Another Teeny Tiny Struggle

I recently wrote of my My Universal (and Expanding) Struggles.  The title is very tongue-in-cheek, but it is mildly amusing to think that some deranged skinhead might stumble on my page and think to himself “what the heil?”  (Oh ok, I admit it, that too was a joke.)

Back to the matter at hand – physics and more specifically, cosmology … even more specifically another one of my struggles associated with it.

I had forgotten about this particular struggle, but I was reminded by something said in skydivephil’s latest video, The Story of Loop Quantum Gravity - From the Big Bounce to Black Holes.  I think of the universe, in one sense, as being the eventual consequence of a prior universe in which matter has collected into a black hole over a period of eternity within that prior universe.  Time that other universe is orthogonal to time in our universe and you can think of all the mass energy being deposited instantaneously, or rather within the first quanta of time.

What I don’t envisage is that all this mass-energy appears in a singularity.  Instead, I see it all being compacted into the minimum amount of space consistent with the universe’s mass-energy being at the Planck density.

However, people are always going on about the initial singularity or the big bang starting with everything condensed down to infinite density.  There’s a corresponding argument regarding the centre of a black hole.

Imagine my joy then to hear that, in June 2001, there was a short paper by Martin Bojowald that suggests that in quantum geometry the singularity is removed (video reference | original paper).  Furthermore, in the video, the presenter specifically refers to planck density shortly after this image is shown:

Note that my conceptualisation isn’t completely consistent with this image, since I would not see the universe on the other side of the big bang as being in line with our universe, but rather orthogonal (ie perpendicular) to it.  This concept is however hinted at slightly later in the video, when the Hartle-Hawking No Boundary model is discussed.  “There is a real and an imaginary time.”  A feature of “imaginary” time is that it is orthogonal to “real” time.  Note that imaginary time isn’t made up, it’s a reference to imaginary numbers which are extremely handy for various tasks in physics and engineering.

The key point in the image is that there is no singularity, the size of universe decreases significantly, but not infinitely, and then expands back out again.  In respect to the planck density, the presenter refers to another paper by Ashtekar, Pawlowski and Singh (video reference | paper) – note that one of the people being interviewed for the video is the first listed on this paper.  The narrow tube shown to sort of link one universe with the other is an (almost certainly extremely brief) era in which planck density is achieved.

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So, I did struggle with regard to the singularity, but it seems I didn’t need to.  If quantum loop theory is close to the money, there is no singularity.

The BGV Theorem Does Not Mean What You Think it Means

I’ve addressed the use and misuse of the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin (BGV) Theorem a number of times in the past (The Misquoting WLC, The Eternally Inflated (Multiverse and WLC) and Multiholes in WLC’s Physics Arguments).

The apologetic argument goes a bit like this:  Atheists are terrified by the idea the universe must have begun, because if the universe has not been in existence forever, something must have created it.  The BGV Theorem says that inflation must have had a beginning, so the universe has a beginning, therefore the universe has a creator.  Therefore god.  (Much leaping around fisting the air and yelling “OOH-ya” and “who da man”.)

To be brutally frank, Vilenkin (one of the authors of the theorem) seriously did not help when he wrote:

It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape: they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.

Admittedly, he did write a couple of paragraphs later:

Theologians have often welcomed any evidence for the beginning of the universe, regarding it as evidence for the existence of God… So what do we make of a proof that the beginning is unavoidable? Is it a proof of the existence of God? This view would be far too simplistic. Anyone who attempts to understand the origin of the universe should be prepared to address its logical paradoxes. In this regard, the theorem that I proved with my colleagues does not give much of an advantage to the theologian over the scientist. As evidenced by Jinasena’s remarks earlier in this chapter, religion is not immune to the paradoxes of Creation.

But the damage had already been done, there was a paragraph begging to be cherry picked by apologists and they went to town.  (A search on “There is no escape: they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning” brings up page after page of apologetic nonsense.

As an aside to very interesting video on a universe from ‘nothing’, Vilenkin makes a very clear comment to the effect that the BGV Theorem does not mean what people like WLC want it to mean.  In this part of the video, he very specifically says that the BGV Theorem does not conclude that the universe must have a beginning, it concludes only that expansion must have a beginning.

WLC will need to find a new argument for an absolute cosmic beginning.  Well, he should, but given his track record, it’s likely that he will just ignore inconvenient statements by the people whose arguments he misrepresents.

Theological Zombies to the Rescue!

I was listening to Skydive Phil’s debate with Randal Rauser recently and it occurred to me that I have a solution to the Problem of Evil.

I went part of the way in Theological Zombies already, but in that I was mostly aiming at the problem associated with the absence of compossibility, or to put it less abstrusely, the problem of a supposedly good, all-knowing, all-powerful god creating this universe in which many of the sentient beings with whom god apparently wants to have a loving relationship (being saved) will end up being damned (being sent to hell, being extinguished or merely being set apart depending on the type of god).

Phil and Randal were talking specifically about the suffering of animals and how that is inconsistent with the existence of a tri-omni god.  They danced around some of the standard defences, that animals are simply fleshy automatons (Descartes’ solution) or that animals don’t feel pain as we do (WLC’s solution) or that demons might be to blame (Plantinga’s silly argument, but only as a possible defeater raised in order to avoid a logical problem) or that the suffering of animals is somehow necessary to achieve a greater good (as I recall Randal tended to lean this way).

Now, in the Theological Zombies argument I present a way in which everyone can be saved.  The fact that there are worlds in which you may be saved but others are cannot is resolved by observing that god is not limited to creating one single universe.  As many universes as are needed can be created and largely populated with zombies that act precisely like other people would in the same circumstances, people who would either be saved in a universe with less suffering or who need a universe with even more suffering in it to be saved.  Therefore, the only beings in this universe who are not zombies are those for whom salvation is compossible with all the other real, non-zombie inhabitants.

If that means that god needs to create billions and billions of universes, that’s ok, because god is not limited in power, or by time, or anything (except perhaps logic).  But it does mean that anyone in this particular universe who is real and is being saved in it is a bit of a scumbag by virtue of it not being possible to be saved in any universe with less pain and suffering in it.

While I was specifically focusing on how Theological Zombies could avoid the problem with consigning so many people to hell or whatever, I can see now that the same argument applies to animals.  For those humans being saved in this universe, it is not necessary that real animals need to suffer.  All that is needed is for there to be theological zombie animals which act precisely as a real animal would if it were to suffer.  Which makes the people who are being saved in this universe even worse scumbags since they need those animals to suffer in order to be saved.

The positive thing though is that for the relatively low cost of accepting that pretty much nothing in this universe is actually real, and that you are a total scumbag who needs innocent animals to suffer, you can believe in whatever god you like and avoid the Problem of Evil altogether.

Plantinga, if he wants, is welcome to use this as one of his defeaters – at least it’s a lot less silly than pain and suffering demons.