I mentioned YouTuber Joe Schmid recent conversion (or reversion) to Catholicism, and the epic seven-hour video he made on the cumulative case for God. (One of only three videos explaining his conversion, which total twenty-five hours.)
I'm working my way through it bit by bit, but I was particularly struck by this section, in which he asks why the universe, if it's "just there", isn't a lot more boring. I've often wondered this myself.
Whenever I've found myself pondering this, I've imagined the universe as an endless block of steel extending in every directions
Here are some of Schmid's suggestions of how the universe might have been (I've modified things I don't understand):
No concrete objects exist.
Only one particle exists.
One particle moves in a straight line forever (or a circle, etc.)
One particle periodically enters into an excited state.
Exactly two particles exist and orbit their common centre.
And he then says: "I could do this forever". Indeed.
Atheists put so much weight on evolution that it doesn't seem to occur to them that even for evolution to occur, the universe had to be a dynamic, rule-governed, complex reality.
To which the atheist might reply: "Well, it just is."
Which reminds me of Fr. Frederick Copleston's reply to Bertrand Russell, in a radio debate on the existence of God, when Russell was sticking to the "arms folded and sitting back" position: "If one refuses to even sit down at the chessboard and make a move, one cannot be checkmated."
A block of steel? How about a block of Rehyllium-X?
ReplyDeleteSee: Henry Hasse, "He Who Shrank" (1936)
That's a new one on me! The idea gives me vertigo.
DeleteThanks, that was an interesting story I had not read before.
DeleteYesterday, I watched the fine-tuning section of the video that you linked to. It is an interesting topic; I enjoy reading or listening to discussions about how the universe or Earth could have been different and what that would mean.
ReplyDeleteBut also, I have mixed feelings about fine-tuning arguments.
On the one hand, I agree with the underlying idea. The fact that there is life in the universe is not really explained by randomness, i.e., "there is some basic stuff and it combines and interacts in various ways", because the fact that there is stuff and that it combines doesn't tell you what it combines into and why life would arise.
But on the other hand, I don't think anyone can know a much about possible universes. It is one thing to talk about how Earth could have been otherwise, but when you get to the whole universe, there isn't much to go based on. It is true that you can imagine innumerable possibilities, but then that is true about anything. Why not a cube Earth, why not a pyramidal planet? We know that because of gravity that wouldn't work, but we had to know about gravity first, rather than just the idea of a planet.
But likewise, when people say, "Why isn't the universe full of life?" or that there is waste in the universe, well, how many universes have they been to?
So in that particular presentation, I believe the argument is inconclusive.
One of Schmid's argument to this, which you might have seen, is his appeal to the "Awesome Theistic Evidence" argument-- that is, even if the words "Made by God with love" were somehow baked into every atom in the universe, that would still face the objection: "We don't know of any other universe, perhaps it simply had to be like that." You can say that's an argument for counterfactuals based on a counterfactual, but it does at least put it in stark perspective.
ReplyDelete