This post features an interesting question that I received yesterday from ’Kelly’. Her question generated from claims by overstated cosmologist, Stephen Hawking, who says that, ‘Since the Big Bang created time itself, there was no prior time available in which a “first cause” could have created the universe.

Question:

I was watching a show the other day during which Hawking said there couldn’t have been a cause of the universe because the Big Bang created time itself, so there was no time for a cause. From the post about “nothing” in cosmology it sounds like there couldn’t have been literally nothing before the Big Bang. So can we still say there had to have been a first cause? Can we also say that God exists outside of time and therefore could have caused it, even if there was no time before the Big Bang?

- Kelly

Answer:

Hi Kelly,  This is a great question.

The word ‘time’ is used to characterize the system in which sequences of physical events occur. Therefore, when Hawking says that “time did not exist prior to the Big Bang”, he is essentially saying that “a system in which sequences of physical events can occur, did not exist prior to the physical universe”. In other words, Hawking is arguing that, “the operations within the universe did not exist prior to the universe.” This however, is hardly a novel conclusion.

If Christians believed that the existence of God was contingent upon the processes of the universe (like time), then Hawking’s objection would present an insurmountable paradox. However, God is not contingent upon the universe nor any process within – He is rather, the Cause of both.

So then, you’re on the right track with your second question; “Can we also say that God exists outside of time and therefore could have caused it, even if there was no time before the Big Bang”? Yes. A system containing sequences of physical events (i.e. time) certainly did not exist prior to the universe. But this says nothing about sequences of metaphysical events. God, by the Christian definition, is a metaphysical being. This means that He is independent and transcendent of space/time.

So, Hawking is correct when he asserts that a ‘temporally prior being could not exist prior to the Big Bang’. But God is not a temporal being. He is a metaphysically, ontologically prior Being who exists independent of “physical measures of time”. Thus, the absence of the physical (prior to the Big Bang) does not challenge existence of a metaphysical Being.

Hawking gets the physics correct here, as he always does, but he gets the metaphysics wrong, as he usually does.

God bless,
Eric

Points of Emphasis

1. Time is the system in which sequences of physical events occur
2. The Christian God is not a physical being
3. Therefore, the Christian God exists independent of time

1. Time is the system in which sequences of physical events occur
2. Metaphysical entities are not contingent upon physical measures of time
3. God is a metaphysical entity
4. Therefore, God is not contingent upon physical measures of time

“Information is information, neither matter nor energy”¹, is what mathematician Norbert Wiener said in 1948. This however, presents yet another scientific paradox for the naturalist. If genetic information is independent of the matter through which it is transmitted, then the question must be asked; “How did the information of the genetic code originate”?

Even before this question can be entertained however, a workable definition of ‘information’ must be put into effect. This is what I intend to do here, by analyzing 1) What information is not, and 2) What information is.

What Information ‘Is Not’

In his article, Scientific laws of information and their implications, Dr. Werner Gitt makes the point that, information is not a property of matter, and therefore it is massless. He offers the following analogy for illustration:

“Imagine a sandy stretch of beach. With my finger I write a number of sentences in the sand. The content of the information can be understood. Now I erase the information by smoothing out the sand. Then I write another sentence in the sand… Despite this erasing and rewriting, displaying and destroying varying amounts of information, the mass of the sand did not alter at any time. The information itself is thus massless.”²

Matter contains mass, and since information itself is massless, it is not a property of matter. So we should not think of letters, words and sentences as ‘information’. Rather, these are merely material symbols that are used to convey information.

If we (mankind) had not attributed meaning to letters and words, then they would not carry any meaning at all. Rather, they would be unintelligible symbols and sounds. Thus, language, both written and oral, is merely a set of symbols and sounds to which we have ascribed certain meanings, for the purpose of conveying information that already originated with us. So although information is stored, transmitted and expressed by matter, it is not a property of matter itself.² ”

As a second illustration, consider the word “gift”. In English “gift” means  present, but the word “gift” in German means poison.³ So here we have two quite distinct meanings for the same exact set of letters. Therefore since the meaning of “gift” can vary from language to language, there can be no inherent meaning in the word itself. It is merely a set of letters to which different cultures have ascribed different meanings.

To emphasize the immateriality of information, Dr. Gitt offers a final  example:

“Imagine a piece of information written on a blackboard. Now wipe the board with a duster. The information has vanished, even though all the particles of chalk are still present. The chalk in this case was the necessary material medium but the information was represented by the particular arrangement of the particles.”²

Here, the particular arrangement of the chalk particles served to transmit information, but once that arrangement was distorted, the informative value of the chalk particles vanished. Therefore, the ‘information’ lie, not with the chalk itself. The chalk was merely a “material medium” which served to represent information.

As shown in the examples above, information is not a property of matter. This leaves us with one very important corollary; matter cannot generate information. Dr. Gitt writes:

“The grand theory of evolution would gain some empirical support if it could be demonstrated, in a real experiment, that information could arise from matter left to itself without the addition of intelligence. Despite the most intensive worldwide efforts this has never been observed.”²

‘What Information ‘Is’

Information, in its purest sense, is ‘an encoded message that is issued from a sender’. Therefore, information can only be produced by an intelligence. This leads to some basic implications: The intelligent sender 1) Must be conscious 2) Have the ability to think autonomously, and 3) Have the ability to act of it’s own volition²

As a  final thought then, I will point out that DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) cannot be ‘information’ in and of itself because DNA is a material substance; and as shown above, information is not a property of matter. However, if the genetic code (which is transmitted by DNA) is to be considered’ information’, then the 3 implications of an intelligent sender (above) must be applied.

1. Wiener, N., Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, Hermann et Cie, The Technology Press, Paris, 1948. [↩]
2. Gitt, Werner. “Scientific Laws of Information and Their Implications—part 1.” Journal of Creation. Web. 11 May 2012. <Scientific laws of information and their implications—part 1>. [↩] [↩] [↩] [↩] [↩]
3. Sarfati, Jonothan. “The Programs of Life.” Creation Magazine, 12 May 2012. Web. <http://creation.com/dna-marvellous-messages-or-mostly-mess>. [↩]

In the May 5th episode of the Unbelievable podcast, secular cosmologist, Lawrence Krauss, participated in a discussion with Christian astrophysicist, Rodney Holder. The discussion was largely centered on Krauss’ newest book,  A Universe from Nothing. As the title implies, Krauss advances the notion that the universe spontaneously generated from absolutely nothing.

The more Krauss discussed this “universe from nothing” idea, the more evidently incoherent his position became. At 10 minutes and 30 seconds into the podcast Krauss said:

“To me nothing…well…there’s a variety of forms of it.”

Come again? There is a variety of forms of “nothing”? Here Krauss equivocates on the idea of “nothing”, similar to Alan Guth (see A Quantum Merry-Go-Round). However, in English, the word “nothing” literally means ‘no thing’, or ‘not anything’ or ‘the absence of everything.’ In short, the word nothing, is simply a term for “universal negation”¹. It is a conceptual tool. It does not have properties. And it does not exist, which is why there cannot be a “variety of forms” of it.

After discussing the available flavors of ‘nothingness’, Krauss went into a diatribe about the grandeur of the cosmos and how very amazing it is that the universe spontaneously arose, uncaused out of nothing (indeed!). This is when Dr. Holder cut in and made the point that,  ‘if nothing existed prior to the universe, not even the potentiality, then the universe could not have come into existence’. Dr Krauss then asked this key question:

“Well if the universe didn’t have the potential to exist, then how did God create it?”

This seems to me, like a painfully easy question to answer. God Himself was the necessary potential. Here I refer you to my argument called Necessary & Sufficient Conditions. In that argument I explain why the very potential for the universe must have existed prior to the universe. And that it was the actualiziton of this potential from which the universe needed to proceed. This argument, I think, is as close to “proof” as we can get for the existence of a conscious creator.

Another Podcast

Dr. Craig and Kevin Harris also discussed Krauss’ strange position in the March 1st episode of the Reasonable Faith Podcast. In this episode, they played a segment from an interview with Krauss who said:

“This is one of the arguments I make, is that “nothing” is unstable.”

Here, Krauss ontologizes “nothing”, by characterizing it as an existing entity. But, again this is a sharp case of equivocation. Krauss, while preserving the actual word, has redefined ‘nothing’ so that it actually has the ability to be unstable.  He goes on:

“You can’t expect nothing to hang around forever without creating something.”

Besides being laughable, this quote makes me think that Krauss would agree, in part, with cosmological arguments for the existence of God, which argue that the universe is contingent upon a cause. However, instead of calling this cause God, Krauss substitutes the word ‘nothing’, and assigns God’s attributes to it. 

In any case, my guess is that this “divine nothingness” hypothesis will continue to gain popularity in the secular community. And although they use the word ‘nothing’ to define the cause of the universe, it seems that they are all the while, describing God.

1. William Lane Craig on the March 1, 2012 podcast, A Universe from Nothing part 3 [↩]