Krauss Doesn’t Get Nothing

USA Today carries an article by science columnist Dan Vergano, discussing Lawrence Krauss’ new book  A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather Than Nothing. Given what Vergano reports in his column (I have not yet read Krauss’ new book) it’s clear that Krauss still doesn’t even begin to understand the philosophical objections to the materialistic claim that the universe can come from nothing, with no need for a Creator. Vergano writes:

Given a big enough emptiness, enough virtual particles can pop into existence, for free, to trigger a Big Bang and start a universe. “Nothing is doing something, and not only that. It has to do something,” Krauss says.

If all this sounds a little philosophical, it might not be an accident. Forthrightly dubious of religion and theology, Krauss sees in the “something from nothing” result an answer to observers who see a need for a Creator to explain existence.

The problem, of course, is that Krauss’ “nothing” is not the nothing I know. We have a confusion of terms. The physicist insists on redefining the term “nothing” and then, using what is essentially a completely different term, attempts to refute the philosophical claim. Krauss first takes “nothing” to mean a pre-existing “empty space” in which random quantum fluctuations could conceivably give rise to an inflationary event like the Big Bang. The equations allow it. Physics says, given certain conditions, it might be possible to make a universe from such “empty space.” But empty space with quantum events going on in it is something, and thus has nothing whatsoever to do with any philosophical argument about nothing. To the point, the fact that it is just another physical something means that it is subject to the same philosophical analysis as the rest of the physical universe.

There is no necessary religious objection, for Catholics at least, to Krauss’ scientific picture of the current state of the universe originating in a fluctuation of a prior quantum background. (This is not to say that it is yet sound science.) There is an objection, however, to his claim that this scientific hypothesis has anything whatsoever to do  with religious and philosophical arguments for a Creator. The quantum background in this case is not “nothing”, it’s just another stage of the universe’s history, and one that needs as much explanation as any other. In short, Krauss has described not a way for the universe to come from nothing, but simply how the universe as we know it might have evolved from a different, previous state.

Krauss’ explanation does not eliminate the argument for a Creator, it merely pushes it back another step. Adding one more material link to a chain of material causes doesn’t get a single step closer to explaining the existence of the whole chain. Despite Krauss’ infelicitous usage of the term, “nothing” does not mean “a region of space in which quantum fluctuations occur as described by physical equations.” Such a quantum-filled vacuum which can be described by equations and which has the ability to pop Big Bangs into being is very definitely something, and as a material thing it is just another link added to the chain of material things, tacked on just prior to the Big Bang. If I argue that a chain with ten links in it cannot be explained except by a chain-creator, it does no good to say, “Ah, but what about an eleven-link chain, eh?” Similarly, it would be silly to claim that a universe that begins with the Big Bang is consistent with God’s existence, but a universe that has one or more extra steps is not. Whatever factors lead the reasoning mind to God in a universe that begins with the Big Bang will be equally present in a universe that has stages before the Big Bang.

It should be remembered, too, that the classical philosophical arguments for God’s existence hold even for an eternal universe, as Aquinas acknowledged. That fact alone should cause materialist critics pause. Two stages or ten before the Big Bang makes no difference. Physical reality is still intrinsically insufficient to explain its own existence.  If Krauss wants to address the philosophical claim that “nothing causes nothing”, he needs to accept the term “nothing” as the philosophers mean it. Otherwise he is simply arguing that “something causes something else”, which is, in this context, philosophically uncontroversial.