Lawrence Krauss Explains How You Get ‘A Universe From Nothing’

I wish to state that I con­cur with Epi­cu­rus (above)argument and the prob­lem it cre­ates to the uni­verse from noth­ing the­o­ry. In oth­er words, laws of physics could not exist in the noth­ing state as they apply only to exist­ing mea­sur­able enti­ties. Time and its man­i­fes­ta­tion as change is a phys­i­cal law (poor­ly under­stood).

Since every­thing in the uni­verse requires a cause, must not the uni­verse itself have a cause, which is God?

There are two basic fal­lac­i­es in this argu­ment. The first is the assump­tion that, if the uni­verse required a causal expla­na­tion, the posit­ing of a “God” would pro­vide it. To posit God as the cre­ator of the uni­verse is only to push the prob­lem back one step far­ther: Who then cre­at­ed God? Was there a still ear­li­er God who cre­at­ed the God in ques­tion? We are thus led to an infi­nite regress–the very dilem­ma that the posit­ing of a “God” was intend­ed to solve. But if it is argued that no one cre­at­ed God, that God does not require a cause, that God has exist­ed eternally–then on what grounds is it denied that the uni­verse has exist­ed eter­nal­ly?

It is true that there can­not be an infi­nite series of antecedent caus­es. But recog­ni­tion of this fact should lead one to reap­praise the valid­i­ty of the ini­tial ques­tion, not to attempt to answer it by step­ping out­side the uni­verse into some gra­tu­itous­ly invent­ed super­nat­ur­al dimen­sion.

This leads to the sec­ond and more fun­da­men­tal fal­la­cy in this argu­ment: the assump­tion that the uni­verse as a whole requires a causal expla­na­tion. It does not. The uni­verse is the total of that which exists. With­in the uni­verse, the emer­gence of new enti­ties can be explained in terms of the actions of enti­ties that already exist: the cause of a tree is the seed of the par­ent tree; the cause of a machine is the pur­pose­ful reshap­ing of mat­ter by men. All actions pre­sup­pose the exis­tence of entities–and all emer­gences of new enti­ties pre­sup­pose the exis­tence of enti­ties that caused their emer­gence. All causal­i­ty pre­sup­pos­es the exis­tence of some­thing that acts as a cause. To demand a cause for all of exis­tence is to demand a con­tra­dic­tion: if the cause exists, it is part of exis­tence; if it does not exist, it can­not be a cause. Noth­ing can­not be the cause of some­thing. Noth­ing does not exist. Causal­i­ty pre­sup­pos­es exis­tence, exis­tence does not pre­sup­pose causal­i­ty: there can be no cause “out­side” of exis­tence or “ante­ri­or” to it. The forms of exis­tence may change and evolve, but the fact of exis­tence is the irre­ducible pri­ma­ry at the base of all causal chains. Existence–not “God”–is the First Cause.

Just as the con­cept of causal­i­ty applies to events and enti­ties with­in the uni­verse, but not to the uni­verse as a whole–so the con­cept of time applies to events and enti­ties with­in the uni­verse, but not to the uni­verse as a whole. The uni­verse did not “begin”–it did not, at some point in time, “spring into being.” Time is a mea­sure­ment of motion. Motion pre­sup­pos­es enti­ties that move. If noth­ing exist­ed, there could be no time. Time is “in” the uni­verse; the uni­verse is not “in” time.

The man who asks: “Where did exis­tence come from?” or: “What caused it?”–is the man who has nev­er grasped that exis­tence exists. This is the men­tal­i­ty of a sav­age or a mys­tic who regards exis­tence as some sort of incom­pre­hen­si­ble miracle–and seeks to “explain” it by ref­er­ence to non-exis­tence.

Exis­tence is all that exists, the non-exis­tent does not exist; there is noth­ing for exis­tence to have come out of–and noth­ing means noth­ing. If you are tempt­ed to ask: “What’s out­side the universe?”–recognize that you are ask­ing: “What’s out­side of exis­tence?” and that the idea of “some­thing out­side of exis­tence” is a con­tra­dic­tion in terms; noth­ing is out­side of exis­tence, and “noth­ing” is not just anoth­er kind of “something”–it is noth­ing. Exis­tence exists; you can­not go out­side it, you can­not get under it, on top of it or behind it. Exis­tence exists–and only exis­tence exists: there is nowhere else to go.

NATHANIEL BRANDEN
The Objec­tivist Newslet­ter,

Edit­ed and pub­lished by Ayn Rand and Nathaniel Bran­den, 

Vol 1, No 5, May 1962, page 19

Intel­lec­tu­al Ammu­ni­tion Depart­ment

Arti­cle is also avail­able at 
http://tinyurl.com/First-Cause-article

This is an absolute­ly bril­liant state­ment by Bran­den, and ties in well with the the­o­ret­i­cal sci­ence today of an ongo­ing mul­ti uni­verse. It is mind blow­ing to know using physics that our uni­verse has a mea­sur­able and pre­dictable life span (Big Bang through evo­lu­tion to final­i­ty), but more so, to log­i­cal­ly deter­mine it is like­ly an ongo­ing process with count­less uni­vers­es and count­less begin­nings and end­ings, and that it has ALWAYS BEEN THIS WAY! This is far more breath­tak­ing, yet still makes more sense, than the inser­tion of a mag­i­cal god who has thoughts and pur­pose, who endured an eter­ni­ty of bore­dom pri­or to decid­ing to cre­ate the only uni­verse and only life sup­port­ing plan­et.