Astrophysicist Alex Filippenko of the Universityof California, Berkeley took part in a panel discussion on June 23, 2012 at the SETICon 2 conference on the topic “Did the Big Bang Require a Divine Spark?” Taking a page out of the playbooks of Stephen Hawking and Lawrence Krauss, Filippenko claimed that “the Big Bang could’ve occurred as a result of just the laws of physics being there. With the laws of physics, you can get universes.”[1] If the laws of physics are responsible for churning out universes, then the ultimate question is not the origin of the universe, but the origin of the laws of physics. Where did they come from? Filippenko recognizes this problem, saying “The question, then, is, ‘Why are there laws of physics?’ And you could say, ‘Well, that required a divine creator, who created these laws of physics and the spark that led from the laws of physics to these universes, maybe more than one.’”[2]
It’s at this point that Filippenko trots out the “who created God?” objection to demonstrate the explanatory inadequacy of the God hypothesis, claiming that we would still have to ask who/what created God, and who/what created the thing/person who created God, ad infinitum. He seems to be unaware of three crucial facts:
- The objection is meaningless because it is based on a misunderstanding of what is meant by “God.”
- It is fallacious to think one must have an explanation of an explanation for it to be a valid explanation
- An infinite regress is impossible, so given the principle of parsimony, there is no reason to think there is a causal entity beyond God.
How, then, does Filippenko answer the question of the origin of the physical laws?: “The ‘divine spark’ was whatever produced the laws of physics, and I don’t know what produced that divine spark. So let’s just leave it at the laws of physics.”[3] Well that explains just about nothing! While I can appreciate his epistemic humility in admitting that the laws of physics need an explanation, and that he does not know what that explanation is, his answer is surely less than satisfying.
If the laws of physics had a beginning, as Filippenko seems to believe, then they need a cause and cannot be the ultimate explanation for reality. The same is true of the quantum vacuum, which the laws of physics acted on to create the universe. If the quantum vacuum had a beginning, then it cannot be the ultimate reality either. One could try to solve this problem by claiming that the laws of physics are actually eternal, and thus the ultimate reality, but since there cannot be physical laws in the absence of physical reality, the quantum vacuum has to be eternal too. Unfortunately, this won’t work either. If the quantum vacuum was eternal, then it should have spawned off an infinite number of universes an infinite time ago. And yet our universe is only 13.7 billion years old, not infinitely old, proving that the quantum vacuum is not eternal. And if the quantum vacuum is not eternal, neither are physical laws.
No matter how you slice it, physical reality cannot be the ultimate reality. One can choose to remain agnostic on the question of ultimate origins as does Filippenko, but his agnosticism appears to be rooted in his naturalistic assumptions about reality as well as his mistaken belief in the possibility of an infinite regress. If we do not assume naturalism and we recognize the need for a first cause, then theism not only becomes a possible explanation for why there is something rather than nothing, but the most plausible explanation.
[1]Space.com, “The Big Bang Didn’t Need God to Start Universe, Researchers Say”; available from http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/06/25/big-bang-didnt-need-god-to-start-universe-researchers-say/?intcmp=features; Internet; accessed 25 June, 2012.
[2]Space.com, “The Big Bang Didn’t Need God to Start Universe, Researchers Say”; available from http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/06/25/big-bang-didnt-need-god-to-start-universe-researchers-say/?intcmp=features; Internet; accessed 25 June, 2012.
[3]Space.com, “The Big Bang Didn’t Need God to Start Universe, Researchers Say”; available from http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/06/25/big-bang-didnt-need-god-to-start-universe-researchers-say/?intcmp=features; Internet; accessed 25 June, 2012.
Thinking to Believe 
July 10, 2012 at 11:14 am
Our Universe would be one of those innumerable ones, so instead of counting against the eternal quanta, which the laws of conservation make so,it counts for them!
Aquinas’ arguments assume that Existence is eternal according to natural phenomena so Scripture argues otherwise. And he has a hierarchical series of efficient explanations in which God is the Primary Cause= Explanation. He states that by taking Him away as that Primary one, others take away also the intermediates,but that begs the question!
That is, whether eternal or not, the Cosmos requires the Primary Cause -that final cause- the divine intent. But that too begs the question of directed intent that Carneades’ atelic argument notes, and the Coyne-Mayr-Lamberth teleonomic-causalism-mechanism- notes that as science finds no intent as it finds no miracles,etc. then He’d lack intent as Creator and so forth and could then not exist and with contradictory, incoherent attributes , again He lacks existence!
I’ll now let others explain about that lack of divine intent! This is a critical component of our naturalist arguments. Another is Reichenbach’s argument from Existence that as it is all, no transcendent God can exist and again,He doesn’t. And as transcendence contradicts omnipresence, He cannot exist that way.
Per the argument from physical mind, a disembodied mind means a brainless one and thus no mind, and again He cannot exist! With this one comes McCormick’s why God cannot exist
In the end all this affirms [ Google:] the Lamberth ignostic-Ockham!
How then might one have a loving relationship with a square circle?Those who affirm that they do must get telepathic messages from Him,which physics denies. Physics also denies His clairvoyance -foreknowledge. Yes, WEIT, science disproves God!
This is by analysis,not by dogma or a priori so that we rationalists do not have to traverse the Cosmos nor have omniscience ourselves!
Isn’t theology ever so funny and -stupid?
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July 10, 2012 at 11:16 am
[…] viaAnother Scientist Claiming that the Laws of Physics + Time = Protons and Plato « Theo-sophical Rumi…. […]
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July 10, 2012 at 11:19 am
Thus the lasws would be eternal so that assuming His existence, He’d be a secondary cause!
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July 10, 2012 at 5:37 pm
Science is the recognition of information, structure, symmetry, etc. and by that; extrapolation and therefore predictability. If science did not recognize the above ‘system/operation’ then every experimental test would end up with a different result; and with continuous differences then why would anyone do the experiments again and again…what would be the point of calling it all ‘science’? Science identifies information that information however must come from intelligence; information that is useless and ‘chaotic’ is not intelligent (ever seen a non-intelligent formula? The fact that you do not understand the formula just means you are ignorant of its use! ). The important question is where does the intelligence come from? To call the universe intelligent points to intelligence and this could be God. If it is not God (what we call as God) then what else could it be? Investigate that possibility without bias! It’s the truth scientists are after even if it takes them to an uncomfortable place (remember what happened to Einstein and his cosmological constant and that it was George Lemaitre—a Belgian priest– who set Albert back on course).
Scientists (mathematicians and cosmologists etc) typically state that one fixed law of the universe is the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and that when the universe began (and we know it had a beginning) it had very low entropy. It has been increasing every moment in a sense driving universal decay forward and advancing what we call ‘time’. Yet even though entropy is usually understood no one has included the information (formulas discovered by science) as an entropic issue in that the intelligibility of the universe (as if a creation) is going from structured and simple to confusing and complicated…as time moves on.
Occam’s Razor demands that we all look for the simple conclusions and answers and such; the obvious answer is that we should consider intelligence behind the information—if that means considering the God of Christianity…then we should do so. Interestingly, Christianity (the Bible) does not ask or want any ‘believer’ to stop thinking—to commit intellectual suicide. No one who is Christian is to seek a frontal lobotomy in order to know/seek/believe in God (or Jesus) that there is a one creator God responsible for the information. IN FACT, we are to seek and ask to call on God for knowledge and test everything (Jeremiah 33:3 and 1st Thessalonians 5:18). The problem with the churches of today and perhaps past times too is that many want to focus on Christ (Grace and salvation) and then stop thinking…like a deer lock-on to the headlights of an oncoming car; they just ‘Go God and Stop their Brain. These fundamentalist Christians (the Young –Earthers) give God a bad name. Christians are not (supposed to be) non-intelligent. Our inborn curiosity is not totally something that we develop it is a CONDITION of our separation from our real true state of being as knowledge as the One who gave us this brain! Curiously is insatiable because we are separated and seek deep understanding…look at the money and time we invest just to know what is on the moon and where the ‘edge’ of the universe is at!
Whatever the Intelligence is that is behind the information we have been discovering via science ‘IT’ has allowed us (the human being) a brain way too large for us to just survive via Darwinistic natural values/traits. We think in abstracts, have intuitive thoughts, make tools to then make tools to figure out ways to explore that go beyond our five senses or to extend our five senses way past anything Darwin says were intended via chance and monkeys! We are one, really very weird ‘bug’!! We are not a meat robot!!! It is as if this is not our home and we are all on a journey on this planet traveling in three space dimensions and one time dimension toward a goal and we are the caretakers of our spaceship Earth.
We are not to stop doing science rather we are to increase our seeking. What we do not know via science now is just our ignorance. It is not a God-of-the-Gaps mentality. The FACT that we can do science IS the communication that there could be God because it is that place from which the information of any science comes from (the ‘fingerprints’ left behind…purposely that we should find!). God-of-the-gaps is us shooting ourselves in the foot and not recognizing that what fills in that Gap is information that we just did not have knowledge for then…but now do…that is, communication and too relationship (from gravity to Higgs Boson to God and Bible…). Relationship is a big deal to God; be it between creatures or the Creator. The bottom line is this: No God, No Science; No Science, no God. We have science so we have a source for that scientific information—GOD! So don’t be a dumb and ignorant Christian; understand the sciences but also understand that the world ‘sent’ you to school so you would JUST get a job and support society by your concluding taxes…and the Christian MUST know that your brain is larger than other creatures because you are to USE IT, feed it correctly (Romans 12:2) and use it logically and reasonably (Isaiah 1:18). Many times I have read in my science-like library information that I should have been told in school…but was not just so I would fit in with society and stop asking WHY and just get a job.
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November 19, 2012 at 1:48 am
The teleonomic argument tells against that divine information. Obbfuscation cannot instantiate Him. Ah, you’re using the God of the explanatory gap- the Sufficient Reason, but alas, Aquinas faulted it eons ago with his superfluity argument,which boomerangs on his five ways! As Percy Bysshe Shellley implicitly use s it whn he maintains:” To suppose an existence beyond, or above them [ the descriptions- laws- of Nature,LD.] is to invent a second and superfluous hypothesis to account for what already is accounted for.” And to claim then no, that is a category mistake,begs the question thereof.
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May 30, 2013 at 12:07 pm
Perhaps an easier to understand answer to the “where did God come from” question is simply that since God exists outside of time/space a beginning/middle/end is irrelevant. Without time casualty isn’t an issue. Alpha/Omega.
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May 30, 2013 at 3:22 pm
Joell,
Right. An eternal being never comes into being, and thus may not need a cause. But even eternal things existing outside of time could require a cause if it is a contingent being. What makes it irrelevant to ask what caused God is not just His eternality, but His metaphysical necessity. He is not a contingent being, but a necessary being, and thus cannot be caused.
See https://theosophical.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/premise-1-of-the-kalam-cosmological-argument-does-not-prove-god-has-no-cause/, https://theosophical.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/even-if-the-universe-is-eternal-it-still-needs-a-cause/, https://theosophical.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/is-postulating-an-eternal-god-explanatorily-equivalent-to-positing-an-eternal-universe/, and https://theosophical.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/contingency-argument-for-gods-existence/
Jason
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October 23, 2013 at 11:20 am
[…] the source and cause of everything other than Himself. For many atheists, the causal terminus is natural laws. Natural laws are eternal, and the source of all physical reality (this represents a gross […]
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February 17, 2014 at 5:01 pm
[…] stumble upon other blogs that expand upon or give better detail to pieces of that explanation. This particular blog post has done that in a […]
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February 27, 2016 at 2:04 pm
dialetic that went nowhere, – no explanation of why this set of laws of physics
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