Oh Kalamity — a cosmological debunking

The Kalām Cosmological Argument is a favourite of William Lane Craig. It's formulated in such a way as to preempt objections, though as I've previously mentioned on numerous blogposts this disingenuous wordplay — an attempt to insulate the argument from criticism — fails.

This great video is as comprehensive a take-down of the Kalām's flawed logic as we're likely to see for some time — at least until some new cosmological theory emerges from legitimate science. The analysis and arguments presented here are thorough, properly referenced and in many cases from the very mouths of the cosmologists themselves.

http://youtu.be/baZUCc5m8sE


Here's the info on the video, copied from YouTube:

We hope this is the definitive take down of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. We show how it is contradictory and that the physics being used to support it doesn't do so. We also had this video reviewed by Marcus, one of the Cosmology Advisers on Physics Forums to make sure there were no errors, his words
"I think it is excellent.Your narrator comes across as really smart and personable....I don't see any glaring errors, really amazingly good
it's charming, intelligent, visually engaging, sporadically really beautiful like the brief cut of the Hubble telescope and the volcano etc. Well-made!"

And here's what P. Z. Myers says in his Pharyngula post (credited to Skepchick) that alerted me to it:

This is a wonderful video debunking the Kalam Cosmological Argument. What I really like about it is that it takes the tortured rationales of theologians like William Lane Craig, who love to babble mangled pseudoscience in their arguments, and shows with direct quotes from the physicists referenced that the Christian and Muslim apologists are full of shit.

Watch and enjoy.

Everything and Nothing — Professor Jim Al-Khalili

We've had Professor Brian Cox's latest wondrous TV series ogling different aspects of the universe — and very splendid it was too. But I'd like to recommend a shorter and perhaps more focussed series recently broadcast on BBC Four. This was Professor Jim Al-Khalili's two-parter Everything and Nothing.

Two-part documentary which deals with two of the deepest questions there are - what is everything, and what is nothing?

In two epic, surreal and mind-expanding films, Professor Jim Al-Khalili searches for an answer to these questions as he explores the true size and shape of the universe and delves into the amazing science behind apparent nothingness.

The first part, Everything, sees Professor Al-Khalili set out to discover what the universe might actually look like. The journey takes him from the distant past to the boundaries of the known universe. Along the way he charts the remarkable stories of the men and women who discovered the truth about the cosmos and investigates how our understanding of space has been shaped by both mathematics and astronomy.

The second part, Nothing, explores science at the very limits of human perception, where we now understand the deepest mysteries of the universe lie. Jim sets out to answer one very simple question - what is nothing? His journey ends with perhaps the most profound insight about reality that humanity has ever made. Everything came from nothing. The quantum world of the super-small shaped the vast universe we inhabit today, and Jim can prove it.

Available on iPlayer for a limited time:

Everything:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00yb59m/Everything_and_Nothing_Everything/

Nothing:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00zwndy/Everything_and_Nothing_Nothing/

For those beyond the reach of iPlayer, both programmes are available on YouTube (but expect them to be pulled soon):

Everything — Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psHPx4YezdE

Everything — Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQEHOuokWV8
Everything — Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4biSl7Fu04
Everything — Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDGxRrSkdNU

Nothing — Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiIaJ0hacwc

Nothing — Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45-XOBzoO-Y
Nothing — Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiWpb_v26dc
Nothing — Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWPzhQFL17w

In the words of Sir Arthur Eddington, "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine."

Marcus chown at TAM London 2010

Into the second day of TAM London with Marcus Chown and his Ten Bonkers Things About The Universe:

Among these bonkers things were the fact that the entire human race would fit in the volume of a sugar cube; if the sun were made of bananas it would be equally hot; 98% of the universe is invisible; and you age more slowly on the ground floor of a building than on the top floor.

Marcus went through his ten items at some speed, perhaps mindful of the necessity of engaging his audience on a Sunday morning after a possibly late night, and he therefore didn't go into much detail. Probably he could have done a complete presentation on each item. He paced the stage rather than standing at the lectern, and his slides were varied — though naturally had a cosmological emphasis. He book-ended his talk with audio-visuals that included music from Elton John and David Bowie. This was a good start to the second day.

Knowledge and faith are not remotely the same thing

On this morning's Thought for the Day the Rev Tom Butler, who claims to be trained in both science and theology, said this:

One physicist has written: "Our measurements point to a universe filled with a kind of matter which we've never seen, propelled by a force which we don't understand." If believing that isn't faith, I don't know what is.

It might help if Tom Butler had been trained in logical thinking as well. The unnamed physicist is clearly making a statement about a lack of knowledge, and it is revealing that the cleric interprets this as faith. Cosmologists speculate about about the nature of the universe, and see that their knowledge about it is far from complete. Clerics may speculate about the nature of God, and with even less knowledge go on to claim that they know in detail what this deity wants you to do with your genitalia.

Sorry to labour the point, but I find it frustrating that this has to be pointed out yet again. Cosmologists may indeed suggest that the universe is largely composed of quantities of matter and energy that they know next to nothing about. But they then go on to suggest how this stuff might be accounted for. They hypothesise. They speculate. They calculate. They test.

Theologians, on the other hand, faced with something about which they have a comparable lack of knowledge, do not do this. They just make stuff up.

Thought for the Day is available as a podcast feed here:
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/thought/rss.xml

or from iTunes here:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=261779755

(BBC podcasts, like the iPlayer streams, usually expire after seven days, but all the Thoughts are available for audio download as mp3s on the TftD archive website.)