Tbh (eventually to be Dr) Joe Schmidt looks like a synthesis of gigabrain and someone who could very plausibly be a nerdy puppyboy in their spare time x3
When he said "tired light hypothesis" I had the mental image of light stopping to take a nap in the middle of it's journey through space. It was tired and needed some shut eye before proceeding across the universe.
According to relativity, from the perspective of the photon everything is length contracted to a single point, while from our perspective if you put a small little clock on the photon it would be frozen still. You can read about muon decay in our atmosphere for a similar description for sub-light speeds. So really, from the perspective of the photon, it is already just sitting in one spot, and hence, it is already napping :P. And the rest of the universe of course exists in the same point from its perspective. At least I think I do remember this pretty clearly from my special relativity lectures :)
great stuff guys well done. Going to be releasing a new video on this next week with scientists who have reexamined the BGV theorem, exciting new paper.
It's weird how I've come to a place in my life where I'm excited to watch two academics discussing apologetics from the eleventh century. Teenage me would be so disappointed!
It looks like they have taken Bertrand Russell’s quote was taken out of context. My understanding is that this quote was about accepting the universe existing was just a “brutal fact” as it was self-evident. As you say, he was not commenting on an eternal universe or a universe with a beginning.
I love these discussions. What I always find funny is how theists, when they got to a necessary being/thing, suddenly take leaps and start ascribing all kinds of fancy properties to it...."because we need it to be like that in the end"
@blankvision2771 science does not show the universe was made. There is absolutely no evidence on if the universe ever began to exist. This is true because we cannot see before the very first tiniest of a fraction of a second of the big bang
@blankvision2771 No, you can't, and science hasn't either, let alone "ancient religion", whatever that means. The answers aren't in numbers either, given that they're nothing but mathematical abstractions. As the always, the answers are *in reality.* And it is by observing reality that one can understand it, _not_ by armchair philosophising one's way into deluding themself with alluring stories of "creation" by some mysterious guy that just so happens to want a relationship with you.
@blankvision2771 Firstly, you know nothing about what I do or don't know about religion. Secondly, Platonism and Neoplatonism are not drawing from "ancient religion", but from the various traditions of Geometers, who are very much so their own community, wholly apart from the traditional priestly class of their time. You could have said however that they are religious in and of themselves, which wouldn't have been far off. Case in point, Plato himself speaks of a Craftsman fashioning the Cosmos from preexisting Chaos, presumably some eternal entity of 'divine essence' as he understood that to be (some kind of eternal pneuma, I suppose). Either way, those abstract objects he thought about were not Plutonic solids, but Platonic solids, which is a post-hoc name by the way, he didn't call them that himself. Also, the Platonic solids thingy comes from _Timaeus_ which he wrote around 360 BC in our calendar, whereas the allegory of the Cave comes from book VII of _the Republic_ which he wrote between 387 and 370 BC. Plato states himself in _Timaeus_ that the book comes after and is intended as a sort of sequel to _the Republic._ Last but not least, Plato's evidence for the relevance of his model to reality is effectively "trust me bro, it's the only theory that makes sense". Again, armchair philosophising...
Its not about being wrong. Its about being a liar. WLC admitted the Kalam was at odds with science in his book aptly named "the Kalam Cosmological Argument" moreover he was directly confronted and corrected on this by physicists on multiple occasions and has never changed his false information. Its a lie, not a question of wrongness.
Starting at 1:11:00 I really appreciate the comments made by both Daniel and Joe here. I think this is one of the places where PhilRel can spur interesting investigation of other philosophical issues, but because there's so much apologetic effort invested into one particular research goal (getting YHWH from the Kalam), it kneecaps further investigation both by (a) deterring philosophers of religion from fully exploring those adjacent questions and (b) deterring outside philosophers from opining on kalam stuff for fear of getting caught in the crossfire of apologetic poo throwing.
Great discussion! It's a perfect illustration of why the Kalam is my favorite theistic argument. Even though it's wrong in every step, it's wrong in ways that are really interesting to discuss.
1:14:00 Regarding the Sean Carroll book: that title sounds like the book is a compilation of the YT videos he did during the pandemic lockdowns. I highly recommend those.
In the beginning was nothing and it went on that way for an amusing length of time. It endured, simultaneously, for precisely 42 seconds, 42 psuedo-seconds, 42 femto-seconds, 42 gestational periods of an 18th century blue whale, 42 readings of Hitchhikers Guide to Cosmological Time Metrics (forthcoming), 42 Galactic Empire Calendars (403rd historical accuracy revision), 42 renditions of a particularly inane joke written as a youtube comment, 42 Mayan Calendar cycles, and 42 First Stones Thrown by Sinless Apes (not yet evolved). Then nothing got bored and exploded. Everything was quite strange because time and causality had a particularly fractious love affair when the Universe was born. All things were strewn about chaotically... especially the philosophers. Great talk. I enjoyed it.
The universe of course began to exist. The reason is that the universe has been changing, which means that it isn't eternal, and must therefore have begun.
It’s perfectly consistent that something changes throughout an infinite past. It clearly doesn’t follow from the fact that something changes that it isn’t past-eternal. Also, just because the universe’s past is finite, it doesn’t follow that the universe began to exist, for the reasons laid out in the video.
@@MajestyofReason I failed to say changing intrinsically. If A changes intrinsically to B, then B can't be A, meaning that A ceases to exist. Is it possible to have an infinite past in this case? And is an infinite past synonymous with being eternal? Thanks for clarifying.
@@mathewsamuel1386 thanks for the clarification. Something can persist throughout intrinsic change. After marriage, someone might change intrinsically in their mass (they typically gain mass in the form of extra belly fat). But it’s one and the same person who changes intrinsically. So it’s entirely consistent for one thing to persist throughout an infinite past whilst changing intrinsically
@MajestyofReason I see. But it seems that this is true only in a very restricted sense. E.g., a person is more than their material body, and gaining body mass doesn't change who a person is. But suppose it were possible to change a black African into a Caucasian. Even if the personality of the original black African is retained, could it be said that, as a Caucasian, the black African persisted? Or take a stone. If, say, a volcano deposits material on the stone that made it larger or that the stone gets shrunk by some abrasive agent. Would it be correct to say that we have the same stone?
I loved this video! I learned some new things here (e.g., Malament-Manchak theorem). Very interesting. Already "liked," shared and added it to my counter-apologetics playlist.
You can be an agnostic atheist or an agnostic theist. Agnosticism is about knowledge, not about what you believe to be true or not. It seems he's still an agnostic. And his agnosticism is like 50/50 in terms of percentage. In an interview or video, he said that the contingency argument is one of the best arguments supporting theism (maybe the best), so I think good arguments like this make him an agnostic and counterbalance the evidence according to his view.
To your question at the end, Joe about why theists find this argument so powerful, I think it's because they already believe in the first place. Craig admits he was a believer *before* he went anywhere near a philosophy department. He revised an already existing argument that supported a conclusion he already held. So, it doesn't need to be *convincing*, it just needs to sound plausible on some level to support what he (and the others) already believes. The question is then, if it didn't convince him in the first place (as he already held the conclusion to be true when he encountered the argument), then why does he think it should be convincing to anyone else?
Craig claims that he was convinced by his personal religious experiences. I can be sympathetic to someone who says, "Well, I had this particular sort of experience that convinced me that x was true, but, given that others haven't necessarily had that experience, I can't blame them for finding my own experience unconvincing. So, I now go about trying to find arguments that others will find convincing so that they might believe me about the experience that I had." Let's consider an analogy. (The following scenario is fictional.) Suppose that I had a childhood friend -- let's call them Terry -- who I remember quite well. I remember the friend winning a state mathematics championship, but then being shot in the school parking lot. I remember this experience as being personally moving and as having a profound effect on my subsequent life. As an adult, I meet up with some former classmates, none of whom remember Terry. And they all skeptical that there was ever a shooting at our school. Certainly, they don't remember that, and if such a tremendous and traumatizing event had taken place, surely they would have remembered it. Perhaps one of my classmates even claims that they were the person who won the state mathematics championship -- so that Terry couldn't have! My own recollection of my experience is not going to convince my former classmates. Utterly convinced that my memories are veridical and wishing to convince others, I might go about trying to provide evidence that what I remember really took place. I might dig up old papers, try to find old teachers, search through court records, attempt to find Terry's grave, and so on. Maybe I even get a PhD in a relevant academic field -- like journalism, criminology, or psychology (with a focus on memory). In that case, haven't I acted like Craig? Haven't I found a set of arguments to justify my views to others, even though it wasn't those arguments that convinced me of my views in the first place? Of course, I think the Kalam argument in fact fails -- otherwise this would be a very different video.
@@daniellinford9643 I suppose, but I don't feel like that's what Craig does. I think he presents the KCA more as an inescapable proof of a god, not really as an attempt to convince others from a point of view whereby he has some other proof he knows isn't good enough (the witness of the holy spirit in his "heart", for example). I think he believes this to be a game-ender, allowing his pre-biased beliefs to completely blur a rational response to all the criticisms against the argument. That's why he believes this so strongly --> it's something that is consistent with his prior and deeply believed conclusions.
@daniellinford9643 Hi again! Actually several weeks ago, I emailed Craig and asked him this very question and yesterday, he replied to me on his website. I thought I'd share his answer with you as you might be interested in it. My question, summarised, was basically: Why do you think other should be convinced of the KCA when you already believed it before you revived it and therefore weren't even convinced yourself? I also mentioned challenges to the argument. His answer is verbatim below (except where I removed when he mentions my name): "Your question, [my name], confuses being converted with being convinced. Since I was a Christian theist when I commenced my doctoral studies in England, my study of the kalām cosmological argument did not convert me; but the argument did convince me. You see, I went to England with an open mind about the argument. Ever since first learning about the argument from Stuart Hackett’s The Resurrection of Theism following graduation from college and about the history of the argument from Frederick Copleston’s magisterial A History of Philosophy, I was so gripped by the argument that I just had to settle my mind about whether it was a sound and convincing argument. So I made it the focus of my study in my doctoral work under John Hick at the University of Birmingham. My studies convinced me more than ever that the argument is sound and persuasive. Not only did the philosophical arguments hold up, but I became aware of the truly extraordinary astrophysical evidence in support of the premise that the universe began to exist. So the argument did convince me. The answer to your question, “why do you feel it should be convincing to others?” is pretty obvious! (i) It is logically valid; (ii) its premises are true; and (iii) its premises are better supported by the evidence than their contradictories. As for “all of the scientific and philosophical objections to the argument,” I have tried to do my philosophical duty by responding to every scholarly criticism of the argument I’m aware of (as well as to some truly ridiculous objections on the Internet) to show why they fail to be convincing. I’ve even gone to the extraordinary length of debating the argument with the top objectors in live public debates before university audiences. Have you seen my debate, for example, with Prof Dr Ansgar Beckerman at the Universität München? Watch it and tell me who you think made the more convincing case. So don’t be cowed by the mere volume of objections, [my name] -of course, atheists and agnostics will object to the argument! Think of what’s at stake for them. I can be truly open-minded about the argument, while they cannot."
Regarding BGV theorem, in his book Many Worlds in One, Vilenkin writes: “It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape: they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.” (176)
If you are willing and dont mind a long comment, I would like to ask for some help from those who are willing to look over a hypothesis and give me some feedback on it. Its about why I think many questions and arguments get avoided. I am sure you have seen politicians do this before during debates. If you have 12 minutes the first basic part I will go over is about fast/slow thinking. If you want there is a 12 minute video by veritasium called "the science of thinking" that will explain it very well. I think this is knowledge that can really benefit people if they do not know about it. The next part though I dont know any videos for and I dont know if anyone really had the idea I have before. The knowledge of the fast/slow mind is what is relevant from that video and I think a good starting point for the discussion. The video also gives examples of people doing it live, but it most likely will work on you as well so that is how I will show you. I am going to ask you a question, and I am going to predict the answer you will have pop in your mind at first, and predict that will be a wrong answer. This works on most people and you can try if for yourself on others to see too, its an interesting conversation starter. A bat and a ball together cost 1.10, the bat costs 1.00 more then the ball, how much did the ball cost? You might have an answer flash in your head right away with fast inaccurate fast mind but if you check that answer with your slow but more accurate conscious awareness, you can see that answer is wrong but it takes effort to do. The answer of ten cents is not the right answer but most people have that pop in their head because of the fast thinking mind that we rely on most of the time. The fast unconscious mind is taking everything in and trying to make sense of it really fast. Its 11 million bits a second. But sometimes it makes mistakes. The slow conscious mind is 40-50 bits and lazy but it can check things and bringing the unconscious mistake to conscious awareness it can correct it. The next thing to understand is about carl jung and the 4 ways the unconscious complex he called shadow deals with reality. The shadow is an unconscious complex that is defined as the repressed and suppressed aspects of the conscious self. there are constructive and destructive types of shadow. Carl jung emphasized the importance of being aware of shadow material and incorporating it into conscious awareness lest one project these attributes onto others. The human being deals with the reality of shadow in 4 ways. Denial, projection, integration and/or transmutation. Now I believe what is happening when a question that exposes a conflict in a belief, idea, something that someone said, or even about someone they idolize and the question gets avoided, that is the fast unconscious mind going into denial and the response is often a projection. This also can trigger and emotional response activating the amygdala more and the pre frontal cortex less where rational conscious thought is said to happen and the amygdala starts to get the body to flood itself with chemicals/hormones. Its like the fast mind knows conscious awareness will say its wrong. so it blocks it off to defend itself from admitting its wrong. in cases of denial and because it blocked off the rational mind, the responses are often irrational. Like personal attacks do not address the issue or answer the question. I think we can agree people have a very hard time now days admitting when they are wrong, I am not except from this myself I do realize. And we can see how badly questions avoidance effects us if you watch political meetings and watch them avoid questions all day long. Ok, so the first thing to go over is denial as that is the main one I expose with questions. A disowning or refusal to acknowledge something I think is a good definition for it here. There is a really good 2 minute video I use as an example of this. A streamer named vegan gains claiming lobsters have brains after some one said he can eat lobsters because they do not have brains. He googles it and starts to read what it says. When he gets to the part where is says neither insects nor lobsters have brains, he skips it and says they literally are insects then skips over that line and continues to read the rest. Just like in the fast thinking video, his fast mind already read that line and refused to acknowledge it in unconscious denial, and just skipped it. The person then tells him he skipped it and he reads it again and sees the line this time. Still being defensive of his claim and refusing to accept he was wrong, he tried to discredit the source and its the lobster institute of maine. If you would like to see the video for yourself its 2 minutes by destiny clips and the video is called " Destiny Reacts To Vegan Gains Ignoring Search Result That Contradicts Him". Justin turdo avoiding the question of how much his family was paid by the we charity 6 times in a row I think is denial as well. I think jordan peterson not being able to answer his own question of does he believe god exists and asking what do and you mean then saying no one knows what any of those words mean while being seemingly angry is think is another really good example of denial... and projection. And while JP find those words difficult, other people understand them easy. Even he does pretty much any other time they are used. So projection is next up. Psychological projection is a defense mechanism people subconsciously employ in order to cope with difficult feelings or emotions. Psychological projection involves projecting undesirable feelings or emotions onto someone else, rather than admitting to or dealing with the unwanted feelings. Many times a mind in denial will use projections for responses. Someone getting mad and telling the other person to not interrupt when they have been doing that a lot themselves would be an example. I have done this myself. The people who tell me I dont understand my own questions and my point is wrong when they do not even know what the point is are all examples as well. I ask them to steel man my position to show then understand my point and they just avoid that question as well clearly showing they do not understand my point. Now we have integration and/or transmutation. Integration is when you bring an unconscious behavior into conscious awareness and accept it. I know that I interrupt people talking sometimes even though I think that is wrong to do. I have a conscious awareness of it, but I have not been able to completely change the behavior.... yet. That is where transmutation comes in. Transmutation is to completely change that unconscious behavior. From being impatient to being patient, of from distrust to trust, hate into understanding and love even. So was this understandable or confusing? if you understand it, do you think its possibly true? Do you have any questions? If you have any tips I am would gladly listen.
I think I understand the objection to "beginning to exist" near the start of this video. In order for something to 'begin to exist', there has to be A) a finite past for that thing, and B) a temporal prior state when it did not exist. Is that right or over-simplified?
Someone could have that sort of view, but Craig doesn't -- and neither do I! If you want to read more about how I think about the notion that physical reality had a beginning, you can read the paper that I published in Erkenntnis: philsci-archive.pitt.edu/21340/1/Modal_Condition_For_Erkenntnis.pdf
Didn't Vilenkin himself at one point say that if someone rejects a realist interpretation of General Relativity, they have no business at all citing the BVG Theorem as evidence of any kind of beginning? I think I remember him saying that at some point, but I can't find it.
If you can find that, please send it to me! As far as I know, only Phil Halper and myself have previously raised a tension between the Craig's use of the BVG theorem and Craig's Neo-Lorentzianism.
@@daniellinford9643 I mean, I should think it should go without saying that you can't treat a scientific model as authoritative if you openly reject the very foundation it's based upon as having any objective reality. Anyway, if I find it I'll let you know. It was hearsay though, so it may not even exist for all I know.
Honestly though, even if the person I heard that from just made it up, someone really should contact Vilenkin and make it clear to him. Because he's naively endorsed Craig's use of the BVG Theorem on at least one occasion, and I don't think he would do that if he knew Craig was an open anti-realist about all of modern cosmological physics.
@@fanghur The situation is slightly more complex because the BGV theorem does not require General Relativity. In any case, I think this is a fairly big problem in this literature. A number of authors want to make use of results from physics, while also rejecting a realistic interpretation of the physical theories that those results require. The fact that this is -- upon reflection -- a fairly obvious idea -- but one that has been missed by so many philosophers -- has inspired me to spend more time working on the relationship between physical cosmology and scientific realism. That's the topic of the monograph I am currently working on.
@@daniellinford9643 correct me if I’m wrong, but the BVG theorem is at least built upon elements of General Relativity even if it isn’t a direct extension of it, right? It assumes the existence of spacetime, the speed of light being constant, space itself being what is expanding, etc. That has always been my understanding of it.
44:06 Wow, that's crazy! If time is discrete then the BGV theorem doesn't apply to the universe? Can we use this as a leverage for Craig to stop using Benardete paradoxes?
I'm just over six minutes in, and I get the distinct impression that the result is going to be that Craig has engaged in a lot of circumlocution to try and hide his special pleading. We shall see.
The thing about Craig is that you can guarantee that if he'd been alive in the early 19th century, he'd be claiming a steady state infinite universe was proof of God. If he'd been around before Copernicus, he'd be all about geocentrism proving God and our privileged position at the centre of creation. If he'd been in Judea in 33CE, he'd be the one condemning Jesus' heresy.
Craig works backwards from his preferred conclusion and he's essentially admitted as much. I'm not sure why people take him seriously apart from his relatively high profile in the apologetics community.
@@shassett79 yeah. I suspect most people know him as 'that bloke who debated Hitchens', if they know of him at all. But the apologetics world exists in its own universe, where critical thinking isn't allowed in. You could show this discussion between Joe and Daniel to a million Christians, and it wouldn't change their mind at all about Craig.
There's multiple lines of evidence that show the universe had a beginning, and if it didn't have a beginning, then we need some other explanation for phenomena such as hubble expansion, and the 2nd law of thermodynamics (as well as common sense intuition about the nature of evolving, chaotic systems). For all intents and purposes, the universe had a beginning. There's no empirical difference between a universe with a beginning and our universe. You may have your own pet theories that something else is going on. That's part of the scientific process, just like proposing incorrect hypotheses is part of the scientific process. When your pet theories reach the standard of empirical truth, we can take them a little more seriously. You can't be a scientist unless you think the theories aren't quite right (or else why would you be researching?) EVERYONE thinks there's something deeper going on. The trick is to be able to critically differentiate between your personal speculation, and what the observations and experiments are saying.
Whether hubble expansion, the 2nd law of thermodynamics, etc. actually support the universe's beginning is addressed in the video :) Also, note that there are physically live models, debated among physicists, which include an infinite past, and which explain the relevant observations. Plus, as we point out in the video, the scientific evidence *at best* supports only that our local spatiotemporal manifold's past is finite. But that isn’t enough to support the claim that the totality of physical reality began to exist. To support *that*, we would need reason to think that (a) no physical reality could pre-exist metric time in a non-metric time, (b) no physical reality could exist timelessly sans metric time, and (c) no physical reality has a timeless aspect in Linford’s sense. But science does not supply us good reason to think that all of (a)-(c) hold.
@@MajestyofReason The scientific enterprise isn't simply a model building exercise. Which is why science is in the state that it is! Scattered, but functionally predictive. It's not just the models that are being debated, it's the nature of truth. It may be the case that there is no empirically confirmable deterministic model of events prior to (the big bang, or some arbitrary point in space time that's simply relative to our perspective). Also, it's almost certainly the case that beyond a certain small scale our theories are useless (a singularity). Same on the largest scale (a horizon). It may even be the case that there is no empirically confirmable deterministic model of events that predict macroscopic phenomena (a concept known as emergence). Look, I also have my own speculation about what's going on there. But, I don't pretend that it's based on anything more than some mathematical extension of physical principles that we're pretty sure don't work all that well in the early universe. Also, I change my mind every day, and consider LOTS of different theories about what's going on in those arenas. It's PURE speculation, so I just say what it looks like on the face of it. This is where we have reached the limit of our understanding.
@@ywtcc Do you feel Craig is justified in his claims that science proves that the entire physical universe began to exist at a single point in the finite past? To me it just seems like he's bastardizing physics to reach his preferred metaphysical conclusion.
The funny thing that i find, why people still talk about Craig's Kalam ? When a lot people say is bad argument but still people talk about it and don't mention Joe Schmid is like Craig's Kalam fans
A time for which there's no objective fact of the matter concerning its duration (and so it isn't metricated into measurable temporal intervals, for instance). For resources, see the screen at 53:48
Just starting to watch this, but I always have to chuckle when folks appeal to what "atheists have always believed X" (e.g., at 2:38) as if that makes it more likely that atheism somehow predicts or entails X. Craig himself holds quite a few novel and idiosyncratic positions, and this same argument could be marshaled against him with great ease... Just seems like throwing stones in glass houses.
The second law of thermodynamics is certainly not a fundamental law! We’ve known since the 19th century that the laws of thermodynamics have an explanation in terms of more fundamental phenomena. That’s the entire subject of a field called “statistical mechanics”. :)
@@daniellinford9643 please give us link or anything showing 2 law of thermodynamics is not fundamental also first law.... And even if is not fundamental still the laws works ..and the argument still works ..
@@Yesunimwokozi1 I can do better than that. Just pick up any statistical mechanics textbook. When I was an undergraduate, we used Kittel’s Thermal Physics.
Fantastic video! A must watch for any layperson like me interested in these topics! Thank you. ❤ Regarding the 'immaterial' property of the alleged cause of the cosmos, and how Craig's Kalam doesn't secure a non-physical cause: What's exactly securing a non-material cause? I mean sure, Atomism isn't a live philosophical theory anymore, but it's old news at this point. Why not considering _current_ materialist theories? Are there any? I would think so. Are they actually affected by Craig's Kalam? I don't know. But I would suspect they aren't. My reasoning is as follows: any modern theory of materialism is bound to be up to date with modern scientific knowledge about the nature of matter. Obviously, we went beyond atomism for quite a long while, yet the very name of atoms highlights the at least cultural legacy of atomism within the fields of physics concerned with the study of matter. Additionally, quarks were seemingly the new atoms in the atomist sense of things for 20th century materialists. And lastly, what is now the Standard Model in Physics has now established on a fairly well known basis that the fundamental nature of matter, is in fact quantum mechanical and seemingly consists of excitations of quantum fields, i.e. wavefunctions that populate spacetime itself. In other words, and irrelative of prior theories of materialism that are now dead anyway, I don't see how a modern materialism updated with current physics - thus acknowledging matter as wavefunctions that occupy spacetime - would be affected in any way by Craig's Kalam and its auxiliary assumptions about reality. On the contrary, I think the things that have been discussed here suggest that a modern Materialist might even argue - in light of his modern understanding of the underlying nature of the substance of matter - that matter and spacetime are intrinsically linked, and that spacetime itself may in fact share the same fundamental nature with matter, i.e. that of being a wavefunction pertaining to some quantum field (here the inflaton I guess?). In short, it seems plausible that a modern Materialist could make cogent arguments for the Universe's content _and_ the Universe itself to be material in nature, which would presumably vindicate materialism.
Everyone i know generally seems to accept that its cyclic, i believe in entropy rather strongly although theres something striking to me about how i said that just now
The 2nd of thermodynamics although well supported makes its own assumptions. That entropy had a beginning or that it will always increase. Apart from the valid criticism that MoR and DL suggested I see no reason to think the 2nd law is necessarily true as it is descriptive, not prescriptive. Here are some other reasons to question the 2nd law. 1. It states in an isolated system energy tends to increase over time. What makes us think the Universe is an isolated system instead of a set of simultaneous systems? It makes a hasty generalization. If it tends to increase then this implies not always which we know as it fluctuates on microscopic levels 2. It assumes time is dynamic and linear rather than static and cyclical or even illusory. Time could be symmetric. 3. The law may very well be a statistical tendency rather than an absolute law. 4. The Poincare Recurrence Theorem gives good reasons to doubt this law. There are just too many unknowns to believe that the existence of entropy necessitates that causality had a beginning or has an end.
You might be thinking about this in the wrong way It's not like we start at some point and then try to cross an infinite temporal distance An infinite temporal countdown doesn't work like that You can imagine it more like this: Garry has counted throughout all eternity, he has counted all the negative intervals. Today he counts "0". Yesterday he counted "-1". The day before that, he counted "-2", ad infinitum.
@@ibelieveitcauseiseentit9630 I agree that it is intuitive to think in a dynamic system causality cannot be infinite in the past but in a static system, it can be cyclical. One could hold to a "B" theory of time.
Our way of perceiving/thinking my be bound by time in a way that we can not escape. There may be a higher reality that we simply can not precive. I think that none-temporal "existence" may fall onto that category.
Some problems! God is not defined. Second Time is not explained. What is Time? What does it originate from? Lot of holes to work with from the start. But I love the enthousiam and its a great talk! Thanks! Btw, imagine black holes are a quantum state phenomena. you can forget then singuralities. Including a start state for the Universe.
Joe, can you do a video with Michael Heumer talking about his argument for reincarnation and a soul. He is an atheist to my knowledge. Id want to see your objections to his arguments.
The past is not finite. We know black holes evaporate with hawking radiation, which proves that even a singularity can't stop time completely. The big bang singularity might appear to move in the reverse direction of a black hole singularity, but the math of physics is the same even with a negative sign, so that would just mean in the past hawking radiation flowed in instead of out, implying time necessarily existed before the big bang.
Thanks for the vid Joe. Are you aware of any evidence for anything physical that exists in non metric time or amorphous time, or which has a timeless aspect to it? Cheers!
There are some physical and philosophical grounds for thinking that a non-spatiotemporal wavefunction exists! They certainly aren’t decisive, but they’re worth engaging. We briefly discuss some of those reasons, and cite authors who explore those reasons, in Sect. 8.3 of Existential Inertia and Classical Theistic Proofs!🙂 It’s also worth noting that, to run our criticisms based on these epistemic possibilities, we don’t need positive evidence *in favor* of them - instead, we need only point out that, for Craig to run his argument, *he* would need to *positively rule them out* , and yet he has done no such thing. Hope this helps my dude!!
@@racsooj456 Excellent question. I think one could certainly *try* to run an abductive argument here, and it would at least be *better* than a deductive argument. But I'm still deeply pessimistic about such an argument's prospects for success, since it's not clear why, e.g., God would be a better explanation for the beginning of our local spatiotemporal manifold than, e.g., the non-spatiotemporal universal wavefunction. The latter appears to me more parsimonious, more concordant with our background knowledge, etc. And it's also worth keeping in mind that there are just *so many* non-theistic explanations on offer, so even if God outcompetes *one* , I'm skeptical God would outcompete them *all* :)
@@MajestyofReason That's interesting. I think that's a valuable push back. I suppose one could tac it on to a cumulative case which is spearheaded by some data or argument that does the work of unsettling the parsimony of something like a universal wave function explanation. 🤔
It's hard to look at the graph starting at 20:04 and think anything other than outright dishonesty is at work here. On the graph, time clearly starts at a point and usable energy has a finite intercept depicted on the y-axis. But this is supposed to prove something about usable energy and the infinite past? It's reminiscent of another infamous graph in one of these videos where they're depicting the number of revolutions of two planets, allegedly across an infinite past, but the numbers start at zero at some finite point and diverge... Just WTF
I'd be interested to know what proportion of philosophers of religion actually think the Kalaam arguments are sound. Are there any surveys? What's your guess?
There are certainly arguments for its possibility! See my video "New objections to the Kalam still work". Philosopher Stephen Maitzen also offers some arguments for thinking the past is infinite in his book "Determinism, Death, and Meaning"
(13:30) *"The singularity is not a thing."* ... Well, that all depends on what you define as a "thing." Is a "transition point" a thing? *Example:* There was obviously a point somewhere in Earth's history where biological life became self-aware (humans). There was also a point somewhere in universal history where inanimate structure became biological life (prokaryote), ... so can this transitional point be called a "thing?" Likewise, there was a point somewhere down the line where nondimensional, organizational structure (mathematics) became multidimensional physical structure (the universe). That's what Big Bang's point of singularity represents: a "point of transition" from one state to another.
@@daniellinford9643 *"Sorry, that's not what a curvature singularity is in General Relativity. Are you familiar with the notion of an open boundary?"* ... Yes, and I simply have a different theory. One does not negate the other; they represent alternative theories (just like "multiverse theory" vs a "single finite universe"). Just because one theory says one thing doesn't mean all other theories must abide by that decree.
@@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC I don’t understand what you mean. A singularity is a mathematical notion independent of any physical theory. You could have a theory on which there are different kinds of singularities or on which singularities are not useful for describing nature, but you don’t get to just make up whatever new definitions you want and then find fault with me for failing to use your idiosyncratic definition.
@@daniellinford9643 *"I don’t understand what you mean. A singularity is a mathematical notion independent of any physical theory."* ... What? If there wasn't a mathematical singularity proposed at the origin of Big Bang, we'd have nothing to discuss, correct? Big Bang presumes that all of the matter and energy in the universe was compressed to a point of infinite gravity and density ... which violates the laws of physics. This demands a better explanation. All I'm doing is offering an alternative explanation for how that singularity can exist - not as a "point of compression," but rather as a portal from a nondimensional state to a multidimensional state. In other words, "nondimensional structure" (mathematical information) moved into "multidimensional structure" (matter and energy) via the initial singularity. Black hole singularities represent matter and energy being reduced down to a point where it can no longer maintain multidimensional structure, and thusly converts back into the nondimensional, "virtual" structure from which is came (mathematical information). *"You could have a theory on which there are different kinds of singularities or on which singularities are not useful for describing nature, but you don’t get to just make up whatever new definitions you want and then find fault with me for failing to use your idiosyncratic definition."* ... There is no need for me to redefine anything at all. I'm only working with what physics defines as a singularity. It's just another way to look at it other than "infinite compression."
@@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC You’re working from the non-technical and oversimplified (and ultimately incorrect) definition provided in some popularizations and then trying to offer a new theory based on that definition. This is why I started by asking if you were familiar with the notion of an open boundary. Before you try to offer a new theory, you should learn the mathematics involved. A singularity is not a point of infinite density.
@@CosmoPhiloPharmacoactually yes both science and philosophy show that the universe had a beginning. Actually science just confirms what most philosophers have known all along, the universe had a beginning.
@@ibelieveitcauseiseentit9630 actually no both science and philosophy do not show that the universe had a beginning. Actually science just confirms what Aristotle knew all along, the universe had no beginning.
Dude only 8 minutes in and already having my mind blown. From a modal perspective, an aspect of God would have to remain non-temporal. Such a composite being does seem implausible.
The universe isn’t eternal and here's why I think so: 1. Our universe is closed because the total amount of matter in it is constant. 2. Physics shows that our universe is expanding. 3. Expansion is a process with an initial state that is different from any subsequent state. 4. By 3, an expansion always has a beginning, marked by a unique initial state. 5. Expansion occurs iff energy is added to overcome inertia in the form of internal equilibrium. 6. By 4, an expanding universe can be eternal iff it existed eternally prior to its expansion. 7. Either our universe is all that exists or it is a subset of all that exists. 8(a). If our universe is all that exists, then it is isolated and subsumes 1. 8(b) But if our universe is isolated, then energy can't be added to it to overcome its inertia and drive its expansion from its prior state of non-expansion or internal equilibrium. 8(c): So our universe couldn't expand contrary to 2 unless 6 is false, so that our universe has a beginning at earliest coincident with the beginning of its expansion. 9(a) If our universe is a subset of all that exists, then, by 5, our universe was in energy equilibrium with its environment prior to its expansion. 9(b) But the sum of our universe and its environment would be isolated such that the energy relation between our universe and its environment can't be altered subsequently. 9(c) By 9(b), there would have been no net transfer of energy from the environment to our universe to overcome its inertia and drive its expansion from its prior state of non-expansion. 9(d) Accordingly, our universe couldn't expand contrary to 2 unless 6 is false, so that our universe has a beginning at earliest coincident with the beginning of its expansion. C(1): By 6, if our universe didn't begin, then it couldn't expand or be expanding. C(2): By 7 through 9, if our universe existed eternally prior to its expansion, then it couldn't expand or be expanding. C(3) But by 2, our universe is expanding. C(4): By C(1) through C(3), therefore, neither did our universe not begin nor did it exist eternally prior to its expansion. C: Therefore our universe isn't eternal.
I have finally found the channel where intelligent people blast away at Craig's ideas lol. After so many severely disappointing debates with other ill-prepared physicists and philosophers, its nice to see actual philosophers point out the dozens of flaws in his ideas at a much deeper level. Many of the issues raised are beyond me but I'm really happy to learn more
This is hilarious. So Dr. Linford says that Craig should argue that "a violation of the second law of thermodynamics is preposterously unlikely." How does that help the atheist in saying that the universe is eternal? If the laws of thermodynamics are regularities, then the burden of proof is on the atheist to show why it does not apply to the closed system of the entire physical reality. Simply arguing that it is possible commits the logical fallacy of special pleading. If you argue that all of physical reality is all there is as your justification then you are committing the logical fallacy of begging the question. No, the evidence strongly supports a beginning to the universe. Appealing to ad hoc hypotheses does not refute that.
@@Shams-fe6lq I did not say it was. But no scientist will deny that it is a regularity. If so, the burden of proof is on the person who denies that it doesn't apply to the universe as a whole. This critique of William Lane Craig actually strengthens his argument, because it show to what lengths atheists have to go to in order to "prove" an eternal universe.
(1) Linford wasn’t saying that would help the atheist in saying that the universe was eternal. He was pointing out a better way for Craig to run his argument, and then proceeded to explain why even that way fails. (2) No, the scientific evidence should leave us agnostic on whether the totality of physical reality is past finite, as Linford quite convincingly argues in his dissertation and papers. (3) Even if the scientific evidence strongly supports past finitude, that isn’t itself evidence that the universe began to exist, since beginning to exist requires far more than mere past finitude; it requires also saying that no physical reality (a) pre-exists metric time in a non-metric time, (b) exists timelessly sans metric time, (c) has a timeless aspect in Linford’s sense, and (d) is timeless simpliciter. But the scientific evidence supports none of this.
@@msmhao the key difference is that there’s no objective fact of the matter about the length or duration of non-metric time, as it is not broken up into measurable temporal intervals - for resources, see 53:38
I think no physical entity or even quantity can exist without time because time is the most basic physical quantity. This can be known through the fact that many physical formulas have time in their denominater. So if we bring an argument from time, it entails other quantities too. Now how can we argue from time? When we do not know how time is exactly, it probably implies that there can be more than one mode of existence for time. But I think there is a separate argument for each mode of time generally speaking: 1) Finite past with infinite future: arguments from this mode of time are retrospective and focus on a first cause. They are often known as causality (like Kalam). 2) infinite past with finite future: arguments from this mode of time are prospective and focus on an independent being. They argue from the premise that a chain of dependent beings cannot continue infinitely and there has to be an independent being in the future. 3) infinite past with infinite future: in this mode of time as John Locke says, the infinite timeline itself is possessed by God's eternal existence. 4) finite past with finite future: we can use Leibniz argument from circle of cause and effect in which God is the first and final cause but out of the circle. Final notes: Sometimes we use the properties from another mode of time to juxtapose it against an argument from another mode which I think is problematic. I also think that an amorphous time is just nominal. Why should we call it time in the first place?
Isn't the critique of Craig's Kalam based upon his distinction of Timeless-Temporal? But this isn't the only view of Time in relation to God, right? I've heard some other alternatives such as the relational view of time, what do you think about it @MajestyOfReason
The theist strongest argument has to do with the nature of change. That is to say, they can argue if something is eternal, it must be initially changeless but capable of change. if there is change then reasonably there is a first instance of change and for change to emerge, there must have been an intention to change prior to its actuality otherwise the emergence would be brute. This is why Craig thinks a mind is a good reason/explanation for its emergence as he also holds to a type of free will/agent causation. So either change has a first instance or not but its hard to explain what could initiate change in a substance that is ultimately time independent. I personally hold to a Parmenidean Monism that all change is illusory since existence cannot gain or lose a property that it already has by definition. So what is responsible for this illusion if not something inherent to the nature of energy itself. It could be stipulated that existence (what is) and its nature (what happens) are brute facts that require no prior explanation or maybe a mind can be defined as what a substance does in a particular arrangement, and if the entire substance was initially arranged in a certain way then it could be sufficient enough to begin the chain of causality. So a theist can simply say substances cannot be created but God would be the substance in a particular arrangement i.e. possessing a unified arrangement that would allow for emergence of a mind similar to how humans are born in a tabula rasa state and develop consciousness. Similar to a pantheistic framework. One thing I do know for sure is that the nature of change itself is very perplexing.
@CMVMic on God's 'intentions' - can it not be argued that since God is necessarily knowledgeable of all things, he doesn't necessarily intend to 'do' a thing at the moment He does? i.e. God does not intend after not having intended, because He knew from eternity what He would intend/ have intended; He nonetheless 'wills' for things to come into existence from His eternal knowledge of what He'd intend. On the point of why would there be a 'change'? Me personally since I'm a Muslim, I believe God has a wise purpose in creating everything - that is for His worship, since we believe God is a being deserving of worship, it'd make sense as to why God actualized the creation, but this doesn't mean God is forced to create or 'needs' worships, only that He is deserving of worship.
@roger5442 does the tenseless theory of time make sense with our everyday understanding of the matter around us? I've never really been able to grasp the B-Theory of time because it seems odd to me that all events exist tenselessly, which would deny causation (which is presupposed to understand science) lmk your thoughts.
@@msmhao Well this assumes omniscience and there are alot of problems with theory of knowledge. The problem of the criterion, the KK Regress problem, Munchhausen Trilemma, Plato's cave, not to mention, we need to define what knowledge is. Also, it wouldn't follow that God would be distinct from all of reality nor that God still existed. One could argue for pantheism but it wouldnt necessarily entail that. Furthermore, a person can claim a mind is a process so whatever state existence was in before the first instant of change did not have a mind or we can say since the first change resulted in separation, a mind never emerged until humans did. Also, when you speak of creation, what exactly are you referring to? The emergence of a new substance or the rearrangement of a preexisting substance? Surely, creatio ex nihilo violates ex nihilo nihil fit and creatio ex deo makes the word God a useless tautology for the Universe. Also, one could argue that the entirety of existence is worthy of worship, but as you said, it wouldnt follow that it should be worshipped. I personally find theism to be metaphysically incoherent.
@CMVMic I think a good response to the objection that creatio ex nihilo conflicts with ex nihilo nihil fit would be the Problem of Subjectivity; i.e. if something can only come from something else, and that 'something else' is of the same nature it came from, then it'd necessarily follow that God's subjectivity is the same as our subjectivity, but this is known to be false due to necessity. What do you think?
Mere mortals, like this simple PhD scientist of 50 years (i.e. me), do not understand what is meant by language used here, such as "metric time" or "begin to be metrically temporal". Perhaps some background explanation of terminology could be provided so that a wider audience might understand. I can understand what _might_ be meant by the individual words, or their particular combination, but cannot be sure. For example "metrically" means "measurably", and "temporal" means "of time", so we might assume that "begin to be metrically temporal" means "begins to be measurably of time", which is nonsensical. Part of the problem is the idea that _time_ can be viewed and measured outside time, or that spacetime can be observed outwith spacetime (so spacetime curvature must be _in_ something, or that expansion must be _in_ something) which is a naïve view, and wrong. That naïveté might lead one to believe that a finite time could not persist indefinitely. Advanced secondary school maths would disabuse a pupil of that misconception, and this would be confirmed in a university course on real analysis.
The distinction between metricated time and non-metricated time can be made mathematically rigorous and is taken seriously by physicists. Roger Penrose's cosmological model (conformal cyclic cosmology) actually requires the two notions, though he doesn't use that terminology. Since you raised your objection from a technical perspective (e.g., referencing your PhD and "a university course on real analysis"), I'll offer a technical reply. To begin, as you presumably know given your technical background, in both geometry and the context of Special and General Relativity, the word 'metric' does not refer to "measurable", at least in any ordinary sense of the word "measurement". Instead, a metric provides (roughly speaking) the distance between any two points in a given geometry. In Euclidean geometry, the metric is just the Pythagorean theorem. In the non-Euclidean geometries utilized for relativistic space-time, the metric is not given by the Pythagorean theorem. (One can object that, since the "metrics" used in relativistic space-time are not positive definite, they are technically "pseudo metrics". But this is a distinction that is usually glossed over and doesn't matter for our purposes.) For the sake of simplicity, let's consider a Minkowski space-time. Let's assume some reference frame in that spacetime. Now, relative to that reference frame, there will be an objective fact about the length of any space-time interval. Now, consider the class of space-times that are conformally equivalent to Minkowski space-time. And let's construct a new mathematical object by identifying all of these space-times with one another. To put that another way, we're going to throw away any of the distinctions between Minkowski space-time and any of its conformally equivalent counterparts. In the object that results from this procedure, there is no longer an objective fact -- even after adopting a reference frame -- as to the length of any curve. In other words, by identifying Minkowski space-time with all of its conformally equivalent counterparts, we've removed all of the metrical information; nonetheless, we've retained all of the topological and light cone structure. Let's call this object an amorphous space-time. In order to construct a spacetime where there is a transition from a non-metricated to a metricated region, we can excise a region from the amorphous spacetime and join it to a more ordinary space-time region. Depending upon how we join the two regions, we can ensure that the amorphous region precedes the more ordinary space-time region. And then it becomes natural to say that an amorphous (or non-metricated) region preceded a metricated region. "Part of the problem is the idea that time can be viewed and measured outside time, or that spacetime can be observed outwith spacetime (so spacetime curvature must be in something, or that expansion must be in something) which is a naïve view, and wrong." I think we're basically in agreement here. Given the explanation that I've provided, neither amorphous nor non-metricated space-time requires measuring time from outside of time, or that space-time curvature is somehow contained in anything, or that expansion must be in anything.
@@daniellinford9643 I was assuming a more general usage of language in a RUclips video, so I'll re-analyse in terms of SR/GR/Minkowski/Riemann. But it might take some time to produce the answer 42.
@@frogandspanner Well, you asked a technical question, so I gave a technical answer. In less technical terms, an interval of time is amorphous (or non-metricated) just in case there is no fact as to the length of that interval. There are analogous definitions for space or for space-time. So, whether an interval is metricated has nothing to do with whether that interval can be measured by some sort of external observer.
Is the idea of a universe that is metrically infinitely old and that was also preceded by an amorphous, non metric state of time coherent? I am just wondering because it would seem like a double wammy vs the kalam lol.
Some people will say that an infinite duration cannot be preceded by anything. I'm not one of them. I think that a duration that is infinitely long is perfectly coherent and that it's also perfectly coherent for an infinite duration to be preceded by another interval -- including a non-metricated interval. Certainly, all of that can be mathematically described. Of course, we don't have any good reason (as far as I can tell) for thinking that the universe is really like that. But that hardly bothers me; I think we're still far too early in cosmological inquiry to rule out such a possibility.
@@daniellinford9643 I wonder if York time is compatible with something like Penrose' Cyclic cosmology, in order to get something like this? My understanding of something like York time is a beginning of metric time infinitely long ago, correct me if Im wrong. Is there any functional difference between a beginning point infinitely long ago and no beginning point at all? Craig in the past has suggested the latter idea is even worse by his lights iirc. But its hard for me to see any difference practically speaking.
@@a.jperez202 That’s an interesting idea! I don’t see any logical incompatibility between the two, though, of course, that doesn’t mean that the resulting model describes our actual universe.
A wavefunction is not a wave in the colloquial sense. See Sect. 8.3 of Existential Inertia and Classical Theistic Proofs for explication and further references🙂
"Physicists have proposed that the universe might not have an equilibrium state. In that case, there isn't a maximum amount of entropy to obtain, and so the universe wouldn't reach equilibrium even if the entropy had been increasing forever". That is confused though. The only literature I've found supporting the claim that the universe might not have an equilibrium state is in the context of gravitational systems. However, that literature does not imply that entropy can increase forever. Total entropy will be continually transmitted between different gravitational subsystems, but the total entropy will not increase anymore. That is very much still a heat death of the universe. So unless someone could provide the physics literature that proves entropy can increase forever, I consider this criticism as misunderstood. And even if the claim is true, and the entropy is going to increase forever, this is irrelevant. If you meet a person (e.g. Mr Beast) who has always been counting natural numbers in non-decreasing order and has never counted negative integers, you know there must have been a finite number of increases in his counting history. Because entropy is a non-negative discrete quantity (it is proportional to the logarithm of an natural number of possible microstates in a given macrostate), and, from observation, the entropy is currently not infinite, then it follows there must have been a finite number of entropy increases in the past and thus a first member of the sequence, which we could call the thermodynamical beginning of the universe.
"So unless someone could provide the physics literature that proves entropy can increase forever, I consider this criticism as misunderstood." I'm not sure why anyone would need to "prove" that the entropy can increase forever. Surely, it's enough for the argument that I was making that we don't know whether entropy can increase forever. And to show that the universe's entropy could possibly continue to increase forever, all I need is a model that, for all we know, might be true. In fact, there are many cosmological models in which the universe's entropy is unbounded. One such model was offered by Carroll and Chen in a 2004 paper: arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/0410270.pdf "If you meet a person (e.g. Mr Beast) who has always been counting natural numbers in non-decreasing order and has never counted negative integers, you know there must have been a finite number of increases in his counting history. Because entropy is a non-negative discrete quantity (it is proportional to the logarithm of an natural number of possible microstates in a given macrostate), and, from observation, the entropy is currently not infinite, then it follows there must have been a finite number of entropy increases in the past and thus a first member of the sequence, which we could call the thermodynamical beginning of the universe." This isn't right and for several reasons. First, we don't know that the entropy of the universe is discrete. You're right that the entropy of a system is often expressed as the logarithm of the number of possible micro states in a given macro state, but that's not the most general definition of entropy. In fact, the definition you've given is only true if all micro states are equiprobable and the micro states are selected from a discrete distribution. We don't know that either assumption is true for all periods of cosmic history. Second, even if there have only been a finite number of entropy increases in the past, it doesn't follow that the past is finite. Third, a "thermodynamical beginning of the universe" -- i.e., some cosmological epoch that has minimum entropy -- is completely irrelevant if we suppose a tensed theory of time, as Craig does.
@@daniellinford9643 The original question really was, whether science points to the finite past, not whether finite past is possibly avoidable by constructing some ad-hoc model and claiming "for all we know, this model could be true". This is an antithesis of scientific thinking, which dictates that we choose the best explanation (one with most intellectual virtues, such as simplicity, explanatory scope, predictive power etc). The scientific consensus is that the universe is headed towards heat death. Sure, you don't have to prove that entropy is going to increase forever, but I would ask that you show that the intellectual virtues of such a hypothesis are on par with those of the heat death hypothesis. "but that's not the most general definition of entropy" In that case, can you state the most general definition of entropy, please? I would also ask, if it's not too much trouble, if you could provide an example of a physical system for which entropy cannot be defined in the sense of counting microstates.
@@tymmiara5967 No, the scientific consensus is not that the universe is headed towards heat death, particularly if, by “heat death”, you mean a maximum entropy state. One viable option, taken seriously by cosmologists, is that the universe has no equilibrium or maximum entropy state. I didn’t simply offer an ad hoc model. If you think that this option is unviable, then you shoulder the burden of proof to show us why we shouldn’t take it seriously. As for the general definition of entropy, the definition is that the entropy is the integral of rho*log(rho), where rho is a probability density. There are all sorts of systems for which the entropy is not the log of the number of states; this will happen, for example, in cases where a system is much more likely to occupy some states than others, eg, so-called jammed systems and other systems far from the domain of traditional equilibrium thermodynamics.
@@daniellinford9643 Models like Carroll's cannot avoid the general problem of Boltzmann's brain paradox. In fact, his model also involves a violation of the unitarity of quantum mechanics. Other attempts to reverse the thermodynamic arrow that avoid Boltzmann's brains end up implying the very beginning they seek to avoid. The fact is that a global violation of the second law of thermodynamics, although nomologically possible (since it is a statistical law), is extraordinarily unlikely, and that is more than enough for the argument. Furthermore, the high number of instances of general suggestions being refuted indexically works as a refutation of the suggestion itself. This is because, in this case, the aspects of the models that generate problems are almost always the same. Therefore, a "general idea" is not enough. It is necessary to show how this would be possible.
And about the implications of a thermodynamic beginning for an absolute beginning, it is necessary to keep in mind which alternatives are at stake. So to say that "a thermodynamic beginning does not imply an absolute beginning of the universe" is to commit to the possibility of an unchanging universe that violates well-established known physical laws or is defined under unintelligible categories of things. This last case includes all this meaningless talk about abstract things like timeless wave functions, exotic metrics, the Neoplatonic "One" and other concepts of things that we know, synthetically a priori, to be impossible (which holds for actual infinity, dialetheias , uncaused beginnings, and all sorts of nonsense that philosophers like to propose).
I’ve found my cosmology exert! 😀 Q: I struggle to understand how anything could exist outside of a universe. No laws of physics, no time, etc. If these things do exist outside of OUR universe, that would be considered another universe. Conclusion: nothing can be “timeless”
I find it misleading a little, that the video is titled "No, science doesn't show the unviverse began to exist", but what in fact the video is saying is merely that "William Lane Craig's scientific arguments that the universe began to exist are wrong".
Not really; we repeatedly point out that science itself can only at best show that our local spatiotemporal manifold is past finite, and that this is entirely insufficient for showing that the totality of physical reality began to exist, since (a) some physical reality might have pre-existed the beginning of metric time within a state of non-metric time, (b) some physical reality might have existed timeless sans metric time, (c) some physical reality might have a timeless aspect in Dr. Linford’s sense, and (d) some physical reality might be timeless simpliciter, as many philosophers of physics take the universal wavefunction to be. Nothing in science shows that all of (a)-(d) hold. So our video isn’t simply addressing WLC’s idiosyncratic scientific arguments.
Whether the universe began to exist or not isn't even a scientific question. You can't scientifically verify the answer. So, this is a scientistic fallacy (conflation of a non-scientific claim with a scientific claim). It's very strange to me seeing a PhD who doesn't even realize the problem here.
@@benroberts2222 Even at 35:40, he's talking about "drawing a metaphysical conclusion from a scientific theory." That's just more scientism. You can't do that.
@@lightbeforethetunnelno, scientism is the idea that science is the only way to know things, emphasis on "only." Scientific realism is the idea that scientific theories are true/knowable to some extent. The difference is that realism does not entail that there aren't other ways to know stuff; and it's limited to discussion about theories that science generates, since scientific observation is commonly considered justification for knowledge. So if one is a realist then one can obtain certain metaphysical knowledge from those theories, at the very least ruling out metaphysics that conflicts with how those theories are constructed. Realist positions tend to be quite nuanced and complex so I'm simplifying here. If you're not a realist, which it sounds like, then the point made at that timestamp is in agreement with you that none of this science stuff tells us anything about the metaphysical. That's a more instrumentalist take: the theories are probably false but they can make accurate predictions about future observations, so no metaphysical commitments are needed to employ them.
The criticism "A monotonically increasing function doesn't need to start anywhere. Instead, it could be that the entropy of the universe has always been increasing" is a straw man. Yes, monotonicity doesn't do the trick, but monotonicity together with the fact that entropy cannot be negative and together with the fact that the entropy is a *discrete* quantity (it is proportional to the logarithm of a *number* of microstates in a given macrostate, which is an integer number) does indeed imply (at least to my understanding, feel free to correct me) that the entropy could not have been increasing from eternity past. There must have been a finite integer number of entropy increases. The best you could do is to say that entropy might have been constant for eternity past and just so happened to start increasing at some moment in time, but such an eternal state of constant entropy is impossible in practice, and can only be constructed in idealised theoretical scenarios (e.g. non-colliding gas particles in a box with perfectly elastic walls). In these idealised scenarios, however, the entropy cannot be anything *but* constant, so they automatically disqualify themselves from being candidates for the models of the early universe.
"Yes, monotonicity doesn't do the trick, but monotonicity together with the fact that entropy cannot be negative and together with the fact that the entropy is a discrete quantity (it is proportional to the logarithm of a number of microstates in a given macrostate, which is an integer number) does indeed imply (at least to my understanding, feel free to correct me) that the entropy could not have been increasing from eternity past. There must have been a finite integer number of entropy increases. " As I pointed out in reply to your other post, entropy has a more general definition and reduces to the logarithm of the number of microstates only under some special conditions. Without discreteness, your conclusion doesn't follow. "The best you could do is to say that entropy might have been constant for eternity past and just so happened to start increasing at some moment in time, but such an eternal state of constant entropy is impossible in practice, and can only be constructed in idealised theoretical scenarios (e.g. non-colliding gas particles in a box with perfectly elastic walls)." I don't see a good reason to think that this is true. Perhaps you could elaborate on why we think that this can only be constructed in idealized theoretical scenarios. But look: we don't know what sort of physical principles describe the universe once we go sufficiently far into the universe's past. So, on what basis can we rule out the possibility that those principles -- whatever they may be -- could have involved the universe's entropy remaining static for some indefinitely long -- or even infinitely long -- period?
"How do you know that?" forever trumps every model. The "God did it" hypothesis in particular stands no chance against this eternal annoying question. Even a child asking "Why? Why? Why?.." can see that.
Awesome video! Really enjoyed it! I have a concern though about the way you two are analyzing the scientific evidence for the beginning of the universe. It may be the case that the evidence that we currently have does not *prove* the beginning of the universe, but surely it lends very strong support for it. It’s always possible to take every piece of scientific evidence for the beginning of the universe and explain it away by saying that there’s a model for an eternal universe that could account for it. But this to me seems like the way young-earth creationists also go about “explaining away” the scientific evidence for an old universe. After all, we can’t necessarily *prove* that the universe is 13.8 billion years old, but we do have incredibly strong evidence which points to that conclusion - which is enough to compel any rational person to accept it as true. But YECs have created scientific models for a 6,000-year-old universe which logically-speaking do account for all of the evidence brought in support of an old universe, albeit they are incredibly contrived and thus improbable. It’s the cumulative case for the old universe that makes it so compelling. To the best of my knowledge, on balance, the cumulative scientific evidence makes the beginning of the universe more probable than not (as many leading cosmologists recognize) even if the data doesn’t *prove* the beginning of the universe.
Thanks for the comments! Briefly: (1) Importantly, cosmological models featuring an infinite past are live and physically respectable in a way that makes it currently an open question in physics whether the totality of all physical reality is past finite. This is totally different from YEC, which isn’t a live, biologically/geologically/astronomically respectable model. Sure, it can be rendered consistent with the data through monumentally unlikely auxiliaries; but that’s totally different from the physically live models in physics featuring an infinite past, which don’t add monumentally unlikely auxiliaries. There’s simply no consensus in physics about whether the right cosmological model will involve a metrically finite or infinite past for all of physical reality. This wouldn’t be true if the evidence strongly told in favor of past metrical finitude. We weren’t just floating logically possible models, containing monumentally improbable auxiliaries, that flaunt the consensus of relevant experts, as YEC does. Instead, we were highlighting physically possible models, containing no monumentally improbable auxiliaries, that are currently a matter of debate among the relevant experts. The disanalogy is apparent. (2) Second, the scientific evidence *at best* supports past metrical finitude. But that isn’t enough to support that the totality of physical reality began to exist. To support *that*, we would need reason to think that (a) no physical reality could pre-exist metric time in a non-metric time, (b) no physical reality could exist timelessly sans metric time, and (c) no physical reality has a timeless aspect in Linford’s sense. As far as I’m aware, science does not supply us good reason to think that all of (a)-(c) hold. (3) Thrid, as Dr. Linford argues quite convincingly in his dissertation [linked in the description], the current state of science should render us agnostic about whether the totality of physical reality began. He doesn't merely raise bare logical possibilities, like YEC's positing demons planting fossils and God allowing this to test our faith; he argues quite forcefully that *the science itself* doesn't strongly support the universe's beginning.
It’s not posible to know God by argumentation alone. In fact arguments are only there to show that the belief in god is reasonable. One thing we can be certain of is that consciousness is a fundamental necessity, and there is not philosophical nor empirical evidence that suggest it is cause by physical particles. Consciousness is the ontological and epistemological ground of knowledge. From there to God there is small step.
_"One thing we can be certain of is that consciousness is a fundamental necessity,"_ Certain how? Epistemically certain? Psychologically certain? Faithfully certain? I only ask because I don't see any particular manner of certainty that would apply to consciousness being a fundamental necessity, but perhaps you can elaborate on what variety of certainty you speak of and how you arrive at that conclusion.
Few things: (1) mind physicalism is a contentious debate, so it’s not exactly “solved,” (2) “consciousness as the epistemological/ontological ground of knowledge” sounds like foundationalism, which is very suspect, and (3) all this assumes an individualistic and internalistic epistemology (i.e. knowledge derives from my inner consciousness/awareness of objective grounds/foundations/principles). All these positions are Enlightenment notions of rationality in the West. Classical, medieval, and postmodern ideas of rationality do not agree. The roots for such ideas are found in late medieval scholasticism but came to full fruition in the Enlightenment(s) with Descartes’s cogito. It’s a complex topic. Many philosophies downstream from Hegel have started moving more towards the predominance of culture and tradition even in our epistemology. So basically, what most Westerners would refer to as “common sense” or “first principles” or “objective,” these guys would refer to it as nothing else than one’s culture/tradition. So basically, there is no such thing as an individualistic epistemology; all beliefs are communal and passed on (testimonial knowledge). While many will move directly to relativism with such an idea, many of them argue that it is not necessary. There is a nuanced third answer between objective truth and relativism which places “truth” in a particular tradition rather than in the individual. Figured anyone reading might enjoy hearing about non-individualist epistemologies. Oakeschott, Macintyre, and Polanyi are the best fellas to read on this subject of traditionalistic/communal epistemology.
Why think consciousness is irreducible? it can be reduced to temporal and causal relations, without them there is no consciousness. Consciousness can be due tot he emergence of change of a substance. Without change, one cannot be conscious and without the existence of a substance, nothing can change. So it seems both a substance and change are more fundamental than consciousness as it follows that consciousness is contingent on those two things. Consciousness is not a substance that things are made of, consciousness is a noun given to what a substance does.
@@CMVMic if consciousness is a noun of a substance, if it is just a name of a substance, then… what is this substance fundamentally made of ? What are the properties of this substance and it’s components?
Dr. Daniel looks like a synthesis of gigabrain and gigachad
He is indeed the origin of these Jungian archetypes through a purely actual manifestation🗿
So Megamind?
But Joe has 3 Spiderman movies on his resume.
Incredibly accurate.
Tbh (eventually to be Dr) Joe Schmidt looks like a synthesis of gigabrain and someone who could very plausibly be a nerdy puppyboy in their spare time x3
It always motivates me to see Tom Holland talk about philosophy.
Just kidding. I love these topics. Congratulations on the channel.
When he said "tired light hypothesis" I had the mental image of light stopping to take a nap in the middle of it's journey through space. It was tired and needed some shut eye before proceeding across the universe.
eepy light hypothesis
Give Lux a break, they've been zooming around for a good while now. As long as I can remember!
According to relativity, from the perspective of the photon everything is length contracted to a single point, while from our perspective if you put a small little clock on the photon it would be frozen still. You can read about muon decay in our atmosphere for a similar description for sub-light speeds. So really, from the perspective of the photon, it is already just sitting in one spot, and hence, it is already napping :P. And the rest of the universe of course exists in the same point from its perspective. At least I think I do remember this pretty clearly from my special relativity lectures :)
great stuff guys well done. Going to be releasing a new video on this next week with scientists who have reexamined the BGV theorem, exciting new paper.
What’s the paper?
Yay! Looking forward to this!
What’s the paper?
Where's the video, Phil?
@@CosmoPhiloPharmaco it;; come out by the end of this week
It's weird how I've come to a place in my life where I'm excited to watch two academics discussing apologetics from the eleventh century. Teenage me would be so disappointed!
To quote world renown physicist Richard Feynman... "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."
It looks like they have taken Bertrand Russell’s quote was taken out of context. My understanding is that this quote was about accepting the universe existing was just a “brutal fact” as it was self-evident. As you say, he was not commenting on an eternal universe or a universe with a beginning.
I love these discussions. What I always find funny is how theists, when they got to a necessary being/thing, suddenly take leaps and start ascribing all kinds of fancy properties to it...."because we need it to be like that in the end"
Wait a minute. Which theist ever manages to get to a necessary being exactly? 🤔 I'm curious.
@@lucofparis4819 They are all not happy with turtles all the way down. I can grant them an infinite-regress-stopper, but that's about it.
@blankvision2771 science does not show the universe was made. There is absolutely no evidence on if the universe ever began to exist. This is true because we cannot see before the very first tiniest of a fraction of a second of the big bang
@blankvision2771 No, you can't, and science hasn't either, let alone "ancient religion", whatever that means. The answers aren't in numbers either, given that they're nothing but mathematical abstractions. As the always, the answers are *in reality.*
And it is by observing reality that one can understand it, _not_ by armchair philosophising one's way into deluding themself with alluring stories of "creation" by some mysterious guy that just so happens to want a relationship with you.
@blankvision2771 Firstly, you know nothing about what I do or don't know about religion. Secondly, Platonism and Neoplatonism are not drawing from "ancient religion", but from the various traditions of Geometers, who are very much so their own community, wholly apart from the traditional priestly class of their time.
You could have said however that they are religious in and of themselves, which wouldn't have been far off. Case in point, Plato himself speaks of a Craftsman fashioning the Cosmos from preexisting Chaos, presumably some eternal entity of 'divine essence' as he understood that to be (some kind of eternal pneuma, I suppose).
Either way, those abstract objects he thought about were not Plutonic solids, but Platonic solids, which is a post-hoc name by the way, he didn't call them that himself. Also, the Platonic solids thingy comes from _Timaeus_ which he wrote around 360 BC in our calendar, whereas the allegory of the Cave comes from book VII of _the Republic_ which he wrote between 387 and 370 BC. Plato states himself in _Timaeus_ that the book comes after and is intended as a sort of sequel to _the Republic._
Last but not least, Plato's evidence for the relevance of his model to reality is effectively "trust me bro, it's the only theory that makes sense". Again, armchair philosophising...
Looking forward to reading his dissertation. Good stuff!
Also, not very relevant, but I just got a First at Oxford, so I'm rather happy :))
Yoooooo Let's go!!!! congrats :)
Congrats, have you been to the Oxford Socratic Society?
@@PhilHalper1 Not yet, but I have several friends who are regular attendees - I do hope to join in October.
@@calebp6114Come! I’ve only been to a few sessions but everyone is extremely nice :)
Happy to see you happy and congratulations and well done … not an easy feat!
Its not about being wrong. Its about being a liar.
WLC admitted the Kalam was at odds with science in his book aptly named "the Kalam Cosmological Argument" moreover he was directly confronted and corrected on this by physicists on multiple occasions and has never changed his false information.
Its a lie, not a question of wrongness.
something something lower the bar 😜
Alexander Vilenkin said he represented his theory well.
tons of reading material. love it!!
Starting at 1:11:00 I really appreciate the comments made by both Daniel and Joe here. I think this is one of the places where PhilRel can spur interesting investigation of other philosophical issues, but because there's so much apologetic effort invested into one particular research goal (getting YHWH from the Kalam), it kneecaps further investigation both by (a) deterring philosophers of religion from fully exploring those adjacent questions and (b) deterring outside philosophers from opining on kalam stuff for fear of getting caught in the crossfire of apologetic poo throwing.
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Great video! I love this topic! I enjoyed it. Entertaining but powerful response. Thanks!
Great discussion! It's a perfect illustration of why the Kalam is my favorite theistic argument. Even though it's wrong in every step, it's wrong in ways that are really interesting to discuss.
It’s similar for me, though I would only say ‘wrong at most steps’!🙂
I really enjoyed this video! Keep up the great work
Bro I don’t know a damn thing that’s going on but I love it
Same 😂
1:14:00 Regarding the Sean Carroll book: that title sounds like the book is a compilation of the YT videos he did during the pandemic lockdowns. I highly recommend those.
Indeed, it is! The book is a great read, too, since it's a more refined version of the YT videos.
Really interesting discussion. And for once I managed to follow most of it.....I think.
Feel free to ask questions!
Can we get a debate with Craig? Woooh
Hey, am I wrong or you used to participate in a religious forum with this nickname 'MeowMeow"?
@@CosmoPhiloPharmaco which forum? The odds are that it’s a different meow.
In the beginning was nothing and it went on that way for an amusing length of time. It endured, simultaneously, for precisely 42 seconds, 42 psuedo-seconds, 42 femto-seconds, 42 gestational periods of an 18th century blue whale, 42 readings of Hitchhikers Guide to Cosmological Time Metrics (forthcoming), 42 Galactic Empire Calendars (403rd historical accuracy revision), 42 renditions of a particularly inane joke written as a youtube comment, 42 Mayan Calendar cycles, and 42 First Stones Thrown by Sinless Apes (not yet evolved). Then nothing got bored and exploded.
Everything was quite strange because time and causality had a particularly fractious love affair when the Universe was born. All things were strewn about chaotically... especially the philosophers.
Great talk. I enjoyed it.
The universe of course began to exist. The reason is that the universe has been changing, which means that it isn't eternal, and must therefore have begun.
It’s perfectly consistent that something changes throughout an infinite past. It clearly doesn’t follow from the fact that something changes that it isn’t past-eternal. Also, just because the universe’s past is finite, it doesn’t follow that the universe began to exist, for the reasons laid out in the video.
@@MajestyofReason I failed to say changing intrinsically. If A changes intrinsically to B, then B can't be A, meaning that A ceases to exist. Is it possible to have an infinite past in this case? And is an infinite past synonymous with being eternal? Thanks for clarifying.
@@mathewsamuel1386 thanks for the clarification. Something can persist throughout intrinsic change. After marriage, someone might change intrinsically in their mass (they typically gain mass in the form of extra belly fat). But it’s one and the same person who changes intrinsically. So it’s entirely consistent for one thing to persist throughout an infinite past whilst changing intrinsically
@MajestyofReason I see. But it seems that this is true only in a very restricted sense. E.g., a person is more than their material body, and gaining body mass doesn't change who a person is. But suppose it were possible to change a black African into a Caucasian. Even if the personality of the original black African is retained, could it be said that, as a Caucasian, the black African persisted? Or take a stone. If, say, a volcano deposits material on the stone that made it larger or that the stone gets shrunk by some abrasive agent. Would it be correct to say that we have the same stone?
I’d love to hear Dr. Ryan Mullins discuss with Dr Linford.
Last time I was this early, it was still "only two weeks to flatten muh curve"
Ooph, sometimes i need to replay sections a couple of times to understand the dialog. Love it, but some clearer lanuage would be nice
You could try watch at a slower speed?
@@ealoinatakes too much time
Joe i recommend you to watch and read Sabine Hossenfelder if you haven't yet.
I loved this video! I learned some new things here (e.g., Malament-Manchak theorem). Very interesting. Already "liked," shared and added it to my counter-apologetics playlist.
Wonderful to see you here, as always :)
@@MajestyofReason Thanks!
Is Joe still an agnostic (meaning being about 50/50 on a lot of evidence for both theism and non-theism)?
You can be an agnostic atheist or an agnostic theist. Agnosticism is about knowledge, not about what you believe to be true or not.
It seems he's still an agnostic. And his agnosticism is like 50/50 in terms of percentage.
In an interview or video, he said that the contingency argument is one of the best arguments supporting theism (maybe the best), so I think good arguments like this make him an agnostic and counterbalance the evidence according to his view.
To your question at the end, Joe about why theists find this argument so powerful, I think it's because they already believe in the first place. Craig admits he was a believer *before* he went anywhere near a philosophy department. He revised an already existing argument that supported a conclusion he already held. So, it doesn't need to be *convincing*, it just needs to sound plausible on some level to support what he (and the others) already believes. The question is then, if it didn't convince him in the first place (as he already held the conclusion to be true when he encountered the argument), then why does he think it should be convincing to anyone else?
Craig claims that he was convinced by his personal religious experiences. I can be sympathetic to someone who says, "Well, I had this particular sort of experience that convinced me that x was true, but, given that others haven't necessarily had that experience, I can't blame them for finding my own experience unconvincing. So, I now go about trying to find arguments that others will find convincing so that they might believe me about the experience that I had."
Let's consider an analogy. (The following scenario is fictional.) Suppose that I had a childhood friend -- let's call them Terry -- who I remember quite well. I remember the friend winning a state mathematics championship, but then being shot in the school parking lot. I remember this experience as being personally moving and as having a profound effect on my subsequent life. As an adult, I meet up with some former classmates, none of whom remember Terry. And they all skeptical that there was ever a shooting at our school. Certainly, they don't remember that, and if such a tremendous and traumatizing event had taken place, surely they would have remembered it. Perhaps one of my classmates even claims that they were the person who won the state mathematics championship -- so that Terry couldn't have!
My own recollection of my experience is not going to convince my former classmates. Utterly convinced that my memories are veridical and wishing to convince others, I might go about trying to provide evidence that what I remember really took place. I might dig up old papers, try to find old teachers, search through court records, attempt to find Terry's grave, and so on. Maybe I even get a PhD in a relevant academic field -- like journalism, criminology, or psychology (with a focus on memory). In that case, haven't I acted like Craig? Haven't I found a set of arguments to justify my views to others, even though it wasn't those arguments that convinced me of my views in the first place?
Of course, I think the Kalam argument in fact fails -- otherwise this would be a very different video.
@@daniellinford9643 Very interesting point!
@@daniellinford9643 I suppose, but I don't feel like that's what Craig does. I think he presents the KCA more as an inescapable proof of a god, not really as an attempt to convince others from a point of view whereby he has some other proof he knows isn't good enough (the witness of the holy spirit in his "heart", for example). I think he believes this to be a game-ender, allowing his pre-biased beliefs to completely blur a rational response to all the criticisms against the argument. That's why he believes this so strongly --> it's something that is consistent with his prior and deeply believed conclusions.
@daniellinford9643 Hi again! Actually several weeks ago, I emailed Craig and asked him this very question and yesterday, he replied to me on his website. I thought I'd share his answer with you as you might be interested in it. My question, summarised, was basically: Why do you think other should be convinced of the KCA when you already believed it before you revived it and therefore weren't even convinced yourself? I also mentioned challenges to the argument. His answer is verbatim below (except where I removed when he mentions my name):
"Your question, [my name], confuses being converted with being convinced. Since I was a Christian theist when I commenced my doctoral studies in England, my study of the kalām cosmological argument did not convert me; but the argument did convince me. You see, I went to England with an open mind about the argument. Ever since first learning about the argument from Stuart Hackett’s The Resurrection of Theism following graduation from college and about the history of the argument from Frederick Copleston’s magisterial A History of Philosophy, I was so gripped by the argument that I just had to settle my mind about whether it was a sound and convincing argument. So I made it the focus of my study in my doctoral work under John Hick at the University of Birmingham.
My studies convinced me more than ever that the argument is sound and persuasive. Not only did the philosophical arguments hold up, but I became aware of the truly extraordinary astrophysical evidence in support of the premise that the universe began to exist. So the argument did convince me.
The answer to your question, “why do you feel it should be convincing to others?” is pretty obvious! (i) It is logically valid; (ii) its premises are true; and (iii) its premises are better supported by the evidence than their contradictories. As for “all of the scientific and philosophical objections to the argument,” I have tried to do my philosophical duty by responding to every scholarly criticism of the argument I’m aware of (as well as to some truly ridiculous objections on the Internet) to show why they fail to be convincing. I’ve even gone to the extraordinary length of debating the argument with the top objectors in live public debates before university audiences. Have you seen my debate, for example, with Prof Dr Ansgar Beckerman at the Universität München? Watch it and tell me who you think made the more convincing case.
So don’t be cowed by the mere volume of objections, [my name] -of course, atheists and agnostics will object to the argument! Think of what’s at stake for them. I can be truly open-minded about the argument, while they cannot."
This video doubled my IQ. My brain hurts
This is magic to my ears one day I would like to understand everything they said.
Who knew SpiderMan was so into the philosophy of Christian apologetics. 😊. . . great video!
Regarding BGV theorem, in his book Many Worlds in One, Vilenkin writes:
“It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape: they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.” (176)
If you are willing and dont mind a long comment, I would like to ask for some help from those who are willing to look over a hypothesis and give me some feedback on it. Its about why I think many questions and arguments get avoided. I am sure you have seen politicians do this before during debates.
If you have 12 minutes the first basic part I will go over is about fast/slow thinking. If you want there is a 12 minute video by veritasium called "the science of thinking" that will explain it very well. I think this is knowledge that can really benefit people if they do not know about it. The next part though I dont know any videos for and I dont know if anyone really had the idea I have before.
The knowledge of the fast/slow mind is what is relevant from that video and I think a good starting point for the discussion. The video also gives examples of people doing it live, but it most likely will work on you as well so that is how I will show you. I am going to ask you a question, and I am going to predict the answer you will have pop in your mind at first, and predict that will be a wrong answer. This works on most people and you can try if for yourself on others to see too, its an interesting conversation starter.
A bat and a ball together cost 1.10, the bat costs 1.00 more then the ball, how much did the ball cost?
You might have an answer flash in your head right away with fast inaccurate fast mind but if you check that answer with your slow but more accurate conscious awareness, you can see that answer is wrong but it takes effort to do. The answer of ten cents is not the right answer but most people have that pop in their head because of the fast thinking mind that we rely on most of the time.
The fast unconscious mind is taking everything in and trying to make sense of it really fast. Its 11 million bits a second. But sometimes it makes mistakes. The slow conscious mind is 40-50 bits and lazy but it can check things and bringing the unconscious mistake to conscious awareness it can correct it.
The next thing to understand is about carl jung and the 4 ways the unconscious complex he called shadow deals with reality. The shadow is an unconscious complex that is defined as the repressed and suppressed aspects of the conscious self. there are constructive and destructive types of shadow. Carl jung emphasized the importance of being aware of shadow material and incorporating it into conscious awareness lest one project these attributes onto others. The human being deals with the reality of shadow in 4 ways. Denial, projection, integration and/or transmutation.
Now I believe what is happening when a question that exposes a conflict in a belief, idea, something that someone said, or even about someone they idolize and the question gets avoided, that is the fast unconscious mind going into denial and the response is often a projection. This also can trigger and emotional response activating the amygdala more and the pre frontal cortex less where rational conscious thought is said to happen and the amygdala starts to get the body to flood itself with chemicals/hormones.
Its like the fast mind knows conscious awareness will say its wrong. so it blocks it off to defend itself from admitting its wrong. in cases of denial and because it blocked off the rational mind, the responses are often irrational. Like personal attacks do not address the issue or answer the question. I think we can agree people have a very hard time now days admitting when they are wrong, I am not except from this myself I do realize. And we can see how badly questions avoidance effects us if you watch political meetings and watch them avoid questions all day long.
Ok, so the first thing to go over is denial as that is the main one I expose with questions. A disowning or refusal to acknowledge something I think is a good definition for it here. There is a really good 2 minute video I use as an example of this. A streamer named vegan gains claiming lobsters have brains after some one said he can eat lobsters because they do not have brains. He googles it and starts to read what it says. When he gets to the part where is says neither insects nor lobsters have brains, he skips it and says they literally are insects then skips over that line and continues to read the rest. Just like in the fast thinking video, his fast mind already read that line and refused to acknowledge it in unconscious denial, and just skipped it.
The person then tells him he skipped it and he reads it again and sees the line this time. Still being defensive of his claim and refusing to accept he was wrong, he tried to discredit the source and its the lobster institute of maine. If you would like to see the video for yourself its 2 minutes by destiny clips and the video is called " Destiny Reacts To Vegan Gains Ignoring Search Result That Contradicts Him". Justin turdo avoiding the question of how much his family was paid by the we charity 6 times in a row I think is denial as well. I think jordan peterson not being able to answer his own question of does he believe god exists and asking what do and you mean then saying no one knows what any of those words mean while being seemingly angry is think is another really good example of denial... and projection. And while JP find those words difficult, other people understand them easy. Even he does pretty much any other time they are used.
So projection is next up. Psychological projection is a defense mechanism people subconsciously employ in order to cope with difficult feelings or emotions. Psychological projection involves projecting undesirable feelings or emotions onto someone else, rather than admitting to or dealing with the unwanted feelings. Many times a mind in denial will use projections for responses. Someone getting mad and telling the other person to not interrupt when they have been doing that a lot themselves would be an example. I have done this myself. The people who tell me I dont understand my own questions and my point is wrong when they do not even know what the point is are all examples as well. I ask them to steel man my position to show then understand my point and they just avoid that question as well clearly showing they do not understand my point.
Now we have integration and/or transmutation. Integration is when you bring an unconscious behavior into conscious awareness and accept it. I know that I interrupt people talking sometimes even though I think that is wrong to do. I have a conscious awareness of it, but I have not been able to completely change the behavior.... yet. That is where transmutation comes in. Transmutation is to completely change that unconscious behavior. From being impatient to being patient, of from distrust to trust, hate into understanding and love even.
So was this understandable or confusing?
if you understand it, do you think its possibly true?
Do you have any questions? If you have any tips I am would gladly listen.
I think I understand the objection to "beginning to exist" near the start of this video.
In order for something to 'begin to exist', there has to be A) a finite past for that thing, and B) a temporal prior state when it did not exist. Is that right or over-simplified?
Please clarify the latter for me I don’t rlly get it?
Someone could have that sort of view, but Craig doesn't -- and neither do I! If you want to read more about how I think about the notion that physical reality had a beginning, you can read the paper that I published in Erkenntnis: philsci-archive.pitt.edu/21340/1/Modal_Condition_For_Erkenntnis.pdf
Didn't Vilenkin himself at one point say that if someone rejects a realist interpretation of General Relativity, they have no business at all citing the BVG Theorem as evidence of any kind of beginning? I think I remember him saying that at some point, but I can't find it.
If you can find that, please send it to me! As far as I know, only Phil Halper and myself have previously raised a tension between the Craig's use of the BVG theorem and Craig's Neo-Lorentzianism.
@@daniellinford9643 I mean, I should think it should go without saying that you can't treat a scientific model as authoritative if you openly reject the very foundation it's based upon as having any objective reality. Anyway, if I find it I'll let you know. It was hearsay though, so it may not even exist for all I know.
Honestly though, even if the person I heard that from just made it up, someone really should contact Vilenkin and make it clear to him. Because he's naively endorsed Craig's use of the BVG Theorem on at least one occasion, and I don't think he would do that if he knew Craig was an open anti-realist about all of modern cosmological physics.
@@fanghur The situation is slightly more complex because the BGV theorem does not require General Relativity.
In any case, I think this is a fairly big problem in this literature. A number of authors want to make use of results from physics, while also rejecting a realistic interpretation of the physical theories that those results require. The fact that this is -- upon reflection -- a fairly obvious idea -- but one that has been missed by so many philosophers -- has inspired me to spend more time working on the relationship between physical cosmology and scientific realism. That's the topic of the monograph I am currently working on.
@@daniellinford9643 correct me if I’m wrong, but the BVG theorem is at least built upon elements of General Relativity even if it isn’t a direct extension of it, right? It assumes the existence of spacetime, the speed of light being constant, space itself being what is expanding, etc. That has always been my understanding of it.
44:06 Wow, that's crazy! If time is discrete then the BGV theorem doesn't apply to the universe?
Can we use this as a leverage for Craig to stop using Benardete paradoxes?
I'm just over six minutes in, and I get the distinct impression that the result is going to be that Craig has engaged in a lot of circumlocution to try and hide his special pleading. We shall see.
Loooove this video, thanks, y'all!
Side note: can we talk about WLC and his thing with goofy voices?
At this point you should just arrange a formal 3+ hours long debate (with Q&A 4+ hours) with WLC on KALAM.
The thing about Craig is that you can guarantee that if he'd been alive in the early 19th century, he'd be claiming a steady state infinite universe was proof of God.
If he'd been around before Copernicus, he'd be all about geocentrism proving God and our privileged position at the centre of creation.
If he'd been in Judea in 33CE, he'd be the one condemning Jesus' heresy.
Craig works backwards from his preferred conclusion and he's essentially admitted as much. I'm not sure why people take him seriously apart from his relatively high profile in the apologetics community.
@@shassett79
yeah. I suspect most people know him as 'that bloke who debated Hitchens', if they know of him at all. But the apologetics world exists in its own universe, where critical thinking isn't allowed in. You could show this discussion between Joe and Daniel to a million Christians, and it wouldn't change their mind at all about Craig.
He'll believe in anything that earns him a very comfortable income without having to work for it honestly.
Joe, I like to see your debate with others. Your debate will be a very rich and impartial debate.
Great conversation!
There's multiple lines of evidence that show the universe had a beginning, and if it didn't have a beginning, then we need some other explanation for phenomena such as hubble expansion, and the 2nd law of thermodynamics (as well as common sense intuition about the nature of evolving, chaotic systems).
For all intents and purposes, the universe had a beginning. There's no empirical difference between a universe with a beginning and our universe.
You may have your own pet theories that something else is going on. That's part of the scientific process, just like proposing incorrect hypotheses is part of the scientific process. When your pet theories reach the standard of empirical truth, we can take them a little more seriously.
You can't be a scientist unless you think the theories aren't quite right (or else why would you be researching?) EVERYONE thinks there's something deeper going on. The trick is to be able to critically differentiate between your personal speculation, and what the observations and experiments are saying.
Whether hubble expansion, the 2nd law of thermodynamics, etc. actually support the universe's beginning is addressed in the video :)
Also, note that there are physically live models, debated among physicists, which include an infinite past, and which explain the relevant observations. Plus, as we point out in the video, the scientific evidence *at best* supports only that our local spatiotemporal manifold's past is finite. But that isn’t enough to support the claim that the totality of physical reality began to exist. To support *that*, we would need reason to think that (a) no physical reality could pre-exist metric time in a non-metric time, (b) no physical reality could exist timelessly sans metric time, and (c) no physical reality has a timeless aspect in Linford’s sense. But science does not supply us good reason to think that all of (a)-(c) hold.
@@MajestyofReason The scientific enterprise isn't simply a model building exercise. Which is why science is in the state that it is! Scattered, but functionally predictive.
It's not just the models that are being debated, it's the nature of truth.
It may be the case that there is no empirically confirmable deterministic model of events prior to (the big bang, or some arbitrary point in space time that's simply relative to our perspective).
Also, it's almost certainly the case that beyond a certain small scale our theories are useless (a singularity). Same on the largest scale (a horizon).
It may even be the case that there is no empirically confirmable deterministic model of events that predict macroscopic phenomena (a concept known as emergence).
Look, I also have my own speculation about what's going on there. But, I don't pretend that it's based on anything more than some mathematical extension of physical principles that we're pretty sure don't work all that well in the early universe. Also, I change my mind every day, and consider LOTS of different theories about what's going on in those arenas.
It's PURE speculation, so I just say what it looks like on the face of it.
This is where we have reached the limit of our understanding.
@@ywtcc Do you feel Craig is justified in his claims that science proves that the entire physical universe began to exist at a single point in the finite past? To me it just seems like he's bastardizing physics to reach his preferred metaphysical conclusion.
The funny thing that i find, why people still talk about Craig's Kalam ? When a lot people say is bad argument but still people talk about it and don't mention Joe Schmid is like Craig's Kalam fans
What exactly do you mean by non-metric time?
A time for which there's no objective fact of the matter concerning its duration (and so it isn't metricated into measurable temporal intervals, for instance). For resources, see the screen at 53:48
Just starting to watch this, but I always have to chuckle when folks appeal to what "atheists have always believed X" (e.g., at 2:38) as if that makes it more likely that atheism somehow predicts or entails X. Craig himself holds quite a few novel and idiosyncratic positions, and this same argument could be marshaled against him with great ease... Just seems like throwing stones in glass houses.
Daniel just said .. second law of thermodynamics is not fundamental...how can he say that??
The second law of thermodynamics is certainly not a fundamental law! We’ve known since the 19th century that the laws of thermodynamics have an explanation in terms of more fundamental phenomena. That’s the entire subject of a field called “statistical mechanics”. :)
@@daniellinford9643 please give us link or anything showing 2 law of thermodynamics is not fundamental also first law.... And even if is not fundamental still the laws works ..and the argument still works ..
@@Yesunimwokozi1 I can do better than that. Just pick up any statistical mechanics textbook. When I was an undergraduate, we used Kittel’s Thermal Physics.
@@Yesunimwokozi1 As he explained in the video, the argument doesn't still work. You can't just ignore everything he said in the video my dude
@@MajestyofReason am going to report this to Dr craig
Can you try to host a discussion with him and Craig?
Good show! 😊👍
Fantastic video! A must watch for any layperson like me interested in these topics! Thank you. ❤
Regarding the 'immaterial' property of the alleged cause of the cosmos, and how Craig's Kalam doesn't secure a non-physical cause:
What's exactly securing a non-material cause? I mean sure, Atomism isn't a live philosophical theory anymore, but it's old news at this point. Why not considering _current_ materialist theories? Are there any? I would think so. Are they actually affected by Craig's Kalam? I don't know. But I would suspect they aren't.
My reasoning is as follows: any modern theory of materialism is bound to be up to date with modern scientific knowledge about the nature of matter. Obviously, we went beyond atomism for quite a long while, yet the very name of atoms highlights the at least cultural legacy of atomism within the fields of physics concerned with the study of matter.
Additionally, quarks were seemingly the new atoms in the atomist sense of things for 20th century materialists. And lastly, what is now the Standard Model in Physics has now established on a fairly well known basis that the fundamental nature of matter, is in fact quantum mechanical and seemingly consists of excitations of quantum fields, i.e. wavefunctions that populate spacetime itself.
In other words, and irrelative of prior theories of materialism that are now dead anyway, I don't see how a modern materialism updated with current physics - thus acknowledging matter as wavefunctions that occupy spacetime - would be affected in any way by Craig's Kalam and its auxiliary assumptions about reality.
On the contrary, I think the things that have been discussed here suggest that a modern Materialist might even argue - in light of his modern understanding of the underlying nature of the substance of matter - that matter and spacetime are intrinsically linked, and that spacetime itself may in fact share the same fundamental nature with matter, i.e. that of being a wavefunction pertaining to some quantum field (here the inflaton I guess?). In short, it seems plausible that a modern Materialist could make cogent arguments for the Universe's content _and_ the Universe itself to be material in nature, which would presumably vindicate materialism.
Joe, I would like you to discuss this with Craig. Any chance you could get him on a Q&A?
46:26 - This is the absolute weakest part of Craig's argument: inferring the type of cause to be a powerful mind.
Right?! Also, on a side note, I really enjoyed your recent video on the implausibility of denying non-resistant non-believers🙂
Everyone i know generally seems to accept that its cyclic, i believe in entropy rather strongly although theres something striking to me about how i said that just now
The 2nd of thermodynamics although well supported makes its own assumptions. That entropy had a beginning or that it will always increase. Apart from the valid criticism that MoR and DL suggested I see no reason to think the 2nd law is necessarily true as it is descriptive, not prescriptive.
Here are some other reasons to question the 2nd law.
1. It states in an isolated system energy tends to increase over time. What makes us think the Universe is an isolated system instead of a set of simultaneous systems? It makes a hasty generalization. If it tends to increase then this implies not always which we know as it fluctuates on microscopic levels
2. It assumes time is dynamic and linear rather than static and cyclical or even illusory. Time could be symmetric.
3. The law may very well be a statistical tendency rather than an absolute law.
4. The Poincare Recurrence Theorem gives good reasons to doubt this law.
There are just too many unknowns to believe that the existence of entropy necessitates that causality had a beginning or has an end.
How do we arrive at the present if the past is infinite?
You might be thinking about this in the wrong way
It's not like we start at some point and then try to cross an infinite temporal distance
An infinite temporal countdown doesn't work like that
You can imagine it more like this:
Garry has counted throughout all eternity, he has counted all the negative intervals. Today he counts "0". Yesterday he counted "-1". The day before that, he counted "-2", ad infinitum.
@@justus4684nah... Common sense says your wrong. There WAS a beginning.
@@ibelieveitcauseiseentit9630 I agree that it is intuitive to think in a dynamic system causality cannot be infinite in the past but in a static system, it can be cyclical. One could hold to a "B" theory of time.
Great discussion yall!
Our way of perceiving/thinking my be bound by time in a way that we can not escape. There may be a higher reality that we simply can not precive. I think that none-temporal "existence" may fall onto that category.
Some problems!
God is not defined. Second Time is not explained. What is Time? What does it originate from? Lot of holes to work with from the start. But I love the enthousiam and its a great talk! Thanks! Btw, imagine black holes are a quantum state phenomena. you can forget then singuralities. Including a start state for the Universe.
So he's a... cosmic skeptic?
Alex O'Connor is jealous
Joe, can you do a video with Michael Heumer talking about his argument for reincarnation and a soul. He is an atheist to my knowledge. Id want to see your objections to his arguments.
The past is not finite. We know black holes evaporate with hawking radiation, which proves that even a singularity can't stop time completely. The big bang singularity might appear to move in the reverse direction of a black hole singularity, but the math of physics is the same even with a negative sign, so that would just mean in the past hawking radiation flowed in instead of out, implying time necessarily existed before the big bang.
Thanks for the vid Joe. Are you aware of any evidence for anything physical that exists in non metric time or amorphous time, or which has a timeless aspect to it? Cheers!
There are some physical and philosophical grounds for thinking that a non-spatiotemporal wavefunction exists! They certainly aren’t decisive, but they’re worth engaging. We briefly discuss some of those reasons, and cite authors who explore those reasons, in Sect. 8.3 of Existential Inertia and Classical Theistic Proofs!🙂
It’s also worth noting that, to run our criticisms based on these epistemic possibilities, we don’t need positive evidence *in favor* of them - instead, we need only point out that, for Craig to run his argument, *he* would need to *positively rule them out* , and yet he has done no such thing. Hope this helps my dude!!
@@MajestyofReason Oh the woes of a deductive argument! Do you think a more modest abductive argument could be run here?
@@racsooj456 Excellent question. I think one could certainly *try* to run an abductive argument here, and it would at least be *better* than a deductive argument. But I'm still deeply pessimistic about such an argument's prospects for success, since it's not clear why, e.g., God would be a better explanation for the beginning of our local spatiotemporal manifold than, e.g., the non-spatiotemporal universal wavefunction. The latter appears to me more parsimonious, more concordant with our background knowledge, etc. And it's also worth keeping in mind that there are just *so many* non-theistic explanations on offer, so even if God outcompetes *one* , I'm skeptical God would outcompete them *all* :)
@@MajestyofReason That's interesting. I think that's a valuable push back. I suppose one could tac it on to a cumulative case which is spearheaded by some data or argument that does the work of unsettling the parsimony of something like a universal wave function explanation. 🤔
It's hard to look at the graph starting at 20:04 and think anything other than outright dishonesty is at work here. On the graph, time clearly starts at a point and usable energy has a finite intercept depicted on the y-axis. But this is supposed to prove something about usable energy and the infinite past? It's reminiscent of another infamous graph in one of these videos where they're depicting the number of revolutions of two planets, allegedly across an infinite past, but the numbers start at zero at some finite point and diverge... Just WTF
I'd be interested to know what proportion of philosophers of religion actually think the Kalaam arguments are sound. Are there any surveys? What's your guess?
On an unrelated topic I saw where 3/4 of all PhD holding philosophers are Atheists.
Hello, Do you know arguments for an infinite past? I don't know about arguments for the eternity of the universe.
There are certainly arguments for its possibility! See my video "New objections to the Kalam still work". Philosopher Stephen Maitzen also offers some arguments for thinking the past is infinite in his book "Determinism, Death, and Meaning"
@@MajestyofReasonany plans to do a video with William Lane Craig
(13:30) *"The singularity is not a thing."* ... Well, that all depends on what you define as a "thing." Is a "transition point" a thing? *Example:* There was obviously a point somewhere in Earth's history where biological life became self-aware (humans). There was also a point somewhere in universal history where inanimate structure became biological life (prokaryote), ... so can this transitional point be called a "thing?"
Likewise, there was a point somewhere down the line where nondimensional, organizational structure (mathematics) became multidimensional physical structure (the universe).
That's what Big Bang's point of singularity represents: a "point of transition" from one state to another.
Sorry, that's not what a curvature singularity is in General Relativity. Are you familiar with the notion of an open boundary?
@@daniellinford9643 *"Sorry, that's not what a curvature singularity is in General Relativity. Are you familiar with the notion of an open boundary?"*
... Yes, and I simply have a different theory. One does not negate the other; they represent alternative theories (just like "multiverse theory" vs a "single finite universe"). Just because one theory says one thing doesn't mean all other theories must abide by that decree.
@@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC I don’t understand what you mean. A singularity is a mathematical notion independent of any physical theory. You could have a theory on which there are different kinds of singularities or on which singularities are not useful for describing nature, but you don’t get to just make up whatever new definitions you want and then find fault with me for failing to use your idiosyncratic definition.
@@daniellinford9643 *"I don’t understand what you mean. A singularity is a mathematical notion independent of any physical theory."*
... What? If there wasn't a mathematical singularity proposed at the origin of Big Bang, we'd have nothing to discuss, correct? Big Bang presumes that all of the matter and energy in the universe was compressed to a point of infinite gravity and density ... which violates the laws of physics. This demands a better explanation.
All I'm doing is offering an alternative explanation for how that singularity can exist - not as a "point of compression," but rather as a portal from a nondimensional state to a multidimensional state.
In other words, "nondimensional structure" (mathematical information) moved into "multidimensional structure" (matter and energy) via the initial singularity.
Black hole singularities represent matter and energy being reduced down to a point where it can no longer maintain multidimensional structure, and thusly converts back into the nondimensional, "virtual" structure from which is came (mathematical information).
*"You could have a theory on which there are different kinds of singularities or on which singularities are not useful for describing nature, but you don’t get to just make up whatever new definitions you want and then find fault with me for failing to use your idiosyncratic definition."*
... There is no need for me to redefine anything at all. I'm only working with what physics defines as a singularity. It's just another way to look at it other than "infinite compression."
@@0-by-1_Publishing_LLC You’re working from the non-technical and oversimplified (and ultimately incorrect) definition provided in some popularizations and then trying to offer a new theory based on that definition. This is why I started by asking if you were familiar with the notion of an open boundary.
Before you try to offer a new theory, you should learn the mathematics involved. A singularity is not a point of infinite density.
Bertrand Russell was just saying the universe is brute, not that it’s always existed lol
Actually it does. And philosophy also shows that the universe has a beginning.
Actually it does not. And philosophy also fails to show the universe had a beginning.
@@CosmoPhiloPharmacoactually yes both science and philosophy show that the universe had a beginning.
Actually science just confirms what most philosophers have known all along, the universe had a beginning.
@@ibelieveitcauseiseentit9630 actually no both science and philosophy do not show that the universe had a beginning.
Actually science just confirms what Aristotle knew all along, the universe had no beginning.
Dude only 8 minutes in and already having my mind blown. From a modal perspective, an aspect of God would have to remain non-temporal. Such a composite being does seem implausible.
The universe isn’t eternal and here's why I think so:
1. Our universe is closed because the total amount of matter in it is constant.
2. Physics shows that our universe is expanding.
3. Expansion is a process with an initial state that is different from any subsequent state.
4. By 3, an expansion always has a beginning, marked by a unique initial state.
5. Expansion occurs iff energy is added to overcome inertia in the form of internal equilibrium.
6. By 4, an expanding universe can be eternal iff it existed eternally prior to its expansion.
7. Either our universe is all that exists or it is a subset of all that exists.
8(a). If our universe is all that exists, then it is isolated and subsumes 1.
8(b) But if our universe is isolated, then energy can't be added to it to overcome its inertia and drive its expansion from its prior state of non-expansion or internal equilibrium.
8(c): So our universe couldn't expand contrary to 2 unless 6 is false, so that our universe has a beginning at earliest coincident with the beginning of its expansion.
9(a) If our universe is a subset of all that exists, then, by 5, our universe was in energy equilibrium with its environment prior to its expansion.
9(b) But the sum of our universe and its environment would be isolated such that the energy relation between our universe and its environment can't be altered subsequently.
9(c) By 9(b), there would have been no net transfer of energy from the environment to our universe to overcome its inertia and drive its expansion from its prior state of non-expansion.
9(d) Accordingly, our universe couldn't expand contrary to 2 unless 6 is false, so that our universe has a beginning at earliest coincident with the beginning of its expansion.
C(1): By 6, if our universe didn't begin, then it couldn't expand or be expanding.
C(2): By 7 through 9, if our universe existed eternally prior to its expansion, then it couldn't expand or be expanding.
C(3) But by 2, our universe is expanding.
C(4): By C(1) through C(3), therefore, neither did our universe not begin nor did it exist eternally prior to its expansion.
C: Therefore our universe isn't eternal.
I have finally found the channel where intelligent people blast away at Craig's ideas lol. After so many severely disappointing debates with other ill-prepared physicists and philosophers, its nice to see actual philosophers point out the dozens of flaws in his ideas at a much deeper level. Many of the issues raised are beyond me but I'm really happy to learn more
You're so biased bro. Have you questioned what these guys are saying or just belive it?
@@androidvariedades6867can u point out flaws in what they are saying?
@@LeafSouls Bernkastel pfp?
@@gokusolos-j3e ye
@@gokusolos-j3e it is bernkastel
Jesus tapdancing Christ these guys are brilliant
How do you feel now that we’re about 2 months post you guys bottling the league??
too soon🥲
@@MajestyofReason as a City fan, I think it’s never too soon 🎉
This is hilarious. So Dr. Linford says that Craig should argue that "a violation of the second law of thermodynamics is preposterously unlikely." How does that help the atheist in saying that the universe is eternal? If the laws of thermodynamics are regularities, then the burden of proof is on the atheist to show why it does not apply to the closed system of the entire physical reality. Simply arguing that it is possible commits the logical fallacy of special pleading. If you argue that all of physical reality is all there is as your justification then you are committing the logical fallacy of begging the question. No, the evidence strongly supports a beginning to the universe. Appealing to ad hoc hypotheses does not refute that.
It’s already been demonstrated that the second law isn’t always followed.
@@Shams-fe6lq I did not say it was. But no scientist will deny that it is a regularity. If so, the burden of proof is on the person who denies that it doesn't apply to the universe as a whole. This critique of William Lane Craig actually strengthens his argument, because it show to what lengths atheists have to go to in order to "prove" an eternal universe.
(1) Linford wasn’t saying that would help the atheist in saying that the universe was eternal. He was pointing out a better way for Craig to run his argument, and then proceeded to explain why even that way fails.
(2) No, the scientific evidence should leave us agnostic on whether the totality of physical reality is past finite, as Linford quite convincingly argues in his dissertation and papers.
(3) Even if the scientific evidence strongly supports past finitude, that isn’t itself evidence that the universe began to exist, since beginning to exist requires far more than mere past finitude; it requires also saying that no physical reality (a) pre-exists metric time in a non-metric time, (b) exists timelessly sans metric time, (c) has a timeless aspect in Linford’s sense, and (d) is timeless simpliciter. But the scientific evidence supports none of this.
@MajestyofReason what's the difference between metric and non-metrix time?
@@msmhao the key difference is that there’s no objective fact of the matter about the length or duration of non-metric time, as it is not broken up into measurable temporal intervals - for resources, see 53:38
I think no physical entity or even quantity can exist without time because time is the most basic physical quantity. This can be known through the fact that many physical formulas have time in their denominater. So if we bring an argument from time, it entails other quantities too. Now how can we argue from time? When we do not know how time is exactly, it probably implies that there can be more than one mode of existence for time. But I think there is a separate argument for each mode of time generally speaking:
1) Finite past with infinite future: arguments from this mode of time are retrospective and focus on a first cause. They are often known as causality (like Kalam).
2) infinite past with finite future: arguments from this mode of time are prospective and focus on an independent being. They argue from the premise that a chain of dependent beings cannot continue infinitely and there has to be an independent being in the future.
3) infinite past with infinite future: in this mode of time as John Locke says, the infinite timeline itself is possessed by God's eternal existence.
4) finite past with finite future: we can use Leibniz argument from circle of cause and effect in which God is the first and final cause but out of the circle.
Final notes: Sometimes we use the properties from another mode of time to juxtapose it against an argument from another mode which I think is problematic. I also think that an amorphous time is just nominal. Why should we call it time in the first place?
Er, with all due respect, it seems that WLC has the better arguments. Please invite him on for a debate
Theism: A long history of assertions searching for support.
What is your age Joe??
Isn't the critique of Craig's Kalam based upon his distinction of Timeless-Temporal? But this isn't the only view of Time in relation to God, right? I've heard some other alternatives such as the relational view of time, what do you think about it @MajestyOfReason
The theist strongest argument has to do with the nature of change. That is to say, they can argue if something is eternal, it must be initially changeless but capable of change. if there is change then reasonably there is a first instance of change and for change to emerge, there must have been an intention to change prior to its actuality otherwise the emergence would be brute. This is why Craig thinks a mind is a good reason/explanation for its emergence as he also holds to a type of free will/agent causation.
So either change has a first instance or not but its hard to explain what could initiate change in a substance that is ultimately time independent. I personally hold to a Parmenidean Monism that all change is illusory since existence cannot gain or lose a property that it already has by definition. So what is responsible for this illusion if not something inherent to the nature of energy itself. It could be stipulated that existence (what is) and its nature (what happens) are brute facts that require no prior explanation or maybe a mind can be defined as what a substance does in a particular arrangement, and if the entire substance was initially arranged in a certain way then it could be sufficient enough to begin the chain of causality.
So a theist can simply say substances cannot be created but God would be the substance in a particular arrangement i.e. possessing a unified arrangement that would allow for emergence of a mind similar to how humans are born in a tabula rasa state and develop consciousness. Similar to a pantheistic framework.
One thing I do know for sure is that the nature of change itself is very perplexing.
@CMVMic on God's 'intentions' - can it not be argued that since God is necessarily knowledgeable of all things, he doesn't necessarily intend to 'do' a thing at the moment He does? i.e. God does not intend after not having intended, because He knew from eternity what He would intend/ have intended; He nonetheless 'wills' for things to come into existence from His eternal knowledge of what He'd intend. On the point of why would there be a 'change'? Me personally since I'm a Muslim, I believe God has a wise purpose in creating everything - that is for His worship, since we believe God is a being deserving of worship, it'd make sense as to why God actualized the creation, but this doesn't mean God is forced to create or 'needs' worships, only that He is deserving of worship.
@roger5442 does the tenseless theory of time make sense with our everyday understanding of the matter around us? I've never really been able to grasp the B-Theory of time because it seems odd to me that all events exist tenselessly, which would deny causation (which is presupposed to understand science) lmk your thoughts.
@@msmhao Well this assumes omniscience and there are alot of problems with theory of knowledge. The problem of the criterion, the KK Regress problem, Munchhausen Trilemma, Plato's cave, not to mention, we need to define what knowledge is. Also, it wouldn't follow that God would be distinct from all of reality nor that God still existed. One could argue for pantheism but it wouldnt necessarily entail that. Furthermore, a person can claim a mind is a process so whatever state existence was in before the first instant of change did not have a mind or we can say since the first change resulted in separation, a mind never emerged until humans did.
Also, when you speak of creation, what exactly are you referring to? The emergence of a new substance or the rearrangement of a preexisting substance? Surely, creatio ex nihilo violates ex nihilo nihil fit and creatio ex deo makes the word God a useless tautology for the Universe.
Also, one could argue that the entirety of existence is worthy of worship, but as you said, it wouldnt follow that it should be worshipped. I personally find theism to be metaphysically incoherent.
@CMVMic I think a good response to the objection that creatio ex nihilo conflicts with ex nihilo nihil fit would be the Problem of Subjectivity; i.e. if something can only come from something else, and that 'something else' is of the same nature it came from, then it'd necessarily follow that God's subjectivity is the same as our subjectivity, but this is known to be false due to necessity. What do you think?
yessss
Mere mortals, like this simple PhD scientist of 50 years (i.e. me), do not understand what is meant by language used here, such as "metric time" or "begin to be metrically temporal". Perhaps some background explanation of terminology could be provided so that a wider audience might understand. I can understand what _might_ be meant by the individual words, or their particular combination, but cannot be sure. For example "metrically" means "measurably", and "temporal" means "of time", so we might assume that "begin to be metrically temporal" means "begins to be measurably of time", which is nonsensical.
Part of the problem is the idea that _time_ can be viewed and measured outside time, or that spacetime can be observed outwith spacetime (so spacetime curvature must be _in_ something, or that expansion must be _in_ something) which is a naïve view, and wrong.
That naïveté might lead one to believe that a finite time could not persist indefinitely.
Advanced secondary school maths would disabuse a pupil of that misconception, and this would be confirmed in a university course on real analysis.
The distinction between metricated time and non-metricated time can be made mathematically rigorous and is taken seriously by physicists. Roger Penrose's cosmological model (conformal cyclic cosmology) actually requires the two notions, though he doesn't use that terminology.
Since you raised your objection from a technical perspective (e.g., referencing your PhD and "a university course on real analysis"), I'll offer a technical reply. To begin, as you presumably know given your technical background, in both geometry and the context of Special and General Relativity, the word 'metric' does not refer to "measurable", at least in any ordinary sense of the word "measurement". Instead, a metric provides (roughly speaking) the distance between any two points in a given geometry. In Euclidean geometry, the metric is just the Pythagorean theorem. In the non-Euclidean geometries utilized for relativistic space-time, the metric is not given by the Pythagorean theorem. (One can object that, since the "metrics" used in relativistic space-time are not positive definite, they are technically "pseudo metrics". But this is a distinction that is usually glossed over and doesn't matter for our purposes.)
For the sake of simplicity, let's consider a Minkowski space-time. Let's assume some reference frame in that spacetime. Now, relative to that reference frame, there will be an objective fact about the length of any space-time interval.
Now, consider the class of space-times that are conformally equivalent to Minkowski space-time. And let's construct a new mathematical object by identifying all of these space-times with one another. To put that another way, we're going to throw away any of the distinctions between Minkowski space-time and any of its conformally equivalent counterparts. In the object that results from this procedure, there is no longer an objective fact -- even after adopting a reference frame -- as to the length of any curve. In other words, by identifying Minkowski space-time with all of its conformally equivalent counterparts, we've removed all of the metrical information; nonetheless, we've retained all of the topological and light cone structure. Let's call this object an amorphous space-time.
In order to construct a spacetime where there is a transition from a non-metricated to a metricated region, we can excise a region from the amorphous spacetime and join it to a more ordinary space-time region. Depending upon how we join the two regions, we can ensure that the amorphous region precedes the more ordinary space-time region. And then it becomes natural to say that an amorphous (or non-metricated) region preceded a metricated region.
"Part of the problem is the idea that time can be viewed and measured outside time, or that spacetime can be observed outwith spacetime (so spacetime curvature must be in something, or that expansion must be in something) which is a naïve view, and wrong."
I think we're basically in agreement here. Given the explanation that I've provided, neither amorphous nor non-metricated space-time requires measuring time from outside of time, or that space-time curvature is somehow contained in anything, or that expansion must be in anything.
@@daniellinford9643 I was assuming a more general usage of language in a RUclips video, so I'll re-analyse in terms of SR/GR/Minkowski/Riemann. But it might take some time to produce the answer 42.
@@frogandspanner Well, you asked a technical question, so I gave a technical answer.
In less technical terms, an interval of time is amorphous (or non-metricated) just in case there is no fact as to the length of that interval. There are analogous definitions for space or for space-time.
So, whether an interval is metricated has nothing to do with whether that interval can be measured by some sort of external observer.
33:06 wait, the Sky Dragon?
When will Craig get that pointing to unknowns doesn't mean "god did it"?
So did Russell believe the universe always existed or not?
Is the idea of a universe that is metrically infinitely old and that was also preceded by an amorphous, non metric state of time coherent? I am just wondering because it would seem like a double wammy vs the kalam lol.
Some people will say that an infinite duration cannot be preceded by anything. I'm not one of them. I think that a duration that is infinitely long is perfectly coherent and that it's also perfectly coherent for an infinite duration to be preceded by another interval -- including a non-metricated interval. Certainly, all of that can be mathematically described.
Of course, we don't have any good reason (as far as I can tell) for thinking that the universe is really like that. But that hardly bothers me; I think we're still far too early in cosmological inquiry to rule out such a possibility.
@@daniellinford9643 I wonder if York time is compatible with something like Penrose' Cyclic cosmology, in order to get something like this?
My understanding of something like York time is a beginning of metric time infinitely long ago, correct me if Im wrong. Is there any functional difference between a beginning point infinitely long ago and no beginning point at all? Craig in the past has suggested the latter idea is even worse by his lights iirc. But its hard for me to see any difference practically speaking.
@@a.jperez202 That’s an interesting idea! I don’t see any logical incompatibility between the two, though, of course, that doesn’t mean that the resulting model describes our actual universe.
How can a wave be non-temporal? That makes no sense at all.
A wavefunction is not a wave in the colloquial sense. See Sect. 8.3 of Existential Inertia and Classical Theistic Proofs for explication and further references🙂
God exists. Get to know him. Invite him into your life. That’s when things change.
Yes, just like a third grader who has an imaginary friend on the playground.
@@aaronlietz nope: not like that.
"Physicists have proposed that the universe might not have an equilibrium state. In that case, there isn't a maximum amount of entropy to obtain, and so the universe wouldn't reach equilibrium even if the entropy had been increasing forever". That is confused though. The only literature I've found supporting the claim that the universe might not have an equilibrium state is in the context of gravitational systems. However, that literature does not imply that entropy can increase forever. Total entropy will be continually transmitted between different gravitational subsystems, but the total entropy will not increase anymore. That is very much still a heat death of the universe. So unless someone could provide the physics literature that proves entropy can increase forever, I consider this criticism as misunderstood.
And even if the claim is true, and the entropy is going to increase forever, this is irrelevant.
If you meet a person (e.g. Mr Beast) who has always been counting natural numbers in non-decreasing order and has never counted negative integers, you know there must have been a finite number of increases in his counting history. Because entropy is a non-negative discrete quantity (it is proportional to the logarithm of an natural number of possible microstates in a given macrostate), and, from observation, the entropy is currently not infinite, then it follows there must have been a finite number of entropy increases in the past and thus a first member of the sequence, which we could call the thermodynamical beginning of the universe.
"So unless someone could provide the physics literature that proves entropy can increase forever, I consider this criticism as misunderstood."
I'm not sure why anyone would need to "prove" that the entropy can increase forever. Surely, it's enough for the argument that I was making that we don't know whether entropy can increase forever. And to show that the universe's entropy could possibly continue to increase forever, all I need is a model that, for all we know, might be true. In fact, there are many cosmological models in which the universe's entropy is unbounded. One such model was offered by Carroll and Chen in a 2004 paper: arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/0410270.pdf
"If you meet a person (e.g. Mr Beast) who has always been counting natural numbers in non-decreasing order and has never counted negative integers, you know there must have been a finite number of increases in his counting history. Because entropy is a non-negative discrete quantity (it is proportional to the logarithm of an natural number of possible microstates in a given macrostate), and, from observation, the entropy is currently not infinite, then it follows there must have been a finite number of entropy increases in the past and thus a first member of the sequence, which we could call the thermodynamical beginning of the universe."
This isn't right and for several reasons. First, we don't know that the entropy of the universe is discrete. You're right that the entropy of a system is often expressed as the logarithm of the number of possible micro states in a given macro state, but that's not the most general definition of entropy. In fact, the definition you've given is only true if all micro states are equiprobable and the micro states are selected from a discrete distribution. We don't know that either assumption is true for all periods of cosmic history. Second, even if there have only been a finite number of entropy increases in the past, it doesn't follow that the past is finite. Third, a "thermodynamical beginning of the universe" -- i.e., some cosmological epoch that has minimum entropy -- is completely irrelevant if we suppose a tensed theory of time, as Craig does.
@@daniellinford9643 The original question really was, whether science points to the finite past, not whether finite past is possibly avoidable by constructing some ad-hoc model and claiming "for all we know, this model could be true". This is an antithesis of scientific thinking, which dictates that we choose the best explanation (one with most intellectual virtues, such as simplicity, explanatory scope, predictive power etc). The scientific consensus is that the universe is headed towards heat death. Sure, you don't have to prove that entropy is going to increase forever, but I would ask that you show that the intellectual virtues of such a hypothesis are on par with those of the heat death hypothesis.
"but that's not the most general definition of entropy" In that case, can you state the most general definition of entropy, please? I would also ask, if it's not too much trouble, if you could provide an example of a physical system for which entropy cannot be defined in the sense of counting microstates.
@@tymmiara5967 No, the scientific consensus is not that the universe is headed towards heat death, particularly if, by “heat death”, you mean a maximum entropy state. One viable option, taken seriously by cosmologists, is that the universe has no equilibrium or maximum entropy state. I didn’t simply offer an ad hoc model. If you think that this option is unviable, then you shoulder the burden of proof to show us why we shouldn’t take it seriously.
As for the general definition of entropy, the definition is that the entropy is the integral of rho*log(rho), where rho is a probability density. There are all sorts of systems for which the entropy is not the log of the number of states; this will happen, for example, in cases where a system is much more likely to occupy some states than others, eg, so-called jammed systems and other systems far from the domain of traditional equilibrium thermodynamics.
@@daniellinford9643
Models like Carroll's cannot avoid the general problem of Boltzmann's brain paradox. In fact, his model also involves a violation of the unitarity of quantum mechanics.
Other attempts to reverse the thermodynamic arrow that avoid Boltzmann's brains end up implying the very beginning they seek to avoid. The fact is that a global violation of the second law of thermodynamics, although nomologically possible (since it is a statistical law), is extraordinarily unlikely, and that is more than enough for the argument.
Furthermore, the high number of instances of general suggestions being refuted indexically works as a refutation of the suggestion itself. This is because, in this case, the aspects of the models that generate problems are almost always the same. Therefore, a "general idea" is not enough. It is necessary to show how this would be possible.
And about the implications of a thermodynamic beginning for an absolute beginning, it is necessary to keep in mind which alternatives are at stake.
So to say that "a thermodynamic beginning does not imply an absolute beginning of the universe" is to commit to the possibility of an unchanging universe that violates well-established known physical laws or is defined under unintelligible categories of things. This last case includes all this meaningless talk about abstract things like timeless wave functions, exotic metrics, the Neoplatonic "One" and other concepts of things that we know, synthetically a priori, to be impossible (which holds for actual infinity, dialetheias , uncaused beginnings, and all sorts of nonsense that philosophers like to propose).
I’ve found my cosmology exert! 😀
Q: I struggle to understand how anything could exist outside of a universe. No laws of physics, no time, etc. If these things do exist outside of OUR universe, that would be considered another universe.
Conclusion: nothing can be “timeless”
I find it misleading a little, that the video is titled "No, science doesn't show the unviverse began to exist", but what in fact the video is saying is merely that "William Lane Craig's scientific arguments that the universe began to exist are wrong".
Not really; we repeatedly point out that science itself can only at best show that our local spatiotemporal manifold is past finite, and that this is entirely insufficient for showing that the totality of physical reality began to exist, since (a) some physical reality might have pre-existed the beginning of metric time within a state of non-metric time, (b) some physical reality might have existed timeless sans metric time, (c) some physical reality might have a timeless aspect in Dr. Linford’s sense, and (d) some physical reality might be timeless simpliciter, as many philosophers of physics take the universal wavefunction to be. Nothing in science shows that all of (a)-(d) hold. So our video isn’t simply addressing WLC’s idiosyncratic scientific arguments.
So your argument, put in layman's terms is that we do not know what exists beyond our "observable" universe to draw such a conclusion as WLC has done?
Do you like psychophysical harmony?
Whether the universe began to exist or not isn't even a scientific question. You can't scientifically verify the answer. So, this is a scientistic fallacy (conflation of a non-scientific claim with a scientific claim). It's very strange to me seeing a PhD who doesn't even realize the problem here.
That was stated at 35:40
@@benroberts2222 Okay, but then why did they talk about science for the first 35+ minutes?
@@benroberts2222 Even at 35:40, he's talking about "drawing a metaphysical conclusion from a scientific theory."
That's just more scientism. You can't do that.
@@lightbeforethetunnelno, scientism is the idea that science is the only way to know things, emphasis on "only."
Scientific realism is the idea that scientific theories are true/knowable to some extent. The difference is that realism does not entail that there aren't other ways to know stuff; and it's limited to discussion about theories that science generates, since scientific observation is commonly considered justification for knowledge. So if one is a realist then one can obtain certain metaphysical knowledge from those theories, at the very least ruling out metaphysics that conflicts with how those theories are constructed. Realist positions tend to be quite nuanced and complex so I'm simplifying here.
If you're not a realist, which it sounds like, then the point made at that timestamp is in agreement with you that none of this science stuff tells us anything about the metaphysical. That's a more instrumentalist take: the theories are probably false but they can make accurate predictions about future observations, so no metaphysical commitments are needed to employ them.
WLC is wrong about just about everything.
fuck me, even a broken clock is right twice a day !
The criticism "A monotonically increasing function doesn't need to start anywhere. Instead, it could be that the entropy of the universe has always been increasing" is a straw man.
Yes, monotonicity doesn't do the trick, but monotonicity together with the fact that entropy cannot be negative and together with the fact that the entropy is a *discrete* quantity (it is proportional to the logarithm of a *number* of microstates in a given macrostate, which is an integer number) does indeed imply (at least to my understanding, feel free to correct me) that the entropy could not have been increasing from eternity past. There must have been a finite integer number of entropy increases.
The best you could do is to say that entropy might have been constant for eternity past and just so happened to start increasing at some moment in time, but such an eternal state of constant entropy is impossible in practice, and can only be constructed in idealised theoretical scenarios (e.g. non-colliding gas particles in a box with perfectly elastic walls). In these idealised scenarios, however, the entropy cannot be anything *but* constant, so they automatically disqualify themselves from being candidates for the models of the early universe.
"Yes, monotonicity doesn't do the trick, but monotonicity together with the fact that entropy cannot be negative and together with the fact that the entropy is a discrete quantity (it is proportional to the logarithm of a number of microstates in a given macrostate, which is an integer number) does indeed imply (at least to my understanding, feel free to correct me) that the entropy could not have been increasing from eternity past. There must have been a finite integer number of entropy increases.
"
As I pointed out in reply to your other post, entropy has a more general definition and reduces to the logarithm of the number of microstates only under some special conditions.
Without discreteness, your conclusion doesn't follow.
"The best you could do is to say that entropy might have been constant for eternity past and just so happened to start increasing at some moment in time, but such an eternal state of constant entropy is impossible in practice, and can only be constructed in idealised theoretical scenarios (e.g. non-colliding gas particles in a box with perfectly elastic walls)."
I don't see a good reason to think that this is true. Perhaps you could elaborate on why we think that this can only be constructed in idealized theoretical scenarios.
But look: we don't know what sort of physical principles describe the universe once we go sufficiently far into the universe's past. So, on what basis can we rule out the possibility that those principles -- whatever they may be -- could have involved the universe's entropy remaining static for some indefinitely long -- or even infinitely long -- period?
Causality can be cyclical and therefore, entropy would not need to be increasing from eternity past.
Heil Plato, the universe is eternal
"How do you know that?" forever trumps every model. The "God did it" hypothesis in particular stands no chance against this eternal annoying question. Even a child asking "Why? Why? Why?.." can see that.
Wdym
How do you know that?
It's weird that Linford is reading.
Awesome video! Really enjoyed it! I have a concern though about the way you two are analyzing the scientific evidence for the beginning of the universe. It may be the case that the evidence that we currently have does not *prove* the beginning of the universe, but surely it lends very strong support for it. It’s always possible to take every piece of scientific evidence for the beginning of the universe and explain it away by saying that there’s a model for an eternal universe that could account for it. But this to me seems like the way young-earth creationists also go about “explaining away” the scientific evidence for an old universe. After all, we can’t necessarily *prove* that the universe is 13.8 billion years old, but we do have incredibly strong evidence which points to that conclusion - which is enough to compel any rational person to accept it as true. But YECs have created scientific models for a 6,000-year-old universe which logically-speaking do account for all of the evidence brought in support of an old universe, albeit they are incredibly contrived and thus improbable. It’s the cumulative case for the old universe that makes it so compelling. To the best of my knowledge, on balance, the cumulative scientific evidence makes the beginning of the universe more probable than not (as many leading cosmologists recognize) even if the data doesn’t *prove* the beginning of the universe.
Thanks for the comments! Briefly:
(1) Importantly, cosmological models featuring an infinite past are live and physically respectable in a way that makes it currently an open question in physics whether the totality of all physical reality is past finite. This is totally different from YEC, which isn’t a live, biologically/geologically/astronomically respectable model. Sure, it can be rendered consistent with the data through monumentally unlikely auxiliaries; but that’s totally different from the physically live models in physics featuring an infinite past, which don’t add monumentally unlikely auxiliaries. There’s simply no consensus in physics about whether the right cosmological model will involve a metrically finite or infinite past for all of physical reality. This wouldn’t be true if the evidence strongly told in favor of past metrical finitude. We weren’t just floating logically possible models, containing monumentally improbable auxiliaries, that flaunt the consensus of relevant experts, as YEC does. Instead, we were highlighting physically possible models, containing no monumentally improbable auxiliaries, that are currently a matter of debate among the relevant experts. The disanalogy is apparent.
(2) Second, the scientific evidence *at best* supports past metrical finitude. But that isn’t enough to support that the totality of physical reality began to exist. To support *that*, we would need reason to think that (a) no physical reality could pre-exist metric time in a non-metric time, (b) no physical reality could exist timelessly sans metric time, and (c) no physical reality has a timeless aspect in Linford’s sense. As far as I’m aware, science does not supply us good reason to think that all of (a)-(c) hold.
(3) Thrid, as Dr. Linford argues quite convincingly in his dissertation [linked in the description], the current state of science should render us agnostic about whether the totality of physical reality began. He doesn't merely raise bare logical possibilities, like YEC's positing demons planting fossils and God allowing this to test our faith; he argues quite forcefully that *the science itself* doesn't strongly support the universe's beginning.
Nanomachines son
Ya craig got friked here. Intro video to science/god gets detroyed bi two big brain big word users. Nice jobs
It’s not posible to know God by argumentation alone. In fact arguments are only there to show that the belief in god is reasonable.
One thing we can be certain of is that consciousness is a fundamental necessity, and there is not philosophical nor empirical evidence that suggest it is cause by physical particles.
Consciousness is the ontological and epistemological ground of knowledge.
From there to God there is small step.
_"One thing we can be certain of is that consciousness is a fundamental necessity,"_ Certain how? Epistemically certain? Psychologically certain? Faithfully certain? I only ask because I don't see any particular manner of certainty that would apply to consciousness being a fundamental necessity, but perhaps you can elaborate on what variety of certainty you speak of and how you arrive at that conclusion.
@@mugsofmirth8101how
Few things: (1) mind physicalism is a contentious debate, so it’s not exactly “solved,” (2) “consciousness as the epistemological/ontological ground of knowledge” sounds like foundationalism, which is very suspect, and (3) all this assumes an individualistic and internalistic epistemology (i.e. knowledge derives from my inner consciousness/awareness of objective grounds/foundations/principles).
All these positions are Enlightenment notions of rationality in the West. Classical, medieval, and postmodern ideas of rationality do not agree. The roots for such ideas are found in late medieval scholasticism but came to full fruition in the Enlightenment(s) with Descartes’s cogito.
It’s a complex topic. Many philosophies downstream from Hegel have started moving more towards the predominance of culture and tradition even in our epistemology. So basically, what most Westerners would refer to as “common sense” or “first principles” or “objective,” these guys would refer to it as nothing else than one’s culture/tradition. So basically, there is no such thing as an individualistic epistemology; all beliefs are communal and passed on (testimonial knowledge). While many will move directly to relativism with such an idea, many of them argue that it is not necessary. There is a nuanced third answer between objective truth and relativism which places “truth” in a particular tradition rather than in the individual.
Figured anyone reading might enjoy hearing about non-individualist epistemologies. Oakeschott, Macintyre, and Polanyi are the best fellas to read on this subject of traditionalistic/communal epistemology.
Why think consciousness is irreducible? it can be reduced to temporal and causal relations, without them there is no consciousness. Consciousness can be due tot he emergence of change of a substance. Without change, one cannot be conscious and without the existence of a substance, nothing can change. So it seems both a substance and change are more fundamental than consciousness as it follows that consciousness is contingent on those two things. Consciousness is not a substance that things are made of, consciousness is a noun given to what a substance does.
@@CMVMic if consciousness is a noun of a substance, if it is just a name of a substance, then… what is this substance fundamentally made of ? What are the properties of this substance and it’s components?
Andrew Loke:
QUÉ VEO… UN RIVAL!?
necesito trabajar en mi español...
@@MajestyofReason haha, It’s ok. It means "WHAT AM I SEEING… A RIVAL!?"