I've been deep in my own research and so have been too preoccupied lately to attend to the blog. Anyway, I ran into an article while reading up on modern cosmology that I thought was relevant to a recent post of mine. There, I argued that Gangadean has failed to prove that the material universe can't be eternal (or more generally, that matter can't be eternal which would entail the former). In fact, I think it's a terrible argument.
Gangadean (at times) must be aware that he hasn't proven as much because as I pointed out, he shifts to talk about there being "no reasons" to believe that matter is self-maintaining and hence this supposedly gives him reason to believe that it can't be eternal (see pg. 55 of Philosophical Foundations). And I think Gangadean is simply confused at this point. Stating some positive evidence for p is by no means proof of p, but rather inclines one to present an inductive argument for p. Moreover, there's the issue of whether the absence of evidence is evidence of absence. In other words, even if it were true that there's no current evidence that the universe is self-maintaining/eternal, or that matter is, we need to ask whether that fact in turn is positive evidence that it isn't self-maintaining/eternal. And it's far from clear that this is so. Our body of evidence is in flux, and there's much we don't know or have access to. But beyond that, Gangadean needs more than mere positive evidence for his conclusion (that matter is not eternal) anyway because his project is to provide a deductive, knock-down, drag out, proof for Theism.
The other point I mentioned before is that Gangadean and his camp must rest their philosophical claims on what the "experts" of modern science tell them--because his main arguments as it concerns matter not being eternal, depend on empirical (a posteriori) claims (indeed they must, because the very existence of matter is an empirical issue). Let's ignore the thorny, but real epistemological problem that arises here--how do you know when someone is an expert or trustworthy source about some topic X, when you yourself are not qualified as an expert or trustworthy source about X? Indeed, Gangadean or the bulk of us for that matter are simply in no place to conduct the necessary experiments or work through the complicated mathematics involved. So there are serious issues for Gangadean's worldview. If he fails to prove that matter cannot even possibly be eternal, and he must rest even one of his premises on the testimony of "experts" concerning empirical matters, then any demonstrative proof is simply beyond reach and proclamations of the clarity of God's existence are beyond the pale--Gangadean's worldview is in serious danger.
Here's an article by a cosmologist Don Page who also happens to be a Christian. And here's the relevant passage. (Don Page was weighing in on the debate between Sean Carroll and William Lane Craig).
On the issue of whether our universe had a beginning, besides not believing that this is at all relevant to the issue of whether or not God exists, I agreed almost entirely with Sean’s points rather than yours, Bill, on this issue. We simply do not know whether or not our universe had a beginning, but there are certainly models, such as Sean’s with Jennifer Chen (hep-th/0410270 and gr-qc/0505037), that do not have a beginning. I myself have also favored a bounce model in which there is something like a quantum superposition of semiclassical spacetimes (though I don’t really think quantum theory gives probabilities for histories, just for sentient experiences), in most of which the universe contracts from past infinite time and then has a bounce to expand forever. In as much as these spacetimes are approximately classical throughout, there is a time in each that goes from minus infinity to plus infinity (emphasis mine).So here's an "expert" telling us that we simply don't know whether or not the universe had a beginning (and no doubt other "experts" like Sean Carroll and Jennifer Chen agree). That is, there are theories according to which, the universe didn't have a beginning. This roughly translates to it being at least possible that the universe didn't have a beginning--models have to be self-contained, internally consistent, and make empirical predictions, among other things to pass as models. Remember a proposition p is clear according to Gangadean if and only if the opposite of p is not possible. So plug in 'matter is not eternal' for p and you see that Gangadean must show that the proposition 'matter is not eternal' is not even possibly true. But here you have cosmologists telling us that it's at least possible that the universe is eternal because there might be mechanisms which enable it to be so. Given something like a correspondance theory of truth, that means the proposition "matter is eternal" is possibly true. Note, this isn't arguing that being comes from non-being (which is what the Gangadeanians might be inclined to try and force out).
Recall that in his book, Gangadean mentions philosophical problems with particular models (like that of Stephen Hawking) which suggest an eternal universe. This is part of his main argument for the claim that matter is not eternal. So he does in fact take the testimony of such "experts" seriously and he should (otherwise he couldn't accept the principle that entropy increases in a closed system--although many such experts speak of this as probabilistic rather than categorical as I've mentioned before). But as I've said, his criticisms are going to be limited to just those models (and those relevantly like them) that he has considered. More generally, to point out problems in current models is to do just that--point out that given our current evidence, it doesn't look probable that the universe/matter is eternal (or that it doesn't look probable that it's possible that the universe is eternal). That's the upper limit of what Gangdean can do. If he want's proof, or clarity or whatever, he's got to rule out even the logical possibility that matter is eternal. In order to do that, he's got to consider every last model--past, present, and even future (those models that haven't even yet been developed), and then show that all of them have (or at least will have) irreconcilable problems. We have an example of a cosmologist mentioning a couple of such models and there are many more (see multiverse theories). We also have to consider those that are in the process of being developed and those that will in the future be developed as we learn more and more about the cosmos.
***It's important to keep in mind just how principled this objection is and so how serious a problem it is for Gangadean. You see, substantive claims about matter are by their very nature empirically got (i.e., we have to observe the way that matter behaves to know things about it). This involves our fallible perceptual faculties, our fallible inductive and abductive reasoning, as well as our fallible practice of making generalizations from a sample. You can observe how a flamingo behaves, or even a great many of them at one point in time, but you can't be certain how the next flamingo will behave. So it is with the universe. So it is with bits of matter. You can make probabilistic claims or generalizations based on prior observations that are for all intents and purposes quite rational, but if you're after certainty, you're going to be disappointed. Moving up a level of abstraction, we can apply the same inductive problem as it concerns cosmological models--even if some fail, it doesn't follow that all will fail. In other words, Gangadean must depend on what are observation-induction-based premises to support the claim that necessarily, matter is not eternal. But that reeks havoc for his project because such claims will ever be at the mercy of empirical fortune--it will depend on how the science turns out on the final reckoning. And science as well as common sense observation, if anything, has faced radical revisions throughout history (think about quantum mechanics vs. classical physics vs. Aristotelian physics or the Copernican revolution for instance). So even in principle, we can't have clarity or certainty regarding substantive claims about things like whether matter is eternal or not. Notice this is true even if I grant team-Gangadean the laws of thought and the "intuitive grasping of concepts" so that we can be certain of trivialities like "matter is matter" and "matter is not non-matter". Obviously, his argument against the possibility of matter being eternal depends on the substantive claims rather than on mere trivialities-- he's got to prove beyond any possible doubt that matter is not "self-maintaining" and that "if it's eternal, then it's self-maintaining" and the like. That means we can't have certainty that God exists. Again to reiterate, models featuring an eternal universe, aren't necessarily making the claim that "being comes from non-being". Instead the strategy is to suggest that we don't know all that much about the nature of the cosmos, or matter and thus we can't (rationally), from the armchair, rule out the possibility that we might learn surprising things about it in the future.
Now my point is not that any of these theories represents what's actual or even what's probably actual. If you're thinking to yourself, "well, yeah there are these theories, but we don't know that they are true or they seem unlikely to be true" then you're barking up the wrong tree. In fact, I find multi-verse theories (i.e., the view that our observable universe is among an ensemble of universes to be unlikely or fanciful--although I'm by no means even close to being certain). But if you think this is somehow an objection against what I've said earlier, then you're not distinguishing between actuality and possibility and that's a crucial distinction when talking about clarity. This is because Gangadean has set the epistemological bar so high and he falls on his own sword. Again according to Gangadean, for some claim to be clear, the opposite of that claim must be impossible. He doesn't say that p is clear if and only if the opposite of the claim is merely non-actual, untrue or probably untrue or even probably impossible. If p is clear to reason, then ~p must be impossible, full-stop. That's what's at stake here and that's where all the problems arise.
On such a standard (Gangadean's own standard) he fails. This is because at least one of the premises upon which his argument rests could be false i.e., it's possible that the universe is "self-maintaining". Moreover, it's possible that his first premise is false. That is, it might be false that "if the universe is eternal, then it is self-maintaining" (I'm also inclined to wonder at this point exactly what Gangadean means by 'self-maintaining' in the first place and see whether cosmologists find it even intelligible). The point is, we just don't know with certainty one way or another. In order to succeed, he's got to show that no consistent model of an eternal universe has or ever will be developed--and I haven't a clue how he or anyone could achieve a thing like that. Pointing out problems with a few dated models is no good (note even his criticisms against Hawking's model doesn't show us that these problems are theoretically irreconcilable. Gangadean's criticisms actually depend on "current" understandings of the cosmos and such knowledge changes with new findings). This means that proof that matter is not eternal, and thus that God must exist is simply beyond reach at least insofar as Gangadean is concerned. This is because his argument for God's existence depends on his first proving that matter is not eternal. So it's not clear that God exists. Importantly, this is so even if we grant Gangadean that the "laws of thought" are clear to reason.
p.s. Alternatively, he could fuss over the meaning of 'possibility' so that the standards for model building in cosmology don't represent what is possible or possibly true. In other words, he could insist that cosmologists have built self-contained models where matter is eternal, but this doesn't represent what is possible in the relevant sense. But this approach would be unpromising for Gangadean. The natural question to ask would be why we should trust Gangadean's dictionary--what makes it the authority on semantic matters? Of course, he could merely presuppose that his definition is the correct one as he often does (I've called this "semantic chauvinism" in the past), but that's rationally unacceptable in the current dispute (that would be the very thing at issue!). Thus he'd have to tell us how he's certain that his definition is the correct one in light of the lexical disagreement with cosmologists and I've said more than enough about why that is problematic for his worldview before.
***Nor will it help one bit to claim that what I'm doing is "appealing to ignorance/unknown" which is a common move that Gangadeanians make at such a juncture. That's rubbish. Remember Gangadean is the one making the claim that God's existence is clear to reason so that you're basically closing your mind to reason if you aren't absolutely certain that God exists. That is to say, his main project and the foundation of his entire ministry and life's work is to demonstrate to all of us that God exists and that denying God's existence is tantamount to denying that a circle is not a square. It's supposed to be that obvious if only you'll use reason consistently! To get there, he needs to show that it's patently obvious that matter/the cosmos isn't even possibly eternal (and that this is knowable at all times to all persons). So all I'm doing is holding him to this. I'm suggesting that he arbitrarily and self-servingly helps himself to the following restriction: he thinks that proof of a hypothesis H, consists in showing that a few of the current alternatives to H are not true. But why should anybody accept this restriction? No, if you want certainty or clarity so that no persons ever are with excuse for unbelief, you need a far less restricted domain--Gangadean needs to show that all alternatives are not possibly true and it seems simply impossible for him to make good on that.
