The Muddled Thinking & Sloppy Semantics of Lawrence Krauss
In this 3 part Reasonable Faith Podcast series, professional philosopher William Lane Craig critiques theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss on the muddled thinking and sloppy semantics of the arguments presented in Krauss’s book A Universe From Nothing.
Craig schools Krauss in the basics of rational thinking, linguistics, semantics and logical deduction – all important elements of the discipline of philosophy that Krauss so chauvanistically denigrates in his book and promotional interviews.
Bill Craig shows that Krauss would do well to educate himself better in the basics of the philosophy of science, philosophy of language, metaphysics and critical thinking. In this way Krauss might have avoided the elementary errors in his work, particularly his boo-boo in equating the term of universal negation “nothing” as if it is actually “something” – a distinct entity with its own ontology.
Craig goes onto to show that when Krauss arbitrarily uses the word “nothing” in his book – meaning dark energy in a quantum vacuum – he is still actually talking about “something” that exists prior to the Big Bang. In making this elementary error, Krauss does nothing to answer the question from Leibniz of “why there is something rather than nothing” – instead only succeeding in pushing the origin of the universe back one step further without answering anything at all — or is that nothing…
Krauss reveals himself as “nothing but” a crass apologist for anti-theistic scientism with a chip. If there ever was an example of prejudiced belief and motivational cognitive bias, Lawrence Krauss would fit the bill perfectly.
Listen to the three podcasts (dated 14th Feb, 23rd Feb & 1st Mar 2012) here or subscribe to the Reasonable Faith Podcast on iTunes here.
Mat Hunt
on March 25th, 2012
I laughed at Craig when he opened up with his nonsensical equation on his first slide. Krauss pointed out that in order to say that the probability of greater than a certain value you are required to first define how you define your probability, once this is done, then you can then actually start to make statements like Craig did.
Once more Craig treats this book as a book of philosophy when it blatantly is not, it is a book on physics, pure and simple. So to make the comments that Craig did shows him up to be as disingenuous as we always knew he is.
I think Craig would have to swallow his own ignorance and actually learn some physics because then he would actually sound less of an idiot.
Chris C
on April 25th, 2012
There have been a lot of accusations thrown in Krauss’ direction, that he has allegedly ‘redefined’ the term ‘nothing’ to mean ‘something’ but this is a storm in a teacup; even if this were to be granted – this concession would do nothing to open the door to theism, when the contrary position is simply that the ‘universe’ has always existed in some way, shape or form.
Given the above, the idea that non-theists have some *additional* burden to bear with regards to ‘why there is something, rather than nothing’ is nonsensical, in precisely the same way as theists sneer at anyone – like Richard Dawkins – presumptuous enough to ask who/what created ‘God’? Some things just are.
Gerhard
on May 4th, 2012
Both the secular and religious worlds are ignorant of the creation story as related in Genesis, and ironically both understand important aspects of nature. Science has the book of nature, and religion the Bible and traditional teachings. A correct understanding of both books would produce an amazing agreement between the two. Matter is not self sustained or self existent, neither is God nature, and creation does not appear from nothing. Creationists do not know how God creates, but if they knew Him they would understand. Even pagans have worked it out before – Romans 1:19,20.