There is Evidence for a Creator of the Universe

Psalms 19.1: The heavens declare the glory of God

The Bible says that God created the Universe. Secular astronomers claim that the cosmos was formed in a Big Bang event. The Bible 
is consistent with the Universe. Secular claims are not.

Books for sale: “What you aren’t being told about astronomy” Volume I, II and III

The phrase “popping into existence” is not the right one to use when you’re talking about the universe. It sounds as if it’s something that happens in time but that’s not the right way to do it. The correct thing to say is there was a first moment of time. When you say it that way it doesn't sound so implausible. The question is, is there a model in which that’s true? Do the equations of the model hang together? Does the model fit the data? And we have plausibly positive answers to all of those. [Dr. Sean Carroll, second round]

Naturalism says that all that exists is one world, the natural world, obeying laws of nature, which science can help us discover. Theism says that in addition to the natural world there is something else, at the very least, God. Perhaps there are other things as well. I want to argue that naturalism is far and away the winner when it comes to cosmological explanation. And it comes down to three points. First, naturalism works—it accounts for the data we see. Second, the evidence is against theism. Third, theism is not well defined. I’m going to be emphasizing this third point because if you ask a theist about the definition they will give you some very rigorous sounding definition of what they mean by God. The most perfect being, the ground for all existence, and so forth. There are thousands of such definitions, which is an issue, but the real problem is not with the definition, it’s when you connect the notion of God to the world we observe. That’s where apparently an infinite amount of flexibility comes in. 

So, I think I can make these points basically by following Dr. Craig’s organization starting with the kalam cosmological argument, and unlike what he said I should be doing I want to challenge the first of the premises: If the universe began to exist it has a transcendent cause. The problem with this premise is that it is false. There’s almost no explanation or justification given for this premise in Dr. Craig’s presentation. But there’s a bigger problem with it, which is that it is not even false. The real problem is that these are not the right vocabulary words to be using when we discuss fundamental physics and cosmology. This kind of Aristotelian analysis of causation was cutting edge stuff 2,500 years ago. Today we know better. Our metaphysics must follow our physics. That’s what the word metaphysics means. And in modern physics, you open a quantum field theory textbook or a general relativity textbook, you will not find the words “transcendent cause” anywhere. What you find are differential equations. This reflects the fact that the way physics is known to work these days is in terms of patterns, unbreakable rules, laws of nature. Given the world at one point in time we will tell you what happens next. There is no need for any extra metaphysical baggage, like transcendent causes, on top of that. It’s precisely the wrong way to think about how the fundamental reality works.

The question you should be asking is, “What is the best model of the universe that science can come up with?” By a model I mean a formal mathematical system that purports to match on to what we observe. So if you want to know whether something is possible in cosmology or physics you ask, “Can I build a model?” Can I build a model where the universe had a beginning but did not have a cause? The answer is yes. It’s been done. Thirty years ago, very famously, Stephen Hawking and Jim Hartle presented the no-boundary quantum cosmology model. The point about this model is not that it’s the right model, I don’t think that we’re anywhere near the right model yet. The point is that it’s completely self-contained. It is an entire history of the universe that does not rely on anything outside. It just is like that. The demand for more than a complete and consistent model that fits the data is a relic of a pre-scientific view of the world. Meanwhile, theism, I would argue, is not a serious cosmological model. A real cosmological model wants to predict. What is the amount of density perturbation in the universe? And so forth. Theism does not even try to do this because ultimately theism is not well defined.

Dr. Craig brings up an argument about the Second Law of Thermodynamics and I’ve written a whole book about the second law and its relationship to cosmology. It is certainly a true issue that we don’t know why the early universe had a low entropy and entropy has ever been increasing. That’s a good challenge for cosmology. To imagine the cosmologist cannot answer that question without somehow invoking God is a classic god-of-the-gaps move.

So let’s go to the second argument, the teleological argument from fine-tuning. I’m very happy to admit right off the bat – this is the best argument that the theists have when it comes to cosmology. That’s because it plays by the rules. You have phenomena, you have parameters of particle physics and cosmology, and then you have two different models: theism and naturalism. And you want to compare which model is the best fit for the data. I applaud that general approach. Given that, it is still a terrible argument. It is not at all convincing. I will give you five quick reasons why theism does not offer a solution to the purported fine-tuning problem

 

First, I am by no means convinced that there is a fine-tuning problem and, again, Dr. Craig offered no evidence for it. It is certainly true that if you change the parameters of nature our local conditions that we observe around us would change by a lot. I grant that quickly. I do not grant therefore life could not exist. I will start granting that once someone tells me the conditions under which life can exist. What is the definition of life, for example? If it’s just information processing, thinking or something like that, there’s a huge panoply of possibilities. They sound very “science fiction-y” but then again you’re the one who is changing the parameters of the universe. The results are going to sound like they come from a science fiction novel. Sadly, we just don’t know whether life could exist if the conditions of our universe were very different because we only see the universe that we see.

Secondly, God doesn’t need to fine-tune anything. We talk about the parameters of physics and cosmology: the mass of the election, the strength of gravity. And we say if they weren’t the numbers that they were then life itself could not exist. That really underestimates God by a lot, which is surprising from theists, I think. In theism, life is not purely physical. It’s not purely a collection of atoms doing things like it is in naturalism. I would think that no matter what the atoms were doing God could still create life. God doesn’t care what the mass of the electron is. He can do what he wants. The only framework in which you can honestly say that the physical parameters of the universe must take on certain values in order for life to exist is naturalism.

The third point is that the fine-tunings you think are there might go away once you understand the universe better. They might only be apparent. There’s a famous example theists like to give, or even cosmologists who haven’t thought about it enough, that the expansion rate of the early universe is tuned to within 1 part in 1060. That’s the naïve estimate, back of the envelope, pencil and paper you would do. But in this case you can do better. You can go into the equations of general relativity and there is a correct rigorous derivation of the probability. If you ask the same question using the correct equations you find that the probability is 1.

Number four, there’s an obvious and easy naturalistic explanation in the form of the cosmological multiverse. People like to worry about the multiverse. It sounds extravagant. I claim the multiverse is amazingly simple. It is not a theory, it is a prediction of physical theories that are themselves quite elegant, small, and self-contained that create universes after universes. There’s no reason, no right that we have, to expect that the whole entire universe look like the conditions we have right now. But more importantly, if you take the multiverse as your starting point you can make predictions. We live in an ensemble and we should be able to predict the likelihoods that conditions around us take different forms. So in cosmology papers dealing with the multiverse you see graphs like this [slide image] that try to predict the density of dark matter given other conditions in the multiverse. You do not see graphs like this in the theological papers trying to give God credit for explaining the fine-tuning because theism is not well defined.

Fifth, and most importantly, theism fails as an explanation. Even if you think the universe is finely-tuned and you don’t think that naturalism can solve it, theism certainly does not solve it. If you thought it did, if you played the game honestly, what you would say is, “Here is the universe that I expect to exist under theism. I will compare it to the data and see if it fits.” What kind of universe would we expect? I’ve claimed that over and over again the universe we would expect matches the predictions of naturalism not theism. So the amount of tuning, if you thought that the physical parameters of our universe were tuned in order to allow life to exist, you would expect enough tuning but not too much. Under naturalism, a physical mechanism could far over-tune by an incredibly large amount that has nothing to do with the existence of life and that is exactly what we observe. For example, the entropy of the early universe is much, much, much, much lower than it needs to be to allow for life. You would expect under theism that the particles and parameters of particle physics would be enough to allow life to exist and have some structure that was designed for some reason whereas under naturalism you’d expect them to be kind of random and a mess. Guess what? They are kind of random and a mess.

 

Why should we expect that there are causes or explanations or a reason why in the universe in which we live? It’s because the physical world inside of which we’re embedded has two important features. There are unbreakable patterns, laws of physics—things don’t just happen, they obey the laws—and there is an arrow of time stretching from the past to the future. The entropy was lower in the past and increases towards the future. Therefore, when you find some event or state of affairs B today, we can very often trace it back in time to one or a couple of possible predecessor events that we therefore call the cause of that, which leads to B according to the laws of physics. But crucially, both of these features of the universe that allow us to speak the language of causes and effects are completely absent when we talk about the universe as a whole. We don’t think that our universe is part of a bigger ensemble that obeys laws. Even if it’s part of the multiverse, the multiverse is not part of a bigger ensemble that obeys laws. Therefore, nothing gives us the right to demand some kind of external cause. The idea that our intuitions about cause and effect that we get from the everyday experience of the world in this room should somehow be extended without modification to the fundamental nature of reality is fairly absurd. 

I never claimed to be able to prove there is a creator

• Evidence: facts, information, documents, etc. that give reason to believe that something is true.
  
• Argument: a coherent series of reasons, statements, or facts intended to support or establish a point of view
  
• Creator: a deity responsible for the creation of the Earth, world, and universe
  

If it is definitively impossible to explain something by following the laws of physics, then you must violate those laws in order to explain it. 

If it has an origin, and it began to exist, then it must have an explanation, because if it began to exist, there must have been a cause.

we can look at the material, and gather information about the immaterial

• [Citation needed] There is no evidence that we can make accurate deductions about the immaterial based on the material. As demonstrated by wildly different views of the immaterial by everyone everywhere. If it was actually possible to gather information about the immaterial we would at least have consensus that it exists, but we don't. Reputable scientists are convinced there is no evidence that anything immaterial exists, not to mention the very specific concept of a creator deity.
  

Picking a god completely at random would actually lead you to be infinitely more likely to pick an unimaginably complicated God. 

 exceptionally intelligent, because He managed to design us

The argument of design can be compared to a painting.

• You could make that comparison if you are okay with lying. The painting analogy is ridiculous because it has nothing in common with the universe. We have very specific natural explanations for everything in our universe. To translate that into the painting analogy, it would be like if science had found billions of well-documented cases where paint falls from the sky and turns into beatifull paintings of different styles and quality. In that case the analogy would work but then the arguments falls apart in spectacular fashion.
  
• PRO is using terrible analogies like this instead of using the universe itself because he understands that nothing about the universe intuitively or intellectually indicates that it is designed.
  

• PRO drops all his supporting premises for the argument from design:
  
• That science has adequately explained biology and astrophysics
  
• That the chances of life occuring are very high
  
• That probablistic arguments are terrible and not valid as evidence
  
• That these arguments are examples of circular reasoning and subjective judgement
  
• PRO drops all his supporting premises for the argument from origins:
  
• That his source is trash with no scientific or theological credibility
  
• That they cherry pick from both science and the Bible to make them fit
  
• That they misconstrue science to fit their preconceived notion
  
• And that their claims run contrary to what reputable scientists say
  
• That the universe can have existed forever
  
• That the universe could also have instead had a beginning
  
• All without needing to invoke God or the supernatural.
  
• PRO drops that his arguments have been presented far better by Craig, and were still easily rebbutted by experts specializing in cosmological philosophy
  
• PRO drops that occams razor defeats his entire argument
  
• Since omnipotence does not explain HOW nothing turns into something
  
• But it does add unnecesary elements which PRO himself admit are incredibly complicated
  

An atheist believes that there is no supernatural creator. That does not mean they don't believe in any kind of supernatural world, it just means they don't believe in a supernatural creator.

• This is a concession that "supernatural world" and "supernatural creator" are not synonumous. Atheists can believe in supernatural causes that are not specifically a creator. 
  

 the facts and information are conservation of mass-energy, and the second law of thermodynamics

• Which do NOT prove that we need a supernatural model, as explained thoroughly by Dr. Sean Carroll.
  
• Plus you yourself conceeded that "creator" is just one of many types of supernatural models, so even if we needed SOME supernatural explanation, that doesn't have to be God.
  

If [energy conservation] and [entropy] do not make a natural origins model impossible, provide those reasons

1. We already have models that explain the universe without violating these principles, which you would know if you read Dr. Carrolls explanation in my second round.
   
2. Even ignoring this, there may be natural origins models that violate energy conservation and entropy because they follow more fundamental physics we have yet to discover.
   
3. So even if the possibility of a natural origins model is impossible, it is an option that will eventually be ruled out by science later down the line, we cannot do so today.
   

The average thickness of sedimentary rocks around the world in the continents that were supposedly deposited by Noah’s flood is about 1,800 meters (5,905 feet) (Nelson 2012). If just 1 percent of this thickness represents fossil remains of marine animals that were alive at the same time during Noah’s flood, then the whole world would have been covered with 59 feet of living marine animals, such as clams, snails, corals, trilobites,and sponges. That many animals living at the same time during that 1 year would have been impossible. The value of 1 percent is not unreasonable when some limestone layers are composed of nearly 100 percent fossils. Even if 0.1 percent of the sedimentary rock thickness contained all marine animals that were alive at the same time in the year of Noah’s flood, that means that the whole world would have been covered with 5.9 feet of animals, and that still is too many animals.

The question you should be asking is, “What is the best model of the universe that science can come up with?” By a model I mean a formal mathematical system that purports to match on to what we observe. So if you want to know whether something is possible in cosmology or physics you ask, “Can I build a model?” Can I build a model where the universe had a beginning but did not have a cause? The answer is yes. It’s been done. Thirty years ago, very famously, Stephen Hawking and Jim Hartle presented the no-boundary quantum cosmology model. The point about this model is not that it’s the right model, I don’t think that we’re anywhere near the right model yet. The point is that it’s completely self-contained. It is an entire history of the universe that does not rely on anything outside. It just is like that. The demand for more than a complete and consistent model that fits the data is a relic of a pre-scientific view of the world. [Dr. Carroll]