I watched only the beginning of Craig's introductory comments to the Craig v. Hitchens thing on youtube (the top result of a search for that). My internet connection was acting up that night and it was already late, and so I didn't go any further. Still, after the hype about Craig, I had decided was anxious to get a dose of the debate, and ended up with just the slightest sample. It's certainly my cup of tea, though, and I'll be checking the whole thing out sometime.Originally Posted by Darcy88
Craig poo-poos infinity
I have to say though, that Craig opened the debate rather weakly. He began with some unconvincing verdicts on what "infinity" and infinite time would mean to cosmology, implying it would lead to contradictions (and so there must be a creation). His arguments amount to "Hey, what is infinity minus infinity" and an appeal to conclusions reached by the famous mathematician David Hilbert, whose work is regarded as very important, but is not without criticism/rejection (even by his closest proteges). But it's enough for Craig (and I don't blame him for that), and it's handed to the audience along with assurances that (rather than being a preacher waving a Bible), he is a "professional philosopher".
The Multiverse, maybe?
Next, he (wisely) mentions the Multi-Verse theories about the origins of our universe. He is interested in pointing to the Anthropic Principle as evidence strongly suggesting a creation and creator, or at least some sort of design/plan behind existence. Looking at certain aspects of our universe, it seems "fortunate" that certain constants and laws came together so precisely--the slightest changes here or there would've made the formation of life impossible. The Multi-Verse is a popular theory among professional cosmolgists these days, and it makes the Anthropic view irrelevant. According to Multi-verse theories, conditions for life occured in our universe, as unlikely as it might seem, because it is just one of many other universes in which unfavorable conditions much more typically occur, and it's all just a matter of chance.
Craig gathers an ally
Craig attacks this notion. Rather, he latches on to some work by Roger Penrose that casts doubt on the Multiverse theory, and deploys it himself (while giving credit, of course), stating that the Multi-verse settling on the fine-tuned version of reality that we are familiar with is a lot less likely than the prospect of encountering many crazy things in this particular portion of the multi-verse. Basically, the idea that a table might suddenly appear out of nowhere is more likely than the Multiverse idea itself producing our reality, and so why aren't we seeing chairs pop up out of nowhere, or other crazy things. I might be mis-stating Penrose's position, but I'm probably as close as Craig gets, anyhow.
Multiverse proponents have their own objections to this sort of argument, if I might be so bold as to reduce Penrose's idea to the Occam's Razor objection.
Roger Penrose and cosmology
But perhaps more importantly, Roger Penrose is an atheist. (Maybe Hitchens points this out... Jeez, I might really regret posting without having watched the whole thing yet...) And, while Craig is of course free to choose what to do with whichever portion of Penrose's work he chooses, I am inclined to believe that it is at least as important to hear Penrose out on these matters, and what he thinks his work might likely imply.
Penrose believes that the universe is indeed infinite in time, with no beginning, nor an end. It isn't an ironclad conviction of his, I assume (since he is a scientist) but rather a theory that makes most sense to him. It's what he thinks is happening, but he isn't asking anyone to have "faith" in it, and he doesn't expect scripture to pile on further "reason" to believe anything. I'd have to have more explaining from him to be fully convinced of his idea (or at least more time to research it), but it is rather elegant (to begin with, certainly) if a few questions (re: knowing the fate of this universe, "bits of things to argue about") are sufficiently addressed. Frankly, I think the biggest job for him would maybe be to address them in such a way that I could understand it, but anyhow...
I'll post an excerpt from a recent interview of his. Basically, he's looking at the fact that photons have no mass, and that that means that physical dimension (I mean specifically mean "scale") means nothing in a world of photons. When we go back to the energy levels at the time of the Big Bang, the energy was greater than the equivalent mass for all of the matter, and so everything was just energy. How "big" was the "universe" at that time? Well, he's saying there wasn't a way to judge size:
http://articles.timesofindia.indiati...ein-quantum/13Now, the strange idea here is that if you have nothing which has rest mass, present in the universe. If you have things like photons then they cant make a clock. And if you can't make a clock you can't measure distances either. And so you don't know how big the scale of the universe is. So the point that I am trying to make is that the universe reaches a state where all black holes evaporate away by Hawking evaporation and there is nothing left - there are bits of things to argue about here - but let's say there's nothing but photons with zero mass. They don't measure scales. Equations of Maxwell for instance are completely independent of scale - if you make them small or big it makes no difference. So I am saying that physics of that stage is insensitive to scale. And this also applies to the Big Bang because if you go back and back and back in time you will find that temperatures get greater and greater, and that means that the energy of individual particles gets greater and greater until you reach the scale at which they get even greater than the mass energy of the particle. That means the particle is effectively without mass. And everything near the Big Bang, in fact probably before the Higg's time (which the LHC is trying to explore), much earlier than that, particles are effectively without mass. If they are without mass they become insensitive to scale again. So what I am saying is that the remote future of the previous aeon will be almost indistinguishable from our Big Bang and it is simply a scale change. I will have to talk about equations in detail but the idea is that the remote future of the previous aeon will be almost indistinguishable from our big bang and then our remote future will become the big bang of the next one. There is never any collapse it just keeps going but then it loses track of how big it is - it's a funny idea but that's the idea I am trying to promote.
Here's the link, and on the next page or so of the interview he goes on to sketch out some reasons he believes this is the case (gravity is the key), but good luck understanding it precisely right away!
Anyhow, this is the guy who provides Craig with his argument against the Multi-verse (thus providing Craig with the chance to present Creation as the best option...), and we just have to decide if Penrose's thinking is the sort of thing that has merit or not, on this matter or that or both. It should be noted, I guess, that Penrose is an Atheist, but not a "positivist", and he's also in dispute over certain matters with other prominent atheists (e.g. Hawking).
Anyhow, I'm anxious to watch the rest, but I've gotten a poor initial impression of Craig just from his opening statement. (And a poor Wi-Fi connection, recently)
