Krauss dissed again (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, November 09, 2015, 15:29 (3093 days ago) @ David Turell

The obvious: only when you call something 'nothing' can you really get something from nothing:-http://www.nationalreview.com/node/426668/print-"I point this out because, circling back to Krauss, this sort of confusion is endemic. Krauss in fact wrote a whole book-length non-sequitur about this: a book titled A Universe from Nothing, which became a New York Times best-seller and in which, as the title indicates, he tries to argue that physics supports the idea of a universe appearing out of nothing. He writes: “What would be the characteristics of a universe that was created from nothing, just with the laws of physics and without any supernatural shenanigans?” Well, “just the laws of physics” is not nothing. So, yes, if you define “nothing” as “not nothing,” you can account for the universe appearing from “nothing.” -"And this is the basic error: Because science can only adjudicate empirical claims — and indeed only one specific type of empirical claim — it cannot, by definition, adjudicate non-empirical questions, such as why empirical claims are possible to begin with. Theistic claims about the creation of the universe are logical claims; these claims may be wrong, but they cannot be adjudicated with science. (And in this specific sense, certainly, the magisteria do not overlap.)-"Here's the problem with all these false dichotomies: At bottom, they come from, and reinforce, illiteracy. And while sophisticates can, and too often do, produce their own exquisite forms of barbarism, widespread illiteracy probably inexorably leads to barbarism. A scientist who doesn't understand anything about epistemology, or religion, or philosophy, and gets on his soapbox is a joke. A scientist who does all these things and as a result is on best-seller lists and gets published in The New Yorker is a symptom of a serious social disease. Never mind the science-versus-religion “debate,” such as it is — widespread confusion about science's epistemological framework is producing a lot of shoddy science, and that should have us all concerned." -***-The main point of the essay:-"That Krauss, while singing the praises of an epistemic of doubt, blithely evinces absolutely none about the nature or value of human life — he only needs to know what “religious” people oppose to know what he's for — merely shows that he's ignorant and intellectually lazy. That he can write this in the pages of a magazine that is supposed to be a beacon of American intellectualism without rebuke, or even throat-clearing, from his ideological fellow-travelers shows that the illiteracy is widespread and cultural. Such confusions stem from the false dichotomies I've been trying to destroy. If someone opposes abortion and is a Christian, the implicit worldview of most of the staff and readership of The New Yorker goes: He must do so on “religious grounds” — that is to say, not “rational grounds” or “scientific grounds.” But this is just nonsense on stilts. It is on scientific grounds that pro-lifers believe that life begins at conception; that this life ought to be protected in law can be justified on the basis of reason, or faith, or both. -"Now, none of this is to say that there is a God (though there is) or that abortion is wrong and should be illegal (though it is, and it should be). But it is simply to demonstrate that we have arrived at a peculiar moment when our elite institutions and discourse seem to be utterly ignorant of their own philosophical and cultural legacy. The institutions we live in and through, whether the scientific revolution or liberal democracy or the concept of human rights, were built and explored by great thinkers, who in turn were grounded in great traditions of rational speculation (that is to say, of philosophy), and it is mystifying and, frankly, very scary that we have arrived at this moment of what can only be called cultural amnesia — an amnesia so profound that we have not only forgotten, we've forgotten that we've forgotten."