Debuncking Atheist Fortress of Facts part 2

Karl Popper

footnote numbers taken over from part 1.

Not Facts but Verisimilitude:

Karl Popper (1902-1994) is one of the most renewed and highly respected figures in the philosophy of science. Popper was from Vienna, of Jewish origin, maintained a youthful flirtation with Marxism, and left his native land due to the rise of Nazism in the late thirties. He is considered to be among the ranks of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Popper is highly respected by scientists in a way that most philosophers of science are not.[15]

He was also a social and political philosopher of considerable stature, a self-professed ‘critical-rationalist’, a dedicated opponent of all forms of scepticism, conventionalism, and relativism in science and in human affairs generally, a committed advocate and staunch defender of the ‘Open Society’, and an implacable critic of totalitarianism in all of its forms. One of the many remarkable features of Popper's thought is the scope of his intellectual influence. In the modern technological and highly-specialised world scientists are rarely aware of the work of philosophers; it is virtually unprecedented to find them queuing up, as they have done in Popper's case, to testify to the enormously practical beneficial impact which that philosophical work has had upon their own. But notwithstanding the fact that he wrote on even the most technical matters with consummate clarity, the scope of Popper's work is such that it is commonplace by now to find that commentators tend to deal with the epistemological, scientific and social elements of his thought as if they were quite disparate and unconnected, and thus the fundamental unity of his philosophical vision and method has to a large degree been dissipated.[16]

Unfortunately for our purposes we will only be able to skim the surface of Popper’s thoughts on the most crucial aspect of this theory of science, that science is not about proving things but about falsifying them.

Above we see that Dawkins, Stenger and company place their faith in the probability engineered by scientific facts. The problem is probability is not the basis upon which one chooses one theory over another, at least according to Popper. This insight forms the basis of this notion that science can give us verisimilitude not “facts.” Popper never uses the phrase “fortress of facts,” we could add that, science is not a fortress of facts. Science is not giving us “truth,” its’ giving something in place of truth, “verisimilitude.” The term verisimilar means “having the appearance of truth, or probable.” Or it can also mean “depicting realism” as in art or literature.”[17] According to Popper in choosing between two theories one more probable than the other, if one is interested I the informative content of the theory, one should choose the less probable. This is paradoxical but the reason is that probability and informative content very inversely. The higher informative content of a theory is more predictive since the more information contained in a statement the greater the number of ways the statement will turn out to fail or be proved wrong. At that rate mystical experience should be the most scientific view point. If this dictum were applied to a choice between Stenger’s atheism and belief in God mystical God belief would be more predictive and have less likelihood of being wrong because it’s based upon not speaking much about what one experiences as truth. We will see latter that this is actually the case in terms of certain kinds of religious experiences. I am not really suggesting that the two can be compared. They are two different kinds of knowledge. Even though mystical experience per se can be falsified (which will be seen in subsequent chapters) belief in God over all can’t be. The real point is that arguing that God is less probable is not a scientifically valid approach.

Thus the statements which are of special interest to the scientist are those with a high informative content and (consequentially) a low probability, which nevertheless come close to the truth. Informative content, which is in inverse proportion to probability, is in direct proportion to testability. Consequently the severity of the test to which a theory can be subjected, and by means of which it is falsified or corroborated, is all-important.[18]

Scientific criticism of theories must be piecemeal. We can’t question every aspect of a theory at once. For this reason one must accept a certain amount of background knowledge. We can’t have absolute certainty. Science is not about absolute certainty, thus rather than speak of “truth” we speak of “verisimilitude.” No single observation can be taken to falsify a theory. There is always the possibility that the observation is mistaken, or that the assumed background knowledge is faulty.[19] Uneasy with speaking of “true” theories or ideas, or that a corroborated theory is “true,” Popper asserted that a falsified theory is known to be false. He was impressed by Tarski’s 1963 reformulation of the corresponded theory of truth. That is when Popper reformulated his way of speaking to frame the concept of “truth-likeness” or “verisimilitude,” according to Thronton.[20] I wont go into all the ramifications of verisimilitude, but Popper has an extensive theory to cover the notion. Popper’s notions of verisimilitude were critixized by thinkers in the 70’s such as Miller, Tichy’(grave over the y) and Grunbaum (umlaut over the first u) brought out problems with the concept. In an attempt to repair the theory Popper backed off claims to being able to access the numerical levels of verisimilitude between two theories.[21] The resolution of this problem has not diminished the admiration for Popper or his acceptance in the world of philosophy of science. Nor is the solution settled in the direction of acceptance for the fortress of facts. Science is not closer to the fact making business just because there are problems with verisimilitude.

Science doesn’t prove but Falsifies

The aspect of Popper’s theory for which he is best known is probably the idea of falsification. In 1959 He published the Logic of Scientific Discovery in which he rigorously and painstakingly demonstrated why science can’t prove but can only disprove, or falsify. Popper begins by observing that science uses inductive methods and thus is thought to be marked and defined by this approach. By the use of the inductive approach science moves from “particular statements,” such as the result of an experiment, to universal statements such as an hypothesis or theories. Yet, Popper observes, the fallacy of this kind of reasoning has always been known. Regardless of how many times we observe white swans “this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white.”[22] He points out this is the problem of universal statements, which can’t be grounded in experience because experience is not universal, at least not human experience. One might observe this is also a problem of empirical observation. Some argue that we can know universal statements to be true by experience; this is only true if the experiences are universal as well. Such experience can only be a singular statement. This puts it in the same category with the original problem so it can’t do any better.[23] The only way to resolve the problem of induction, Popper argues, is to establish a principle of induction. Such a principle would be a statement by which we could put inductive inferences into logically acceptable form. He tells us that upholders of the need for such a principle would say that without science can’t provide truth or falsehood of its theories.[24]

The principle can’t be a purely logical statement such as tautology or a prori reasoning, if it could there would be no problem of induction. This means it must be a synthetic statement, empirically derived. Then he asked “how can we justify statement on rational grounds?” [25] After all he’s just demonstrated that an empirical statement can’t be the basis of a universal principle. Then to conclude that there must be a universal principle of logic that justifies induction knowing that it ahs to be an empirical statement, just opens up the problem again. He points out that Reichenbach[26] would point that such the principle of induction is accepted by all of science.[27] Against Reinchenback he sties Hume.[28] Popper glosses over Kant’s attempt at a prori justification of syetnic a priori statements.[29] In the end Popper disparages finding a solution and determines that induction is not the hallmark of science. Popper argues that truth alludes science since it’s only real ability is to produce probability. Probability and not truth is what science can produce. “…but scientific statements can only attain continuous degrees of probability whose unattainable upper and lower limits are truth and falsity’.”[30] He goes on to argue against probability as a measure of inductive logic.[31] Then he’s going to argue for an approach he calls “deductive method of testing.. In this case he argues that an hypothesis can only be empirically tested and only after it has been advanced. [32]

What has been established so far is enough to destroy the fortress of facts of idea. The defeat of a principle of induction as a means of understanding truth is primary defeat for the idea that science is going about establishing a big pile of facts. What all of this is driving at of course is the idea that science is not so much the process of fact discovery as it is the process of elimination of bad idea taken as fact. Science doesn’t prove facts it disproves hypotheses.. Falsifying theories is the real business of science. It’s the comparison to theory in terms of what is left after falsification has been done that makes for a seeming ‘truth-likeness,’ or verisimilitude. Falsification is a branch of what Popper calls “Demarcation.” This issue refers to the domain or the territory of the scientists work. Induction does not mark out the proper demarcation. The criticism he is answering in discussing demarcation is that removing induction removes for science it’s most important distinction from metaphysical speculation. He states that this is precisely his reason for rejecting induction because “it does not provide a suitable distinguishing mark of the empirical non metaphysical character of a theoretical system,”[33] this is what he calls “demarcation.”

Popper writes with reference to positivistic philosophers as the sort of umpires of scientific mythology. He was a philosopher and the project of the positivists was to “clear away the clutter” (in the words of A.J. Ayer) for science so it could get on with it’s work. Positivistic philosophers were the janitors of science. Positivists had developed the credo that “meaningful statements” (statements of empirical science) must be statements that are “fully decided.” That is to say, they had to be both falsifiable and verifiable. The requirement for verifiable is really a requirement similar to the notion of proving facts, or truth. Verifiability is not the same thing as facticiy or proof it’s easy to see how psychologically it reinforces th sense that science is about proving things. He quotes several positivists in reinforcing this idea: Thus Schlick says: “. . . a genuine statement must be capable of conclusive verification” Waismann says, “If there is no possible way to determine whether a statement is true then that statement has no meaning whatsoever. For the meaning of a statement is the method of its verification.”[34] Yet Popper disagrees with them. He writes that there is no such thing as induction. He discusses particular statements which are verified by experience just opens up the same issues he launched in the beginning one cannot derive universal statements from experience. “Therefore, theories are never theories are never empirically verifiable. He argues that the only way to deal with the demarcation problem is to admit statements that are not empirically verified.[35]

But I shall certainly admit a system as empirical or scientific only if it

is capable of being tested by experience. These considerations suggest

that not the verifiability but the falsifiability of a system is to be taken as a

criterion of demarcation. In other words: I shall not require of a

Scientific system that it shall be capable of being singled out, once and

for all, in a positive sense; but I shall require that its logical form shall

be such that it can be singled out, by means of empirical tests, in a

negative sense: it must be possible for an empirical scientific system to be refuted by experience.[36]

What this means in relation to the “fortress of facts” idea is that it transgresses upon the domain of science. Compiling a fortress of facts is beyond the scope of science and also denudes science of it’s domain.

He deals with the objection that science is supposed to give us positive knowledge and to reduce it to a system of falsification only negates its major purpose. He deals with this by saying this criticism carries little weight since the amount of positive information is greater the more likely it is to clash. The reason being laws of nature get more done the more they act as a limit on possibility, in other words, he puts it, “not for nothing do we call the laws of nature laws. They more they prohibit the more they say.”[37]

sources

[15] Steven Thornton, “Karl Popper,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Winter 2011 edition Edward N. Zalta Editor, URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2011/entries/popper/ vested 2/6/2012

[16] ibid

[17] Miriam-Webster. M-W.com On line version of Webster’s dictionary. URL: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/verisimilar?show=0&t=1328626983 visited 2/7/2012

[18] Thornton, ibid.

[19] ibid

[20] ibid

[21] ibid

[22] Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery. London, New York:Routledge Classics, original English publication 1959 by Hutchison and co. by Routldege 1992. On line copy URL: http://www.cosmopolitanuniversity.ac/library/LogicofScientificDiscoveryPopper1959.pdf digital copy by Cosmo oedu visited 2/6/2012, p4

[23] ibid

[24] ibid

[25] ibid, 5

[26] Hans Reinchenbach (1891-1953) German philosopher, attended Einstein’s lectures and contributed to work on Quantum Mechanics. He fled Germany to escape Hitler wound up teaching at UCLA.

[27] Popper, ibid, referece to , H. Reichenbach, Erkenntnis 1, 1930, p. 186 (cf. also pp. 64 f.). Cf. the penultimate paragraph of Russell’s chapter xii, on Hume, in his History of Western Philosophy, 1946,

p. 699.

[28] ibid, Popper, 5

[29] ibid, 6

[30] ibid 6

[31] ibid, 7

[32] ibid

[33] ibid 11

[34] ibid, 17, references to Schlick, Naturwissenschaften 19, 1931, p. 150. and Waismann, Erkenntnis 1, 1903, p. 229.

[35] Ibid 18

[36] ibid

[37] ibid, 19 the quotation about laws is found on p 19 but the over all argument is developed over sections 31-46 spanning pages 95-133.

Debuncking the Atheist Fortress of Facts part 1

 

This is part of a larger framework that includes the theories of Thomas Kuhn and argues that science is a social construct. That part of it will be saved for another time. This section, although long is answering an argument that I see atheist touting all the time. They always deny it but it's unmistakably there. Section one documents that there such an attitude among atheists and gives some preliminary arguments. Section 2 shows the truly unscientific nature of the attitude.

Nowhere is the arrogance of humanity more apparent than in the many tendencies to treat God as a big man in the sky and try to subject him to scientific analysis. This is a move that most thinkers of the previous century would have laughed themselves silly over. One cannot second guess the nature of the divine by insisting that God operates under rules like a biological organism? Richard Dawkins is a major purveyor of this view but Victor Stinger is even more so. Stinger, in his God the Failed Hypothesis[1] is the genius who stated the "who created God" thing, one of the hallmarks of atheist ignorance. The method is super simple. Stinger does mess not with trying to probe the heavens or reaching beyond our tiny little sample of reality on this dust mote, he does it the "obvious way" by creating a straw man argument for God then knocking it down. The straw man is based upon a selective understanding guaranteed to denude belief of a factual basis and to load a pile of facts in the unbelieving camp so as to create the impression that atheism is a choice based upon the full brunt of scientific fact, and religious belief has nothing going for it but ignorance and superstition. This tactic I call the “fortress of facts.” The fortress of facts is something atheists deny vehemently but it’s obvious in almost every argument they make. Most scientifically inclined observers know that science is not merely the accumulation of a pile of facts. Science is not about proving facts or manufacturing a pile of facts so much as it is about testing hypothesis in a systematic fashion. Science is more about disproving than about proving. There are aspects of reality that beyond the ability of science to disprove. God is one of these. Yet, even though atheists will deny the words “fortress of facts” if we observe the way they argument this is undeniable consequence of their logic and their approach.

Science and the “God Hypothesis.”

The whole idea of referring to God as an hypothesis in the first place is an attempt to classify the God concept under the rubric of scientific domain. If God is an hypothesis then he’s something science can dispute, because science is about testing hypothesis. Of course the notion weather or not God can be so classified is a theological question and must be answered theologians. Since atheist denuded theology of any valid content (through sheer mocking and ridicule) then there’s no one to respond who atheists wont mock and ridicule. Thus truth by stipulation is written into the atheist ideology. This overall move turns upon the fortress of facts idea because a hypothesis without fact can’t be maintained. Thus while denying up front that they think about science in this manner we can see the fortress of facts as the basic assumption in the over all atheist approach to belief. We see the fortress of facts at work in the writings of Singer:

says Victor Stenger in "God: The Failed Hypothesis." The book is subtitled, "How science shows that God does not exist." Chapter by chapter, the author shows that the existence of God would suggest certain realities in the world that would be verifiable by scientific inquiry. But the data don't support these would-be realities, thereby providing evidence that no God exists.

Stenger, retired professor of Philosophy at University of Colorado and of Physics and Astronomy at University of Hawaii, is successful in this line of reasoning because of his clearly stated definition that he is not just talking about any kind of god, but specifically the capital-g God of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition.[2]

We can see the assumption of the fortress of facts in Skeptic Magazine article reviewing[3] Stinger’s book: “conspicuous by his Absence.” "Stinger lays out the evidence from cosmology, particle physics and quantum mechanics showing that the universe appears exactly as it should if there is no creator." This is a factual approach. The facts show God doesn’t exist because if he did things would be different. To show this we use our tremendous fact finding potential in science.

How does he reckon it should if there is no God? He constructs his own fundamentalist driven version of what God would be like. Of course he has no knowledge of that. It's really a disproof of the atheist big nightmare of the fundamentalist concept of God, in other words, a straw man argument not a real disproof of anything valid. Beyond that, which is a deal breaker--because how you set up the inquiry in the first place determines everything-- there are other criticisms. For example his take on the issue of prayer studies. This is also proof of the "fortress of facts" concept which I am always pointing out that atheist ideology teaches. No atheist has of yet accepted the notion when I point it but it's clear that they argue from it all the time. The idea science gives them a big pile of facts but we believers have no facts. The facts are going to tell us if we can believe in God or not, of course the facts are only facts if they are “scientific” (ie in this case that means if they work against belief in God).

For instance, he tackles the question of the efficacy of prayer, in which the followers of these faiths fervently believe. If God exists, he argues, prayers could be shown to have been answered, using verifiable, replicable studies. And indeed, such studies have been conducted, with universally negative results. (Some studies, which supposedly yielded positive results, used flawed methodology and thus the conclusion is dismissible.) "If prayer were as important as it is taken to be by Jews, Christians and Muslims, its positive effects should be obvious and measurable," Stenger concludes. "They are not. It does not appear - based on the scientific evidence - that a God exists who answers prayers in any significant, observable way."[4]

Here again we have the same idea at work, science gives us a fortress of facts that religion can’t match, never mind the fact that we have selected which facts are important to observe and what assumptions about God set up the facts we want to select. For example consider the flip flop that has happened in regard to these prayer studies. Back in the day when they were being done (late 80s, early 90s) they were big news the atheists were on defensive grasping at whatever straws they could to answer, since they had no counter studies and counter data. One of the major arguments they used to make on every message board, every blog, ever news group where this was debated was that you can’t control for outside prayer. The defenders of the studies, such as Dr. Byrd and Dr. Harris did their own straw-clutching to answer this argument about control. Since that time, however, thing have turned around. A study with the largest data base was done that showed very little or no difference in the two groups. The atheists have gone ape making the argument that “prayer is disproved.” The study detractors (now the theists) argue “you can’t control for outside prayer, the argument atheists used to make. The atheists say “O sure you can.” When I point out that they used to make this argument themselves many of them have said “no atheist ever argued that.” How quickly we forget. I remember. I have the article. Gary P Posner did argue it:

The most striking flaw in this study's methodology is one forthrightly acknowledged by Byrd. "It was assumed that some of the patients in both groups would be prayed for by people not associated with the study; this was not controlled for ... Therefore, 'pure' groups were not attained in this study." In other words, the focus of the study - prayer - was "not controlled for," except that three to seven intercessors were assigned to pray daily for each patient in the IP group, and none was assigned to the controls. Thus, although unlikely, it is nevertheless theoretically possible that the control group received as many prayers as did the IP group, if not more.

If "intercessory prayer" was not controlled, except that each IP patient was assumed to have received somewhere between X+3 and X+7 prayers daily, as opposed to X+0 for the control patients, what are we to conclude? That God is conditioned in a Pavlovian manner to automatically respond to the side with the greater number of troops, even though the assigned intercessors had no emotional ties to their patients, and even though the IP patients were otherwise no more worthy of healing as a group than were the controls? Does God not know that the side with fewer troops is in just as much need of assistance? Where is the evidence of his omniscience and compassion?

And what can be said about the evidence for God's omnipotence? It is true, assuming that Byrd's data are valid, that in the IP group, 5 percent fewer patients needed diuretics, 7 percent fewer needed antibiotics, 6 percent fewer needed respiratory intubation and/or ventilation, 6 percent fewer developed congestive heart failure, 5 percent fewer developed pneumonia, and 5 percent fewer suffered cardiopulmonary arrest. But no significant differences were found among the other twenty categories, including mortality, despite explicit prayers "for prevention of ... death." And, reports Byrd, "Even though for [the six seemingly significant] variables the P values were less than .05, they could not be considered statistically significant because of the large number of variables examined. I used two methods to overcome this statistical limitation ... [the] severity score, and multivariant [sic] analysis" (emphasis added).[5]

So what happens if we say Posner was right? These studies don’t measure the truth of prayer because you can’t control for outside prayer? The study that shows no difference is meaningless. Of course the atheists will say but the theist still has no facts to back prayer. Of course they are just selecting the facts that support there view. There are facts that back prayer but they are ignored because they counter the ideological assumptions of naturalism. That will be dealt with in subsequent chapters.

The assumptions that Stenger has to make to make his straw man work is that God is exactly as he wants him to be. The reviewer at Simply Einstein (ibid) defends him against the charge of straw man.

The logical purist may object that one can't "prove a negative," that one can no more disprove God than disprove the existence of Santa Claus or an invisible unicorn in the backyard. But the fact that most people do believe in God while rejecting the latter two is part of the point. Given no real reason to believe in Santa Claus or invisible unicorns, people reject such beliefs. Yet they hold tenaciously not only to belief in their God, but specifically to the tenets that their religion teaches about him. It is really these tenets that Stinger is addressing. By showing that they are wrong, like the efficacy of prayer or the notion that God fine-tuned the universe specifically for the sake of existence of humanity, the author demonstrates that belief in God is equally unfounded.[6]

Yet this is not much of a defense. The so called "tenets" are self selected to be one's he picks out that he thinks he can beat. No religious creed or Bible passage commands us to believe on the basis of the fine tuning argument. No scientific argument can disprove the notion that God has fine tuned the universe to bear life. The only thing science can prove about fine tuning is that we can't prove it. On the other hand far greater scientists than Stinger say his arguments against fine tuning are not so good. The person answering mail for John Polkinghorne’s website (formerly physicist at Cambridge second only to Hawking, who retired to be a Christian minister) says:

Stenger did some marginally useful scientific work but his claims are far too dogmatic. As for his suggestion that Anthropic Fine tuning is a non-problem because of his simplistic program MonkeyGod that purports to simulate universes and “show” that anthropic universes are commonplace, I know of no serious cosmologist who takes this seriously. Martin Rees’s “Just Six Numbers” is a good guide to the real science.[7]

Polkinghorne himself says: “I have read several of the books expressing the current outburst of militant atheism, but not the two you mention. My impression is that they are polemical rather than presenting reasoned arguments of a truth-seeking kind, and that they largely depend upon attacking caricature distortions of religious belief.”[8]

Others find the straw man to be Stenger's usual method:

Stinger—a retired physicist who is leveraging his scientific background to try to discredit anything and everything that smacks of spirituality—doesn’t respect his intellectual opponents enough to get their positions right; in some instances he appears to deliberately misrepresent their views; and, most important, his own reasoning is characterized by unremitting carelessness. Moreover, there is a method to his carelessness—it enables him to systematically avoid addressing the tough arguments of his opponents. Hence we find him frequently setting up a straw man by misrepresenting the debate as a simple matter of science and reason versus superstition. Once having defined this as the issue, all he needs to do is assume the attitude of an outraged scientist and heap on the ridicule. But if he had done his homework and taken the trouble to really understand the science and logic supporting quantum spirituality, he would have discovered that it is harder to dismiss than he had imagined. Indeed, the more carefully—and yes, critically—one considers the issues, the more one finds quantum spirituality to
be eminently worthy of serious consideration, as a plausible and measured approach to the most long-standing and intractable questions at the basis of science.[9]

Stenger doesn't deal with what I consider to be the major God arguments, the ground of being stuff of Tillich and Schleiermacher. Like most of the cult of atheism he's in thrall to his own version of science which is laced with metaphysics. Like most of them they think they are being scientific and philosophical when they denounce philosophy and theology and talk about how science is the only form of knowledge, and then they are bringing ontology in through the back door to put fiber into their world view. Stenger's straw man making is standard procedure for the new atheist. They are always spitting out some line with a dashing air of how theology is stupid so they don't have to read it. They know it's stupid even though they haven't read any. The whole point of showing they haven't read is usually because they are getting the ideas wrong but they never seem to care.

The fortress of facts concept is seen in the works of the high priest of New Atheism, Richard Dawkins.

An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: "I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one." I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.[10]

Intellectually “fulfilled atheist” is code for “we have the facts.” What he’s clearly saying is that it was unsatisfying when we didn’t have the facts, God is still be rejected even though he has no real reason for it, but it’s not satisfying. The only thing that makes it satisfying is when we get a pile of facts. That’s because of the explanatory value. He makes it quite clear this is his motive reason for saying these things that he’s after is expletory power and what constitutes an explanation is a scientifically verifiable fact that can’t be disputed.

An even clearer example:

-Faith, being belief that isn't based on evidence, is the principal vice of any religion. And who, looking at Northern Ireland or the Middle East, can be confident that the brain virus of faith is not exceedingly dangerous? One of the stories told to the young Muslim suicide bombers is that martyrdom is the quickest way to heaven — and not just heaven but a special part of heaven where they will receive their special reward of 72 virgin brides. It occurs to me that our best hope may be to provide a kind of "spiritual arms control": send in specially trained theologians to deescalate the going rate in virgins.[11]

As juxtaposed to the next paragraph:

Well, science is not religion and it doesn't just come down to faith. Although it has many of religion's virtues, it has none of its vices. Science is based upon verifiable evidence. Religious faith not only lacks evidence, its independence from evidence is its pride and joy, shouted from the rooftops. Why else would Christians wax critical of doubting Thomas? The other apostles are held up to us as exemplars of virtue because faith was enough for them. Doubting Thomas, on the other hand, required evidence. Perhaps he should be the patron saint of scientists.[12]

The implication is we have the facts, that are why we understand the world. Further implication is that the world is only the surface level of physical workings. The first paragraph is clearly arguing from guilt by association. It’s asserting that if there are some brutal dangerous religious people they must be that way because of religion; therefore all religious people are potentially that way. If a Christian apologist for example were to talk about the Nazis and how their scientifically engaged members conducted inhumane experiments on Jews in concentrating camps, and tried to drawn conclusions about the dangerous nature of science based upon that association, the atheists would set up a howl. It would not take the atheist long to see the fallacy of guilt by association in that case. Never mind that, and let’s also skim over the fact that he’s using a straw man version of faith tailored to make it seem more stupid. While faith per se is not based upon facts there’s nothing in the nature of faith that causes one to ignore facts. He tried to incriminate the joy of discovery which is he hardly in a position to critique since he’s never experienced and can’t understand it. That sense of joy has nothing to do with ignoring facts. For me part of that joy came form the realization that my faith is backed by facts. The more important point is that he’s placing the tailored example of no facts along side the self selected example of fact finding to create the sense of the skeptic haing a huge pile of pile of fact that confirms his world view while in fac the believe purposely rejects having facts. That is a perfect example of the fortress of facts mentality.

While it is anecdotal, evidence from the popular level shows, to some extent, the effects of this kid of thinking upon the rank and file of the atheist movement. There’s a popular website by one of the troops called “God is Imaginary.” It’s far from special, just run of the mill message board sloganeering and propaganda. It does express the fortress of facts mentality clearly.

“God is imaginary: Proof no 11, notice that there is no scientific evidence.”

"There is no scientific evidence indicating that God exists. We all know that. For example:

• God has never left any physical evidence of his existence on earth.

• None of Jesus' "miracles" left any physical evidence either. (see this page)

• God has never spoken to modern man, for example by taking over all the television stations and broadcasting a rational message to everyone.

• The resurrected Jesus has never appeared to anyone. (see this page)

• The Bible we have is provably incorrect and is obviously the work of primitive men rather than God. (see this page)

• When we analyze prayer with statistics, we find no evidence that God is "answering prayers." (see this page)

• Huge, amazing atrocities like the Holocaust and AIDS occur without any response from God.

• And so on…

Let's agree that there is no empirical evidence showing that God exists.

If you think about it as a rational person, this lack of evidence is startling. There is not one bit of empirical evidence indicating that today's "God", nor any other contemporary god, nor any god of the past, exists. In addition we know that:

1. If we had scientific proof of God's existence, we would talk about the "science of God" rather than "faith in God".

2. If we had scientific proof of God's existence, the study of God would be a scientific endeavor rather than a theological one.

3. If we had scientific proof of God's existence, all religious people would be aligning on the God that had been scientifically proven to exist. Instead there are thousands of gods and religions.

The reason for this lack of evidence is easy for any unbiased observer to see. The reason why there is no empirical evidence for God is because God is imaginary."[13]

The major thrust of that bit of flim flam is that “we” (our side) we have all the facts in a great big pile and they don’t have a single one. Most thinking atheists and most scientifically minded atheists put it in terms of “explanatory power.” Appeal to God doesn’t explain the world as well as does science. That’s a more sophisticated version of the fortress of facts. Dawkins has a variation on this argument.

Unfortunately, Dawkins pushes envelope too far. He tries to turn the simple desire to know into a moral virtue in order to make it seem that science is more moral than religion:

Humans have a great hunger for explanation. It may be one of the main reasons why humanity so universally has religion, since religions do aspire to provide explanations. We come to our individual consciousness in a mysterious universe and long to understand it. Most religions offer a cosmology and a biology, a theory of life, a theory of origins, and reasons for existence. In doing so, they demonstrate that religion is, in a sense, science; it's just bad science. Don't fall for the argument that religion and science operate on separate dimensions and are concerned with quite separate sorts of questions. Religions have historically always attempted to answer the questions that properly belong to science. Thus religions should not be allowed now to retreat away from the ground upon which they have traditionally attempted to fight. They do offer both a cosmology and a biology; however, in both cases it is false.[14]

He’s saying that religion is trespassing upon questions of science, yet he doesn’t even bother to point out that religion was there first. Just because people in the prehistoric and ancient worlds mixed religious and scientific explanations—not having developed science religion was all they had to fall back on—doesn’t mean that’s the reason religion came to exist. As science has developed there is no reason why religious people can use it to understand questions that fall into he overlap between the two domains. The questions he’s discussing are overlap questions and modern thinking religious people have used to science to help answer them. In making this point he asserts that science is the fact giving endeavor while religion is content to have faith and do without facts. Of course that’s not a good description of most modern thinking religious people.

Dawkins wants us to think in terms of the fortress of facts, nothing provides scientific facts like science does. Of course he’s not mentioning the fact that it’s only one kind of explanation. There are facets to the question about the origin of life than just the physical workings of evolution. There are questions people have asked for thousands of years that science is not prepared to answer. There are questions that science is not allowed to answer because they are out of its domain. These are questions about the meaning of the life, the reason why life is, and the ultimate “destiny” (for want of a better word) of humans. These are things science can’t tell us they are the reasons religion exits. So the kinds of facts that religion provides the uses for faith are in a different area than those provided by science. The nature of the atheist view point is self selected to focus only upon the kinds of facts that science provides and it offers a biased, fallacious and inaccurate view of religious thinking. It also provides a distorted understanding of what science is. Science is not a pile of facts. Science is not even about fact making. Science is about hypothesis testing; it’s not about proving facts but testing for verification and falsifying premises. The overall “big picture” painted by science is a lot more dependent upon they a particular culture views life than it is the demonstration f a pile of facts.

Not only is this notion of science as a big pile of facts that guarantees an accurate understanding of reality a view that most scientists don’t take to the understanding of science, it’s specifically contradicted by the vast majority of historians and philosophers of science. While there is a great of contradiction between philosophers of science, the one thing they all agree on is that this fortress of facts idea is nonsense. First let’s turn to two major philosophers of science, Karl Popper and Thomas S. Kuhn. These two are destined to be linked since they had a major showdown to so speak over Kuhn’s theory, in the early to mid 60s. In that day Kuhn was thought to have won, his views went on to define philosophy of science for about three decades. I suspect that in this day popper is more popular and is probably now thought to have won. In reality, however, I think talk of who won is foolish because no only is the field still evolving but it’s diversifying and moving away form both, so neither of them won really. There is coming to be a plurality of models. Before going into that I’m going to examine Popper first, then Kuhn. What all of this evolving plurality agrees upon is that science is too complex and problematic to be regarded as anything like a fortress of facts!

---

[1] Victor J. Stenger, God: The Failed Hypothesis:How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2007.

[2] Jerry Petersen, Simply Einstein, Review “Victor J. Stinger, God the Failed Hypothesis.” Online web page:

URL http://simplycharly.com/einstein/victor_stenger_god_the_failed_hypothesis_review.html visited Jan 31, 2012.

[3][iii] David Ludden "Conspicuous by His Absence". Skeptic. April 4, 2007. http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-04-04.html. Retrieved 2007-10-17. visited Jan 31,2012

[4] Petersen, ibid.

[5] Secular web

Gary P. Posner, “God in the ICU? A Criticique of San Franscisco Hospital Study of Intercessory prayer and Healing.” Originally published in Free Inquiry spring 1990, Secular Web URLhttp://www.infidels.org/library/modern/gary_posner/godccu.html

[6] Petersen,ibid

[7] John Polikinghorne’s staff, formerly on Polikinghorne’s official website, now Star Course, “Polikinghorne Q and A, Stenger and Hitchens. On line reseruce: URL http://www.starcourse.org/jcp/qanda.html#Stenger_and_Hitchens visited Summer 2011.last visited Jan 2 2012.

[8] Polkinghorne,ibid

[9] David Sharf, “Pseudo Science and Stenger’s Quantum gods: Mistaken, Misinformed, and Misleading.” NeuroQuantology, Vol 8, No 1 (2010), online copy URL: http://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/article/viewArticle/272 visited Jan 2 2012 Sharf received his Ph.D. in 1986 from Johns Hopkins University, in the philosophy of physics. The title of his dissertation was: Quantum Mechanics and the Program for the Unity of Science

[10] Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker. Why The Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design. New York: W.W. Norton & Company,inc. 2004, 6.

[11] Richard Dawkins, “Is Science a Religion,” The Humanist: A Magazine of Critical inquiry and Social Concern, Jan-feb 1997, on line copy URL: http://www.thehumanist.org/humanist/articles/dawkins.html

visited Feb 2, 2012

[12] ibid

[13] “God is Imaginary” Example no 11 no scientific evidence URL: http://godisimaginary.com/i11.htm

visited 1/30/2012

[14] Dawkins, ibid.

Review: Lawrence Kruass's Universe From Nothing

illustration of Higgs boson

The closest thing to a “smoking gun” for anti-God evidence is presented by Lawrence Krauss in his book A Universe from Nothing.[1] Krauss merely argues something that every Christian apologist on message boards has been dealing with since the late 90s, that is the notion that the idea that Quantum theory means that the universe popped into existence from nothing based upon the assumption that Quantum particles do the same. This is really nothing new. When I first became aware of message boards and of the strife between atheists and theists on message boards, they were arguing about this. Yet the book has be lauded by atheists like it’s their version of the advent of Christ. Almost as quickly as it manifest it was shot down again by a philosopher. I’ll come t that in a moment. Why Krauss’s book got the glamour and not some of the physicists a decade ago who were saying the same thing I don’t know. Perhaps it’s because they didn’t write whole books about it. In any case, Krauss argues that the eternal laws of Quantum mechanics produce particles out of nothing when the instability of vacuum states causes quantum fields to shift and produce different kinds of particles.[2] This seems like it’s blessed with the aura science and thus cannot be questioned, yet a philosopher dared to question. David Albert exposed the meaning of terms in this senero and exploded the whole project.

Albert first points out that tracing the universe back to some physical property or cause is not an explanation as to why there is something rather than nothing.

What if he were in a position to announce, for instance, that the truth of the quantum-mechanical laws can be traced back to the fact that the world has some other, deeper property X? Wouldn’t we still be in a position to ask why X rather than Y? And is there a last such question? Is there some point at which the possibility of asking any further such questions somehow definitively comes to an end? How would that work? What would that be like?[3]

Secondly, moving on form that difficulty, he points out that since the enlightenment science has always assumed that at the “bottom of everything” there is “some basic, elementary, eternally persisting, concrete, physical stuff.”[4] Newton had it that this “stuff” consisted of particles. At the end of the nineteenth century it was particles and electro-magnetic fields. “And what the fundamental laws of nature are about, and all the fundamental laws of nature are about, and all there is for the fundamental laws of nature to be about, insofar as physics has ever been able to imagine, is how that elementary stuff is arranged.”[5] The laws don’t tell us where the elementary “stuff” came from. The laws concerning quantum mechanics are not exception. The laws do not tell us where the fields came from. Moreover, every previous theory counted particles among concrete stuff and quantum theory does not. In quantum theory particles are understood as arrangements of fields. Some arrangement correspond to certain numbers and kinds of particles, come correspond to no particles.[6] This latter arrangement, Albert tells us, is what they call “vacuum states.” According to Albert, Krauss is arguing that the laws of relativistic quantum field theories “entail that vacuum states are unstable. And that, in a nutshell, is the account he proposes of why there should be something rather than nothing.”[7]

In other words because the state of no particles is “unstable” (it’s hard to keep nothing from becoming something) “nothing” blows up into something so to speak. There are problems with this account. First, we have just seen, it assume a whole set up of laws and fields with no real reason for them to be there (the fact that none of the theory explains a real “why” I’ll put off until latter). Secondly, the issue of what is meant by “nothing” is the crux of the matter. When physicists say “nothing,” they don’t mean real actual nothing as in a lack of anything at all. What they really mean is vacuum flux, that this pre existing framework of law and field and the arrangement there of the and the sporadic popping in and out of prior existing particles. As Albert says, “Relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical vacuum states — no less than giraffes or refrigerators or solar systems — are particular arrangements of elementary physical stuff..”[8] This is most crucial because Albert is arguing that “nothing” in terms of no particles does not mean “nothing” in terms of now fields, or no laws. Thus “nothing” doesn’t mean “nothing,” it means something for which we still must account. That really blows the whole argument because it’s not a universe from nothing, it’s a universe form something else for which we must account, and can’t. So that means it’s just a rehash of status quo. The book originally was introduced with a media splash and created a sensation. Albert taking out the argument created anther sensation. Op ed writers and bloggers began crediting Albert with victory and a sense of hoopla began.

What would a universe from true actual nothing really prove? If it could be shown that the universe just started up, something form nothing (real actual nothing) there would be no way to really demonstrate that it’s not the Christian concept of creation ex nihilo. In fact that would actually fit the qualifications for the basic Christian doctrine of creation. There would be no way to prove it one way or the other because we could never go back to the other side of nothing and demonstrate that something isn’t causing this “something from nothing.” The impression is given the hype about Krauss’s book that there is some control that screens out metaphysical causes such as God. There in fact no such control. Now of course if this were the case we could not use that as an argument to demonstrate the existence of God. If we wanted to use that as a God argument we would have to push the logic of it on the grounds that something form total actual nothing is illogical and flies in the face of every single observation we can ever make about the real world. That would not demonstrate the reality of God. It might be a good conjecture but it would still only be a conjecture. At that rate it could go ether way. Yet it’s not disproof of God either. In fact, examining the arguments made by the three atheists expositors above, none of them actually says “here is proof there is no God.” Dawkins say “almost certainly” and Stenger says God is a failed hypothesis. Krauss imitates we don’t’ need him as an explanation. Something else is going on other than disproof.

What they are really getting at is not about proof or disproof but control of knowledge. They actually want to replace epistemology with ideology. They want to shut down forms of knowledge such as philosophy and phenomenology and replace them with the atheist fortress of facts idea. This is all really saying, all three books make the argument “we have the fortress of facts and theism has no facts.” Of course “facts” in this sense mean nothing more than the information that can be controlled by atheist expositors and that supports the atheist straw God concepts. It’s a switch from a global knowledge which includes philological thinking about science as a respectable partner in learning and centers everything on their realm of discourse. Thus Dawkins reduces God to the level of a biological organism, Stenger reduces belief to the level of a scientific hypothesis (even though belief is about something totally removed form the workings of the physical world), and Krauss asserts that knowledge of the physical world is the only knowledge worth knowing. All three are reducing theological ideas to a point where they take on physical attributes and become part of the scientific domain, thus they can be controlled by scientists.

What is even more blunt and telling is Krauss who gives away the whole store in an op-ed piece for the Los Angeles Times:

The illusion of purpose and design is perhaps the most pervasive illusion about nature that science has to confront on a daily basis. Everywhere we look, it appears that the world was designed so that we could flourish.

The position of the Earth around the sun, the presence of organic materials and water and a warm climate — all make life on our planet possible. Yet, with perhaps 100 billion solar systems in our galaxy alone, with ubiquitous water, carbon and hydrogen, it isn't surprising that these conditions would arise somewhere. And as to the diversity of life on Earth — as Darwin described more than 150 years ago and experiments ever since have validated — natural selection in evolving life forms can establish both diversity and order without any governing plan.

As a cosmologist, a scientist who studies the origin and evolution of the universe, I am painfully aware that our illusions nonetheless reflect a deep human need to assume that the existence of the Earth, of life and of the universe and the laws that govern it require something more profound. For many, to live in a universe that may have no purpose, and no creator, is unthinkable.

But science has taught us to think the unthinkable. Because when nature is the guide — rather than a priori prejudices, hopes, fears or desires — we are forced out of our comfort zone. One by one, pillars of classical logic have fallen by the wayside as science progressed in the 20th century, from Einstein's realization that measurements of space and time were not absolute but observer-dependent, to quantum mechanics, which not only put fundamental limits on what we can empirically know but also demonstrated that elementary particles and the atoms they form are doing a million seemingly impossible things at once.[9]

Wait a minute, something’s wrong here. He’s taking a kind of thinking that is used as a tool to inform us about the workings of the physical world, and saying “because to use this tool we must assume the subject matter of the tool is all there is, that proves that’s all there is.” That proves nothing. Perhaps the subject matter of the tool is irrelevant to the consideration of concepts like “purpose” and “meaning” because these are not part of the domain in which that tool is meaningful. When the concept of the tool becomes the only form of knowledge then of course all other considerations must be put aside, by why should we allow that to happen? Actually science has not taught us “to think the unthinkable—that the universe has. No can it ever do so. To even ask the question is beyond the scope of science. To do science one must not assume purpose or meaning in the workings of the physical world, yet one need not always be doing science. This is truly what we call “ideology.” One idea fits all and all sense data must be herded into that rubric in order to be considered “valid.” It’s really ideological struggle between reductionism which seek to cut off all aspects of reality save those that can be controlled by reductionism, vs. the assumption that human aspirations are worth considering in some way other than reductionsitically. The driving force behind the fortress of facts is the assumption that only one kind of thinking can be pursued. This one idea of reductionism must control and filter all knowledge. This is nothing more than a totalitarian ideology.

Krauss really gets blunt about the ideological ramifications in interview. Ross Andersen publishes in the Atlantic an interview he had done with Krauss for another project. He entitles the article “Has Physics Made Philosophy and Religion Obsolete?”[10] Krauss had just come from Christopher Hitchen’s memoral service, and even he descriges as: “It was a remarkable event for a remarkable man, and I felt very fortunate to be there. I was invited to give the opening presentation in front of all of these literary figures and dignitaries of various sorts, and so I began the only way I think you can begin, and that's with music from Monty Python..”[11] Asked why the sudden public antagonism between physics and philosophy he answers:

Krauss: That's a good question. I expect it's because physics has encroached on philosophy. Philosophy used to be a field that had content, but then "natural philosophy" became physics, and physics has only continued to make inroads. Every time there's a leap in physics, it encroaches on these areas that philosophers have carefully sequestered away to themselves, and so then you have this natural resentment on the part of philosophers. This sense that somehow physicists, because they can't spell the word "philosophy," aren't justified in talking about these things, or haven't thought deeply about them---[12]

Philosophy can only have “content” in so far as it reflects the workings of the physical world? As though that’s all the content there is to have. That’s all there is to think about. Only science is about anything. But wait how is it that physics has encroached upon anything philosophy is about if philosophy a bunch of made up flights of fancy. Science was never about the meaning of life and philosophy was never about the workings of the physical world. It’s true that science used ot be called “natural philosophy” but hat was far from being the major section of philosophical thought. He seems embarrassed about not being in philosophy. He resents the idea that he can’t talk about the meaning of life. He can talk about the meaning of life he just can’t claim scientific authority to make pronouncements informing us all of the meaning of life, or lack thereof.

Here is his statement on the importance of philosophy:

Krauss: Well, yeah, I mean, look I was being provocative, as I tend to do every now and then in order to get people's attention. There are areas of philosophy that are important, but I think of them as being subsumed by other fields. In the case of descriptive philosophy you have literature or logic, which in my view is really mathematics. Formal logic is mathematics, and there are philosophers like Wittgenstein that are very mathematical, but what they're really doing is mathematics---it's not talking about things that have affected computer science, it's mathematical logic. And again, I think of the interesting work in philosophy as being subsumed by other disciplines like history, literature, and to some extent political science insofar as ethics can be said to fall under that heading. To me what philosophy does best is reflect on knowledge that's generated in other areas. [13]

He arbitrarily reduces logic to mathematics just because math is in the domain of science. We could just as easily relegate math to a subordination under philosophy on the grounds that math is based upon logic. Russell and Whitehead proved that logic is the basis of math, and since logic started as philosophy it would be more logical to put math under philosophy.[14] Besides formal logic is not mathematics. Moreover, major logicians such as Hartshorne and Plantinga who achieved authoritative status in the use of S5modal logic could, by Krausses logic, be seen as mathematicians and by extension of that association as physicists. Thus their takes on the modal argument for God must be scientific. Remarkably he actually attributes something to fields such as history and literature. He does that to parcel out philosophy. Of course this drive to end the very existence of philosophy is just a bid to take over knowledge so that one ideology prevails as the only way to think, it just happens to be the one in which Krauss is credentialed. He wants to pretend that philosophy is really just leeching off other disciplines when in reality he’s moving beyond the accepted domain of science to poach on the territory of theology, philosophy, ethics history and probably other disciplines (mathematics and logic). It’s also worth nothing that he missed the point on nothing in terms of the history of ideas. He claims it was the philosophers who re-write nothing and have constantly changed its definition when in reality it’s the philosophers who have continually defined nothing as nothing but science Newton scientists have been re-writing the meaning of the term to define it as “something.”15

A humorous exchange occurs when Andersen points out that philosophy offers a basis for computer science. Krauss says: “Well, you name me the philosophers that did key work for computer science; I think of John Von Neumann and other mathematicians, and---.” Andersen says: “But Bertrand Russell paved the way for Von Neumann..”

Karauss says: “But Bertrand Russell was a mathematician. I mean, he was a philosopher too and he was interested in the philosophical foundations of mathematics, but by the way, when he wrote about the philosophical foundations of mathematics, what did he do? He got it wrong.” So not only can we take him over as one of the science boys since he did math but (which would just as easily mean math is part of philosophy again) but he also got it wrong about math (yet that reflects on his philosophical side not on his math side, not real sure how that works since it would be the math side that got it wrong). Andersen remarks “Einstein got it wrong.” To which Krauss replies:

Krauss: Sure, but the difference is that scientists are really happy when they get it wrong, because it means that there's more to learn. And look, one can play semantic games, but I think that if you look at the people whose work really pushed the computer revolution from Turing to Von Neumann and, you're right, Bertrand Russell in some general way, I think you'll find it's the mathematicians who had the big impact. And logic can certainly be claimed to be a part of philosophy, but to me the content of logic is mathematical.[16]

Science guys are happen when they are proved wrong? I guess he must be ecstatic since Albert’s article? We’ll have to ask him how happy he’s been since his book was panned. It means there’s more to learn, such as the meaning of life and the value of philosophy. He admits logic is part of philosophy and Russell was into both it just eludes him that this also means philosophy is the foundation of computer science and math together that makes it the foundation of physics. Now that’s the “unthinkable” we should be taught to think. Maybe the fortress of facts is a house of cards and maybe there’s more than one form of knowledge in the universe? His answer is supercilious because a scientist being happy when he get’s it wrong doesn’t change the fact under discussion it doesn’t change the fact that scientist get it wrong just as philosophers sometimes do.

Kruass referred to Albert as “a moronic philosopher.” That doesn’t sound happy to me. Nor does it sound very acute. Albert is so moronic in fact he is not only a well thought of philosopher at Columbia he also holds a Ph.D. in theoretical physics.[17] He might to reconsider his castigation of Albert when we take a deeper look at Karuss’s argumentation skills. He essentially gives away the store, and thinks he’s bested his opponents.

But I am certainly claiming a lot more than just that [something from nothing]. That it's possible to create particles from no particles is remarkable---that you can do that with impunity, without violating the conservation of energy and all that, is a remarkable thing. The fact that "nothing," namely empty space, is unstable is amazing. But I'll be the first to say that empty space as I'm describing it isn't necessarily nothing, although I will add that it was plenty good enough for Augustine and the people who wrote the Bible. For them an eternal empty void was the definition of nothing, and certainly I show that that kind of nothing ain't nothing anymore.[18]

That’s really the point Albert made and he says this as though he just doesn’t understand the opponent’s argument. He does bring up the issue of St. Augustine and creation ex-nihilo. He doesn’t seem to get that the issue cuts both ways. Yet the Christian is not something from nothing, it doesn’t post that the universe just popped into being from true absolute nothing without a cause and for no reason. He admits that his “nothing” is actually something, and something must be explained, something must have caused it. What could that something be but God? That would be the argument. He’s not answering it by throughing back the issues ex-nihilo misunderstood (minus God) then admitting that his own views leaves an origin form an unexplained “Something.” Andersen raises the prospect that he’s arguing physics with Saint Augustine (who presumably worked form Aristotelian physics thus making his view 2000 years out of date). Krauss states:

It might be more interesting than debating some of the moronic philosophers that have written about my book. Given what we know about quantum gravity, or what we presume about quantum gravity, we know you can create space from where there was no space. And so you've got a situation where there were no particles in space, but also there was no space. That's a lot closer to "nothing."

But of course then people say that's not "nothing," because you can create something from it. They ask, justifiably, where the laws come from. And the last part of the book argues that we've been driven to this notion---a notion that I don't like---that the laws of physics themselves could be an environmental accident. On that theory, physics itself becomes an environmental science, and the laws of physics come into being when the universe comes into being. And to me that's the last nail in the coffin for "nothingness."[19]

He seems not to understand what these “moronic philosophers” are driving at. He keeps talking like he’s proved something if he shows that there is no “nothing” but in fact that’s the only way his argument would work. If no actual nothing then he has no argument at all. Then he’s just saying “the universe came from something that we can’t account for.” Implication: it might have needed God to create it. It only appears to be that God is unnecessary if things can spontaneously pop up out of true absolute nothing. Even that would not be proof since we can’t prove there really is no cause. Yet if we could prove that that would be the only real way to prove that God is not needed or not present. The real answer he has that might work is based upon pure speculation. He appeals to natural law and a supposition not in evidence that they are some kind of accident. This just puts the atheist back at square one saying “maybe there could be an alterative to God, maybe.”

---

[1] Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing: Why There is something Rather Than Nothing. New York, NY: Free press, a division of Simon and Schuster, 2012.

[2] Ibid 189.

[3] David Albert, “On the Origin of Everything ‘a Universe form Nothing’ by Lawrence Krauss,” New York Times Sunday Book Review (March 23, 2012). On line version URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/a-universe-from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-krauss.html visited June 20, 2012. David Albert also has a Ph.D. in theoretical phsyics.

[14] ibid.

[5] ibid

[6] ibid

[7] ibid

[8] ibid

[9] Lawrence M. Krause, “A Universe Without Purpose.” Los Angeles Times, Opinion. (April 1, 2012). On line copy URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-krauss-cosmology-design-universe-20120401,0,4136597.story visited 7/2/12.

[10] Ross Andersen, “Has Physics Made Philosophy and Religion Obsolete?” The Atlantic (April 23, 2012). Pm et 396. Online URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/has-physics-made-philosophy-and-religion-obsolete/256203/ visited 7/2/12.

[11] Ibid.

[12] ibid.

[13] ibid.

[14] Principia (find)

[15] find

[16] Krauss in Andersen, ibid.

[17] Massimo Pigliucci, “Lawrence Krauss Another Physicist with an Anti-Philosophy Complex,” Rationally Speaking, blog. URL: http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2012/04/lawrence-krauss-another-physicist-with.html visited 7/4/12

Massimo Pigluicci is a philosopher at City University of New York..

[18] Krauss In Andersen, ibid.

[18] ibid