Simplicity and why the universe exists

While they are not at all the same question, perhaps if we can begin to decipher the latter, we can begin to decrypt the former. I am the creator and host of the PBS television series Closer To Truth, and for the past several years I have been bringing together scientists and scholars to examine the meaning and implications of state-of-the-art science. The next Closer To Truth series, now in production, focuses on cosmology and fundamental physics, philosophy of cosmology, philosophy of religion, and philosophical theology, and thus I have been interviewing cosmologists, physicists, philosophers, and theologians, asking them, among other questions, "Why This Universe?

In recent years, the search for scientific explanations of reality has been energized by increasing recognition that the laws of physics and the constants that are embedded in these laws all seem exquisitely "fine tuned" to allow, or to enable, the existence of stars and planets and the emergence of life and mind. If the laws of physics had much differed, if the values of their constants had much changed, or if the initial conditions of the universe had much varied, what we know to exist would not exist since all things of size and substance would not have formed.

Stephen Hawking presented the problem this way:. Use this link to get back to this page. Why this universe? Toward a taxonomy of possible explanations. Author: Robert Lawrence Kuhn. Date: Summer Is the Universe Self-Caused?

Robert J. Deltete - - Philosophy 75 4 Thomas D. Sullivan - - Dialogue 33 2 Quentin Smith - unknown. Simplicity and Why the Universe Exists. Quentin Smith - - Philosophy 72 - Could the Universe Cause Itself to Exist?

William F. Vallicella - - Philosophy 75 4 Explanatory Atheism: A Retrospective. Paul Kabay - - Philo 11 1 Objections to Smith's Cosmological Argument Robin Collins - unknown. Any other putative candidate would be indiscernible from and identical with the big bang singularity. Further, the evidence is that there is only one big bang singularity. How may the theist respond? In this case, the law would be false; the simplest thing would not come into existence in the simplest way.

But this logical possibility is consistent with the existence of this thing confirming the Law of the Simplest Beginning. For example, the recession of galaxies is logically compatible with Steady State Cosmology, but nonetheless highly confirms Big Bang Cosmology. The evidence that the simplest possible thing exists does not provide equal or more confirming evidence for the theistic hypothesis than it does for the Law of the Simplest Beginning.

If the Law of the Simplest Beginning is true, we expect to a high degree of probability, indeed, with certainty, that there is a big bang singularity.

But the hypothesis that God exists does not lead us to expect with certainty or a high degree of probability that there occurs a big bang singularity. The hypothesis that God creates a universe also does not lead us to expect that there is a big bang singularity for there are an infinite number of different ways God could begin a universe and there are infinitely many possible beginningless universes that God could create. Could God ordain that the Law of the Simplest Beginning obtains?

The definition of God is that he is the cause of any universe that exists. Thus it would be inconsistent with this definition to suppose that he ordains a law that implies there is a universe that begins to exist without a cause. The theist may point to a potential weakness; if God does not exist and the Law of the Simplest Beginning obtains, then we are left with a brute fact. The law explains the singularity, but what explains the obtaining of the law? There is no explanation; the law is contingently true.

Does this mean that the atheistic theory leaves us with an ultimate brute fact, the obtaining of this law, whereas theism does not leave us with an ultimate brute fact? The theistic hypothesis also has an unexplained contingency. This act is explained in terms of agent causality; God performs the act and in this sense is the cause of the act. The creative act has a causal explanation in terms of its agent. But there is another event that has no explanation, namely, the event of God causing the creative act.

Note that this is not the event of causing the big bang. This event is caused by God. The uncaused event is the event of God causing his creative act, or, in other words, Of God performing his act of creation.

If the theist responds to my argument with one of these old refrains, nothing new will be added to the case that theists Craig, Swinburne, Leslie, Sullivan, Deltete, etc. The atheistic hypothesis, the Law of the Simplest Beginning, is new; it is not entailed by previous atheistic positions. The theist may argue that the proposition, the simplest possible thing comes into existence in the simplest possible way, cannot be a law of nature since it does not have the proper form of a law of nature.

She may argue that no law of nature can be about only one thing the simplest possible thing and assert that this thing exists. There is no non-question-begging argument for the thesis that a law of nature cannot mention a particular thing and imply it exists. Even if it is true that all laws that have previously been formulated do not mention a particular thing or imply that a particular thing exists, this does not show it is logically impossible for there to be such a law.

In any case, I can avoid the issue about whether my atheistic hypothesis is a law of nature by paring down my argument.