Does the Big Bang prove that the universe had a beginning?

TLDR: No, depending on what you mean by "prove."

Asking somebody to prove something is a way of raising the burden of proof to an unattainable standard. The idea behind our request is that we want the person to demonstrate certainty about their conclusion. That way if there's just an inkling of doubt, we can dismiss their case. In the real world, epistemological confidence (or strength of belief) comes in degrees. There are very few things we can be certain about, but certainty isn't necessary to function in life. We go on less than certainty about most things. Requiring certainty, then, is unreasonable in most cases.

For the purpose of this blog post, let's take it for granted that the big bang happened. I know there's a big stir on the internet about the James Webb Space Telescope calling the big bang into question. I don't think there's any merit to those doubts, but that's not what this post is about, so I won't go into it.

The question for today's post is whether the big bang, if it happened, proves that the universe had a beginning. If we're using "proof" as in establishes with certainty, then my answer is no. If the big bang were proof in that sense, it would mean that it would be impossible for the universe not to have a beginning as long as the big band theory is true. As long as it is possible for the big bang to be true without the universe having a beginning, then the big bang doesn't prove the universe had a beginning.

There are lots of models cooked up by cosmologists that are consistent with the big bang and that do not have a beginning. Most of these models are speculative and untestable. Most of them are probably wrong. But as long as they are possible, they show that it is possible for there to be a big bang without an absolute beginning. And that means the big bang does not show with certainty that the universe had a beginning.

But the fact that the beginning of the universe doesn't follow necessarily from the big bang doesn't mean the big bang isn't evidence for a beginning. Here, I'm using "evidence" to mean any artifact, data, or information that raises the probability of some conclusion. Since the beginning of the universe is more probable given the big bang than it would be without it, the big bang is evidence for the beginning of the universe.

Consider two scenarios - one in which the universe appears to be static and the other in which the universe appears to be expanding. Of these two scenarios, the expanding scenario at least makes it look like the universe had an origin as opposed to the static one which gives no indication. The origin would've been at or near the point in the past at which everything converged to a singularity. As you go back into the past, everything gets closer and closer together. There's a limit to how close things can get. Once they are all located at the same point, they cannot get any closer. If we look at the expanding universe and extrapolate back in time, it points to an absolute origin since everything is headed in the direction of infinite density.

Admittedly, there are horizons beyond which we can't look. One horizon is the epoch of recombination when subatomic particles first formed stable atoms. Before that, the universe was opaque. Recombination was the point at which the universe began to give off its first light. That light still exists as the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB). We can't see, using electromatic radiation, what the universe looked like before that no matter how powerful our telescopes become because no light was emitted prior to recombination.

We may be able to see earlier than that using gravitational waves, though. Gravitational wave astronomy is still new. I hope it advances to the point of being able to look at the universe earlier than the release of the CMB. There would be a lot we could learn.

Even if that succeeds, though, we run into another horizon. There is a point beyond which not even our best theories in physics can predict what we should expect the universe to be like. In general relativity, Einstein's field equation (and its various solutions) starts to yield nonsensical results when the curvature of spacetime approaches infinity. In quantum mechanics, the Heisenburg uncertainty principle would be violated if things were contricted to spaces smaller than the Planck length. Quantum mechanics and general relativity are two of our most successful theories in physics (and maybe in all of science), but if we try to use them to extrapolate back to a beginning, we run up against a wall.

It may be that we can push beyond this horizon if we can come up with a theory of quantum gravity that reconciles quantum mechanics and general relativity and allows us to describe the universe on scales smaller than the Planck length. But who knows if we will ever have such a theory? It may be that there isn't such a theory or it may be that such a theory is unknowable.

With all this fuzziness about what the universe was like beyond a certain point, it raises a degree of doubt that we can extrapolate from our observations about the universe now, using the known laws of physics, to an absolute beginning. That may always be the case.

I don't think this doubt should prevent us from inferring a beginning of the universe, though. Suppose the universe does not converge all the way to a singularity. Still, there's a limit to how far it can converge. At some point, it can't get any denser. Only one of two things can happen once you extrapolate to the limit of how dense the universe can get. Either whatever is left came into being, or it has always existed. If it has always existed, then why did it just begin to expand 13.8 billion years ago and not any sooner? After all, it would have had an infinite amount of time in which to do so. Whatever the reason or cause for why the universe began to expand when it did, that cause or reason would have always been there. I think the big bang points to a beginning of the universe even if we don't know what the universe was like beyond a certain point.

It may be that the beginning of the universe is the point at which our theories do make sense. The fact that we cannot push them beyond a certain point may be owing to the fact that the universe can't exist beyond that point, which in turn, means that's the beginning. Maybe the universe had some finite curvature and density at its beginning, avoiding all the problems of infinities, and avoiding the violation of any known laws.

This is all speculative, of course, but the speculation that the universe had a beginning is at least based on what we know. Based on what we know about the expansion of the universe and the laws of physics, it looks like the universe had a beginning. The fact that there are speculative models in which the universe didn't have a beginning doesn't change this fact. There's nothing in our evidence that makes it look like any of those speculations are true. There's nothing we can point to that would remotely suggest the universe had some finite density for infinite time before expanding.

So, while I don't think the big bang shows with any certainty that the universe had a beginning, I do think it shows with some positive probability that the universe had a beginning. It at least points to a beginning. It's the sort of thing we would expect if the universe had a beginning. It certaintly makes it look more like the universe had a beginning than it would if the universe was not expanding or contracting. So I think the big bang is evidence for the beginning of the universe even if it's not proof.

Subconscious and Implicit Reasoning

We are reasoning machines, but most of the reasoning we do isn't explicit and formal. Aristotle attempted to formalize our reasoning methods by recognizing laws of logic, including syllogisms that express laws of logical inference. Using these tools in a formal way allows us to recognize and avoid making mistakes in our reasoning. It also helps us understand what people are saying and thinking if we can formalize what they say.

Consider this conversation:

Sam I Am: I may have had Covid a month ago, but I'm not sure.

Doctor: Oh, if you had Covid, you would know it.

Sam I Am: In that case, I definitely had the flu.

This conversation didn't actually happen, so there's no need to nit pick about the fact that it's possible to have Covid and not know it. That's irrelevant to the point I'm trying to make.

Anywho, it might seem like I made some big leap in logic to conclude that I had the flu from the fact that if I had Covid, I would've known it. But there's some unstated premises in my reasoning as there almost always is in our day to day conversations. If I were to formalize my reasoning, it would look like this:

1. If you had Covid, you would know it.
2. I do not know it.
3. Therefore, I did not have Covid.

1. I either had the flu, or I had Covid.
2. I did not have Covid.
3. Therefore, I had the flu.

Formalizing my reasoning reveals that I used two different kinds of syllogisms. The first one uses the modus tollens syllogism, and the second one uses the disjunctive syllogism. Notice that the second premise in my second syllogisms says the same thing as the conclusion in my first syllogism. That's why the first syllogism comes first. I have to establish that conclusion before I can use it as a premise in my next argument. To simplify this sort of thing, we can combine all the premises and inferences into one argument, which eliminates repetition. In my case, it would look like this:

1. If I had Covid, I would know it.
2. I do not know that I have Covid
3. I either had the flu or I had Covid.
4. Therefore, I did not have Covid (this follows from 1 and 2 by modus tollens).
5. Therefore, I had the flu (this follows from 3 and 4 by disjunction).

Whenever we're talking to somebody, and they seem to make a leap of logic, or they come to some conclusion we disagree with, we tend to want to fill in the gaps where they didn't explicitly state all their permises. If we're charitable, we fill the gaps with whatever we think must be assumed in order to render their argument logically valid. Often, we don't even state the premise ourselves. If we disagree with their conclusion, the reason we give is always some denial of what we think the hidden premise was.

Now consider the following conversation:

Jim: I don't think I had Covid.

Bobe: Why not?

Jim: Because if I had Covid, I would've known it.

Notice that if we tried to formalize this into a syllogism, there would be a missing premise.

1. If I had Covid, I would have known it.
2.
3. Therefore, I did not have Covid.

What is the hidden premise? It doesn't take too much creativity to recognize that Jim's reasoning assumes that he did not know he had Covid since that's the only way to render the reasoning valid. If you were trying to understand Jim, you would likely assume that's his hidden premise. He could've said something like this:

Jim: I don't think I had Covid.

Bob: Why not?

Jim: Well, I didn't have any of the symptoms of Covid.

Bob: It's possible to have Covid without having symptoms.

There are a couple of things going on in this conversation. First, Jim is making an argument to justify his conclusion that he didn't have Covid. Second, Bob is objecting to Jim's argument by denying what he takes to be Jim's hidden premise.

At first glance, Jim's argument might seem unobjectionable, but even this line of reasoning contains a hidden premise, which can be exposed by trying to formalize the reasoning into a syllogism.

1. I did not have any of the symptoms of Covid.
2.
3. Therefore, I did not have Covid.

The best candidate for the hidden premise that jumps out at us is this: If Jim had Covid, he would have had symptoms of Covid. If that were the hidden premise, the conclusion would follow by modus tollens. Since that's the only premise Bob can immediately come up with, he fills in the gap and denies that premise. If the hidden premise is false, then Jim's argument is unsound even if it's logically valid.

Notice that Jim and Bob had this conversation without either of them ever stating the hidden premise in Jim's argument. This sort of thing happens every day. It happens in regular conversation, in heated arguments, and in civil debate and discussion.

There is a danger in filling in the gaps when somebody else delivers an argument with hidden premises. The danger is that you will fill the gaps with the wrong premise. If you do that, and the other person notices, they will think you are misrepresenting them. They may either chalk it up to an innocent misunderstanding, or they may think you're misrepresenting them deliberately. It's hard not to want to fill the gaps when the missing premise seems obvious, but we sometimes fill the gaps with whatever jumps out at us even if there are other options. We do this because we're hasty and sometimes uncharitable.

When I've had formal debates, I've tried two different tactics when responding to my opponent's argument. One tactic is to acknowledge that there's a hidden premise. I'll say something like, "Your argument assumes such and such because that's the only way to make the argument go through." Another tactic I use is to formalize their argument, leave one of the premises blank, and say that unless my opponent fills in the blank, his argument is invalid. I can only remember using that second tactic one time in a debate. I'm reluctant to use that in a formal debates because it requires more back and forth before getting to the point, and there are limited rounds. Usually, I make my best guess at the hidden premise. To avoid being accused of strawmanning their position, I make it known that I'm only guessing what their hidden premise is. Then I'll say something like, "If I've understood you correctly, here's the issue I have with your arugment. . ."

It is interesting to me that in most debates, arguments, and discussions I've seen or been involved in, the disagreements seem to hinge on the hidden premises rather than the explicitly stated premises. It is also interesting to me to recognize that a lot of reasoning - even valid reasoning - happens without even exlpicitly thinking about all the premises we're invoking. We just jump from one fact or observation to our conclusion without explicitly thinking about the hidden premise or the logical rule of inference we used to draw the conclusion from the stated and hidden premise. In many, and possibly most, cases, we reason subconsciously. But formalizing our reasoning can help us be more clear. Formalizing our buddy's reasoning can help us understand him. Formalizing our reasoning can help us recognize and avoid mistakes in thinking. It can also improve our reading compreshension.

We should be thankful for Aristotle.

Defining knowledge as justified true belief with Gettier thrown in

Philosophers have been accused of using words in very unconventional ways, which is confusing for people who aren't philosophers. There's a reason they do it, though. They do it for the sake of clarity. Language, the way it is commonly used, can be very ambiguous. Since philosophers are trying to address hard questions that require a lot of precision and careful thinking, they want to define their terms in precise ways so they can understand each other and communicate clearly. This requires them to give very precise definitions to the words they use. It doesn't matter whether the definitions they give are common or not. What matters is that the reader understands what they are saying. As long as you understand what somebody means by the words they are using, you can figure out what they are trying to communicate with those words.

Words and their meanings didn't just fall from the sky. A word doesn't mean something because the dictionary says so. It's the other way around. The dictionary is an attempt to capture what words already mean. What determines the meaning of words is just how they are used. Since any given word might be used in multiple different ways, there are some ways that are more common than others. Dictionaries attempt to put the most common uses first and the least common uses last.

In the case of the word, knowledge, the definition philosophers typically use may be unusually precise compared to the way most people would definite it, but it's not an arbitrary definition that's peculiar to philosophers. Rather, it's a definition that was arrived at in an attempt to capture the common use. Let me try to show that by asking some questions.

Would it make sense to claim that you know something if you didn't even think it was true? Probably not. Wouldn't it seem odd to say, "I don't think birds of a feather flock together, but I know they do"? I suspect that would seem odd to you. At a bare minimum, then, before you can know something, you have to at least believe it to be true. To "believe," just means to think something is true.

If I believe something, is that enough to claim that I know it? We have already established that belief is necessary for knowledge, but most of us would acknowledge that belief is not sufficient. Something more is needed. After all, I might believe something and be wrong about it. People believe all sorts of things that aren't true. You can't know something is true if it's not true. So at minimum, before you can know something, it first has to be true.

Now we've shown that to have knowledge, you need at least two ingredients. You need it to be true, and you need to believe that it's true. But are those two things enough?

Well, consider a situation in which somebody, for no reason at all, or for some erroneous reason, comes to believe that there is life on Jupiter. Up until now, no discovery of life on Jupiter has been made, and no chemistry or light on Jupiter has given us any reason to think there's life on Jupiter. But then suppose that years down the road, a probe sent into the atmosphere in Jupiter found that, in deed, there is mocrobial life floating in the atmosphere of Jupiter. If that were the case, then the person who believed there was life on Jupiter would have been right all along. He had a belief that turned out to be true. Would it be fair to claim that he knew that there was life on Jupiter?

I hope you said no. The way we commonly use the word, knowledge, seems to entail that he didn't have knowledge. Rather, he just made a lucky guess, and happened to believe it. What is missing? Well, if he just arbitrarily believed something he made up, the missing ingredient seems to be justification. If he had concluded that there was life on Jupiter because he performed some spectroscopy on the planet and discovered chemicals in the atmosphere that could only be created by living organisms, then he would have some justification for believing there was life on Jupiter. Or, if he had been part of the team that sent a probe to Jupiter, and he was privy to the data the probe sent back indicating that it found life on Jupiter, then he would by justified in beliving there was life on Jupiter. Then we might say he knows there's life on Jupiter.

Now, we have established that knowledge requires (1) belief, (2) truth, and (3) justification. That is why the typical definition philosophers use for knowledge is "justified true belief." That has served as a satisfactory definition for knowledge in most cases.

Being the persnickety people that good philosophers are, though, even this definition has been probed for its accuracy. Just as in the scientific method, we test hypothesies by trying to falsify them, so also in the case of philosophy, we test ideas by trying to think of counter-examples. A philosopher named Edmund Gettier came up with some counter-examples to the definition of knowledge as justified true belief. The issue he raised has become known as "The Gettier Problem" since there is no concensus on the resolution.

A counter-example to knowledge as justified true belief would be a scenario in which all three ingredients are present, but we still don't think the person has knowledge.

When I was in middle school, I had a friend named Chad who had a girlfriend named Wendy. One day, as a joke, I told Chad that Wendy said she was going to break up with him. Chad believed me because he didn't have any reason to think I'd lie about something like that. Seeing the look on his face, I felt bad and immediately told him it had been a joke. He went about his merry way. The next day, Chad came at me angry for lying to him. It turned out Wendy really did break up with him, and he was mad at me for claimimg that it had been a joke when it was actually true.

Notice that when I told Chad that Wendy was going to break up with him, he had all three ingredients for knowledge. (1) He believed Wendy was going to break up with him, (2) he was justified in believing Wendy was going to break up with him, and (3) it was true that Wendy was going to break up with him. Yet because I was joking, most of us would probably agree that Chad did not have knowledge. I wasn't reporting to Chad anything that I actually knew. It was just a coincidence that I happened to be right. This scenario, then, serves as a counter-example to knowledge as justified true belief. It appears that something else was missing. What was it?

Here, philosophers give different answers. Some answers involve tweaking or qualifying the criteria of "justification" in some way. What exactly is justification? Will any ole justification do? Other answers involve adding a fourth criteria. What other ingredient is required for knowledge?

Since Gettier problems in real life are very exceptional, I think that pragmatically speaking, we can just ignore them. The definition of knowledge as justified true belief is a good enough rough definition to cover most real life cases. But when it comes to arguing the nitty gritty details of the things weirdos like you and I like to talk about (including the topic of epistemology), it might be useful to tackle the Gettier problem.

While I haven't read a whole lot of literature on how other philosophers have tackled this problem, my own unrefined view is that whatever the justification for our belief is, it must be a proper justification. That is, the justification must actually bridge the gap between the belief and the reality. There has to be a connection between the two. There is no connection between the reality of Wendy breaking up with Chad, and Chad's belief that Wendy would break up with him since I just made it up. If Wendy had told me she was going to break up with him, and I had told Chad, then there would have been a bridge from the reality to the belief. In that case, Chad would have a proper justification for his belief that Wendy would break up with him. That would give him knowledge.

While I am happy to define knowledge as justified true belief without going into the Gettier problem, if I had to nail it down more precisely, I would just add the "proper" part along with the explanation. My more persnickety definition of knowledge would be "properly justified true belief."

How would you deal with the Gettier problem? What is the missing ingredient for knowledge that is left out by the usual definition?

Libertarian free will, Frankfurt cases, and the ability to do otherwise

Anybody who believes in free will thinks the will is free from something or free to do something. Libertarians thinks the will is free from absolutely all antecedent conditions, including one's own psychological states. That means if you have free will in the libertarian sense, then for any free act, you could have done otherwise even if everything in the universe prior to and up to the moment of choice had been exactly the same, and that includes all of your psychological states, including your beliefs, desires, preferences, biases, motives, etc.

Since the ability to do otherwise is so wrapped up in the notion of libertarian free will, many have taken to defining free will as the ability to do otherwise. A philosopher named Harry Frankfurt came up with some counter-examples to show that the ability to do otherwise is not necessary for libertarian free will. These are thought experiments designed to show that one can have libertarian freedom even if they lack the ability to do otherwise.

For example, imagine you're sitting at a table with a can of Coke on one side and a can of Dr. Pepper on the other, and you are given the option to drink one or the other. Imagine that unbeknowst to you there's a guy hiding behind the curtain watching you closely, and if he sees you reach for the Coke, he's going to jump out from behind the curtain and slap the Coke away, preventing you from drinking it. That never happens, though, because you choose to drink the Dr. Pepper instead of the Coke.

Thought experiments like this are meant to show that one can make a libertarian free choice without having the ability to have done otherwise. Even though you couldn't have chosen to drink the Coke, your choice to drink the Dr. Pepper was still a free choice.

One can nit pick about the particulars of the thought experiment (e.g. if you were free, then your choice wasn't just between Coke and Dr. Pepper, but between drinking Coke and not drinking Coke, etc.), but setting those quibbles aside, I think what Frankfurt thought experiments show is that the ability to do otherwise is not what is meant by libertarian free will. It shouldn't be part of the definition of libertarian free will.

However, Frankfurt cases almost never happen in real life. In real life, we make choices continuously every day without there being Frankfurt cases. In the absense of a Frankfurt case, if you have libertarian free will, then you do have the ability to do otherwise. The ability to do otherwise, then, is a consequence of libertarian free will in the real world. So it does make sense to talk about libertarian free will as entailing the ability to do otherwise, at least in the real world as opposed to imaginary scenarios.

Trump and Harris on abortion

I watched the Trump and Harris debate tonight. I think Harris did better than Trump. I think Trump missed a lot of opportunities. I think the moderators got too involved by participating in the debate, correcting Trump and arguing with him when that was Harris's job, not theirs.

Speaking of missed opportunities, Harris articulated her pro-choice views very clearly. She thinks the right to abortion is rooted in a woman's right to decide what to do with her own body. Trump, however, did not articulate his point of view very clearly or respond to Harris' argument, and so missed an opportunity. This is what I think he should have said in his two minutes:

If abortion were justified on the basis that women have the right to decide what to do with their bodies, then abortion would be justified through all nine months of pregnancy. However, most people, including pro-choice people, do not think abortion is justified through all nine months. Consistency demands that abortion is not justified on the basis that women have the right to decide what to do with their bodies.

Why is it that even pro-choice people are against late stage abortions? It's because the more developed the unborn become, the harder it becomes to honestly deny that it's a living human being. The fact that it's a living human being is the reason even pro-choice people oppose abortions in the third trimester in spite bodily rights. That means whether it's a living human being is the real issue, not bodily rights.

There is no stage of development in which something that is non-human turns into a human. The unborn is human through all stages of development. It's alive through all stages of development, too, because otherwise there would be a miscarriage. That means it's a living human being through all stages of development. If we oppose abortion in the latest stages of pregnancy because it's a living human being, and if it's a living human being through all stages of pregancy, then to be consistent, we must oppose abortion through all stages of pregancy.

I don't know whether Trump is really pro-life or not. I've never seen any evidence that he really understands the issue. I get that same impression with a lot of republicans who claim to be pro-life. I think they claim to be pro-life because they think they have to in order to get elected. Fewer of them are doing that these days because the tides are turning.

I have thought for a long time that pro-lifers needed to focus more on the moral question of abortion rather than the legal question. I've expressed this point of view to a lot of pro-lifers who have disagreed with me. Since Roe v. Wade got overturned and a few states have banned or limited abortion, there has been a huge backlash. There are more pro-choice people now than there were before. I think this is owing to the fact that the law was changed before hearts were changed. The law was changed before moral points of view were changed. I think I was right that pro-lifers should have focused on the moral question before the legal question and that the moral question should have had the greater emphasis. I said more about that here.

Questions for God

If you could interview God and ask him anything, what questions would you ask? Here are some things I'd like to know. Feel free to leave a comment sharing your own view, even if speculative.

1. How big is the universe?

2. Are there other universes?

3. How much life is in the observable universe?

4. How much life is in our galaxy?

5. How much intelligent life comparable to our own is in the universe/galaxy?

6. Where is the closest extraterrestrial life?

7. Where is the closest civilization of beings comparable to us?

8. What is the most intelligent being in the galaxy/universe?

9. What is the most advanced civilization in the galaxy/universe?

10. What is the biggest sentient being in the galaxy/universe?

11. Is there a limit to how intelligent a physical being can get?

12. What is really going on in the quantum world?

13. How do general relativiy and quantum mechanics actually fit together? What is the correct theory? Is there a theory of quantum gravity? If so, what is it?

14. What is dark matter?

15. What is dark energy?

16. What's going on inside a black hole?

17. What is the correct theory of time? Is it static, dynamic, or something else?

18. What was the universe like in its earliest stages? Was there an inflationary period? If so, what made it stop?

19. How does the soul interact with the brain?

20. What's it like to be a disembodied spirit?

21. How should we interpret the creation account in Genesis? What really happened literally? How should that inform our theology?

22. What happened to Jesus' body after the ascension?

23. Who is right? The Calvinist or the non-Calvinists?

24. Who is right? The protestants, Catholics, or Eastern Orthodox? What are the major things that each of them get right or wrong?

25. Who would win in a debate between Jonathan Edwards and William Lane Craig if each were in their prime, and they were debating Calvinism vs. Molinism?

26. What did the dinosaurs really look like? What colour were they? What sounds did they make? How did they hunt? (Hopefully God would show me some picures or a video or something.)

27. How did life begin on our planet?

28. What role did you play in the evolution of life, especially human life?

29. How massive is the most massive black hole in the universe, and where is it?

30. What's the best design for a fusion reactor that could actually be useful to humans?

31. Why does the New Testament give the impression that the second coming of Jesus was right around the corner when it still hasn't happened after 2000 years?

32. Are there any Dyson spheres in the galaxy/universe?

33. Why do you allow there to be so much suffering in the world?

34. What's the longest a human could live given optimum conditions but without altering the current genome?

35. What happened to that pocket knife Glen gave me?

36. What should I do with the rest of my life?

37. What are the top ten most important theological truths?

38. What should I know that I haven't asked?

39. What's something I would find really interesting but that I haven't asked about?

40. What's the best way to treat cancer?

41. Besides earth, where is the most habitable planet for humans in terms of atmospheric composition, gravity, etc.?

42. What is the oldest organism in the universe that has ever lived?

43. Who is the smartest human besides Jesus who ever lived?

44. Who is the smartest human currently?

45. How smart is the smartest creature in the universe?

46. What's the best economic system?

47. What does the healthiest diet consist of?

48. Who wrote the gospels?

49. Who is right--Mike Licona or Lydia McGrew?

50. What's the best Bible translation?

51. What will things literally be like once the resurrection and judgment have happened?

52. What are the most fundamental laws of physics? What is the most fundamental physical stuff?

53. What role does the brain play in our conscious experience? How does the brain store memories? How do those memories manifest themselves from the physical brain to our conscious experiene of them?

54. Where is the best place for me to live?

55. What does it mean that we are created in your image?

56. Where is the earliest surviving fragment of any book in the New Testament, and what is it?

57. What happened to the Ark of the covenant?

58. What is the biggest animal in the galaxy/universe that can fly?

59. What happened to the Roanoke colony?

60. What happened to the lost 116 pages of the Book of Mormon?

61. What was the last original autograph of any book in the New Testament, and what happened to it?

62. What is the expansion rate of the universe, and why are astrophyscists getting different results depending on how they try to measure it?

63. What was the original ending of Mark's gospel?

64. How will the universe change after everything happens in the eschaton? Will the laws of nature be the same or altered?

65. How was the tetragrammaton originally pronounced?

66. What became of Jesus' brothers and sisters? Are any of their descendants around today? Who are they?

67. When and where did the Shroud of Turin come from, and how was it made?

68. What is the answer to the Fermi paradox?

69. What is the real solution to the Twin paradox?

70. What's the best solution to the health care situation in America and everywhere else?

71. Why did David Crocket, James Bowie, and William Travis decide to stay and defend the Alamo?

72. Is it wrong for Christians to join militaries and fight in wars?

73. Is there anything inexplicable about the applicability of math to the physical world that I'm just not seeing?

74. Are there any animals besides humans that believe in God, gods, or any sort of spirits or ghosts?

75. What is the correct view of epistemology when it comes to foundational beliefs, especially synthetic a priori beliefs? How is knowledge ultimately justified?

76. What is the best chess opening if you are white? What is the best response to that opening if you are black?

77. Are there brute facts? If so, what are some examples?

78. Where did Robert Harper come from, and who were his parents?

79. How much total gold is in earth's crust?

80. Where are the most well-preserved dinosaur remains, and what kind of dinosaur is it?

81. Where is the biggest naturally occuring gold deposit in the solar system?

82. Where is Planet 9 (formerly Planet 10), and why is it so hard to find? What is it like? Does it even exist?

83. Are there any civilizations that are alien to each other but who have made contact with each other? If so, where are they? What's their story?

84. Are space and time quantized? If so, what is the smallest unit of space and time?

85. Are there any rogue planets with life on them? If so, what is the most complex life on a rogue planet, and where is it?

86. What kind of stars are most favourable to life (e.g. M-type, K-type, G-type, etc.)?

87. Are there any civilizations that developed under water? If so, where are they, and what are they like?

I may add to these later.

Classic Greg Koukl conversation

In the late 90's or thereabouts, Greg Koukl and Frank Beckwith published a book on Relativism. In one of the chapters, Greg wrote a series of mock diaglogues in which he tried to show that moral relativism is self-refuting (at least in some of the ways it is practiced). Today, I had a conversation that could've come straight out of Koukl's chapter. It was so text book I felt silly typing my part. It was in the comment section of a YouTube poll that asked "Is in vitro fertalization (IVF) morally acceptable?" This is how it went down:

Random citizen: These questions are ludicrous. You can't shove your shit morality on other people.

Sam I Am: Why not?

Random citizen: because it's your morality, not someone else's. Live your life by it, but don't force others to it. Live and let live.

Sam I Am: What if my morality says it's okay to push it on other people? Isn't it your morality that I shouldn't? Why push that morality on me? Why not just live and let live?

Random citizen: that's what I'm saying, Live and let live which means asshole, you live your life and let others live THEIRS AS THEY SEE FIT.

Sam I Am: But that's YOUR morality, not mine. Why are you pushing it on me? If you believe in "live and let live," then why not practice it instead of pushnig your morals on other people?

A debate on religious pluralism

I had another debate with the same guy who debated me on whether Christianity was the one true religion. This time, he framed the debate as Religious Pluralism vs. Christian Exclusivism. He went first, defending religious pluralism. Here is my opening statement in response:

*****

That was a well-written opening! Let's pause and give that man a hand! Now let's sit back down and refute his arguments. :-)

This is my argument in a nut shell.

1. If religious pluralism is true, then all major religions are more or less true.
2. If all religions are more or less true, then Christianity is more or less true.
3. If Christianity is more or less true, then Islam is more or less false.
4. If Islam is more or less false, then not all major religions are more or less true.
5. Therefore, if religious pluralism is true, then religious pluralism is false.

In other worlds, religious pluralism is self-refuting. Now let me defend these premises.

1. If religious pluralism is true, then all major religions are more or less true.

This premise is true by the definition Pro gave of religious pluralism. He said all major religions are equally valid interpretations of the same divine reality. His use of the word "reality" implies that there is some truth behind these various interpretations. So all religious must be true under this definition of pluralism.

2. If all religions are more or less true, then Christianity is more or less true.

This second premise is true because Christianity is a religion.

3. If Christianity is more or less true, then Islam is more or less false.

One of the essential claims of Christianity is that Jesus is the unique son of God and is equal with God the father. One of the essential claims of Islam is that God has no equal and has no son.

Pro anticipated this argument when he said that "Religious Pluralism does NOT mandate that every part of every religion is true." The problem with his response is that he fails to make a distinction between essential teachings and non-essential teachings. Christians differ amongst themselves on a variety of issues, and so do Muslims. However, there are a few teachings that define what Christianity is and what Islam is such that if you remove those teachings, you no longer have Christianity or Islam, respectively.

For example, if Jesus doesn't return before the great tribulation, then Christianity could still be true. But if Jesus is not the son of God, then Christianity cannot be true because Jesus being the son of God is an essential teaching of Christianity.

The fact that Christianity and Islam differ in their non-essential teachings does not mean they can't both be true. However, the fact that they differ on essential teachings does mean they cannot both be true. Jesus is either God or he's not God. If he's God, then Islam is false. If he's not God, then Christianity is false. But under no circumstances can they both be true.

4. If Islam is more or less false, then not all major religions are more or less true.

This premise is true because Islam is one of the major religions.

5. Therefore, if religious pluralism is true, then religious pluralism is false.

This follows from 1-4 by the transitive property.

Now, I need not prove that Christianity is true since Pro subscribes to religious pluralism. To be consistent, he must already acknowledge that Christianity is true. If he denies that Christianity is true, then he must deny religious pluralism since Christianity is one of the major religions.

So the only question is whether Christianity is exclusively true.

Pro thinks that the only argument for the exclusivity of Christianity is the explicit statements of exclusivity in the Bible. But that is false. There is also the argument from the law of non-contradiction, which Pro unsuccessfully attempted to address. The essential claims of Christianity are these:

1. There is one and only one God.
2. God imposes moral obligations on people.
3. People disobey their moral obligations.
4. God punishes people for their moral violations.
5. Jesus is the Christ.
6. Jesus died to pay for our moral violations.
7. Jesus was raised from the dead.

If any of these are false, then Christianity is false. But since Pro agrees that Christianity is true (to be consistent with his pluralism), then he cannot deny any of these claims without giving up his religious pluralism.

If Jesus is the Christ, then Judaism is false.

If There is only one God, then Hinduism is false.

If God imposes moral obligations on people, then Buddhism is false.

If Jesus died to pay for our moral violations, then Islam is false.

And those are all the major religions. It follows that if Christianity is true (which Pro must agree it is), it follows that it is the only major religion that is true, and therefore Christian exclusivism is true.

Now let me address one last argument Pro made against the exlusivity of Christianity. He claims that it violates the concept of an all-loving God.

As a side note, In Islam, God is not all-loving. Pro stipulated that "For the purposes of this debate, we'll be assuming the existence of an omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent God." That very stipulation refutes religious pluralism.

Anyway, the reason Pro thinks Christian exlusivity violates the concept of an all-loving God is that it entails that billions of people will be damned through no fault of their own since they had no control over where they were born or what religion they were born into.

This argument fails for two reasons. First, it fails because the damnation of all these people is not an essential claim of Christianity. He already acknowledge earlier that religious pluralism does not entail that every part of a religion is true. The Catholic Church denies the claim that all non-Christians are damned. So Pro's premise is false.

But even if Pro's premise (that all non-Christians are damned), it would still not follow that people are damned through no fault of their own. Notice the essential claims of Christianity I listed above. The claim of Christianity isn't that people are damned because they didn't convert to Christianity. Rather, the claim is that they are damned because of their moral violations. One does not need to be a Christian (or to even have knowledge of Christianity) in order to know right from wrong. So it isn't true that non-Christians in various parts of the world are damned throug no fault of their own. They are at fault because they know right from wrong, and they do wrong. Everybody violates their moral obligations. Nobody is perfect. If there WERE a perfect person out there somewhere, then that person would not be damned.

So Pro's argument against Christian exclusivity is fallacious on two counts.