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Alexander Vilenkin: “All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning”

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I’ve decided to explain why physicists believe that there was a creation event in this post. That is to say, I’ve decided to let famous cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin do it.

From Uncommon Descent.

Excerpt:

Did the cosmos have a beginning? The Big Bang theory seems to suggest it did, but in recent decades, cosmologists have concocted elaborate theories – for example, an eternally inflating universe or a cyclic universe – which claim to avoid the need for a beginning of the cosmos. Now it appears that the universe really had a beginning after all, even if it wasn’t necessarily the Big Bang.

At a meeting of scientists – titled “State of the Universe” – convened last week at Cambridge University to honor Stephen Hawking’s 70th birthday, cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University in Boston presented evidence that the universe is not eternal after all, leaving scientists at a loss to explain how the cosmos got started without a supernatural creator. The meeting was reported in New Scientist magazine (Why physicists can’t avoid a creation event, 11 January 2012).

[…]In his presentation, Professor Vilenkin discussed three theories which claim to avoid the need for a beginning of the cosmos.

The three theories are chaotic inflationary model, the oscillating model and quantum gravity model. Regular readers will know that those have all been addressed in William Lane Craig’s peer-reviewed paper that evaluates alternatives to the standard Big Bang cosmology.

But let’s see what Vilenkin said.

More:

One popular theory is eternal inflation. Most readers will be familiar with the theory of inflation, which says that the universe increased in volume by a factor of at least 10^78 in its very early stages (from 10^−36 seconds after the Big Bang to sometime between 10^−33 and 10^−32 seconds), before settling into the slower rate of expansion that we see today. The theory of eternal inflation goes further, and holds that the universe is constantly giving birth to smaller “bubble” universes within an ever-expanding multiverse. Each bubble universe undergoes its own initial period of inflation. In some versions of the theory, the bubbles go both backwards and forwards in time, allowing the possibility of an infinite past. Trouble is, the value of one particular cosmic parameter rules out that possibility:

But in 2003, a team including Vilenkin and Guth considered what eternal inflation would mean for the Hubble constant, which describes mathematically the expansion of the universe. They found that the equations didn’t work (Physical Review Letters, DOI: 10.1103/physrevlett.90.151301). “You can’t construct a space-time with this property,” says Vilenkin. It turns out that the constant has a lower limit that prevents inflation in both time directions. “It can’t possibly be eternal in the past,” says Vilenkin. “There must be some kind of boundary.”

A second option explored by Vilenkin was that of a cyclic universe, where the universe goes through an infinite series of big bangs and crunches, with no specific beginning. It was even claimed that a cyclic universe could explain the low observed value of the cosmological constant. But as Vilenkin found, there’s a problem if you look at the disorder in the universe:

Disorder increases with time. So following each cycle, the universe must get more and more disordered. But if there has already been an infinite number of cycles, the universe we inhabit now should be in a state of maximum disorder. Such a universe would be uniformly lukewarm and featureless, and definitely lacking such complicated beings as stars, planets and physicists – nothing like the one we see around us.

One way around that is to propose that the universe just gets bigger with every cycle. Then the amount of disorder per volume doesn’t increase, so needn’t reach the maximum. But Vilenkin found that this scenario falls prey to the same mathematical argument as eternal inflation: if your universe keeps getting bigger, it must have started somewhere.

However, Vilenkin’s options were not exhausted yet. There was another possibility: that the universe had sprung from an eternal cosmic egg:

Vilenkin’s final strike is an attack on a third, lesser-known proposal that the cosmos existed eternally in a static state called the cosmic egg. This finally “cracked” to create the big bang, leading to the expanding universe we see today. Late last year Vilenkin and graduate student Audrey Mithani showed that the egg could not have existed forever after all, as quantum instabilities would force it to collapse after a finite amount of time (arxiv.org/abs/1110.4096). If it cracked instead, leading to the big bang, then this must have happened before it collapsed – and therefore also after a finite amount of time.

“This is also not a good candidate for a beginningless universe,” Vilenkin concludes.

So at the end of the day, what is Vilenkin’s verdict?

“All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.”

This is consistent with the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem, which I blogged about before, and which William Lane Craig leveraged to his advantage in his debate with Peter Millican.

The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin (BGV) proof shows that every universe that expands must have a space-time boundary in the past. That means that no expanding universe, no matter what the model, can be eternal into the past. No one denies the expansion of space in our universe, and so we are left with a cosmic beginning. Even speculative alternative cosmologies do not escape the need for a beginning.

Conclusion

If the universe came into being out of nothing, which seems to be the case from science, then the universe has a cause. Things do not pop into being, uncaused, out of nothing. The cause of the universe must be transcendent and supernatural. It must be uncaused, because there cannot be an infinite regress of causes. It must be eternal, because it created time. It must be non-physical, because it created space. There are only two possibilities for such a cause. It could be an abstract object or an agent. Abstract objects cannot cause effects. Therefore, the cause is an agent.

Now, let’s have a discussion about this science in our churches, and see if we can’t train Christians to engage with non-Christians about the evidence so that everyone accepts what science tells us about the origin of the universe.

News

The seven fatal flaws of moral relativism

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Moral relativism is the view that moral values and moral duties do not exist in reality, but only exist as opinions in people’s minds. When you ask a moral relativist where the belief that stealing is wrong comes from, he may tell you that it is his opinion, or that it is the opinion of most people in his society. But he cannot tell you that stealing is wrong independent of what people think, because morality (on moral relativism) is just personal preference.

So what’s wrong with it?

I found this list of the seven flaws of moral relativism at the Salvo magazine web site.

Here’s the summary:

  1. Moral relativists can’t accuse others of wrongdoing.
  2. Relativists can’t complain about the problem of evil.
  3. Relativists can’t place blame or accept praise.
  4. Relativists can’t make charges of unfairness or injustice.
  5. Relativists can’t improve their morality.
  6. Relativists can’t hold meaningful moral discussions.
  7. Relativists can’t promote the obligation of tolerance.

Here’s my favorite flaw of relativism (#6):

Relativists can’t hold meaningful moral discussions. What’s there to talk about? If morals are entirely relative and all views are equal, then no way of thinking is better than another. No moral position can be judged as adequate or deficient, unreasonable, acceptable, or even barbaric. If ethical disputes make sense only when morals are objective, then relativism can only be consistently lived out in silence. For this reason, it is rare to meet a rational and consistent relativist, as most are quick to impose their own moral rules like “It’s wrong to push your own morality on others”. This puts relativists in an untenable position – if they speak up about moral issues, they surrender their relativism; if they do not speak up, they surrender their humanity. If the notion of moral discourse makes sense intuitively, then moral relativism is false.

I sometimes get a lot of flack from atheists who complain that I don’t let them make any moral statements without asking them first to ground morality on their worldview. And that’s because on atheism morality IS NOT rationally grounded, so they can’t answer. In an accidental universe, you can only describe people’s personal preferences or social customs, that vary by time and place. It’s all arbitrary – like having discussions about what food is best or what clothing is best. The answer is always going to be “it depends”. It depends on the person who is speaking because it’s a subjective claim, not an objective claim. There is no objective way we ought to behave.

So, practically speaking, everyone has to decide whether right and wrong are real – objectively real. If they are objectively real, that means that there is a right way for human beings to behave, and a wrong way for human beings to behave. It means that things that are really objectively wrong like rape are wrong for all times and all places, regardless of what individuals and societies might think of it. In order to rationally ground that kind of morality, you have to have a foundation for it – a cosmic Designer who decides for all times and places what the conduct of his creatures ought to be. And then our moral duties are duties that are owed to this Designer. It is like playing football or playing a boardgame – the person who invents the game decides the rules. But if there is no designer of the game, then there are no rules.

Without a designer of the universe, the question of how we ought to act is decided by people in different times and different places. It’s arbitrary and variable, and therefore it doesn’t do the job of prescribing behavior authoritatively. It’s very important not to get involved in any serious endeavor with another person or persons if they don’t have a sense of right and wrong being absolute and fixed. A belief in objective moral values is a necessary pre-requisite for integrity.

News

On the Beatitudes, John MacArthur is wrong, Sinclair Ferguson is right

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I stayed home from church on Sunday and decided to watch sermons (and birds, through the window) while doing weights and then cardio on my recumbent bike. I wanted to hear a good sermon on the Beatitudes, so I started with John MacArthur and moved on to Sinclair Ferguson. I thought it might be worth making a post about it, because it’s an important point.

So, to start with, I will say that I don’t have an ordinary living room like most hoomans, with, like, “furniture”. I have a chin-up / dip station, a flat/incline/decline bench, two adjustable dumbbells, a folding floor mat, a recumbent bike, and a TV hooked up to a laptop for streaming. My living room is just for working out, and watching streaming videos. Usually, it’s about men’s issues like Chisha Zed and Emily King, wargame gameplay like Example of Play and Taff in Exile, or sermons.

So, I started out with coffee and a fiber smoothie (e-mail me for recipe), and then this sermon from John MacArthur:

MacArthur says:

The third reason we ought to study the Sermon on the Mount is that it’s the only path to true happiness for Christians. If you want to be truly happy and filled with the Spirit, you don’t chase mystical experiences, pursue elusive dreams, or hop from meeting to meeting trying to catch something in the air. Instead, to know happiness, blessedness, bliss, joy, and gladness, you simply study the Sermon on the Mount and put it into practice. Additionally, I believe we should study it because it’s the most powerful tool for evangelism. Living out the Sermon on the Mount will astonish the world—it’s the greatest evangelistic tool there is, as this kind of life transforms and draws others to Christ.

I disagree with John MacArthur here. Christians should use the method of evangelism that Jesus used, which is to present evidence to non-believers.

Here is a great article by Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason, and he looks through the Bible to see how people in the Bible evangelize.

Koukl starts with the actions of Moses in the Exodus:

Note the pattern: a powerful evidence (miracles, in this case), giving the people knowledge of God, in Whom they then placed their faith. Knowledge—some level of certainty—went before belief in each of these cases.

Then Koukl goes on to the New Testament:

Jesus gives us the same lesson we find in Exodus. He proves something that can’t be seen—the forgiveness of sins—with evidence that can be seen—a dramatic healing. Jesus heals “in order that you may know.” Once again, the concrete evidence allows the doubters to know the truth so they can then trust in the forgiveness Christ could give.

It’s easier for a pastor to say to people in the pews that they don’t have to study any evidence to evangelize. Then there’s no work for them to do, and people like to hear that message. People love testimonies and changed lives, because it’s easy.

One problem with this approach is that people in all different religions have testimonies and changed lives. Mormons have that. Even atheists can tell you that atheism improved their happiness. So that’s not going to work. But the bigger problem is what Greg said: the testimony / changed life approach is not Biblical. The use of evidence is Biblical. And we have loads of evidence available.

Here is a list of evidences that a mature Christian should be able to say SOMETHING about:

  • origin of the universe
  • fine-tuning of the initial conditions for permitting life
  • origin of life (building blocks AND information)
  • molecular machines
  • sudden infusions of information in the fossil record
  • habitability
  • scientific evidence that the mind is not the brain
  • the moral argument
  • a good argument from prophecy, like Psalm 22
  • a case for the reliability of the gospels
  • a case for the resurrection based on evidence accepted by a wide range of Christian and non-Christian scholars
  • a case for the archaeological accuracy of the Bible

And so on! There’s more, but I want to get to Scottish pastor Sinclair Ferguson.

I feel I should say that my dear departed best friend and wise advisor Murdina would love that I am listening to her beloved Scottish pastors. I even know how to translate Scottish rubbish to real English. “Warrum” means “warm”. “Girrul” means “girl”. “Worruld” means “world”. “Churruch” is “church”. Etc. Etc.

Anyway, here’s Sinclair Ferguson’s sermon:

At 8:28, Sinclair Ferguson says:

The Beatitudes describe a countercultural transformation that reflects the beauty of Jesus in our lives, but this transformation often leads to conflict and persecution in a world that opposes such values. Jesus emphasizes this in a postscript to the Beatitudes, warning that this new way of life will bring believers into opposition with the world, resulting in suffering.

This reality deeply impacted the Apostle Peter, who initially struggled with the idea of a Christian life marked by persecution, longing for a Christ without a cross. Yet, by the end of his life, in his first letter, Peter encourages Christians facing trials, saying, “Do not be surprised by the fiery trial that is coming upon you, as though something strange were happening to you.” He came to understand that belonging to Jesus Christ and His kingdom naturally invites the same opposition Jesus faced, marking a defining characteristic of the citizens of God’s kingdom.

This is a much more accurate and realistic statement of what will happen to you if you start taking discipleship to the Lord Jesus seriously.

An authentic Christian life is not going to be marked by “happiness” as the world understands it. On the contrary, Christians are not only vulnerable to ordinary suffering, but they also will face social disapproval and even persecution for following Jesus. That’s the normal Christian life. This should NOT be surprising for followers of Jesus. We should expect to experience the same loss and persecution that Jesus experienced.

In fact, staying faithful through suffering or privation is more likely to impress non-Christians.

The only way that the normal Christian life is ever going to make you happy is if you rejoice at experiencing the same sort of sadness that your Boss did. Like if your reputation at work suffers because you disagree with same-sex marriage. The only happy thing about it is that you can look back on your loss with Boss, and give him a fist-bump. You were faithful, and it cost you something to do it.