The Geeky Atheist

I've been a bad person in that I haven't been updating recently here. I've been on YouTube with a few videos, but plan on updating in both spots now.

I've been listening to debates between theists and atheists for a while now, and for the most part, I have heard most of the arguments. A recent episode of Conversations from the Pale Blue Dot was with a Christian philosopher that debated/discussed the efficacy of the Kalam Cosmological argument with William Lane Craig. Linked from the show notes post is a radio interview with William Lane Craig.

Their discussion was good, but I wanted to hone in on something from that interview. At 14:40 in the audio, the conversation follows about the "first cause" in Kalam's argument:

Interviewer: Bill, you argue that we can recover some attribute about the cause just by conceptual analysis. What would this cause of the universe be like. Well, it couldn't be material because it brought about matter. It couldn't be spacial because it brought about space. It couldn't be subject to time because it brought about time. [...] Are you saying he has some trouble with that?

Craig: Yes, he didn't dispute that the cause would have to be timeless, immaterial, and spaceless because it brought time and space into being. But he wanted to dispute my inference that the cause would be personal, and one of the arguments that I give for the personhood of the first cause [...] is the following argument: there are only two candidates that I know of in the philosophical and scientific literature for entities that can exist timelessly and immaterially, and that would be either an unembodied mind (consciousness without a body) or else an abstract object, like a number, a mathematical object. But mathematical objects don't stand in causal relationships. [slight chuckle] The number 7 has no causal impact upon anything. It is part of the definition of abstract objects that they are causally effete or causally impotent. They don't stand in causal relations. That implies therefore that the cause of the origin of the universe must be an unembodied mind. And therefore the cause of the universe is a personal being.

And Wes' response to this was just to say, "Well, how do you know these are the only two alternatives? Maybe there's some timeless, immaterial entity that we don't know of."

Interviewer: Well give it to us, I mean...

Craig: Exactly, I thought that was a very weak response. I said, "Fine, tell me what it is, I'll include it in the list." But there is no non-ad-hoc candidate in the philosophical and scientific literature, apart from minds or abstract objects that I know of. Nor could he name one.

Emphasis added by me. You can see in his own language where we have an argument from ignorance and an a false dichotomy. We have an example here of a merging of two logical fallacies: the argument from ignorance and the false dichotomy. I've dubbed it the unknown false dichotomy.

Examining the Unknown False Dichotomy

To examine why this reasoning is flawed, all we need to look for is some past beliefs that were argued, "it must be this or that" and the actual answer turned out to be some third option that no one had thought of.

The most impressive example that comes to mind is from Einstein. Prior to Einstein, light was argued that it was either a particle or a wave. One one side, you had people pointing to the photoelectric effect proving that light was made of particles. On the other side, you had people arguing that it was wave-like due to the famous double-slit experiments. There were only two proposals at the time, and both had their supporters. But as Einstein demonstrated, there's a wave-particle duality. The elusive third option that was previously unknown.

This example clearly demonstrates the mentality at the time: it can't be a wave because look at the photoelectric effect. It can't be a particle because look at the dual slit experiments.

But we're missing the other side of the unknown false dichotomy, because if you asked these scientists if they could be wrong, they would most certainly say, "Yes, there's clearly something we don't understand." Unlike Craig, they recognize that just because we haven't thought of another possible answer doesn't mean it must be one of the existing answers. Reality doesn't always fit our pre-defined views, and we must be ready and open to discovery of anything that fits the bill more precisely than any other view.

The key thing to remember is that in reality we have to deal with probabilities, not absolute truths. Just because our understanding of wave-particle duality fits our measurements right now doesn't mean that we have a 100% true theory on the way light works. But when we look at what happened before the big bang, if "before" even makes sense, we can't make any assumptions. When someone claims, "I only know of X possibilities, and since it can't be (X-1) possibilities, it must be the last one!" they've gone about trying to prove their point by disproving all the counter claims. But just because you've rejected all the other claims doesn't make yours true without actual evidence.

We have no evidence of anything prior to the big bang, and therefore our state of mind should not be one that we assume a specific truth, but rather an open mind ready to accept whatever any evidence we may garner can show.