Is Sola Scriptura self-refuting?

I've noticed over the last few years that a lot of issues Catholics and protestants used to debate about have kind of gone by the wayside. They don't get talked about as much. Sola Scriptura is getting all the attention. The primary argument Catholic apologists have against Sola Scriptura is that it's self-refuting.

The reason Catholics think it's self-refuting is because it's not taught in the Bible. If the Bible is the only source of theological truths, but the Bible doesn't teach sola scriptura, then sola scriptura can't be a theological truth.

I have argued elsewhere that Sola Scriptura is taught in the Bible,¹ but I want to ignore that so I can come at this objection from a different angle. Actually, I have a few things to say about it, so maybe there'll be more than one angle. For the sake of this post, I want to grant, for the sake of argument, that the Bible does not teach Sola Scriptura.

Let's start with what it means to be self-refuting. A self-refuting statement is a statement that, when assumed to be true and taken to its logical conclusion, turns out to be false. For example, the statement that "All sentences over five words long are false" is a self-refuting statement because it's over five words long. If the statement was true, then it would be false. It refutes itself.

If a statement refutes itself, then it's necessarily false. It's not even possible for it to be true. By the law of excluded middle, if a statement is false, then it's negation must be true. Since, for example, the statement that "All statements over five words long are false" is a self-refuting statement, it follows that the statement, "It is not the case that all sentences over five words long are false," is true because that's the negation of the original statement.

Now, consider the conclusion of the argument above I gave about Sola Scriptura. The conclusion was, "Sola Scriptura can't be a theological truth." That's what would follow if Sola Scriptura were self-refuting. But does that mean Sola Scriptura is false? If Sola Scriptura is self-refuting, then yes, we would have to say that it is false.

If Sola Scriptura is false, then the conclusion would have to be that the Bible is not the sole infallible rule of faith. If the Bible is not the sole infallible rule of faith, then there must be other infallible rules of faith besides the Bible. In other words, since Sola Scriptura is self-refuting, it would follow necessarily that there is another infallible source of theological truths besides the Bible.²

Think about that for a minute. We are basically drawing the conclusion that if the Bible does not state that the Bible is the sole infallible rule of faith, then necessarily, there must be another infallible rule of faith besides the Bible. But how does it follow that if the Bible does not claim to be the sole infallible rule of faith that it therefore isn't? That doesn't follow at all. There must be a mistake somewhere in the Catholic apologist's argument.

Let's suppose, hypothetically, that God inspired the Bible in such a way as to be infallible. And let's suppose there is no other infallible source of authority besides the Bible. That is not to say God couldn't inspire a prophet, a teacher, or even the Pope to make an infallible statement. We're just assuming, for the sake of argument, that he doesn't. If that were the case, then wouldn't it also be the case that the Bible is the sole infallible rule of faith? Wouldn't it be the sole infallible source of authority?

Now suppose that the above scenario is true, and that the Bible happens not to mention that it is the sole infallible source of authority or rule of faith. Well, then you'd have a situation where the Bible was the sole infallible rule of faith even though the Bible didn't say so.

This scenario seems to be perfectly coherent. Keep in mind, I'm not arguing at this point that it's true. I'm only arguing that it's a coherent scenario. It's something that's possible. It's something God could have done. But if Sola Scriptura is self-refuting, then it's not possible for the Bible to be the sole infallible rule of faith or source of authority. So here's my argument in a nut-shell.

1. If Sola Scriptura is self-refuting, then it is not possible for God to inspire the Bible in such a way as to make it infallible without inspiring something else and making it infallible as well.
2. It is possible for God to inspire the Bible in such a way as to make it infallible without inspiring something else and making it infallible as well.
3. Therefore, Sola Scriptura is not self-refuting.

If Sola Scriptura is not self-refuting, then where has the Catholic argument gone wrong? It certainly seems, on its face, to be a good argument. Here's the argument again:

If the Bible is the only source of theological truths, but the Bible doesn't teach sola scriptura, then sola scriptura can't be a theological truth.

In other words, if all theological truths are in the Bible, but Sola Scriptura is not in the Bible, then Sola Scriptura cannot be a theological truth.

There are a few possibilities of where the problem lies with this argument. It could be that Sola Scriptura is true, but it's not a theological truth. It's just a plain ole ordinary truth. It could also be that not all theological truths are recorded in the Bible.

This second option seems obviously true. What is a theological truth anyway? Isn't it a truth about God or religion? John tells us at the end of his gospel that "Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written" (John 21:25). No doubt Jesus said and did many things that were never written down. Likewise, Paul said, "For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears" (1 Corinthians 13:9). The Bible does not contain an exhaustive list of truths about God. There are truths about God that nobody knows, not even the Pope. Jesus, talking about the end times, said, "But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father" (Matthew 24:36). There is a theological truth about when God is going to act in the last days that not even Jesus knew, and nobody knows today.

So it isn't the case that all theological truths are contained in the Bible. The problem with the Catholic argument may just be that it consists of a misunderstanding of what Sola Scriptura even is. Sola Scriptura is not the claim that all truths can be found in the Bible. It's not even the claim that all theological truths can be found in the Bible. Nor is it the claim that the only truths we can know are Biblical truths. After all, I know that Saturn orbits the sun, but the Bible doesn't tell me so.

Sola Scriptura is the claim that the Bible alone is an infallible authority on theological truths. There is nothing self-refuting about that. All that's required for that claim to be true is for God to inspire the Bible in such a way as to guarantee its truth, and for God not to inspire any other source of authority or truths in the same way. That is perfectly possible, and there's not a thing in the world incoherent about it.

What a Catholic could say is that Sola Scriptura cannot be an infallible doctrine unless it is taught in the scriptures. But that is perfectly fine for a protestant. To subscribe to Sola Scriptura, one need only subscribe to the claim that the Bible is the sole infallible source of authority. One need not subscribe to the additional claim that it is infallibly true that the Bible is the sole infallible source of authority. It is that additional claim that Catholics are banking on in order to show that Sola Scriptura is self-refuting, but that additional claim is not what Sola Scriptura is.

I grant that Sola Scriptura is a theological claim because it's a claim about something God did or did not do. Sola Scriptura is not the claim that you can only know theological truths that are revealed in the Bible. It's possible to know things about God through natural theology. The things you discover that way may not be infallibly true, but they could still be true anyway, and you could still be justified in believing them.

Likewise, we could discover through history, tradition (with a small 't'), or by simply recognizing the voice of our shepherd that the Bible is θεόπνευστος and therefore infallible. If we know of no other source of authority that's equally θεόπνευστος, then Sola Scriptura becomes the default position until we learn of some other infallible source. Sola Scriptura does not need to be taught explicitly in the Bible or infallibly known in order to be true or in order to be known.

What does it even mean for a statement or claim to be infallible? I take it to mean that it's a statement or claim that's guaranteed to be true because it came from an infallible source. After all, a statement is either true or false. Adding "infallible" to it doesn't make it anymore true than it already was. It's the source of the claim that's either fallible or infallible. If a source is infallible, that means the source is guaranteed to only provide true statements. If Sola Scriptura does not come from an infallible source, like the Bible, it could still be true, and it could be known to be true. It doesn't need to be an infallible truth to be true or known.

The same thing applies to the Canon.

NOTES:

1. I had a debate on debate.org with Adrian Urias titled "Sola Scriptura vs Sola Dei Verbum," but unfortunately that web page no longer exists, and the WayBack Machine doesn't appear to have it archived. Adrian, if you're reading this, did you happen to keep a copy of it? EDIT: Oh look! Watson posted a copy of the debate in the comment section. Thank you Watson!

2. It's also possible to negate Sola Scriptura by claiming that there are no infallible sources of authority at all, but that option is not open to Catholics or protestants. If we agree that there is at least one infallible rule of faith, but there's not only one, then by necessity there must be more than one. Even without this qualification, there's an obvious problem with the Catholic argument. It would follow that since Sola Scriptura is self-refuting that either (1) there is no infallible source of authority, or (2) there must be more than one infallible source of authority. But under no circumstances can there be just one infallible source of authority because that's allegedly self-refuting.

Why you should have an estate plan and file an affidavit of heirship for your deceased parents and/or grandparents

I have been a landman since 2006, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's the importance of estate planning. Estate planning is figuring out what is going to happen to your assets (and your corpse) after you die. A lot of people don't worry about it because they don't think they have any assets. But it is possible to have assets and not know it. Let me explain.

If you don't have a Will, then when you die, your assets go to your living heirs according to the laws of descent and distribution in your state. These laws differ from state to state, but they're pretty similar. If you're married and have kids, they might all go to your spouse, all to your children, or divided between them.

But suppose you don't have kids or a spouse. In that case, they go back to your parents. If your parents are dead (and they probably are by the time you die), then it goes to your brothers and sisters or to their children if they are dead.

Now, let me share a situation I've been dealing with lately to explain to you why it is important to have a Will and to file an affidavit of heirship for your deceased parents and/or grandparents. First, let me explain a little about how mineral ownership works.

Land, and the minerals that lie in and under the land (e.g. coal, oil, gas, gold, uranium, copper, etc.), can be divided into separate estates. What I mean is that it's possible to own the surface of a piece of land while somebody else owns the minerals. In fact, that's normal. In most states, only the surface owner pays taxes. If you own the oil and gas, but not the surface, and there's no well producing oil or gas, then you probably don't have to pay taxes. Again, these laws differ from state to state.

That means several generations can go by, each inheriting the oil and gas, without the descendants even knowing they own the oil and gas. If their parents owned the oil and gas, and they never leased it, paid any taxes on it, or did anything with it, they might just forget all about it and neglect to inform their children. Their children have no idea they inherited it, and their children are even less aware.

Okay, here's the situation I'm dealing with right now. I researched the title (both surface and mineral) of a piece of land in which a man back in the 1930's owned the minerals. I was able to find, through courthouse records, how he acquired his interest. But then, as I was searching for him in the indexes, he just disappeared. There was no affidavit of heirship, and there was no Will or Probate record. Where did his minerals go?

It turns out, he died in another state. He had no wife or children. You'd think his interest would go to his siblings, but oh no! It was not that simple. He was an only child. That means his interest went back to both his maternal grandparents and his paternal grandparents, then it trickled down to their remaining descendants. So all these distant cousins of the man inherited his minerals.

Do you think they knew about it? Of course not. They had no idea. And since that was so long ago, they are all deceased. Their descendants have inherited the minerals. And, of course, none of them know about it.

My job, now, is to find these descendants by looking up obituaries and whatever information I can find on Ancestry, Find-A-Grave, Family Search, or wherever else. Once I find them, I have to persuade them to help me create an affidavit of heirship to file in the courthouse in the county where these minerals are.

The problem is that most of these people have never dealt with this sort of thing before. A lot of them think I'm some Nigerian scam artist, and they don't want to talk to me. It takes a lot of persuasion and explaning to get them just to believe me.

I have managed to persuade some people that I'm legitimate, but now there's another problem. A lot of these people I'm trying to contact are the great-grandchildren or even great-great-grandchildren of the people for whom we need affidavits of heirship. An affidavit of heirship is supposed to include information about when and where the person died, whether they had a Will or probate record, and who all their heirs are. The great-grandchildren usually have no idea if their great-grandparent had a Will or whether that Will was admitted to Probate. It's nearly impossible just to create an affidavit of heirship because none of the living descendants can answer the questions I have to answer to fill out the affidavit.

That is why it's important to have an estate plan and to file an affidavit of heirship for your deceased parents or grandparents. You might own minerals in some county in a different state and not even know it. A Will removes all ambiguity about who will inherit whatever assets you own. In the absense of a Will, an affidavit of heirship can establish who your heirs are so the laws of descent and distribution can apply. Something filed in the courthouse, either where you live or where the minerals are located, can establish legal title. You may not ever do anything with your minerals, but your descendants might want to sell them, lease them, or include them in their Wills. They can't do that if they don't even know they own anything.

Moreover, if some energy company wants to mine coal or drill for oil and gas, they have to be able to find who owns the minerals so they can negotiate a lease agreement. If your grandchildren own the minerals, but they can't be found because you didn't have a Will, and nobody filed an affidavit of heirship for you, then your poor grandchildren will miss out on any lease bonuses or royalties they might've been paid. Don't do that to them.

When your parents die, you should file an affidavit of heirship even if they have a Will. Wills are not always admitted to Probate, and some states require them to be admitted to probate before title to land or minerals can be vested. You should file an affidavit of heirship at least in the county where your parents or grandparents lived. The affidavit should state when and where they died, whether they had a Will, whether that Will was admitted to Probate, who the survivors were (e.g. spouse, children, etc.), where they live, and whether they were precedeased by any spouse or children, and if so, whether there are any living grandchildren, and where they are.

If you know your parents or grandparents owned land or minerals in various counties, you should file a copy of the affidavit of heirship in the county clerk's office of every courthouse in every county in which they owned land or minerals. The affidavit should cite the Cause No. of the Probate case (if there is one) in whatever county their estate in being probated in (usually where they lived when they died). This will make everybody's life a lot easier, possibly for hundreds of years into the future.

You don't want generations to go by without anybody ever filing an affidavit of heirship because then you'll end up with the situation I'm dealing with where none of the living descendants know whether their great-grandparents had a Will, or sometimes even who all of their children were. Not everybody knows who their great-aunts and uncles were, much less where they lived. When I talk to people, I often know more than they do about their family history.

Having an estate plan will make things much easier on your heirs after you die. Everybody should have one, even if you don't think you own a lot of assets. You don't know when you're going to die. You don't even necessarily know what you own. And if you have some complicated family involving multiple marriages, step children, foster children, adopted children, or children with questionable lineage, having an estate plan simplifies things by removing ambiguity about who will inherit your stuff. You will be doing all of your heirs a favour by having an estate plan.

Besides helping your family out by having an estate plan, you'll be helping out the poor landmen who have to unravel surface and mineral title years down the road. Please, think of the landmen!

The basics of the New Testament

I've noticed when engaging people in real life (more so than on the internet) about anything having to do with Christianity or the New Testament, it's hard to really have a deep discussion about anything because they don't even know the basics. The issue may be whether Jesus existed, whether anything in the New Testament has historical value, whether gnosticism or any of the various dozens of gospels outside the New Testament have an equal claim to validity or historicity with the documents in the New Testament, or whether we can know what Jesus taught or what his apostles taught, or whether anything in our modern Bible translations can get us in touch with what the originals said, etc. I've found that it's hard to discuss these topics with people if they don't at least know a few basic things about the New Testament.

I thought I'd write a blog entry explaining what I take to be the basics. These are the things I wish were common knowledge among anybody who wants to argue about Christianity, Jesus, orthodoxy, etc. I'm going to try to do this without inserting too much of my own opinion.

There are 27 distinct books in the New Testament. The New Testament (and the Bible) is not one monolithic book by one author written at one time. It's a library of different works by different authors writing at different times using different genres.

There are four gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These are accounts of the ministry of Jesus, including his death and resurrection. There is wide agreement among New Testament scholars that the gospels fall under the genre of ancient biography (or more specifically, Greco-Roman biography). When scholars say these gospels are anonymous, they mean that the author is not named in the body of the writing. It has nothing to do with whether we know who the authors were. None of these gospels ever circulated without the names we attribute to them today. However, there is much debate and disagreement about the actual authorship.

While the four gospels have different authors, most scholars think there is a literary relationship between the three synopic gospels--Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The problem of figuring out how they are related is called The Syoptic Problem. There are different proposed solutions to the synoptic problem. The most widely believed view is called the Two-Source Hypothesis (2SH). According to the 2SH, Mark was written first. Matthew and Luke wrote their gospels independently of each other, but they both used Mark as their primary source. Since Matthew and Luke share some material that is not found in Mark, it is thought that there was another source they also shared that has been lost to history. The other source is called Q, from the German world, quelle, meaning "source."

To a lesser degree, many scholars subscribe to the Farrer hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, Mark was written first. Matthew used Mark as a source. Luke used both Mark and Matthew as a source. Since Luke used both Mark and Matthew as a source, Q is unnecessary to explain the material found in both Matthew and Luke but not in Mark.

There are other views, but they are not very common. An older view that used to be more common was the Griesbach hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, Matthew was written first, then Luke, then Mark. Luke used Matthew as a source, and Mark used both Matthew and Luke as a source. There are some adherents to this hypothesis today, but it's a minority position.

John was written independently of the synoptic gospels, but there has been some debate over whether John was familiar with any of the other gospels.

Most scholars date the composition of Mark somewhere around 66 to 70 CE. Matthew and Luke are dated in the 80's, and John in the 90's. There is a small minority of scholars who think Luke can be dated as late as 120 CE. Some conservative scholars date all the gospels before 70 CE.

The book of Acts comes after the gospels. It was composed by the same person who authored Luke's gospel. It contains a history of the church beginning with the appearances of Jesus after his death and ending in the mid-60's, just before the first Jewish war against Rome, which began in 66 CE.

There are 13 letters in the New Testament that are all attributed to the apostle, Paul. Of those thirteen letters, seven are typically called "the undisputed letters" because there is nearly unanimous agreement that they were all written by Paul. These letters include Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, 1 Thessalonians, Philippians, and Philemon. These letters are dated from the late 40's to the mid to late 50's CE. With the exception of Philemon, they were all written to churches. Philemon was written to an individual.

The fact that there are seven "undisputed" letters does not mean scholars dismiss the others as forgeries. What it means is that there is not as wide of a concensus about the authorship of the other letters. The other letters are accepted/rejected to varying degrees by different scholars. Many scholars think Paul wrote Ephesians, Colossians, and 2 Thessalonians. The pastoral epistles - 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus - are generally thought to be pseudonymous, though there are some scholars who think they are authentic.

Most scholars do not think Peter wrote 1 and 2 Peter. Some date 2 Peter as late as the second century. Nobody knows who wrote Hebrews, though there is speculation about it. Since there were multiple people in the early church named John, there is quite a bit of dispute about which John wrote 1, 2, and 3 John. Many scholars consider James to be wisdom literature rather than a conventional letter/epistle. Some, but not many, think James, the brother of Jesus, wrote it. Revelation is an example of apocalyptic literature. It is attributed to John, but is not clear which John is meant. Jude is attributed to "the brother of James," which has lead many to think it refers to another one of the brothers of Jesus, but this is uncertain.

Most of the books of the New Testament show up in all the earliest canon lists. Some, like Jude and Revelation, were disputed. None of the gnostic gospels were ever included in any canon lists.

While the primary language of Jesus was likely Aramaic, the entire New Testament was originally written in Greek. There are a small number of people who think Matthew was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic because of a quote by Papias found in one of Eusebius' works. There are hints of an Aramaic substratum in the New Testament where certain words and phrases in Aramaic are preserved.

All of the original autographs of the New Testament are lost. All we have left are copies. Most of the ancient copies we have are fragments. The earliest fragment we have is P52, also called the John Rylands Papyri. It is a fragment from the gospel of John that dates to between 100 and 150 CE.

The earliest complete copy of the entire New Testament is Codex Sinaiticus, which dates to the 4th century. The earliest complete copy of any book in the New Testament (I think) is P46, which contains some of Paul's letters. It dates to the 2nd or 3rd century.

From the second century to the 16th century, there are around 5800 copies (including fragments) of the New Testament in Greek. There are many more in other languages, including Latin, Syriac, and Coptic. There are hundreds of thousands of variants in these manuscripts. Most of the variants are small differences, like spelling, but some are differences consisting of whole verses either added or omitted.

Textual critics study and compare ancient manuscripts in order to reconstruct, to the best of their ability, what the originals said. These studies are published in critical editions of the New Testament like the Nestle Alland 28th edition and the United Bible Society 4th edition. There may be newer editions that have come out since the last time I checked. I have a copy of the Nestle Alland 26th edition.

Almost all modern translations of the New Testament were translated directly from Greek. They are not translations of translations. Most of them also include footnotes about textual variants.

The academic study of the historical Jesus and early Christianity does not assume that the New Testament is inspired by God. It applies the same historical methods to the New Testament documents as it does to any other ancient document. While there is much disagreement between scholars on what can be known about the historical Jesus and early Christianity, there are a handful of things that enjoy pretty wide-spread agreement if not concensus. They include things such as:

1. Jesus was born around 4 BCE.
2. Jesus was from Nazareth in Galilee.
3. Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist.
4. Jesus was an itinerant preacher.
5. Jesus taught about the kingdom of God (many scholars call him an apocalyptic prophet).
6. Jesus had a core group of followers (probably 12) who were appointed as apostles.
7. Jesus was crucified by the Roman prefect, Pontius Pilate, on the charge of claiming to be the king of the Jews (i.e. the messiah).
8. Pontius Pilate was prefect/governor of Judea from 26 to 36 CE.
9. Jesus died around 30 CE. Some scholars date his death as early as 26 CE, and some as late as 33 CE.
10. Some of Jesus' followers claimed to see him alive after his death and to proclaim his resurrection.

According to the New Testament, there were originally twelve apostles. An apostle is somebody who is "sent." It's kind of like a missionary. Judas was one of the original twelve, but he was kicked out because he betrayed Jesus. He was replaced by Matthias. Paul was an apostle, but he was not a member of the twelve. Some Christian theologians think he was the rightful replacement to Judas, but this is speculation and is not stated in the New Testament.

Paul was a Pharisee who opposed the Jesus movement, actively sought to end it, and gained a reputation as a persecutor. Early on (probably within the first three years), Paul was on his way to Damascus when Jesus appeared to him. This experience resulted in Paul's conversion, and he began proclaiming that Jesus was the messiah and had risen from the dead.

As far as we can tell, all of Jesus' earliest followers were Jews. When gentiles began to be admitted to the church, it caused controversy. The controvery centered around whether a gentile convert had to first convert to Judaism, undergo circumcision, and keep the Mosaic law. This controversy was allegedly resolved at a council in Jerusalem. James, the brother of Jesus, wanting to make conversion easy for the gentiles, so he gave a small list of requirements for gentile converts, saying they should abstain from blood, food sacrificed to idols, and sexual immorality, but there was no requirement that they undergo circumcision or keep the whole Mosaic law. Paul's letter to the Galatians reveals that the controversy lingered well after the Jerusalem council. Paul was against requiring gentile converts to first convert to Judaism or be circumcized, but there were some people who were disciples of James who were going to different churches telling them that they had to be circumcized. Whether James himself sent them or not is disputed.

The core message of the early Christians (sometimes called the gospel or the kerygma) was that Jesus was the messiah, that he died for sins, and that he was raised from the dead. Messiah and Christ both mean the same thing. It means "annointed." In the Old Testament, an anointed person could be a priest, a prophet, or a king. While all three offices are attributed to Jesus in the New Testament, it is primarily used to refer to Jesus' kingship. According to Acts, Jesus' followers were first called "Christians" in Antioch, which means the name probably originated with outsiders, and Jesus' followers adopted it. It was a way of referring to people who followed "Christ."

The notion that there would be a king in the end times comes from a promise God made to always have a man on the throne of Israel. God made this promise to both David and Solomon, the second and third kings of ancient Israel. After David's dynasty came to an end during the Babylonian exile (beginning in 587 BCE), the prophets, especially Jeremiah, began to say God would fulfill his promise by raising up a descendant of David in the last days who would sit on the throne of Israel and be king forever. Christians thought Jesus was the fulfillment of these prophecies. But the early Christians didn't just think Jesus would be king of Israel. They thought he would be king of kings and lord of lords. In other words, he would be a universal king and rule over all authorities.

The early Christians believed they were living in the end times and that Jesus would soon return to establish his kingdom on earth. Christians today are still awaiting his return. The return of Jesus is supposed to be associated with the resurrection of all the dead. Some will be raised to face judgment, and others will be raised to eternal life. Christians put their hope in Jesus because Jesus died for their sins. By trusting in Jesus and confessing that he is king, they are declared by God to be righteous, meaning they are pardoned for their sins and are treated as if they had none. The Christian hope is to have peace with God, to enjoy a resurrection to eternal life, and to know, experience, enjoy, and praise God forever.

Time dilation and length contraction are horns on the same goat

I've been learning about special relativity and the Lorenz transformations lately (and I recommend this playlist), and I had an epiphany. The epiphany is that length contraction isn't really length contraction. Rather, it comes from the fact that different parts of a moving thing are in different times because of the relativity of simultaneity. Lemme explain.

Let's say we consider our own inertial frame of reference. For those not familiar with special relativity, an inertial reference frame is a reference frame that isn't experiecing any acceleration (i.e. change in speed or direction). If you were in a box that was moving at some fixed speed in one direction relative to, say, the earth, you wouldn't be able to tell that you were moving. If you had a small window to look out of, it might look like everything else was moving.

Special relativity says that the laws of nature and the speed of light are the same in all inertial reference frames. That means if you were standing on the earth, and you turned on a laser, the speed of light would be about 300k m/s. And if you were in a box moving at 30k miles per hour, and you turned on a laser, the speed of light would still be 300k m/s relative to you.

This is a little trippy because it's not like most other things. If you were on a bus, and you threw a ball 50 mph in the same direction the bus was moving, then the ball would move 50 mph relative to you. But if you were standing on the side of the road watching somebody on the bus throw the same ball at the same speed, the total speed of the ball relative to you would be the speed of the bus plus the speed at which the person on the bus threw the ball.

Not so with light. With light, whether you are on the bus shining a light forward, or you're on the ground watching somebody on a bus shine a light forward, you will measure the speed of the light as being about 300k m/s. It's this fact that gives rise to all the weirdness of special relativity, including time dilation, length contraction, and the relativity of simultaneity.

To illustrate this, imagine a light source sitting in the exact center of a box. When the light comes on, it hits both ends of the box at the same time.

But now imagine the box is moving relative to you. You're just standing there watching it go by, and the same thing happens. A light in the exact center of the box comes on. Since the light bulb is in the box, it's moving with the box, but that doesn't matter. Light will still move at the speed of light regardless of the movement of the source. So it will move just as fast to the left as it moves to the right. But since the box is moving, the light will hit each end of the box at a different time. Since the left side of the box is moving toward the source of the light, and the right side of the box is moving away from the source of the light, the light will hit the left side before it hits the right side.

This would be easier to show with an animation than with still pictures. Use your imagination.

Now, think about that for a minute. If you were in the box moving with the box, the light would hit both ends of the box at the same time. But if you're not moving with the box, and the box is moving to the right from your frame of reference, the light will hit the left side before it hits the right side. How is that possible?

Well, that's the relativity of simultaneity. Two events, like a light hitting a wall, can be simultaneous from one person's frame of reference, but they can happen at different times from another person's frame of reference.

Now, here's my epiphany with length contraction. Don't take this as gospel because I've watched a lot of YouTubers explain length contraction, and none of them have explained it like this. So maybe I've got it all wrong.

Anywho, let's say you are in the box, and the light hits each end of the box at 10 am. Let's say you actually place a clock at each end of the box, and they both read 10 am when the light hits each end.

But now imagine you're standing on the ground watching the box go by. From that point of view, the clock on the box in the back should read 10 am when the light hits the wall on the left.

We know from what we talked about earlier that the light hits the wall on the left before it hits the wall on the right from your point of view on the ground watching the box fly by. If the moment the light hits the wall on the left is 10 am, and it hasn't hit the wall on the right yet, that must mean the clock on the wall that's on the right is reading a time earlier than 10 am. Since the light hasn't hit the right end of the box yet, that means the right end of the box exists at an earlier time than the left end of the box.

Think about that for a minute. If the box is moving to the right, then as time goes by, it will have moved farther and farther to the right. So at an earlier time, it has moved less to the right than at a later time. If it's not 10 am on the right side of the box yet, then the right side of the box hasn't moved as far as it will have moved once it is 10 am on the right side of the box. If the left side of the box has moved to where it's supposed to be at 10 am, but the right side hasn't, then we should expect the right side of the box not to have moved as far as the left side of the box has moved. The result is that the box should appear to be shorter. The reason is because the person on the box measures the size of the box at 10 am on both ends, but the person on the ground measures the box at 10 am on the left side, but at some time earlier than 10 am on the right side.

The relativity of simultaneity is what explains length contraction. The length isn't actually different. It's the time that's different. Length contraction comes from the fact that the back end of the box has moved more than the front end of the box from the point of view of the person on the ground because the person on the ground is looking at both ends of the box at different times.

Does that make sense?

Notice that this weirdness is amplified the faster the box is moving. The faster the box moves, the bigger difference there is between when the light hits the back end and the front end of the box. The bigger that difference is, the earlier the front end of the box will be when the light hits the back end of the box, which means it will have moved less, and the box will seem shorter from the point of view of the person on the ground.

They should call it the relativity of length rather than length contraction. The person in the box measures each end at 10 am, but the person on the ground measures the left end at 10 am and the right end at some time earlier than 10 am. Of course 10 am and less than 10 am are actually happening at the same time for the person on the ground. I'm just talking about the person on the ground looking at the moving frame of reference. 10 am on the left side of the box happens before 10 am on the right side of the box. Let me know if I'm not explaining that clearly. I don't want anybody to get the wrong idea.

If you prefer, you can run the same thought experiment for when the light hits the right end of the box. The clock at the right end will read 10 am. But at the same time (from the ground point of view), the light has already hit the back end. From the grounded person's point of view, the time at which the light hit the left end of the box is in the past, and the clock at the back reads something later than 10 am. So the left end has moved farther than the right end, resulting in the box being shorter.

I don't know if this is right or not, but it makes sense to me. What do you think?

Being happy, more or less

Sometimes, you don't need anything more to make you happy. You need less.

What is philosophy, and how are science and philosophy related or distinguished?

If you take an introduction to philosophy class in college, the first issue they address is usually "What is philosophy?" This is an important question if you're interested in learning about philosophy, but it's also an important question if you're interested in other fields of study, like science, history, literature, etc. I've heard a lot of people argue about whether, for example, the multiverse is science or philosophy. When these arguments happen, it always comes down to what is meant by "science" and "philosophy."

The first thing I remember my intro to philosophy teacher saying was that philosophy was the love of wisdom. This defintion was based on the etymology of the word. "Philo" comes from the Greek word for love or friendliness toward. "Sophia" comes from the Greek word for wisdom. As a side note, I called my blog and my youtube channel PhiloChristos because I love Christ and I am a friend of Christ. I'm a Christian. Anywho, the etymology of a word is not the best way to determine its meaning because the meaning of words changes over time. The meaning of a word depends on how that word is used, and people change how they use words over time.

Let me first say what I wish was the meaning of philosophy. I wish philosophy was the use of reason to arrive at truths. The reason I don't think that's the best definition of philosophy, even though I wish that were the meaning, is because there's a whole field of philosophy and several schools of thought that deny even the existence of objective truth. They also deny the usual rules of logical inference. Philosophy, according to common use, appears to be broader than I would like it to be. Post modernism, continental philosophy, and much of eastern philosophy would not agree with my preferred definition of philosophy since they often reject reason, logic, and truth, but still publish in academic philosophical journals.

Alvin Plantinga gave a definition in one of his books (God, Freedom, and Evil if memory serves me right) that was pretty broad but mostly accurate. He said philosophy was just thinking really hard about stuff. That captures both my preferred definition as well as whatever post-moderninsts and eastern philosophers seem to think philosophy is. I'm afraid his definition might be too broad, though. I've spent a lot of time thinking really hard about conversations I had or decisions I made and what I wish I had said or done instead, but I wouldn't consider that philosophy.

Yesterday, somebody on YouTube commented that all philosophy is speculation. That comment is what gave rise to this post. I don't think that's true at all. When it comes to epistemology, which is undoubtedly the domaine of philosophy, there is a distinction between what we can know with certainty and what we can know with less than certainty. There are at least some things we can know with certainty. I know I exist, I know that 2+2=4, and I know that if two statements explicitly contradict each other, they can't both be true. I know these things with certainty. When I think about these things and what justifies my knowledge, I am engaged in philosophy. The question of whether the law of non-contradiction is true is a philosophical question with an answer we can be absolutely certain about. So philosophy can give us certainty, at least in some cases, which means not all philosophy is mere speculation.

In fact, it seems to me that philosophy is the only field of inquiry that can give us certainty. Science can't give us absolute certainty because it depends on observations, and it's at least possible that none of our perceptions correspond to an external world. But whether the external world exists or not, I am still certain of my own existence and of the law of non-contradiction. The person who made that youtube comment was so wrong, he was almost right again.

So what is philosophy? That's a hard question to answer. Even science used to fall under the broader category of philosophy. It was called "natural philosophy." We now consider science to be distinct from philosophy, which means our definition of philosophy has changed. I think it used to be the broadest way of referring to any field of inquiry where you're just trying to figure out what reality is like, which is why science was considered a branch of philosophy. Philosophers still use the findings of science, though. William Lane Craig often says that science gives us premises that are used in philosophical arguments with theological implications. Philosophers of time point to relativity to argue for what they think time is. Philosophers are happy to admit that they use science in their arguments.

Science uses philosophy, but for some reason, scientists are very reluctant to admit that they are using philosophy. However, science uses all the tools of reasoning that philosophers use. Science is a set of methods for discovering truths about the physical world. Where does science get the methods from? They can't get the methods from science or that would be circular reasoning. The methods come from philosophy. All the tools of reasoning that science uses come from philosophy. Science couldn't even get off the ground if not for philosophy. Without philosophy, one could not reason inductively or deductively, and science does both. Without philosophy, one could not draw any conclusions about the physical world merely by making observations, and that is the primary function of science.

Without philosophy, one could not design an experiment since it is philosophy that gives you the syllogism necessary to make an experiment relevant. Usually, experiments are designed in such a way as to test a hypothesis. A hypothesis is an educated guess about what the world is like. A hypothesis is testable if it allows you to make a prediction. Here is how the reasoning would work if you were designing an experiment to test a hypothesis:

1. If such and such hypothesis is true, then we should expect such and such to happen under such and such circumstances. <--This is the prediction.
2. Such and such did not happen under such and such circumstances. <--This is the result of the experiment.
3. Therefore, such and such theory is not true. <--We have falsified the hypothesis.

This reasoning, which science uses, is called modus tollens in philosophy. How do we know the reasoning is valid? Well, it isn't science that tells us that. It's the discipline of philosophy that tells us that. So philosophy underlies science, and it would be impossible to do science without philosophy.

And that's just one example. Many more could be given. I gave a deductive example, but here's an inductive example. Science also uses repeatability. The more repeatable an experiment is, the more sure we can be of the conclusion. Induction is when you extrapolate from specific examples to general conclusions. For example, if every time you heat water to 212ºF, it begins to boil, then you can draw the conclusion that 212ºF is the boiling point of water. That means if you heat water to 212ºF in the future, you can expect the same thing to happen. It will even happen if you're not watching. Extrapolations like this allow you to form generalizations which you can then use to predict what will happen in the future under similar circumstances. This principle has been stated in different ways:

• The future will resemble the past.
• Nature behaves the same way when we are not looking as it does when we are looking.
• What happens in the lab can tell us what happens in nature.

David Hume famously pointed out that the principle of induction itself cannot be demonstrated to be true since any experiment you could conjure up in an effort to prove the principle of induction would have to assume the truth of the principle in order to be valid. You couldn't say, "We know the principle of induction is true because every time we've used it in the past, it has yielded reliable results" because that would be circular reasoning. Since you can't use science to justify the principle of induction, where do we get the principle? We get it from philosophy. Philosophy, then, underlies science, and one cannot do science without certain philosophical presuppositions, like induction, logic, and the reliability of our sensory perceptions which are what enable us to make observations.

What is philosophy, then? I don't know for sure, but I usually recognize it when I see it. I do think that, strictly speaking, whenever you are doing science, you are doing philosophy, but at the same time, I understand what people mean when they distinguish science and philosophy. Whenever they are distinguished, science is always what we are able to conclude through making observations, taking measurements, etc. Philosophy, by contrast, is just whatever we are able to conclude through thinking and reasoning without necessarily having to go out into the world and make observations. I think that's what people mean when they make the distinction, but if you really wanted to be careful, you'd have to recognize that the distinction is not tidy. Science depends on philosophy, and philosophers often use the findings of science as a basis for what they are thinking about.

It may be that "philosophy" is just one of those words that doesn't have a precise definition. Since I've left the definition of philosophy kind of open-ended without nailing down a definition, how would you define philosophy, and how would you distinguish it from science? Or would you?

My new favorite science YouTuber - FloatHeadPhysics

I've been a big fan of science Youtubers for several years now. I even did a couple of blog posts on them in the past. PBS Spacetime was my favourite for a long time until they started running out of ideas. I discovered FloatHeadPhysics a few months ago and just decided today that Mahesh Shenoy is my new favourite science YouTuber.

I highly recommend any videos he has on special or general relativity. Mahesh is a superb communicator. He doesn't just explain the different phenomena; he strives to explain them in a way that makes them intuitive so they are not only easy to understand but they make sense as well. Before I watched his videos, there were some things I understood (or believed) intellectually but didn't understand (or know) in my heart. For example, gravity is sometimes explained by saying the earth is accelerating upward. I believed that because it's what the experts said, but it made no sense to me since the earth wasn't expanding. But I saw a video the other day where he explained it in a way that was intuitive and made sense. He made the light come on for me.

One of the first videos of his I saw was on the Twin Paradox. I had seen a ton of videos on this subject, and it seemed like multiple people gave different explanations. Most people resolved the paradox by pointing to the fact that the twin who left and came back had to experience acceleration when they changed direction, but Don Lincoln at FermiLab made two videos I found convincing arguing that acceleration had nothing to do with the solution. Then Sabine Hossenfelder (I think--my memory isn't perfect) made a video insisting that the solution involved acceleration, and Don Lincoln responded by saying, "We're basically saying the same thing," when they clearly were not. Well, I watched FloatHeadPhysic's video on the subject, and so far it was the best video of all the videos I've seen on the Twin Paradox.

Another science YouTuber I discovered since my last post on this subject that I wanted to mention because it's worth drawing attention to is Space Mog with Maggie Liu. She also has some excellent content and explains things really well.

Oh, and there's also GeoGirl with Rachel Phillips. I don't remember if I mentioned her or not. I got really interested in geology in the 10th grade. I've been insterested in astronomy for as long as I can remember, and my high school offered an astronomy class that was one semester. To take astronomy, you had to also sign up for geology for the other semester. I wasn't that interested in geology until I took the class. It was awesomer than I expected. It's been a long time since I've really gotten into the topic, but Rachel's channel has re-awakened my interest. Her videos are outstanding because she goes into a lot of detail and uses powerpoint.

EDIT 11/26/2024: Somebody in the comments didn't agree with me when I said Don Lincoln and Sabina Hossenfelder were not saying the same thing about the resolution to the Twin Paradox, so here are the videos I was talking about so you can judge for yourself.

Don Lincoln/Fermilab's first video on the Twin Paradox

Don Lincoln/Fermilab's second video on the Twin Paradox

Sabina Hossenfelder's video on the Twin Paradox

Don Lincoln/Fermilab's response to Sabina Hossenfelder

Mahesh Shenoy/FloatHeadPhysics' video on the Twin Paradox

Mahesh Shenoy/FloatHeadPhysics' second video on the Twin Paradox (I just saw this one today. Mahesh agrees with Don that although acceleration is necessary to cause a change of reference, the solution to the paradox doesn't lie in the acceleration per se. According to Mahesh, the solution lies in the relativity of simultaneity. His explanation makes a lot of sense to me.)

It looks like I was a little skeptical when I saw Don's first video. I left a comment saying, "But from the point of view of the traveler, if they can always consider their own frame of reference stationary, then it isn't them who has existed in two reference frames. It's the person who supposedly didn't travel who existed in two reference frames."

I left another comment on his second video saying, "I've watched both of your videos, and I still don't get it. If Jim is station on earth, and Bob goes out, then comes back in again, then from Jim's frame of reference, he's in one frame of reference, and Bob is in two--outbound and inbound. But from Jim's frame of reference, wouldn't he be in one frame of reference and Jim in two since Jim moves away from him, then toward him?"

I left a comment on Don Lincoln's third video saying, "Maybe I'm stupid, but I don't agree with this at all. I think you and Sabine ARE saying something different. Sabine says that acceleration is what solve the paradox, not because acceleration is necessary to create two reference frames, but because of the acceleration itself. You deny it's the acceleration itself and say it's merely because of the two reference frames."

As a bonus, here's another video I saw seven months ago directly responding to Don Lincoln and explaining where he thinks Don went wrong. I left a comment on this video saying, "I remember trying to figure out the twin paradox, running into Don Lincoln's video after watching several others, and thinking, 'Finally! I understand!' But I guess I didn't understand. Of course not being a physicist myself, I'm still not sure. If the experts disagree, how can I adjudicate between them?"

For now, I think I'm going to go with Mahesh' explanation because his makes the most sense to me.

This is such an interesting topic to me! The whole reason I delved into the Twin Paradox several years ago was because of NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo is this movement where people commit to writing a 50k word novel within the month of November. I thought it would be fun to do, and I had a story cooking in my head for a long time. It was a time travel story. In the first chapter, I talked about how the main character came up with the idea for a time machine. I got bogged down talking about special relativity when I realized there was some stuff I didn't understand. So I went on YouTube and started watching Twin Paradox videos. I never did complete my novel because, as you can see, I hadn't found a solution to the Twin Paradox I was confident about enough to include it in my novel.

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.