response. The solution: yet another citation of the mysterious Krauss and his magnum opus A Universe from Nothing.[1]

Okay, I like a good hand-waving exercise as much as the next person: “hocus po-krauss – look, a Universe!” But what exactly is his explanation? My undergrad in applied science is stretched to the limit in grappling with these matters, so let me try and put it in simple though hopefully not simplistic terms. In part one of this post, I’ll trace some preliminary history to put Krauss in context. In part two, which arrives this Wednesday, I’ll briefly outline his proposal and suggest what I consider to be the central scientific defeater. Finally, in part three on Friday I’ll consider the semantics of ‘nothing’ and suggest why, despite Krauss’s best efforts, creation is contingent and we still need God.

First, then, some history. Once upon a time, most scientists believed—contrary to Biblical revelation—that the material Universe was eternal. Then came the discovery of cosmic background radiation in 1964, confirming suspicions that our Universe expanded out from (what was later termed) a ‘singularity’. 13.72 billion years is a long time ago, but such an event still counts as a start requiring an explanation. As Greg Koukl quips, “a big bang requires a big banger.”[2] Fred Hoyle’s Steady State theory was no match, and ‘God’ was potentially a physicist’s friend. (Do you know any other immaterial, eternal, powerful, uncaused and intelligent candidates for bringing something out of nothing?)

In a Universe where there is supposedly no free lunch, how can one get something from nothing without invoking the supernatural? Scientific materialists, as Richard Lewontin confessed, “cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door … [because] at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured [and] miracles may happen.”[3] Material phenomena require empirically verifiable and falsifiable material explanations.[4]

Thus began the race for a methodologically atheistic account of something coming from nothing—or, at the very least, downplaying an absolute beginning and undermining the anthropic fine-tuning written across the cosmological constants. Such proposals include Richard Tolman’s oscillating Universe, Alan Guth’s inflationary expansion, Paul Davies’ cosmic jackpot to solve The Goldilocks Enigma, Stephen Hawking’s “no-boundary proposal” (drawing on “imaginary time” and “imaginary numbers”, √-1 kind of stuff which seems ab-surd to me), or any one of cosmologist Max Tegmark’s multiverse hypotheses.

String theory, a recent contender, illustrates the problem. In our search for a TOE (Theory of Everything), the Universe seems increasingly bizarre, the proposals are either presently unverified or entirely unverifiable, and the scientific camps continue to fragment in dissent. (Krauss, for instance, dismisses string theory as untestable,[5] but seems fine with causally disconnected multiverses to explain equations beyond Einstein essential for life. Karl Popper would have kittens over these shenanigans, and Thomas Kuhn would say it’s time for a paradigm shift.) All of this should give us pause before enthroning any scientific explanation as “just the way it is.” Even our best models aren’t reality itself—they are powerful metaphors to help us understand the material Universe.[6] Science advances through dissension, so this I respect. Such naïveté concerning the philosophy of science is, however, reprehensible.[7] Humility and wonder, not bluster and arrogance, is an appropriate response of limited and biased humans before the mystery of it all.

As you can see, Krauss joins a long and brilliant procession of crusaders in search of physics’ Holy Grail: the quest for eternal and unified laws.  What, then, is his proposal? For that, read on to part 2 of “Universe from Nothing – a load of Krauss.”

Dave Benson