Ajita Krishna Dasa: Quite a few atheists suggest that the universe could have created itself and therefore does not need a God as an explanation for its existence. The famous New Atheist Daniel Dennett makes this claim in his book “Breaking the Spell”. However, a closer look reveals that this claim is self-contradictory. For a thing to create itself it had to exist before it existed. In other words it had to both exist and not exist at the same time. But this violates one of the fundamental principles of logic, namely the law of non-contradiction which states, in the words of Aristotle, that “one cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time”. In other words, a thing can’t both have the property A and the property not-A in the same context. My bike, for example, can’t both have the property of being “black” and the property of being “not black” in the same context. Similarly a universe can’t both exist and not exist in the same context. We thus have to reject the idea of a self-creating universe.
Hare Krishna,
Please accept my humble obeisances. All Glories to Sri Sri Guru and Gauranga!
While I agree that the idea of a self-created universe is absurd, unfortunately among the scientifically “enlightened” your argument may be considered a bit ineffective at proving this. According to quantum mechanics it is indeed possible for an object to inhabit multiple states (possess contradictory qualities which appear to be mutually exclusive), and this way of thinking is very popular now (search for “Schroedinger’s Cat” for more detail on this).
The modern student of physics is so conditioned that the contradiction inherent to the notion of a self-created universe does not preclude it being true.
Not long ago holding such beliefs would have been considered a psychiatric symptom, but sadly today it is the norm…
Pamho, agtSP!
I don’t think they are capable of applying that in a scientific and/or philosophical way to the universe. As far as I know they usually don’t apply the “laws” of quantum mechanics to other areas – maybe because they know accepting that the laws of logic are not true will cause havoc in our world views and scientific pursuits. Because then anything can be true and false at the same time. Besides that there are at least 10 competing theories of quantum mechanics, so I would reply that they should sort their speculation out before using them to support what they would like to be true. But even if they open up for the idea that some things doesn’t work according to the laws of logic maybe we can use that to push them towards Krishna acintya-sakti. Further, just becuase something is possible doesn’t make it a good explanation or scientific. So if they postulate that the universe could create itself they have to offer us some evidence.
Ys, AKD
For the “Big Bang” to happen requires that scientists are able to make Quantum Mechanics – which deals with the microscopic level – compatible with the General Theory of Relativity – which deals with the macroscopic level. So far mathematicians have not been able to reconcile these two theories; they are mutually incompatible with each other. So while what Indulekha Mataji says about “Schroedinger’s Cat” may be possible in Quantum mechanics it is not possible in the General Theory of Relativity.
About 15+ years ago I read Dennett’s book on philosophy of consciousness, which was pretentiously entitled “Consciousness Explained”.
Of course there was no real explanation. His own pet program was a kind of warmed over behaviorism, in which the whole “internal” experience of consciousness is simply ignored because science does not have tools for dealing with it.
I did find the book had interesting anecdotes from experimental cognitive science, and a kind of lopsided and incomplete survey of some of the major topics and controversies in Philosophy of Mind.
[I think this is a great area of specialty for devotee/philosophers.]
I think I’ll pass on Mr. Dennett’s latest contribution to popular atheism. They all say the same thing, these guys: asatyam apratistham te jagad ahur anisvaram aparaspara sambhutam kim anyat kama-haitukam.