In his book Breaking the Spell, atheist Daniel Dennett writes the following concerning the cause of the universe:
"What does need its origin explained is the concrete Universe itself, and as Hume...long ago asked: Why not stop at the material world? It...does perform a version of the ultimate bootstrapping trick; it creates itself ex nihilo. Or at any rate out of something that is well-nigh indistinguishable from nothing at all." [1]
As William Lane Craig explains, Dennett remarks betray a misunderstanding:
"Here Dennett spoils his radical idea by waffling at the end: maybe the universe did not create itself out of nothing but at least out of something well-nigh indistinguishable from nothing. This caveat evinces a lack of appreciation of the metaphysical chasm between being and nothingness. There is no third thing between being and non-being; if anything at all exists, however ethereal, it is something and therefore not nothing. So what could this mysterious some thing be? Dennett does not tell us." [2]
However, the bigger problem for Dennett is that the idea of a self-creating universe is absurd. In order to cause itself to come into being, the universe would have to already exist! Dennett's position is clearly absurd.
Here is a great audio in which Daniel Dennett and William Lane Craig discuss cosmology and fine-tuning.
"What does need its origin explained is the concrete Universe itself, and as Hume...long ago asked: Why not stop at the material world? It...does perform a version of the ultimate bootstrapping trick; it creates itself ex nihilo. Or at any rate out of something that is well-nigh indistinguishable from nothing at all." [1]
As William Lane Craig explains, Dennett remarks betray a misunderstanding:
"Here Dennett spoils his radical idea by waffling at the end: maybe the universe did not create itself out of nothing but at least out of something well-nigh indistinguishable from nothing. This caveat evinces a lack of appreciation of the metaphysical chasm between being and nothingness. There is no third thing between being and non-being; if anything at all exists, however ethereal, it is something and therefore not nothing. So what could this mysterious some thing be? Dennett does not tell us." [2]
However, the bigger problem for Dennett is that the idea of a self-creating universe is absurd. In order to cause itself to come into being, the universe would have to already exist! Dennett's position is clearly absurd.
Here is a great audio in which Daniel Dennett and William Lane Craig discuss cosmology and fine-tuning.
Further, you can checkout Wintery Knight's review of the discussion here.
Courage and Godspeed,
Chad
Footnotes:
1. As quoted by William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith 3rd, Edition, p. 151,
2. Ibid.
2. Ibid.
Comments
http://bareknuckle.org/2010/09/22/stephen-hawking-and-no-god-needed/
As the universe appeared out of nothing, so initially there was no space, no time, no matter and no energy. Scientists have successfully shown how the total matter-energy content of the universe has always remained zero. But we are not satisfied with that explanation, we want more. We also want to know how the total space-time content of the universe has always remained zero. And it should always remain zero if the universe has actually appeared out of nothing. Otherwise scientists will have to account for the extra residual space-time that was not there at the beginning.