Quantum Physics Debunks Materialism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C5pq7W5yRM

uantum theory?

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Originally Posted by Qatada I've heard some people say that quantum theory explains that matter can come into existence spontaneously. Can you tell briefly describe the theory, tell me whether its just hypothesis or based on fact, and how you respond to it? Jazak Allah khayr.

Selam aleykum
I think this is somewhat of a misconception, and I'm not sure what they are refering to. there's three scientific principles that they might be refering to.

1. Einstein's relativity theory.
According to general relativity, E=mc^2 and by that ratio energy can be transformed into matter and vice versa. Like in an atom bomb, how a part of the matter of an atom is transferred into massive amounts of destructive energy. This isn't creating out of nothing, but merely changing the form of energy. There is always conservation of enrgy, that is the sum total of all energy is always the same. The only thing we can do is manipulate the form that energy has. So for the atom bomb for example, we can change energy in the form of matter, to energy in the form of heat and radiation. So nothing new is created, instead existing energy merely changes forms.

2. Superposition.
Due to the wave-particle duality and due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. We cannot know the exact location of particles. We can only detect particles by letting them interact. But by this process of detection, they have changed position. This is a big restriction in quantum-science. And something we have to take into account in any test or experiment. So rather then expressing the location of particles, in quantum physics we express an area of probabilities. An area that contains all the different places where the particle could be. These areas are calculated by complex mathematical equations based on experiments and chance-calculation. When studying these areas we come across a phenomena called superposition. This principle says that if a particle can be in one position or in another position, then there is also a third alternative where the particle temporarily exists in in both positions. However this doesn't mean that a new particle has come into existence that later disappears again. It is the same particle, which just manifests himself in two locations. What causes this phenomenon however, is yet unknown.

3. Matter and antimatter.
Empty space, or a vacuum isn't really empty. Space is made out of a sort of checkers-board, with negative and positive fields (boxes). If all the negative fields are filled with raw particles, and the positive fields are left open, then the end result is just empty space, a vacuum. If however a positive field also gets a particle, then we can detect that particle as it will manifest himself as "matter". If a negative box does not get a raw particle, this box will manifest himself as "anti-matter". So, if a raw particle changes location from a positive box to a negative box, then to us it will appear as if matter collides with antimatter and disappears. Also, if you could force a raw-particle to move from a negative box to an empty positive box, you would create matter and antimatter by doing so. This however isn't "creating out of nothing". In fact you would be merely manipulating raw particles, to make it seem as though new things come in existence. But this is only appearance. In reality nothing new is created, instead compositions of existing things have merely shifted.

 

Originally Posted by Qatada asalam alykum JazakAllah akhi, can you now explain them points in relation to the origin of the universe, especially with the most focus on point no.2 superposition?

Superpostiion doesn't really have any direct link to the origin of the universe. Basically, all these rules follow the law of conservation of energy, that is no new energy is created, and no old energy is destroyed. Thus we know that none of these three can account for the creation of the universe, because for such a creation you would have to break the law of conservation of energy. The only alternative, is when you believe in an infinite universe, and you see the big bang merely as a dramatical change in the composition of the universe, and not as it's origin. However that theorie faces a whole bunch of scientific and philosophical challenges which make it implausible.

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I've heard that quantum theory (or is it hypothesis?)

Most parts of quantum science is theory, only some small parts are still hypothetic since we're still pending on results of experiments.

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explains that the universe never needed a begining because quantum explains that time ie past, present and future are irrelevant. I dont understand it much myself but can you comment on what u know about this?

Yes this is true. From an a-temporal, or better yet, an ex-temporal point of view, the past, present and future could have been created instantanious. So the origin of the universe doesn't need to "precede" the big bang. However this still doesn't acount for the existence of that universe. Logic still predicts that something caused it nonetheless.

 

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Originally Posted by Qatada what is meant when past, present and future are all created together instantaniously? how is that possible scientifically? what do they mean by this? i.e. do they mean that the future of what we're doing today had already been created billions of years ago?

Well consider that time is a dimension, and that this dimension is part of our universe. Things inside the universe traverse trough time, but things outside the universe wouldn't necessaryly do so. That is what I meant by a-temporal or ex-temporal. Outside the dimension of time. It could very plausibly be the case that past present and future were created at once. And that only to us, since we have a subjective point of view, it appears as if past comes "before" future.

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also, i know abit about entropy, but can u explain it abit more. does entropy mean that there is only a certain level of useful energy which can be used for the production of new universes, and that this useful energy could soon run out? [how is this possible if u say that energy just changes in state without being destroyed?]

I got this definition for entropy on-line:
A function of thermodynamic variables, as temperature, pressure, or composition, that is a measure of the energy that is not available for work during a thermodynamic process. A closed system evolves toward a state of maximum entropy.
So translation: the amount of entropy is the amount of energy that can no longer be used. that doesn't mean that energy is destroyed, but simply that it has changed into a state where it can no longer be changed back to it's previous state. It appears with our current knowledge impossible for the entropy of a closed system to decrease. In other words, in ever process that happens, every single even in the universe, the entropy increases. Meaning in every process the amount of energy that is no longer useful increases. So yes, if the universe would go on forever, then eventually we'll run out of useful energy. In such a hypothetical future, all energy would be scattered and spread over the vastness of space. All suns/stars burned out, all heat dissipated. Also , I don't know how much energy it would take to form a universe, but I don't think there was ever enough energy in our universe to create a new universe.

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how does this rule of entropy apply to the multiverse argument too? And how can that be refuted?

It would apply to the multi-verse in just the same way as the standard universe view. I don't see why it would need further explanation in the multi-verse view. And I don't think the multiverse view should be refuted. It could be true, it could be false, important thing s to keep in mind though is:
1. It doesn't solve the question of existence or negate the anthropic principle
2. It is still a speculative hypothesis.

 

Originally Posted by Qatada asalaam alaikum jazak Allah khayr akhi. What happens to the energy which isn't useful anymore? you explained that stars are destroyed etc. but can't this energy change to something else which will be useful, since it just changes state? Whats the difference between energy which forms the universe, and energy which isn't useful anymore?

Your representation is a bit off. first of all, some energy is no longer useful for certain processes, that doesn't mean it isn't "used" at all. It also doesn't mean that it's no longer part of teh universe or anything like that. Just look at it like this:
Energy can change states trough certain processes, but some of these processes are only one-way-streets. So eventually, given infinite time, all energy will be "stuck" in a certain state. To simplify the matter with an analogy: you can drop a glass and let it scatter, but you cant rewind the process and "unbreak" a broken glass.
(by the way, there's a very nice short story about this phenomena called "the last question".)

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also, about the past, present and future, do you mean that outside the dimensions of this universe - the past, present and future can be percieved and seen?

Wheter or not it can actually be "seen" or "percieved" is not the issue. The issue is, that from a non-subjective point of view, one doesn't necesairly precede the other.

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How is this known (does science prove this and how)?

It is a logical conclusion of our understanding of the nature of time and space.

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And would this argument be plausible for theists who believe in God by saying that the future is already written and known by God?

Are you asking wheter this concept is compatible with the idea of God knowing the future? Yes; possibly.

 

I understand now, so would this energy probably cause alot of destruction in the universe? Or would it do something else?

Everything else you said makes sense right now, so jazak Allah khayr :) Well it depends on your perspective. Like with the analogy of the glass. Everything is made out of energy, the matter (glass) that is destructed consists out of energy, the force that destroys it is (kinetic) energy, the sound it makes is energy. So it's a bit odd to ask whether or not "this energy" causes allot of destruction. Which energy are you refering to? For example, if the sun would burn up; the biggest problem is not the state of entropy, but rather the lack of light and heat. A universe were all the stars have gone out would be very dark and cold. Another, perhaps even better analogy: you can burn up a piece of wood for warmth, but you can't un-burn the ashes. So in other words the problem of entropy is not that systems with high entropy are destructive, but rather simply that we have no use for them.

As for the relation to the infinite history. Those who claim that the universe has always existed, would have to explain why we aren't already in a state where all entropy is maximised.
here's that short story btw:
The Last Question -- Isaac Asimov

By AbdulFattah http://seemyparadigm.webs.com/

Contemporary Physicists and God’s Existence

Contemporary Physicists and God’s Existence (part 1 of 3): The Eternalness of Matter

    
Description: An Islamic Critical Evaluation of the Ideas of Some Contemporary Physicists: Part One: The eternalness of the universe and the decay of matter, and the implications of the Big Bang.
By Dr. Jaafar Sheikh Idris

Whether God exists or not is not as such, part of the subject matter of any empirical science, natural or social.  But the facts or what are sometimes assumed to be the facts of the natural sciences, especially physics and biology, are often interpreted to support one view or the other.  This is not therefore a paper about physics, but about the relationship between physics and the question of the existence of God.  More specifically, it is mainly an Islamic rational critique of the ways modern atheists attempts to meet the challenge posed by the Big Bang theory.  It does not deal with positive proofs for the existence of the Creator; it only proves the invalidity of the arguments used to buttress atheism.

One of the main arguments invoked in support of some form or other of atheism has always been the claim that the world, or some part of it, is eternal and, as such, needs no creator.  Thus, some Greek thinkers believed that the heavenly bodies, especially the sun, were eternal.  The main argument of one of them, Galen, was, according to Al-Ghazali, that it has had the same size for continued for eons and eons,a fact which shows that it is not perishable, for if it were, it would have shown signs of decay, which it doesn’t.  Al-Ghazali says that this is not a good argument because:

First...we do not grant him that a thing cannot perish except by decaying; decaying is only one way of perishing; but it is not improbable for something to perish suddenly while it is in its complete form.  Second, even if we grant him that there is no perishing without decay, whence does he know that it does not suffer any decay?  His reference to observation posts is not acceptable, because their quantities [the quantities known by them] are known only approximately.  So if the sun, which is said to be a hundred and seventy times or more the size of the earth[1], were to diminish by amounts the size of mountains, that would not be apparent to the senses.  So it might be decaying, and might have decreased by amounts the size of mountains or more, but the senses cannot perceive this ...” (Al-Ghazali, 126)

Al-Ghazali’s guess that the size of the sun might be diminishing was, as we can now see, a rare prescience of what science would prove.  Scientists now tell us that the sun does indeed decay, but much more than he thought, and that it will ultimately perish.

The amount of energy released by the sun is such that the mass of the sun is decreasing at the rate of 4.3 billion kilograms per second.  Yet this is such a small fraction of the sun’s mass that the change is hardly noticeable…

Our sun is believed to be about 4.5 billion years old, and will probably continue its present activity for another 4.5 billion years. (Wheeler, 596)

If the heavenly bodies are not eternal, what is it then that is eternal, the substances from which those bodies are made?  But physicists have discovered that these are made of molecules.  Is it then the molecules that are eternal?  No, because these are made up of atoms.  What about the atoms?  It was once believed that they were indivisible, and were, as such, the immutable matter from which all kinds of transient forms of material things are made.  This seemed, at last, to be the solid foundation on which to erect modern atheism.

Science continued to advance however, and contented in its advancement to embarrass the atheists.  It was soon discovered that atoms were not the immutable solid ultimate eternal constituents of matter that they were believed to be for a time.  Like everything else, they are also divisible; they are constituted of subatomic particles, which are in turn divisible in yet smaller constituents.  Is there an end to this divisibility?  No one knows; but even if there was, that would not be of any help to the atheists, for science has not only shown atoms and their constituents to be divisible, it has obliterated the division between matter and energy.  Thus, every piece of matter, however small, is not only theoretically but also practically changeable into energy, and vice versa.  The end result is that there is no longer any actual existent to which one can point and say with any assurance: this has always been like as it is now, and will continue forever to be.

That discovery should by itself have sufficed to dash any hope of anchoring atheism on the eternity of matter.  If it did not, the Big Bang theory certainly did.  It was this theory which dealt the final death blow to the eternity of any part of the universe.  Why?

Cosmologists believe that the big bang represents not just the appearance of matter and energy in a preexisting void, but the creation of space and time too.  The universe was not created in space and time; space and time are part of the created universe. (Davies, 123)

The biggest misunderstanding about the big bang is that it began as a lump of matter somewhere in the void of space.  It was not just matter that was created during the big bang.  It was space and time that were created.  So in the sense that time has a beginning, space also has a beginning.” (Boslouh, 46.)

In the beginning there was nothing, neither time nor space, neither stars nor planets, neither rocks nor plants, neither animals nor human beings.  Everything came out of the void. (Fritzch, 3)

The question of the existence or non-existence of God is not, as we said, the concern of any empirical science.  But scientists are human beings.  They cannot help thinking about the non-scientific yet vital implications of their sciences.  They cannot even help having feelings towards those implications.

Jasrow says about Einstein:

He was disturbed by the idea of a universe that blows up, because it implied that the world had a beginning.  In a letter to De Sitter, Einstein wrote, “This circumstance of an expanding universe irritates me.” ... This is curiously emotional language for a discussion of some mathematical formulas.  I suppose that the idea of a beginning in time annoyed Einstein because of its theological implications. (Jasrow, 29.)

Gastro quotes similar reactions by other scientists, like Eddington who says that “the notion of a beginning is repugnant” to him (122), and attributes this emotional reaction to the fact that they do not “bear the thought of a natural phenomenon which cannot be explained”[2]  and comments on such reactions of scientists by saying that they provide:

... an interesting demonstration of the response of the scientific mind - supposedly a very objective mind - when evidence uncovered by science itself leads to conflict with the articles of faith in our profession.  It turns out that the scientist behaves the way the rest of us do when our beliefs are in conflict with the evidence.  We become irritated, we pretend the conflict does not exist, or we paper it over with meaningless phrases. (Jasrow, 15-16.)

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Footnotes:

[1] We now know that it is definitely more. The mass of the sun is 333, 000 times that of the earth, and its radius is 109 times the earth’s radius.

[2] Gastro would have been more accurate if he said, “a phenomenon that cannot be naturally explained.”, since Divine creation is an explanation, and the only one in such cases.

 

 

Contemporary Physicists and God’s Existence (part 2 of 3): A Series of Causes

  
Description: An Islamic Critical Evaluation of the Ideas of Some Contemporary Physicists.  Part two: Various hypotheses of what could stand as causes of beings or events.

 

If matter, time and space all had a beginning, the question that naturally comes to mind is: How did they come to be?  The Quran tells us that if a person does not believe in God, then he cannot explain the coming into being of anything except by one of three untenable explanations:

a.     either he says that it was created by nothing, i.e. that it just appeared out of nothing?

b.    Or that it created itself,

c.     Or that it was created by something that is itself created.

Addressing the atheists the Quran says:

“Were they created by nothing?  Or were they themselves the creators (of themselves)?  Or did they create heaven and earth?  Nay, but they are not sure.” (Quran 52:35-36)

The Quran is not saying that the Arabs whom it addressed actually believed that things were created by nothing, or that they created themselves.  They certainly did not claim that they were the creators of the heavens and earth; no sane person would.  The Quran then, is only making clear to the atheists the absurdity of their position.

After a careful study of some of the arguments of many Western atheistic philosophers and scientists, I have found that they do indeed fall into these three untenable categories.  Why untenable?

Was it created out of nothing?

Suppose that you told someone that there was nothing, nothing at all in a certain region, and then lo! a duck appeared alive and kicking.  Why wouldn’t he believe you however much you assure him that that was indeed the case?  Not only because he knows that ducks don’t come into being in that way, as some might suppose, but because believing this violates an essential principle of his rationality.  Thus his attitude would be the same even if the thing that he was told to have come from nothing was something that he never heard of before.  It is because we believe that nothing comes out of nothing, that we keep looking for causes by which we explain the occurrence of events in the natural, social or psychological world.  It is because of this rational principle that science was possible.  Without it, not only our science, but our very rationality will be in jeopardy.  Moreover, the idea of causation is essential even to the very identity of things, as it was observed by the Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes):

It is self-evident that things have identities, and they have qualities in virtue of which every existent has its actions, and in virtue of which things have different identities, names and definitions.  If it were not the case that every individual thing had an action peculiar to, it would not have had a na­ture that is peculiar to it; and if it did not have a special na­ture, it would not have had a special name or definition. (Tahafut Attahafut, 782-3)

Did it create itself?

The absurdity of the idea of something creating itself is even clearer.  For something to create, it must be already existing; but for it to be created, it must be nonexistent.  The idea of something creating itself is thus self-contradictory.

Was it created by something that is itself created?

Can the cause of a temporal thing be itself temporal?  Yes, if we are talking about immediate, incomplete causes like eating and nourishment, water and germination, fire and burning, etc.  But these causes are incomplete causes.  First, because none of them is by itself sufficient to produce the effect we attribute to it; every such temporal cause depends for its efficacy on a host of other positive and negative conditions.  Second, because being temporal, they need to be caused, and cannot therefore be the ultimate causes of the coming into being of anything.  Suppose the following to be a series of temporal effects and causes: C1, C2, C3, C4… Cn, such that C1 is caused by C2, C2 by C3, and so on.  Such temporal causes are real causes, and useful ones, especially for practical purposes and for incomplete explanations; but if we are looking for the ultimate cause of the coming into being of, say, C1, then C2 is certainly not that cause, since it is itself caused by C3.  The same can be said about C3, and so on.  So even if we have an infinite series of such temporal causes, still that will not give us an ultimate explanation of the coming into being of C1.  Let us put this in other words: when does C1 come into being?  Only after C2 has come into being.  When does C2 come into being?  Only after C3 has come into being, and so on until Cn.  Therefore C1 will not come into being until Cn has come into being.  The same problem will persist even if we go further than Cn, even if we go to infinity.  This means that if C1 depended for its coming into being on such temporal causes, it would never have come to exist.  There would be no series of actual causes, but only a series of non-existents, as Ibn Taymiyyah[1]  explained.  The fact, however, is that there are existents around us; therefore, their ultimate cause must be something other than temporal causes; it must be an eternal, and therefore, uncaused cause.

When someone, whether scientist or nonscientist, insists on his erroneous beliefs in the face of all the evidence, there can be no way for him to support those beliefs except by resorting to dubious arguments, because no falsehood can be supported by a valid argument.  This has been the case with all atheistic scientists and philosophers who believe in the Big Bang theory.

Some claimed unabashedly that the original matter of the universe came out of nothing.  Thus Fred Hoyle, who advocated the steady state theory, which was for sometime considered to be a credible rival to the big bang theory, but which, like its rival, necessitates the coming into being of new matter-- used to say[2]:

The most obvious question to ask about continuous creation is this: Where does the created material come from?  It does not come from anywhere.  Material simply appears - it is created.  At one time the various atoms composing the material do not exist, and at a later time they do.  This may seem a very strange idea and I agree that it is, but in science it does not matter how strange an idea may seem so long as it works – that is to say, since the idea can be expressed in a precise form and so long as its consequences are in agreement with observation. (Hoyle, 112)

When Hoyle said this, there was an uproar against him.  He was accused of violating a main principle of science, namely that nothing comes out of nothing, and was thus ‘opening the flood gates of religion’ as one philosopher of science put it.  Thus Mario Bunge said about it:

[T]his theory involves the hypothesis of the continuous creation of matter ex nihilo.  And this is not precisely what is usually meant by respecting scientific determinism even in its widest sense, for the concept of emergence out of nothing is characteristically theological or magical even if clothed in mathematical form. (Bunge)

That the hypothesis of creation ex nihilo is not a scientific one, is true, but the claim that it is characteristically theological is wide off the mark.  Theistic religions do not say that things come out of absolute nothing because that contradicts the basic religious claim that they are created by God.  All that many religious people say is that God creates things out of nothing, and there is the whole difference in the world between the two notions.

If creation out of nothing was earlier considered by atheists to be an unscientific and theological principle, it is now claimed by some to have a scientific status and is used to discredit religion.

For the first time a unified description of all creation could be within our grasp.  No scientific problem is more fundamental or more daunting than the puzzle of how the universe came into being.  Could this have happened without any supernatural input?  Quantum mechanics seems to provide a loophole in the age-old assumption that ‘you can’t get something for nothing’.  Physicists are now talking about ‘the self creating universe’: a cosmos that erupts into existence spontaneously, much as a sub nuclear particle pops out of nowhere in certain high energy processes.  The question of whether the details of this theory are right or wrong is not important.  What matters is that it is now possible to conceive of a scientific explanation of all creation. (Jastrow, viii)

What kind of explanation is this?  Do you really even start to explain anything by saying that it pops out of nowhere?  Do scientists really believe that the sub nuclear particle referred to pops out of nowhere, in the sense that it really comes out of nothing, and has no relation whatsoever to anything that precedes it?  Commenting on what Davies claimed, one scientist had this to say: “This, in any case, is an event that occurs in space and time, within a domain bathed in matter and radiation.  ‘Nothing’ is nowhere to be seen in this situation.“[3]

This same fallacious idea is repeated in a later book by another atheistic scientist, Taylor:

As such, there is a non-zero probability of, say, a particle such as an electron appearing out of the vacuum.  In fact a vacuum is full of possibilities, one of which is the appearance of the Universe itself.  It had been created from nothing, as it were. (Taylor, 22)

What kind of vacuum is Taylor talking about?  If he is using the word in its technical scientific sense, then he can indeed speak of its being full of possibilities, or of an electron appearing out of it, because this vacuum is in fact a non-empty region.  This surely, however, is not the nothingness that is referred to by the big bang theory.  There is therefore not even an analogy between the appearance of a particle in a vacuum and the appearance of a Universe out of absolute nothing.

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Footnotes:

[1] Taqi al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyyah (1263 - 1328), an Islamic scholar born in Harran, now modern day Syria.

[2] Later on he changed his mind, not only about this, but about the whole theory.

[3] This is what my friend,  Professor Mahjoob Obeid,  the famous Sudanese physicist wrote to  me in a personal  communication.

 

 

Contemporary Physicists and God’s Existence (part 3 of 3): Room for God

  
Description: An Islamic Critical Evaluation of the Ideas of Some Contemporary Physicists: Part three: The only conclusion to the series of causes is that there be one ultimate and external cause which led to all others.

 

The idea that something is not created by anything, that it comes out of nothing, is very different from the idea that it creates itself.  It is strange therefore to find some scientists speaking about them as if they are one and the same thing.  It is not only Davies who confused these two notions as we can see in the quotation just cited, but others also.  Taylor tells us that electrons can create themselves out of nothing in the manner Baron Munchausen saved himself from sinking into a bog by pulling himself up by his bootstraps.

It is as if these particles special particles are able to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps (which in their case are the forces between them) to create themselves from nothing as Baron Munchausen saves himself without visible means of support...This bootstrapping has been proposed as a scientifically respectable scenario for creating a highly specialized Universe from nothing. (Taylor, 46)

Is it science or science fiction that we are being told here?  Taylor knows and says that Munchausen’s is only a story; what he claimed to have done is in fact something that is physically impossible to do.  In spite of this, Taylor wants to explain by his idea something that is not only real, but is of the utmost importance, and thus ends up saying something that is more absurd than Munchausen’s fictitious story of saving himself by pulling up his bootstrap.  At least Munchausen was talking about things that were already in existence.  But Taylor’s special particles act even before they are created!  They “pull themselves by their own bootstraps... to create themselves from nothing.”!

False Gods

The third alternative to attributing the creation of things to the true God, is to attribute them to false gods.  Thus many atheists try to attribute the creation of temporal things to other things which are themselves temporal (as we said before). Davies says:

The idea of a physical system containing an explanation of itself might seem paradoxical to the layman but it is an idea that has some precedence in physics.  While one may concede, (ignoring quantum effects) that every event is contingent, and depends for its explanation on some other event, it need not follow that this series either continues endlessly, or ends in God.  It may be closed into a loop.  For example, four events, or objects, or systems, E1, E2, E3, E4, may have the following dependence on each other: (Davies, 47)

But this is a clear example of a very vicious circle.  Take any one of these supposed events or objects or systems.  Let it be E1, and ask how it came about .  The answer is: it was caused by E4, which preceded it; but what is the cause of E4?  It is E3; and the cause of E3 is E2, and of E2 is E1.  So the cause of E4 is E1 because it is the cause of its causes.  Therefore E4 is the cause of E1 and E1 is the cause of E4 which means that each one of them precedes and is preceded by the other.  Does that make any sense?  If these events, etc.  are actual existents, then their coming into being could not have been caused by them the way Davies supposes it to be.  Their ultimate cause must lie outside this vicious circle.

And the philosopher Passmore advises us to:

Compare the following:

(1)  every event has a cause;

(2)  to know that an event has happened one must know how it came about.

The first simply tells us that if we are interested in the cause of an event, there will always be such a cause for us to discover.  But it leaves us free to start and stop at any point we choose in the search for causes; we can, if we want to, go on to look for the cause of the cause and so on ad infinitum , but we need not do so; if we have found a cause, we have found a cause, whatever its cause may be.  The second assertion, however, would never allow us to assert that we know that an event has happened ...  For if we cannot know that an event has taken place unless we know the event that is its cause, then equally we cannot know that the cause-event has taken place unless we know its cause, and so on ad infinitum.  In short, if the theory is to fulfill its promise, the series must stop somewhere, and yet the theory is such that the series cannot stop anywhere – unless, that is, a claim of privilege is sustained for a certain kind of event, e.g. the creation of the Universe. (Pasture, 29)

If you think about it, there is no real difference between these two series as Ibn Taymiyyah clearly explained a long time ago (Ibn Taymiyyah, 436-83).  One can put the first series like this: for an event to happen, its cause must happen.  Now if the cause is itself caused, then the event will not happen unless its cause event happens, and so on, ad infinitum.  We will not therefore have a series of events that actually happened, but a series of no events.  And because we know that there are events, we conclude that their real ultimate cause could not have been any temporal thing or series of temporal things whether finite or infinite.  The ultimate cause must be of a nature that is different from that of temporal things; it must be eternal.  Why do I say ‘ultimate’?  Because, as I said earlier, events can be viewed as real causes of other events, so long as we acknowledge them to be the incomplete and dependent causes they are, and as such not the causes that explain the coming into being of something in any absolute sense, which is to say that they cannot take the place of God.

What is the relevance of this talk about chains after all?  There might have been some excuse for it before the advent of the Big Bang, but it should have been clear to Davies in particular that there is no place for it at all in the world-view of a person who believes that the universe had an absolute beginning.

The fact that every thing around us is temporal and that it could not have been created except by an eternal Creator has been known to human beings since the dawn of their creation, and it is still the belief of the overwhelming majority of people all over the world.[1]  It would, therefore, be a mistake to get from this paper the impression that it hinges the existence of God upon the truth of the Big Bang theory.  That certainly is not my belief; neither was it the purpose of this paper.  The main thrust of the paper has rather been that if an atheist believes in the big bang theory, then he cannot avoid admitting that the Universe was created by God.  This, in fact, is what some scientists frankly admitted, and what others hesitantly intimated to.

There is no ground for supposing that matter and energy existed before and was suddenly galvanized into action.  For what could distinguish that moment from all other moments in eternity? ...  It is simpler to postulate creation ex nihilo, Divine will constituting nature from nothingness. (Jastro,122)

As to the first cause of the universe in the context of expansion, that is left to the reader to insert, but our picture is incomplete without Him. (Jasrow,122)

This means that the initial state of the universe must have been very carefully chosen indeed if the hot big bang model was correct right back to the beginning of time.  It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us. (Hawking,127)

References

Al Ghazali, Abu Hamid, Tahafut al Falasifa, edited by Sulayman Dunya, Dar al Ma'arif, Cairo, 1374 (1955)

Berman, David, A History of Atheism in Britain, London and New York, Routledge, 1990.

Boslough, John, Stephen Hawking's Universe: an Introduction to the most remarkable Scientist of our Time,  Avon Books, New York, 1985.

Bunge, Mario, Causality: The Place of the Causal Principle in Modern Science, The world publication Co. New York, 1963

Carter, Stephen L. The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion. Basic Books, Harper Collins, 1993.

Concise  Science Dictionary,  Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1984

Davies, Paul, (1) The Cosmic Blueprint: New Discoveries in Nature's Creative Ability to Order the Universe, Simon & Schuster Inc, London, 1989. (2) God & The New Physics, The Touchstone Book, New York, 1983.

Fritzsch, Harald, The Creation of Matter: The Universe From Beginning to End, Basic Books Inc Publishers, New York, 1984.

Ibn Rushd, al Qadi Abu al Walid Muhammad Ibn Rush, Tahafut at-Tahafut, edited by Sulayman Dunya, Dar al Ma'arif , Cairo, 1388  (1968.)

Ibn Taymiya, Abu al Abbas Taqiyuddin Ahmad Ibn  Abd al Halim, Minhaj al Sunna al Nabawiya , edited by Dr. Rashad Salim, Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, Riyad,  AH 1406 (1986)

Jastrow, Robert, God And The Astronomers, Warner Books, New York, 1978.

Hawking, Stephen,  A Brief History of Time,

Hoyle, Fred, The Nature of the Universe, Mentor Books, New York, 1955.

 Kirkpatrick, Larry D. and Wheeler, Gerald F. Physics, A World View, New York, Saunders College Publishing, 1992.

Newton, Sir Isaac, Optics, Dover Publications Inc. New York, 1952.

Pasture, J. A,  Philosophical Reasoning, New York, 1961.

Taylor, John, When the Clock Struck Zero: Science's Ultimate Limits, Picador, London, 1993

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Footnotes:

[1] “…the first published avowal of speculative atheism appeared in 1770 on the Continent, and in 1782 in Britain.” (Russell, Atheism. 3).

“The most recent Gallop data indicate that 96 per cent of Americans say they believe in God... “ , (Carter, Culture, 278).  The percentage must surely be greater in the non Western world.

 

 source

Deviant attempts to use theories of physics against the proofs of the belief of Islam

(original source : http://sunnianswers.wordpress.com/2008/10/18/deviant-attempts-to-use-theories-of-physics-against-the-proofs-of-the-belief-of-islam/)

Deviant says: The problem with the Kalam argument [the argument of the scholars of the Islamic belief] in describing how “beings” are created is that under the laws of thermodynamics, matter cannot be created or destroyed, it merely changes form.

Abu Adam: Where does kalam describe, according to you, how beings are created? How does the changing of form affect the kalam argument?

The claim that matter cannot be destroyed is merely a theory, it is not an absolute truth. It is a hypothesis no one has been able to show false in an experiment, that is all. What is factual about all this, is only this: no one has been able to show matter being destroyed in an experiment (as far as I know.) So what? How exactly does this affect the kalam argument?

Deviant says: Thus the first premise that is used in Kalam, that beings have a beginning and an end is misleading.

Abu Adam: This is not the first premise, there are proofs for why it must have a beginning mentioned in kalam. As for having an ending, this cannot be known by reason alone, and one does not need to prove it to show that the world is created. You seem to think that these ideas are newly claimed by physicists, when in fact they are thousands of years old, and are indeed dealt with in the books of kalam.

Deviant says: This is all observed empirically in nature. That’s why its a law of thermodynamics and not a theory of thermodynamics.

Abu Adam: Now you are resorting to lie, as expected. The so called law of thermodynamics remains a theory in that it remains falsifiable, and it remains labeled a law only because no one has shown it false in an experiment. This does not mean it is true. You are mixing what is actually observed with the interpretation of what is observed. Moreover, I can’t think of any reason why the so called laws of thermodynamics run contrary to kalam. They are merely attempted descriptions of what is normally true. It belongs to the “possible” category of things in kalam terminology. Aļļaah can create matter that cannot be destroyed in the world of physical cause (i.e. through a physical means,) as well as matter that can be destroyed (by physical means.) If it is really true that matter cannot be destroyed in the causal habits of this universe, i.e. by physical means, not that it would be indestructible in absolute terms, then this simply means that Aļļaah created it to be so. This idea, that matter changes form, and does not vanish, does not deal a blow to kalam, so we are still at loss for what you are getting at.

Deviant says: First, the parts of the universe aren’t necessarily “created” since matter/energy merely shift forms. Secondly, theoretical physics throws the entire conception of this principle out of the window because parts of a whole may be radically different from the whole.

Abu Adam: The first point is the thousands of years old argument of the Aristotelean philosophers. The books of kalam deal with this. Claiming that it is not created, i.e. not emergent, leads to logical contradictions mentioned in kalaam books. As-Sanuusiyy mentions one of these in his ˆAqiidah Aş-Şugħraa, but there are many proofs. The fact that one cannot have infinite movements/changes in the past is enough to prove this, as shown in The Foundations of the Religion.

As for the second point, the scholars of kalam admit that the parts are different from the whole. Az-Zarkashiyy (745-794 AH/ 1344-1392 AD) for one states plainly that trying to understand indivisible matter based on what we see in this world is a mistake, which I think is more than reasonable. Everything we see around us are divisible things with bulk that have different attributes, so how can we draw an analogy between these things and what is not divisible? Kalam science is not affected by this, as it is not a new idea.

Deviant says: Subatomic particles defy causal relationships and very large bodies which supersede the speed of light reverse causality. This isn’t “theory” but observations made by scientists.

Abu Adam: It is not that simple. What exactly was observed that “defy causal relationships,” and “reverse causality,” as you are claiming? What you are speaking of is the scientist’s interpretation of what he saw, not what he actually saw - if you are telling the truth about this scientist.

I do not know of any physicist that denies cause, least of all Einstein. Causality itself is not even something observable. What is observable is physical entities, large or small, and how they behave. To claim something is really a cause of their behavior is metaphysical, because causality itself cannot be seen. I mean cause in the sense of the power to actually affect events. That is, we say fire causes burning, but does this mean that it causes it in actual reality, or is fire intrinsically, and in actual reality, powerless? Of course, the belief of Muslims is that fire has no intrinsic power to burn; the fire and its burning are two different creations that Aļļaah has created, and none of them necessarily follows the other in the minds eye, only according to what is normally true. That is, Aļļaah normally creates burnt paper when it has come in contact with fire.

To claim that causal relationships are defied is highly problematic from a philosophical standpoint, because when you deny that an event has a cause, then you are questioning cause in general. Cause-effect is a first principle from which knowledge springs. Without it there is no basis to claim knowledge of the outside world. Why? Because your knowledge of the world, is not what you sense itself, but rather, the interpretation of your mind of the signals of the senses. This bridge from the physical world to the metaphysical world of the mind, and the acceptance of it as true, is based on the acceptance of cause-effect, the cause effect between your senses and your perception. In short, to question cause-effect is to question reality, and to question reality is to question your observation. So no, I do not accept the idea that this has been observed. You have either not understood, or the scientist is full of it.

Moreover, no one has observed particles beyond the speed of light. You are now turning to lies to support your attack on Islam and its scholars, as expected.

Deviant says: Moreover, the nature of entropy posits that at one point the universe was pure light….

Abu Adam: Who was there to observe this pure light? How can you claim that this is known with any level of certainty? It is no more than a guess. It is a “the chair is black, thus all chairs are black” type of argument. It is a claim about history, it cannot be proven by experiments to have actually happened.

Deviant says: If the parts of the universe were the same as the elementary subatomic particles, then the universe should imitate that, but it doesn’t.

Abu Adam: The decoherence phenomenon and environmental effects prevent that. That is, the small particles are isolated from the environment, but big particles are not. For this reason we cannot see the characteristics of quantum in them. The difference between large and small particles is not to the extent that there is no relation between them. Certainly not in a way that contradicts the principles of ĥuduutħ (emergence, having a beginning, such as any change in form of physical things) and imkaan (possibility in the minds eye), which are the basic elements of kalam arguments.

Deviant says: According to a theory of special relativity, causal relationships break down if something goes greater than the speed of light, thus one would perceive an effect before its cause.

Abu Adam: So your mother might be your daughter? What are you trying to say?

Einstein does not say that causal relationships are reversed. Einstein was a zealous defender of physical cause. What he said was that from the reference point of something traveling at less than the speed of light, the result of a cause might appear before the cause itself. No one has proven, however, that a particle, large or small, can travel faster than the speed of light. At the end of the day, what you are claiming is that the kalam argument has been contradicted by a theoretical possibility based on assuming the occurrence of a speed that has not been proven by physicists to exist. But even if this theory was true, how does this contradict kalam?

Deviant says: Modern physics has shown us that at the subatomic particle level, certain entities actually lack spatio-temporal characteristics, and in spite of this, matter and energy still exist. If the parts of matter and energy, subatomic particles, lack the attributes of spatio-temporality, then this shows that the parts of an entity can actually be different than the whole. This second point rebuts the notion that merely because the parts of the universe are created that the universe as a whole is created since modern physics has shown that the parts of the universe lack spatio-temporality.

Abu Adam: No it does not. The proofs of kalam are not based on the parts being like the whole, they are based on ĥuduutħ (emergence) and imkaan (possibility in the mind’s eye) in either what exists in itself (matter/attributed) or what exist in something else (form/attribute).

No one denies that subatomic particles differ from normal bodies. All parties know that the rules of big bodies do not necessarily apply to very small particles. The opposite, however, is not true. For example, relativity applies to both fast and slow particles, as well as big bodies, as it is the most general theory. It is the generalization of the Newtonian theory. We cannot say that it applies only to small particles. Newtonian mechanics, however, can only give correct answers for large and slow bodies. As for the fast ones, physics uses relativity because Newtonian mechanics don’t hold. This is the difference. They are not in different worlds, but models for describing, or predicting, how particles behave at different levels of size, speed, etc.

When particles become very small, physics is forced to use relativity models/theories, and when they get even smaller, then physics is forced to use QM. This does not mean that there is no relation between small particles at QM level and those at relativity level and again at “normal” level.

As for QM, it explains a lot of the strange things observed in small particles. What necessarily follows from this theory has to do with measurement of speed, position, velocity, etc. Physicists do not say that a thing is in several places at the same time, except perhaps those that are prone to silly interpretations of some observations, like the double-split experiment. A number of them do say that if we want to know the place of an electron, then we come with an instrument to see, or by our eyes. Before we look, the system was undisturbed, they say it was not in a place. When you looked or measured, then you disturbed the system, thus you obliged the electron to go into an arbitrary position. This is philosophy, not science. It is the ancient, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Einstein, for one, fiercely refused this idea. He said, “Measurement will not give you an arbitrary position every time.”

Deviant says: subatomic particles can do things that normal matter cannot do, like exist in multiple places at the same time due to the Heisenburg principle of uncertainty, and may not even exist in time.… Moreover…. photons, which are massless particles and can technically be in multiple places at one time.

Abu Adam: No one has observed a photon, or anything else, being in multiple places at the same time. It is an idea of a scientist in an attempt to interpret, and it is a silly one, or a badly phrased one.

Deviant says: Thus, both of the basic premises of the kalam cosmological argument are rendered obsolete by modern physics.

We would still like to know how. Present the argument and show how physics has proven the argument I presented in “The Foundations of the religion,” wrong according to you. Show how what was actually observed contradicts the argument. We are not interested in theories.

As a final comment, a theory is just that: a theory. It is a scientist’s attempt to interpret some observation that he made. Take a look at this for example: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0609163

As Muslims we must not accept everything a person says just because he is good at math or is wearing a white jacket. Let us also not forget that the word of a kaafir is not a proof of anything. We cannot even accept as true what they claim to have observed in the laboratory. Why? Because we have only a kafir’s word for it. It is kħabar waaĥid, a singular narration, and from a kaafir, so it is like writing on water; it is only possibly true in itself. Not only that, but when it is also self-contradictory in nature, such as some of the supposed interpretations of experiments in physics, then we would not accept it from a muslim, let alone a kaafir. If you remember this, brothers and sisters, you can save yourself a lot of satanic whispers.

The habit of physicists in this age is to throw ideas/ theories and then stay with them until an experiment shows otherwise. They do not always use logic before they speak. They consider everything as possible - it is the heritage of christian sophistry. They do not care about something called impossible in the minds eye, such as the idea of standing and not standing at the same time. This type of idea-throwing as theories happens a lot. An example of discarded theories is the idea of “ether,” which was the hypothetical substance through which electromagnetic waves travel. Newtonian mechanics and relativity theory are others (though they work fine for certain things.) There is therefore no reason to take theoretical physics into the logical debate of kalam. Some of these ideas are no more than silly, and not absolute truth. Even Hawkins states plainly in his book “A brief History of Time”:

“Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis; you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation which disagrees with the predictions of the theory (P. 10)”.

The physicists of today are philosophers of yesterday, empowered by the technological success of physics. They use this power to fool people into accepting even their ideas that are metaphysical - atheism, agnosticism, sophistry - hiding behind the achievement of physics, sometimes disguising them as physical theories. They do this just as the philosophers of yesterday did the same in light of their skills in mathematics, until the kalam scholars drove them into the corner. Today this is not happening, because the muslims are weak, and highly qualified kalam scholars, capable of critical thinking, are extremely few.