Bribase wrote:Hack is right on a macro level of course, but we have good reason to say that on the sub-atomic level things genuinely do pop into existence as a product of stochasticity.
A couple of things wrong with this, and while they are not huge errors, they are fundamental, and actually lend validity to the position you cited:
1. Stochasticity doesn't produce anything. Stochasticity is not a prescriptive principle, but a description of the evolution of certain types of system. The only sense in which it can be described as prescriptive is in the sense that the future evolution of the system is restricted by fixed parameters and 'adjacent space', which is to say the space of the adjacent possible. To simplify, a stochastic system is one in which the future emergence of the system is determined by the initial (current) state of the system and one or more random variables. Here, random is employed in the sense of 'statistical independence', which makes any given change in state of comparable probability to any other.
2. What happens on a quantum level is that particle pairs pop into existence, except that they don't actually pop into existence, they represent a change in state, governed only by the uncertainty principle.
Let's try to deal with this in a simple fashion, if that's possible. I'm not sure, because I have been honing my explanations of this for several years and I'm still struggling to encapsulate it in a snappy fashion that doesn't turn into tl:dr.
What virtual particle pairs represent is a change in state of energy, borrowed from the fabric of spacetime, essentially in the form of pure energy. They do not constitute 'something from nothing' and nor do they necessarily constitute entities that are 'uncaused'. What they do represent is a change in state, and thus come under the initial criticism of Kraig's first rectally extracted blind assertion, namely that
anything, ever, began to exist.
Now bear in mind that Kraig is leaning heavily on several equivocation fallacies, firstly with 'beginning to exist', since he conflates a change in state with
ex nihilo beginnings (shoehorning the latter in when the audience's back is turned, already blinded by the truly stunning obviousness and common sense of the statement 'everything that begins to exist has a cause' (and supposing that 'common sense' is of any utility in elucidating the principles on which the universe appears to operate)), and secondly with regard to his use of the word 'universe'.
Kalam makes about as much sense as the syllogism:
1. All men have a mother
2. Therefore, mankind has a mother.
What do you reckon?
This is one of the hidden fallacies in Kraig's argument, namely the fallacy of composition. An informal fallacy, as it doesn't apply in all cases, but one of my major arguments against the Kalam Fallacy has always been that, while his point about beginnings may bear fruit (although as you can tell, I don't concede this point at all, for very good reasons that have bugger all to do with logic and everything to do with thermodynamics), applying a general property to entities existing within the universe to the universe itself is a folly, and for reasons that are demonstrable.