These are some reflections as I read theoretical physicist and cosmologist, Lawrence Krauss’s book ‘A Universe from Nothing’.

Krauss’s basic thesis seems to be that the laws of physics and particularly of quantum mechanics, show that the universe can have just happened without a Creator God.

If you look at my page on God’s existence (https://aquest-for-truth.net/existence-god/), I find it difficult to see this can be true.  Krauss argues that resolving the infinite regress by arguing that an eternal being is necessary for there to be creation is logically fallacious.   Consequently, as the infinite regress is unresolvable, then the best way to resolve it is to argue that the universe just happened or a universe from nothing.  But of course that begs the point about what is ‘nothing’, which Krauss seems to consider in in terms of ‘dark matter’ and dismisses philosophical questions about the nature of nothing, not based on empirical science, as useless and a waste of time.  This might be part of his problem.  I will develop this more in later blog.

I try to imagine how his position can be true, for in my mind when I look back to the beginning of creation, I am outside that moment.  Yet, from another perspective, all of us were in that moment, yet this is hard to imagine.  Perhaps that is my problem!  Yet for me as soon as there is a moment of specific creation, then there was always something other than that the specifically created.  Some traditional metaphysics talk about creation as a process of division or separation – of one becoming 2.  If creation is a process of division, then there has to be something that exists that can be divided.  Similarly this something must be the totality of all that is of which there is nothing outside of it, in other words, is infinite.  Wittgenstein

In the same process, when I look forward to the future of the expanding universe, as Krauss argues strongly for, I find myself asking what is the universe expanding into?  But again perhaps that is my problem for the universe is the totality of existence, there is nothing outside the universe and it creates what it expands into.  Well it was an attempt to try and imagine what Krauss’s theories mean.

The German philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein in his book ‘Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’, said ‘if you say that there is a limit, then you have to say what is on the other side of the limit’.  An expanding finite universe, by the very nature of its physicalness is limited whilst having a changing limit because it is expanding.  So like Wittgenstein we ask, what is on the other side of the limit?  Wittgenstein is cryptically suggesting that there is no limit, in other words that the universe is based on something infinite

I have often thought that when I learnt more about ‘dark matter’ that perhaps I would understand better how many physicists can be atheists.  In fact, it is quite to the contrary, as I learn more about what dark matter is, I become more convinced that modern science is helping us to understand God through giving us a better understanding of the Universe.  For example, Krauss argues that 30% of the universe is made up of matter and 70% of dark matter.  Although I am not a fundamentalist, I have always approached sacred books and particularly the Bible, as books that at least give us insights into how the ancients thought.  In the book of Genesis, the 1^st verse says ‘in the beginning or in a beginning (the Hebrew is ambiguous), God created the heavens and the earth.  The 2^nd verse goes on to say ‘The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.’  The keywords here are that the earth was ‘without form and void’ and ‘darkness.

There is a suggestion through exploring some of the linguistic analysis of this passage that this could refer to a dark mass or what scientists now call ‘dark matter’.  It was from within the dark matter that light was created.

Perhaps there is a lot more to be discovered yet of what the Genesis creation account means and how it can relate to modern science!