Review of recent Craig/Smith debate at Harvard

[BrianB]

Hi all,

Here is a first draft of a review I'm writing on the debate at Harvard between William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith.

Enjoy,
Brian


----------------------------------

Does God Exist? A Debate between William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith
Harvard University - 04/06/2003

Last Sunday night I observed a debate between Dr. William Lane Craig and Dr. Quentin Smith, two prominent philosophers who spend much time in the philosophical journals discussing the philosophy of physics and cosmological theories, theories of time, and mathematics among other topics. I was particularly interested in this debate because it has been my understanding that Dr. Smith is one of the better-qualified opponents for Dr. Craig. My general impression of the past debates involving Craig has been that his opponent was simply unprepared to deal with the substance of the arguments presented. Smith, on the other hand, is actively writing in the philosophical journals, has debated Craig before, and co-wrote a book with Craig. If anyone is qualified, it is Smith. He was also very personable, though I only got to shake his hand and say a short thank you after the debate.

The topic of the debate was the existence of God, and the participants agreed to narrow the discussion to two topics:
1. The beginning/origin of the universe
2. Foundations of morality

Smith opened the debate with a 20-minute presentation arguing a case against the existence of God. Craig followed for 20 minutes. They continued to alternate for periods of 12, 8, and 5 minutes apiece and ended with Q&A. Both Craig and Smith seemed to be in good spirits and on friendly terms, even making a few jokes during the presentation.


I was going to proceed through the debate chronologically, but I think it’d be better to summarize the positions of the debaters and offer some further comments. The first part of the debate seemed somewhat confused to me, because a) Smith didn’t seem to follow even his most recent writings, b) his initial presentation wasn’t well structured (IMO), and c) Craig it seems responded initially to Smith’s written materials and jumped into his own presentation building on that. It created a decent amount of confusion on my part, although others may have had an easier time following the points they were attempting to make. Because much of the first part becomes clear in light of later discussion, I’ll use a mostly non-chronological format. Most of this comes from my notes, but I also have to work from memory, which for me is a big pain, so please forgive if I mess something up. Hopefully the audio/video/transcripts will be available in the not too distant future.

Quentin Smith

Smith opened the debate by presenting a positive atheistic case from a) the beginning of the universe and b) foundations of morality.

* Claim One: The Universe Created Itself

For background I suggest the first two sections of Smith's article "The Reason the Universe Exists is that it Caused Itself to Exist" published in Philosophy, available on the web at:

http://tinyurl.com/8zxc (you can also go to www.qsmithwmu.com and follow links)

I think the best way for me to explain Smith's position is to work off the above-cited article and discuss the difference between his debate presentation and the written article.

In the above article Smith attempts to argue that the universe caused itself to exist. He began his opening comments by rejecting "the traditional" atheist arguments[1] and instead presents his own self-causation argument. I must admit that this is the first time I've ever seen self-causation argued for in a serious setting. It’s my understanding that self-causation has always been considered irrational, and, for example, was the reason that Bertrand Russell rejected God's existence. Russell errantly thought the Christian belief was that God was a self-caused being, and he therefore rejected the God hypothesis because he considered the idea of a self-caused being incoherent. I think it’s fair to say that Smith is going out on a long limb with his argument from self-causation.

The approach in his article as I understand it is:
1. Mutual simultaneous causation can happen. (Smith refers to the spin-up / spin-down relationship of electron pairs and also the effects of gravity as examples of mutual simultaneous causation.)
2. If mutual simultaneous causation can happen, then it’s possible for the universe to begin to exist by the mutual simultaneous causation of elementary particles A, B, and C all causing each other. That is, A causes B to exist, B causes C to exist, and C causes A to exist.

---quote---
“In this case, the universe begins to exist, is caused to begin to exist, but is not caused to begin to exist by God or any other cause(s) external to the universe. Perhaps it is worth spelling this out in detail. The universe at t = 0 is nothing other than the particles’ temporal parts a and b and c. Each of these time-slices of the particles is caused to begin to exist by something internal to the universe, namely, by one of the time-slices or states of one of the other three particles. If the universe at t = 0 is a, b and c, and a, b and c are each caused to begin to exist by something internal to the universe, it follows that the universe is caused to begin to exist, but not by anything external to the universe. The universe is self-caused in the sense that each part of the universe is caused to exist by some other part of the universe.”
---endquote---

So Smith seems to argue for what one might call a ‘circular self-causality model’

A -> B -> C -> (draw an arrow back to A)

The big difference between the debate presentation and the paper is that Smith abandons the circular self-causality model and opts for an ‘infinite series self-causality model.’ He drew this diagram on one of the blackboards:

... -2 -> -1 -> 0 -> 1 -> 2 ... t0

down arrows down arrows

... –II -I Q I II ... t1

The -> arrows show simultaneous causation (0 causes 1, 1 causes 2 like A causes B in his paper)
The down arrows show the movement of time, so t0 comes before t1 and is the ‘first moment’ of the universe. So, we have mutual causation for t0 that gives rise to t1. I cannot remember if there were arrows in the t1 series.

From this diagram, Smith’s contention is that the infinite line of causes at t0 are all causing each other simultaneously, and since they’re all causing each other, nothing else is needed to explain how they could be caused. Restating, all the parts of the universe (IIR, later in the debate Smith called them elementary particles meaning the ‘elementary’ particles smaller than electrons and quarks and whatever) cause each other to exist, somehow. If this infinite regress contains the causes of everything in the universe, then everything has been accounted for and there’s no place left for God. Therefore, God does not exist.


* Claim two: a) Naturalistic evolution can accounts for morality, including ‘objective morality’ OR objective morality is intrinsic to the universe, and b) God cannot be the ground of objective morality because laws that come from him are purely subjective.

Unfortunately, Smith did not give a structured and clear presentation for this section of the debate. I’ll give what I can from my notes.

Smith offers two possibilities for the foundations of morality
1. Morals are objective, being intrinsic to the structure of the universe
2. Morals are the product of biological evolution

He seems to reject the “personal preference” option so popular among postmoderns. Instead, he says that morals can be objective by being “intersubjectively valid” by which I think he means that they’re agreed upon by a community, especially the world community. Is this from Wittgenstein? He used the term without explaining what he meant by it, whether they would be agreed upon, or they should be agreed upon by people in similar circumstances. It is this that can provide the motivation for doing good.

It appeared to me that Smith was arguing in favor of two mutually exclusive positions. I think he actually believes in the first option (Craig says they agree that moral laws are objective), but argues for both possibilities. Arguing for mutually exclusive positions in a debate seems to be a very strange thing to me. Hopefully I was simply misunderstanding him.

Regarding #1, which seems to be Smith’s own belief, his position is that moral laws are simply intrinsic to the structure of the universe in the sense that things have a ‘nature’ and ‘the good’ is to be identified as ‘the realization of something’s nature.’ Now, in Craig’s response he says that if Smith applied this only to humans, he would be guilty of specieism. Smith rightly avoids such a charge by extending this ‘realization of something’s nature’ to include everything in the universe. On his view, a large rock has greater moral value than a small rock because it is more fully developed; it has more fully realized its nature.

Additionally, the satisfaction of a desire is itself realizing one’s nature, and therefore it is inherently good to do things that satisfy desire. Now here is where things get interesting. On this view, Smith agrees that a serial killer killing people in order to satisfy his desire is inherently good. That is, the action itself is good. It’s only when we examine the wider context that such an action is not good, because even though it is inherently good, the wider situation is not. Also as a consequence of this view, people are not all of equal value, but some have more value than others because some are further along in the realization of their nature. This seems very close to (my laymans understanding of) the type of ethics promoted by Peter Singer of Princeton U. The more developed one is, the greater value they have.


Smith was, unfortunately, particularly weak in his attack on the theistic foundations of morality.
1. He says “Belief in God is not required to act morally. There are lots of atheists who act in a morally better fashion than many theists.” (paraphrase) This has nothing to do with the claim regarding foundations of morality.
2. He offers several arguments from outrage in a meandering presentation of the Problem of Evil. He also adds “Theists will say that suffering can be used to bring us closer to God. How does breaking my leg bring me closer to God? What good can there be in an animal being burned in a forest fire?” (paraphrase)
3. Moral laws that come from God would be subjective, not objective, since he’s just a person.

I think Smith would have done better in this section had he made a more structured presentation of the Problem of Evil. I was unable to tell if he was presenting a logical POE or a probabilistic POE.[2] I’m surprised that he attempted to use something like the first argument, since it has covered quite well in Craig’s works/debates and is obviously a straw man.


William Lane Craig

Craig opens by presenting two questions that need to be examined.
1. Are there any good arguments against the existence of God?
2. Are there any good arguments for the existence of God?

In the first part of the debate Craig is working mostly from Smith’s writings. Smith’s claim in the debate is that God couldn’t have caused the universe because it is the infinite regress that causes everything. I think Craig gets a little off track in responding to Smith because it appears that Smith has abandoned recent arguments that he’s put forward. For example, Craig argues that the singularity (however conceived) would be part of the universe and therefore not metaphysically necessary. He seems to be countering the beginning of Smith’s 2001 article “Time Was Created by a Timeless Point”[3]:

---quote---
“And I agree with Plantinga and most other contemporary analytic theists that the cause of spacetime has a metaphysically necessary existence.
…
However, I argue that the timeless, uncaused, simple, independent, necessary and transcendent being that causes spacetime’s beginning to exist is not God but a spatially zero-dimensional point.”
---endquote---

In response to this, Craig argues that the singularity is part of the universe and not metaphysically necessary. He asks a question “Can you have a boundary without the reality that it bounds?” answers no, and presents an Argument from Contingency.

If I recall, the Argument from Contingency ran something like this:
1. Everything that exists has an explanation for its existence either in itself or outside of itself.
2. The universe does not have an explanation in itself.
3. Therefore, the explanation for the existence of the universe lies outside the universe

However, in the debate Smith agreed with Craig that the singularity didn’t exist and wasn’t metaphysically necessary. He spent a couple of minutes arguing that the concept of a zero-dimensional point is incoherent, which is in direct contradiction to his 2001 article quoted above.


Another example is that Craig responds to Smith’s argument by characterizing it as a donut of causation. This is an apt characterization for Smith’s written article “The Reason the Universe Exists is that it Caused Itself to Exist”, but Smith abandoned this argument and used a different one during the debate. I should note that it wasn’t until after I heard Smith’s response to this that I finally understood what he was trying to argue in his opening statement. When Craig understood where Smith was going, he responded with an example of a line of people/parachuters being held up in the air. Each person holds up the one below them, but how do they all stay up? You’ve got to have an ‘anchor point’ somewhere in order to make things work. Infinite regresses are not acceptable.

Continuing,
In his writings, Smith thinks that an ‘a se’ singularity is more probable than God because of the chaotic nature of the Big Bang. Craig counters with the teleological argument, arguing that even if you could have an ‘a se’ singularity capable of doing what Smith wants, the fine-tuning of the universe shows that the Big Bang was not chaotic, and that this shows the superiority of the theistic hypothesis.

Craig responds to Smith’s attack on a theistic foundation for morality by saying that God’s will is not subjective because it flows from his nature, which is to be defined as ‘the good.’ It is therefore transcendent and not arbitrary. He responds to Smith’s sorta-presentation of the Problem of Evil by saying that God has morally sufficient reasons for allowing evil to exist.

Also, Craig presented a form of the Moral Argument…but my notes are getting more and more scarce. *grin*

Craig promotes the kalam Cosmological Argument that he is known for:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.

However, instead of being a defeater for Smith’s position, Smith agrees with the above argument. The uniqueness of his claim is that the cause of the universe it the universe itself, and so while the kalam can take us to the cause, Smith wants to argue that the universe is self-caused, not caused by something outside itself.

Misc and Q&A

A few comments that took me by surprise:

An atheist congratulated Dr. Smith for his deconstruction/distruction of Big Bang cosmology and asked if he would comment on the fact that the Big Bang was an atheistic theory from the beginning. Smith responded by saying that the questioner/commenter was simply wrong, and that it was initially resisted heavily by atheists because if its apparent theistic implications. Oh, it wasn’t Smith’s reply that surprised me (he was just being honest), it was the comment. Craig said “Quentin is right, and I think you’ve misunderstood his presentation. Both of us affirm Big Bang cosmology. Quentin isn’t trying destroy it. We’re arguing over how to interpret it.” (paraphrase, from memory)

“No physicist holds that the singularity actually exists” – Smith

Somewhere Smith made the comment that things do pop into existence out of nothing, and Craig responded by saying that it’s a misunderstanding of Quantum Vacuum Fluctuation which is matter arising out of energy, not out of non-being. Smith responded by saying that the energy itself is created out of nothing.


Well, that’s a summary without a whole lot of critique by myself, though I had to include a little. I have a lot to say in analyzing the arguments, but perhaps that will come later. Overall the debate was ok. It could have been better if Smith’s initial statement had more structure, and he was working off his recent written works, as well as if Craig had spotted the difference between Smith’s written materials and debate presentation. There were some quite humorous moments (get the video) like when Smith said in a serious (but joking) tone during one of his rebuttal periods:

“And addressing this point that I was cut off during last time…”
<looking at the girl running the stopclock>
“by you”
<pause, slight chuckles from the audience, Smith smiles and looks up to continue on>…
<1 second later the timer goes off signaling the end of Smith’s time>
<everyone laughs>

Anyway, I have to give Smith credit for his perspective on the debate. I agree that the traditional atheistic response is simply inadequate. However, I think he had a huge burden of proof to show that it’s possible for something to be self-caused (not to mention that it’s actually the way it happened) that he didn’t meet. Well this thing is a lot longer than I expected. If you have questions, feel free to ask and I’ll do what I can to answer.

NOTES:
1. Smith, Quentin; “Time Was Created by a Timeless Point” available at http://tinyurl.com/8zxq expresses his position:
“Why does time exist? In the context of the “spacetime theories” of the special or general theory of relativity, this question should be more appropriately phrased as “Why does spacetime exist?” I will narrow the question further and adopt the results of contemporary general relativistic cosmology, namely, that spacetime began to exist about fifteen billion years ago. Accordingly, my question will be “Why did spacetime begin to exist?”

There are two familiar, contemporary responses to this question. The theist says that the question has an answer and that this answer is that God caused spacetime to begin to exist. The standard response of the atheist is to say that there is no answer to this question; spacetime’s beginning to exist is a brute fact or has no explanation. This standard atheist response seems to give theism a prima facie theoretical superiority to atheism; theists offer a detailed explanatory hypothesis about why spacetime begins to exists, and standard atheists are content to leave spacetime’s beginning to exist unexplained.

I reject standard or traditional atheism and side with theism on this issue. A theory that includes an explanatory hypothesis about some observational evidence e, such as spacetime’s beginning to exist, is ceteris paribus epistemically preferable to any theory of the observational evidence e that does not include such an explanatory hypothesis. No atheist has ever provided a proof that the existence of spacetime is a brute fact and, consequently, standard atheism remains, in this respect, an unjustified hypothesis.”


2. A good resource on this subject, discussing the differences in the types of POEs is Doug Geivett’s lecture on the Problems of Evil available at www.hisdefense.org

3. http://www.qsmithwmu.com/time_began_...less_point.htm

[AtheistArchon]

- Wow, it sounds like it was an excellent debate! I am somewhat surprised that Smith and Craig were on such good terms... usually these things go in a different direction (a-la most evolution debates).

- I'm sorry I missed it... I'll be getting the video, or at least reading the full transcript. Thanks for the summary!!

[wienerdog]

“No physicist holds that the singularity actually exists” – Smith

Wow. That's a big change on his part, because he argued the opposite in the book he and Craig wrote. In the book Craig pointed out that the singularity represents the boundary of space/time, and to say that matter and space were shrunk down to a point of zero volume is incoherent, since matter and space require volume to exist.

[Pereynol of Sheer Dread]

Thanks Brian!
Your review was a good read, and the links were also helpful.
It is really encouraging to see that a genuine dialog between these guys seems to have taken place in the debate. That sort of thing should be the norm rather than the exception....

[Joseph Alward]

BRIAN
It’s my understanding that self-causation has always been considered irrational, and, for example, was the reason that Bertrand Russell rejected God's existence. Russell errantly thought the Christian belief was that God was a self-caused being, and he therefore rejected the God hypothesis because he considered the idea of a self-caused being incoherent.

JOE ALWARD
I think you're wrong, Brian. Russell merely argued that it makes just as much sense to believe that the universe always existed as it does to believe that God always existed and was the creator of the universe. In my view, Occam's Razor points to the universe always existing, rather than God always existing, and then creating the universe. For you convenience, I will reprint below what Russell said.

"If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, "How about the tortoise?" the Indian said, "Suppose we change the subject." The argument is really no better than that. There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination. Therefore, perhaps, I need not waste any more time upon the argument about the First Cause." --Bertrand Russell

[wienerdog]

Dr. Alward,

I think the problem with saying the universe has always existed is that the universe is made up, in some sense at least, of events. Thus, any claim that it has always existed leads to the problem of an infinite regress. If the universe was a-temporal, then I'd agree with you, since Ockham's razor would make one a-temporal entity more plausible than two.

Also, with Russell's quote, part of the problem is that he stated "If everything must have a cause..." But I'm not aware of any formulation of the cosmological argument that makes such a claim. And at face value, it's obviously false: why would sheer existence require a cause? Craig specifically argues that everything that begins to exist has a cause, and given Big Bang cosmology (and the infinite regress problem), this would apply to the universe, but not to God.

[Joseph Alward]

JOE ALWARD
Wienerdog, I agree that everything that begins has a cause, but a universe which began is not what I had in mind. If one entity--God--can exist without having begun to exist, then so can another entity--the universe--exist without its having begun to exist. The recent Big Bang may be just one of an infinite sequence of Big Bangs, each of which is followed by a Big Collapse.

[psychopath]

Joe -

I know this is probably an area of expertise for you, so maybe you can answer these questions.

If one entity--God--can exist without having begun to exist, then so can another entity--the universe--exist without its having begun to exist. The recent Big Bang may be just one of an infinite sequence of Big Bangs, each of which is followed by a Big Collapse.

But how does this escape the infinite regress problem? Also, what of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics? If the universe is somehow eternal and has gone through infinite Big Bang-Big Collapse cycles, must there not be some instances during which the entropy of the universe increases? If not, it would seem that, if the universe has existed infinitely, one would have the infinite regress problem in terms of entropy - theoretically, at some time in the past there would have needed to be infinite order.

[Joseph Alward]

JOE ALWARD
Psychopath, the problems you mention go away if it's true that new laws of physics are created everytime the universe undergoes a Big Bang. There's no evidence of this ever having happened, of course, but there's also no evidence that a god created the universe, either.

[BrianB]

Hi Joseph,

It appears you are correct about Russell. Though his logic and characterization of the argument are messed up, it does look like he wasn’t characterizing the Christian conception of God as a self-caused being. Thanks for correcting me.

Moving on to your other comments…

Your comment “If one entity--God--can exist without having begun to exist, then so can another entity--the universe--exist without its having begun to exist” is exactly what atheists have been arguing for a long time, at least until Big Bang cosmology forced many of them to change their arguments. The whole point of the big bang is that (in a naturalistic scheme) as you run back in time, you end up at nothing. Not just empty space or something like that, but nothing at all. Positing a ‘sequence’ of big bangs doesn’t help because it’d just be multiple examples of things beginning to exist out of nothing.

For a review of the Oscillating model, I suggest Craig’s paper here:
http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billc...equestion.html

Also:

“Therefore, what the Big Bang model actually requires, as Hoyle points out, is creatio ex nihilo; this is because as one follows the expansion back in time one reaches a time at which the universe was 'shrunk down to nothing at all'.{17} Now if Mackie wants to deny this conclusion, then he is quite simply obligated to come up with another model to supplant the standard model. But of course he has not done so. Some scientists, uncomfortable with the idea of an absolute beginning, have entertained oscillating models of the universe; but while such mathematical models have been drafted, they have also been shown to he physically, thermodynamically, and observationally untenable. Moreover, it would seem that since in such models the universe would have to pass through a singularity with each oscillation, then with every contraction, the universe would have to disappear into non-being and with each expansion emerge de novo from nothing. It is difficult to see what has been gained from this.”
http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billc...cs/mackie.html

I’d say the Big Bang, since it is ‘creatio ex nihilo’, is heavy proof for creation by a transcendent creator. When the Big Bang cosmology was initially proposed, atheists strenuously objected to it because of its theistic implications. That’s also why you see Smith resorting to the sorts of uncaused/self-caused explanations that he does.

Consider these two facts:
1. Theists have been arguing for exactly what the Big Bang cosmology says for thousands of years, and have only recently had empirical evidence for the claim.
2. Atheists initially rejected Big Bang cosmology because of its theistic implications and are continually coming up with fantastic metaphysical claims such as circular self-causation, that the universe just popped into being out of nothing, and that there were totally different laws of physics for each of these worlds in order to avoid coming to the conclusion of #1.

What should be the perspective of someone coming to the debate and seeing these two facts? To me, it’s no great leap to the conclusion that theism provides the better explanatory model for the beginning of the universe. It’s consistent, time-tested, and doesn’t require great leaps of faith. BTW, I’m not so deluded to think that such great evidence is going to convince everyone. If someone wants to disbelieve something enough, they’ll always find a way. I make no claims to be able to convince people.

Regards,
Brian

[Joseph Alward]

WIENERDOG
The whole point of the big bang is that (in a naturalistic scheme) as you run back in time, you end up at nothing. Not just empty space or something like that, but nothing at all.

JOE ALWARD
I guess that's where I would have to disagree with you. I don't agree that there had to be "nothing" just prior to the Big Bang. In one model, we have nearly-infinite mass-energy in a nearly-infinitesimal volume of space-time. In another model we have mass-energy springing into existence from nothing. It boggles the mind, I agree.

This topic really belongs in the science forum.

[wienerdog]

That quote wasn't me.

I would have to agree, though, that Big Bang cosmology sounds exactly like what Christian philosophers and theologians have been describing for two millennia. The material of the universe, including time itself, began to exist, since it was created by an a-temporal entity. The only significant philosopher I'm aware of that argued against this was Averroes, although many thought that the philosophical arguments were inconclusive (like Aquinas).

[Pate]

Even if there are new laws of physics for each cycle, that does not eliminate the problem of infinite regress.

The way I see it, there are two objections that could cause problems to the Kalam argument. One is the question whether we can assume that causality exists without time, other is the potential that vacuum fluctuation models might have to explain the universe. With regard to the vacuum fluctuation models, I'm not sure how formidable challenger they might be for God-hypothesis, but like I wrote at the science forum, Craig's discussion of them at http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billc...equestion.html seems quite incomplete and I don't know whether they really are so outdated as Craig suggests.

[wienerdog]

Another debate between Craig and Smith can be accessed at http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billc...ig-smith0.html

Craig and Smith do seem to be very friendly adversaries. I noticed that when Craig published his book Time and Eternity a couple of years ago, one of the quotes on the back cover was from Smith.