Explaining the universe

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Explaining the universe

• Michael Lacewing
• enquiries_at_alevelphilosophy.co.uk

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What we need to explain

• Why does the universe exist at all?
• Why do we exist? (Why is the universe set up so
  that life is possible?)

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The Kalam argument

• Of anything that begins to exist, you can ask
  what caused it. For example, what caused me (my
  birth)? In a sense, my parents. But then, we can
  repeat the question what caused my parents?
  And so on. We can go back to the beginning of the
  universe, and then ask what caused the
  universe?. If
• the universe began to exist, then it must have a
  cause of its existence. Something cant come out
  of nothing.
• What we need is something that causes things to
  exist, but the existence of which isnt caused
  itself.
• Only God could be such a thing.

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Science is inadequate

• Science cant explain the origins of the
  universe. It uses causal explanations, so it has
  to assume the existence of something to explain
  anything.
• Of anything science assumes to exist, we can ask
  what caused that?.

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Objection 1

• Must every event have a cause? David Hume
  famously argued that we cannot know this. It is
  not an analytic truth (by contrast, every effect
  has a cause is an analytic truth but is every
  event an effect?).
• Something cannot come out of nothing is also
  not analytic.
• But our experience is that everything so far has
  a cause.
• But can this principle can be applied to the
  beginning of the universe?

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Objection 2

• Because time came into existence with the
  universe, the universe didnt happen at a time,
  so in a sense, it has no beginning.
• True, but science suggests the universe has a
  finite past (it is about 15 billion years old).
  Whatever has a finite past must have a cause of
  its existence.
• In the case of the universe, that cause cant
  exist in time if time didnt exist before the
  universe.
• But that doesnt mean there was no cause, only
  that the cause must exist outside time. Which God
  does.

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Objection 3

• Even if this universe has a beginning, perhaps it
  was caused by a previous (or another) universe,
  and so on, infinitely. Something has always
  existed.
• Does this make sense?
• The universe gets older as time passes. But this
  couldnt happen if the universe was infinitely
  old, because you cannot add any number to
  infinity and get a bigger number 8 1 8. So
  if the universe is infinitely old, it is not
  getting any older as time passes!

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Objection 3 cont.

• To have reached the present, an infinite amount
  of time would need to have passed. But it is not
  possible for an infinite amount of time to have
  passed.
• If we have an infinite series of causes, although
  each cause can be explained in terms of the
  previous cause, we may wonder what explains the
  whole series.

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Richard Swinburne an inductive argument

• The Kalam argument does not prove God exists. But
  the hypothesis that God exists is the best
  explanation.
• Again, science cant offer a good explanation.
• We should not simply say there is no
  explanation. This is not good science nor good
  philosophy.

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Personal explanation

• We can explain the universe if we give a personal
  explanation in terms of God God wanted life to
  exist, so created the physical laws to make this
  possible.
• We use explanations in terms of persons - what we
  want, believe, intend - all the time.
• These are not explanations that make use of
  scientific laws.

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Is this a good explanation?

• Does it improve our understanding? Or does
  introducing God just invoke one mystery to
  explain another?
• What explains God? is no better than What
  explains scientific laws?
• Swinburne that we cant explain God is no
  objection. A good explanation may posit something
  unexplained. This happens in science all the
  time, e.g. subatomic particles.

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Does the universe need explaining?

• The lottery argument
• Its incredibly unlikely, before the draw, that
  whoever wins will win.
• But someone will win.
• With enough chances, the incredibly unlikely can
  become inevitable.
• If there are lots of universes, one of them would
  have the right conditions for life.

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Why us?

• Why this one? No reason but if it wasnt this
  one, we wouldnt be here to ask the question!
• Its all a big coincidence.