How Hawking, Dawkins, Krauss and other Atheists are Helping to Destroy Science, Part 2

Everyone who isn't abusing science to promote their unscientific ideology step forward.  Not so fast, Atheists.

This is part 2 of a series explaining how certain Atheist scientists are helping to destroy science.  How are they doing this?  They're promoting their unscientific philosophy as if it had the authority of science, which cheapens science and promotes a culture of ideological bickering.

There are three different kinds of people who do this:   1).  Creationists who claim that science can prove not only that God exists, but that the Bible is literally true word for word.  2).  Atheists who claim that science is capable of proving that God either doesn't exist or isn't necessary for our existence.  3).  Eastern philosophers who usually claim that Quantum Mechanics somehow validates their philosophy (like Deepak Chopra).  All three of these groups are just as bad (for science) as one another, but I'm focusing on Atheists because currently they seem to be given the most scientific credibility.  If Atheists who poison the scientific well are the most credible of these ideologues, then that makes them the most dangerous.  

Part 1 of this series is here, Part 3 is here, Part 4 is here, Part 5 is here.

The rest of this post will reference the video above, however you should not need to watch it to understand what I'm criticizing...I hope.  

A Flat Universe

Krauss' errors, in favor of atheism, are going to get much much worse from here on out.  At about 32:49 in the video, Krauss says, "...in a flat universe, the total energy of the universe is precisely zero because gravity can have negative energy.  So the negative energy of gravity balances out the positive energy of matter.  What's so beautiful about a universe with total energy zero?  Well only such a universe can begin from nothing...The laws of physics allow the universe to begin from nothing.  You don't need a deity.  You have nothing, zero total energy, and quantum fluctuations can produce a universe."

Here's where Krauss is really starting to fall off of the deep end.  What Krauss is really saying here is pretty subtle, so you might not have caught it.  What he's saying is that because the total amount of positive and negative energy in the universe cancel each other out (they're equal but opposite in magnitude) we have no energy. Therefore, since the universe is nothing, it could be created by nothing.  In this way he avoids the logical incoherency of proposing that "something came from nothing" by just saying that the universe is itself nothing.  Nothing created nothing.

However, this is completely absurd.  Do I really need to point out that when you look up at the night sky, you're actually seeing Something?  

The problem with what Krauss is saying is that he assumes that because the positive and the negative energy balance out, there isn't really any energy there to begin with. This is nothing more than faulty reasoning, and to demonstrate why it's faulty I'll steal Hawking's metaphor:

Imagine a man going out into a field of dirt.  He wants to create a hill so he begins to dig into the soil.  As he digs, he piles the dirt in one spot until he's created a small hill.  Now, while he creates this hill by digging, he's also creating a hole.  The mass that he dug out of the hole is equal to the mass of the hill he created by digging the hole.  If you add them together, they cancel each other out and equal zero.  However, there is still a hill and there is still a hole.  Even though they are equal and opposite, and their mass cancels out to zero, they both do definitely exist.  

Another example, to steal from William Lane Craig, is to pretend that you go on a road trip cross-country and then return back to where you started.  If the trip there and the trip back are opposite but equal, does that mean you never went on a trip at all?  Krauss, apparently, would argue that you never went on the trip.

What Krauss is doing is carefully choosing his words to mislead his audience, and you, and probably himself without realizing it, into thinking that the universe balances out to Nothingness.

However, even if his conclusion was true he would still be wrong.  The fact is, space still exists.  Space is something, and even if energy cancels out to zero, he still hasn't explained how space could have been created by Nothing.  A person who believes in God would still contend that space requires God as its creator.

Of course, even if there was negative space which cancelled out positive space, it wouldn't matter.  If a Quantum fluctuation of vacuum energy created the universe, it still doesn't explain where the vacuum state itself came from.  Krauss has simply used a semantic trick to push the problem back one step.  And as I established in part 1, Quantum Vacuum states are not equal to Nothingness.

I have just one more thing to criticize, and then I'll move on from Krauss. 

The Physics of Metaphysics

Before the speech ends, Krauss is going to make one more error, and it's probably the worst of all the errors so far.  Krauss is going to flat out make obvious metaphysical assertions which he believes are undeniable in the face of science.  This will bring me to the final conclusion that the metaphysics that Krauss is pushing on his audience as science is bad for science. 

Krauss says, "Our new picture of cosmology is that we live in a universe dominated by nothing."  Note that when he says "nothing", he is referring to so-called dark matter and energy, which is not the same "nothing" he was referring to earlier.  He continues, "...this tells us that we are more insignificant than we ever imagined...We constitute a 1% bit of pollution in a universe that's 30% dark matter and 70% dark energy.  We are completely irrelevant.  Why such a universe in which we're so irrelevant would be made for us is beyond me."  There's laughter and applause at this point.  Krauss then says, "Now I want a bit of applause and we can go back to the science."  

This is exactly the problem.  None of what he just said about us being "pollution" or "irrelevant" or "insignificant", or about the universe obviously not being created for us, is actually science.  Those statements are metaphysical value judgments.  Notice, however, how he implies that they are necessary conclusions of science.  This is Krauss injecting his philosophy into science.  It's a bait-and-switch tactic: Krauss begins to talk about science, then seamlessly transitions into philosophy.  The implication being, of course, that if you accept his scientific conclusions, you have to accept his philosophical conclusions as well.  This is a common sleight-of-hand used by many popular Atheists today.  They establish their scientific authority, then when you're dazzled by how scientific they are, they slip in the non-science so that you won't rationally discern the difference. 

Why Krauss is Bad for Science

Unfortunately, this is precisely what is so damaging to science.  We cannot use the scientific method to determine if we are "relevant", if we're "pollution", or if the "universe was created for us".  Nor should we pretend that we can.  As Lemaître might say, our theories don't depend on whether or not you think we're "irrelevant" or "pollution" or "insignificant" in any way, the universe just is the way it is.  You could just as easily conclude that we are relevant and special because we're different than 99% of the rest of the universe which could mean we have a special place in the cosmos distinct from the majority of the 'junk'.  Science cannot tell you which metaphysical conclusion is true - they're both scientifically irrelevant.

You can believe that the universe was created by Nothing instead of God if you want to.  However, this is another unscientific metaphysical belief.  It is wrong to pass this unscientific belief off as if it is part of a packaged deal with science.  I can accept the theories of science without having to accept that the universe came from nothing.  Krauss however wants to use science to prop up his atheistic philosophy of an uncaused universe.

By helping to popularize the sort of ideas I've criticized so far, however, Krauss is giving the impression that it's okay to use science to promote your ideology.  He's helping to establish that science is free game for ideologues to promote whatever political, social, or metaphysical position they want to.  However, science must be free of ideology, bias, and so on in order to operate properly.  If we force science to submit to our ideologies, then it ceases to function properly.   With that in mind, it should be obvious that what Krauss and his contemporaries are doing is poisoning the scientific well.

If you're a pro-science Atheist, you should be more ashamed and angry than anyone else when you see what Krauss is doing here.  I'm not saying Atheists should disagree with Krauss' metaphysical conclusions, I'm saying they should be angry that he tries to pass them off as if they have scientific authority.  What Krauss is doing is no better than what Deepak Chopra does when he claims that the science of Quantum Mechanics supports his bunk Eastern philosophies of medicine. And it's no better than what creationists are doing in their creation museum.  And it's no better than any other flea riding the back of science so that their own ideology can seem like it has the authority of science behind it.

If we allow things like this to go on, it's going to get worse before it gets better.  Krauss and his contemporaries are creating a climate of ideological conflict that detracts from science.  He is promoting a narrative that says we should all be in a tug-of-war battle over science to see who can use it best to promote their ideology.  When this happens, Christians react by abusing science to promote theology, and Atheists in turn try to further abuse science to promote Atheism.  No matter who wins the tug of war, we all lose because we develop a culture that values ideological nonsense over neutral science. 

This is why so many laypeople in America seem to be "anti-science".  We've been 'told' that science is a tool of ideology by people like Krauss, so some of us are willing to dismiss certain scientific theories if we view them as an attack on our own ideology.  "Evolution is just a theory, it hasn't been proven".  Sure, whatever you say, except the main reason we see laypeople criticizing evolution is because they've been 'told' that it is an attack on their religious beliefs which isn't true.  This sort of reactionary nonsense will only stop when everyone steps back and let's the scientific method unfold independent of their own personal biases. I'm looking at you too, Atheists.

Part 1 is here, part 3 is here, part 4 is here, part 5 is here.