Cosmological Criticism: Part 2

This post is part of a sequence on Cosmological Argument.

The Universe began to exit is the 2nd premise of KCA. Since the Big Bang theory is NOT a theory of the origin of Universe^[2a], it no longer holds much importance in Cosmological argument. Christian philosopher William Lane Craig argues that The Borde, Guth, Vilenkin Theorem^[2b] acts as a empirical scientific evidence to establish the truth of this premise.

Victor J. Stenger in his most recent book, The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning^[2c] :

The conclusion that Borde and collaborators had proved that the universe had to have a beginning was disputed the same year by University of California-Santa Cruz physicist Anthony Aguirre and Cambridge astronomer Steven Gratton in a paper that Craig ignores. Being good scholars, Borde et al. refer to Aguirre and Gratton in their own paper. I contacted Aguirre and Vilenkin, the latter whom I have known professionally for many years. I greatly admire the work of each, which will be referred to often on these pages. I first asked Vilenkin if Craig's statement is accurate. Vilenkin replied:

"I would say this is basically correct, except the words “absolute beginning” do raise some red flags. The theorem says that if the universe is everywhere expanding (on average), then the histories of most particles cannot be extended to the infinite past. In other words, if we follow the trajectory of some particle to the past, we inevitably come to a point where the assumption of the theorem breaks down—that is, where the universe is no longer expanding.
This is true for all particles, except perhaps a set of measure zero. In other words, there may be some (infinitely rare) particles whose histories are infinitely long."

I then asked Vilenkin, “Does your theorem prove that the universe must have had a beginning?”

He immediately replied,
"No. But it proves that the expansion of the universe must have had a beginning. You can evade the theorem by postulating that the universe was contracting prior to some time."

Vilenkin further explained, "For example, Anthony in his work with Gratton, and Carroll and Chen, proposed that the universe could be contracting before it started expanding. The boundary then corresponds to the moment (that Anthony referred to as t = 0) between the contraction and expansion phases, when the universe was momentarily static. They postulated in addition that the arrow of time in the contracting part of space-time runs in the opposite way, so that entropy grows in both time directions from t=0."

I also checked with Caltech cosmologist Sean Carroll, whose recent book From Eternity to Here provides an excellent discussion of many of the problems associated with early universe cosmology. Here was his response:

"I think my answer would be fairly concise: no result derived on the basis of classical spacetime can be used to derive anything truly fundamental, since classical general relativity isn't right. You need to quantize gravity. The BGV [Borde, Guth, Vilenkin] singularity theorem is certainly interesting and important, because it helps us understand where classical GR breaks down, but it doesn't help us decide what to do when it breaks down. Surely there's no need to throw up our hands and declare that this puzzle can't be resolved within a materialist framework. Invoking God to fill this particular gap is just as premature and unwarranted as all the other gaps.

William Craig frequently quotes Vilenkin in his arguments although Vilenkin dismissed^[2d] the existence of God as a cause of the begining of the Universe. But most recently in 11 january, 2012 in the New Scientist magazine^[2e], Vilenkin argued for a begining of the Universe.

Alan Guth in his Cosmic Inflation paper^[2f] wrote,

There is, of course, no conclusion that an eternally inflating model must have a unique beginning, and no conclusion that there is an upper bound on the length of all backwards-going geodesics from a given point. There may be models with regions of contraction embedded within the expanding region that could evade our theorem. Aguirre & Gratton (2002, 2003)have proposed a model that evades our theorem, in which the arrow of time reverses at the t = -1 hypersurface, so the universe “expands” in both halves of the full de Sitter space.

See Bibliography.

Cosmological Criticism: Part 1

This is part of the sequence on Cosmological Argument.

The first premise of William Lane Craig's Kalam Cosmological argument is

Whatever begins to exist has a cause

There are other versions of this premise. It can also be said like this: "Every thing that begins to exist has a cause".

1. Fallacy of Equivocation: Craig says this premise is justified through "common sense", "everyday experience" and which is "intuitively obvious". But we don't see anything begin to exist "ex nihilo". We see things begin to exist "ex materia". In other words, things change one form to another. Comparing the begining of Universe's existence ex nihilo (presumably) with begining of things' existence ex materia is a fallacy of equivocation.

2. Begging the question: The premise implies two sets of things. Things that begin to exist (BE) and things that don't begin to exist i.e. eternal (NBE). If god is the only object allowed in NBE then the premise becomes "Every thing except god has a begining & cause of its existence". If the conclusion of the argument is "Universe has an eternal, uncaused cause" then presupposing god as the only necessary candidate makes the argument question begging. In order to avoid begging the question, theist must produce one or more real or hypothetical candidates other than god for NBE. For example: pre-big bang universe, quantum mechanical field, branes, aliens etc and then logically exclude them.

3. Causal Determinism is correct: The premise assumes causal determinism is absolutely correct in all aspects of (classical, relativistic, quantum) physics. If theists assume, the exact (non-probabilistic) cause for when and why a single unstable nucleus becomes stable (radioactive decay) will be eventually verified through empirical scientific observation, then what prevents atheists to assume science will eventually find the exact naturalistic cause of the origin of Universe?

The premise could also be worded like this "Every finite and contingent or dependent thing have a cause". This is a modal version of the premise which says, All contingent thing have a cause or explanation of their existence.

4. Causality and Time: If time is finite and contingent then it has a cause of its existence. But causality doesn't apply in any way when there is no time.

5. Quantum Mechanics: Vacuum fluctuation i.e. formation of particle anti-particle pair in a quantum mechanical field is a quantum phenomenon which is finite and (if) contingent, has no cause. The phenomenon has been observed in Casimir effect. Although Bell's inequalities show local hidden variables don't exist, under Bohmian mechanics (causal deterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics) non-local hidden variable (which requires faster than light interaction) still is an unproved hypothesis at best.

6. Problem of Induction: Even though causality applies to the known world, it does not apply to the Universe at large. The premise of causality has been arrived at via a posteriori inductive reasoning which is dependent on experience. Hume argued causal relations are not a true deductive a priori.

See Bibliography