Ahh, how I love a former physicist talking nonsense about physics and people thinking he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about.

1. Cosmological models that contain a multiverse were not created because atheists wanted to defend themselves. They emerged as a conclusion from a group of other models in physics. Within that group of models, some are known to be correct and others look promising.

As a conclusion from a well-defined group of models, there are constraints on the number of universes in a multiverse that come from the models from which they were inferred. There is no one number of universes shared by every multiverse model ever proposed, but I don’t know of any model where we’re talking about a few hundred or a few thousand universes in a multiverse. We’re talking about 10 to the power of a few dozen up to a few hundred universes. In certain groups of models it’s even more than that, 10 to the power of 10 to the power of a very large number.

2. Yes, it is weakened. In fact, this argument is weakened by a multiverse even if there were no evidence and no physical model that made the existence of a multiverse seem realistic. Positing the existence of multiple universes adds more of something we already know exists—a universe. Claiming that there exists a god with the properties that such a universe-creating god would have is to base the explanation of the universe on something unfamiliar, alien, and disconnected from our experience and from our ability to study it. The proof of that is the progress we as a society have made in studying the universe over the last two hundred years, compared to the zero progress we’ve made in studying God over the last two thousand years.

I’ll add two points:

1. In my opinion the fine-tuning argument never gets off the ground at all, so there’s no need to propose any explanation for fine-tuning in the first place (God, a multiverse, or anything else). The argument as it’s presented among theologians—and certainly the way Michael Abraham builds it—is just one big pile of nonsense that boils down to the following observation, from which almost nothing follows: “If things were very different, then other things dependent on them would be very different.” Okay, and… what follows from that? Nothing about God, I claim, and really nothing in general.

2. I don’t buy multiverse models. As of now, they seem to me to be an interesting hypothesis by cosmologists that looks promising. Maybe in the future I’ll be able to say they’re probably true too. Until then, they’re only a promising hypothesis. Nice, interesting, and worth further development by researchers in the field, but far from established science.

I’m glad I gave you pleasure. I also really love blabbermouths who talk about models in physics and arguments in philosophy with second-grade reading comprehension. So now we both enjoyed ourselves. A draw.

Michi, why a draw? It’s not a competition. Each of us rejoices in the other’s joy, and thus redemption comes to Zion.

See? We agree that one has to be happy, and we found the common ground between the mountain of dispute.

Not a Cosmologist,
The reason I’m turning to you is first of all your gentle style, which spoke to my heart. Beyond that I wanted to ask a small content question on behalf of a mere mortal with no background in physics (me).
The claim of fine-tuning offers an explanation for what seems to me like a real philosophical and maybe even scientific problem. Why do you say there’s no problem?

Doron,

This paragraph is for Michi too. I apologize for the style. Right after I posted it I regretted the opening of my first comment. All that talk about “talking nonsense” was rude, especially when I’m a guest speaking about the owner of the house.

As for your question, I’m not sure what I can add beyond what I wrote in the previous comment that would move the discussion forward. Maybe the best way to clarify this disagreement is to try to start with shared concepts. What is the problem (philosophical, scientific, whatever it is in your eyes) that you think is on the table here? That is, what problem do you think “the fine-tuning claim offers an explanation” for?

I emphasize that I’m asking specifically about things that are a *problem*. Not a neutral observation of intellectual interest. What is problematic and solved by the fine-tuning claim, in your words?

I don’t know about Michi, but your new mild style is a bit of a disappointment… maybe I’ll manage to persuade you to return to your old ways.
As I understand it, the problem is very simple. Physicists agree among themselves that our universe was created ex nihilo from the singular point. As far as I understand, everyone agrees that before its creation there were no space and time and no physical laws (at least not laws in any accepted or intelligible sense for us). It seems to me that everyone also agrees that this universe contains a few very, very, very specific constants… without which life could not have developed (even if only on the outermost fringes of this universe).
From here the question is: what is the best explanation for the existence of those constants?
And the answer that claims to be the most reasonable (and in my eyes it really is the most reasonable, as far as I understand the matter) is that an intelligent designer was required to make this possible.

In any case, the basis of the discussion is first of all philosophical in principle and not scientific, since we’re talking about speculation about what preceded our physical universe.

Doron,
I’ll summarize the main point in one sentence: almost all the claims you made that you say everyone agrees on are not agreed upon by everyone, and those that are still do not amount to a problem that “fine-tuning” solves and alternatives to it do not.

In detail, I’ll say the following. Cosmologists do not agree among themselves that our universe was created ex nihilo from the singular point. I’ll assume for a moment that by “universe” you meant the universe of which you and I are loyal citizens, and not “everything that ever was or will exist” or something like that. Under that assumption, there is also no consensus among cosmologists that before the formation of the universe there were no physical laws. The opposite is true. If I adopt the other meaning of the word “universe,” then there is no consensus among cosmologists that the universe in that sense ever “began” to exist in any sense of the word “began,” including senses of “began” that take into account the absence of a time axis.

In addition, it seems right to say that the following two claims are completely consensual among physicists, not just cosmologists. They are certainly agreed upon by me, non-cosmologist and non-physicist that I am:
1. The equations that describe how fundamental physical objects behave in our universe depend on the values of a number of constants.
2. Changing the values of those constants from their known values would lead to predictions about the behavior of those physical objects that are very different from how they behave in the universe we live in.

Finally, it is not agreed by everyone, and certainly not by me, that life cannot arise in universes in which those constants have different values. Here I feel free to speak for myself and not claim anything about any consensus among experts in the field (though even here there is no consensus among cosmologists). To be precise: it’s not that I think the opposite of that claim is true, namely that there are non-negligible ranges of these constants of nature such that choosing values from those ranges would describe a hypothetical universe in which life could arise. I have no opinion on the matter. I’m waiting for an argument either way, which I’ve never found.

Bottom line: in the absence of agreement on what is agreed upon, I don’t think you’ve described a problem—certainly not one that “fine-tuning” solves and some “design-free” alternative does not.

We can move forward from here in two directions. One direction is to discuss the factual gaps between us about what is agreed and what is not. I’d be happy to substantiate, as best I can, everything I wrote on that matter, in whatever order you choose. The second direction is to try to ignore that disagreement and try to argue about some principle that you think we don’t agree on. I don’t know exactly what that principled issue is that we disagree on, but in light of what you wrote I hope maybe you have an idea. I’ll add that we can take both directions in parallel, but in my opinion it’s better to take them one after the other in whatever order you prefer.

Being is, and non-being is not.
And in a realistic version: everything that can exist does exist.
And if infinitely many universes are possible, then they exist.

Not a Cosmologist,
I’m having trouble understanding your claims. Something in your writing style (or in the way I’m reading…) isn’t connecting for me. Could you simplify?

I’ll say what I think I did understand:
You’re claiming that I don’t know the facts, which definitely could be true.

So I’ll ask again:

Is it not true that there is a scientific consensus around the Big Bang model?
Yes/No

Is it not true that prior to the formation of the universe in the Big Bang about 13.8 billion years ago there were no space and time and no physical law in the accepted sense that science and philosophers of science use those terms?
Yes/No

Doron,

The answer to the first question is yes, there is scientific consensus around the Big Bang model. The answer to the second question is no, the claim you described in that question is indeed not correct.

I’m very surprised to hear your answer to the second question. I’ve never encountered this before, and I’m interested to see whether readers here who understand physics can strengthen your point (or the opposite). But let’s assume you’re right and go with you. Now explain to me what exactly did happen or change in the Big Bang according to those models in which space and time and the laws of physics also existed “before” it.

I suspect I know where you’re going with this and I’ll allow myself to bet: you’ll adopt a sweeping naturalistic approach (maybe in the name of Ockham’s razor) and argue for the existence of “other” laws of physics that existed “before” the Bang. But that’s just a guess…

Doron,

To provide the explanation for “what exactly did happen or change in the Big Bang” etc.? That’s a huge task. Why should I try to do that? It’s not necessary for our conversation, for two reasons. First, remember that I’m still at the stage of trying to understand the following position of yours: fine-tuning solves some problem. If I provide that explanation, how will that help me understand the problem as you see it?

Second, I don’t see how it helps you understand my view of fine-tuning. My view of fine-tuning doesn’t depend at all on what I know about cosmology. We only got into this topic in the context of my attempt to understand what you are claiming. If in this question of yours you’re trying to understand my opinion on fine-tuning, it’s not really necessary. Just ask about my opinion on fine-tuning, as I presented it above.

I’ll add one side perplexity. How did you get to “naturalism” and Ockham’s razor? I wouldn’t use naturalism or Ockham’s razor to justify the various claims I’ve made about cosmology throughout our conversation. There’s no need. I would simply do my best to explain the relevant cosmological material. There are quite a few religious researchers in cosmology who are not infected with the disease of naturalism. They would not disagree with what I said earlier about cosmology. It is literally what is found in cosmology textbooks. It’s in the textbooks because these results are fairly old—from the 1960s to the 1980s of the previous century.

It seems to me that you’ve taken the discussion a bit backward. I already agreed with you that anyone who sees fine-tuning as a solution must first show what the problem is. But in order to show what the problem is, there has to be agreement on the factual basis—in this case, regarding the scientific consensus around the question of the beginning of the universe. Specifically, we need to agree that the scientific mainstream really does hold the position I attributed to it from the outset, according to which space, time, and all the laws of physics were created ex nihilo in the Big Bang. You argued that there is no such consensus, and I was very surprised and immediately ran to check myself… What I’ve discovered so far is that my initial assessment was actually justified: the alternative theories—those that deny the coming-into-being of the universe and of physics in general—are considered “exotic” (not mainstream).
Of course, it may be that once again I didn’t understand what I read…. But if I am right after all, then you are mistaken about the facts and we won’t be able to move forward.
I can share with you that I looked at Wikipedia, Britannica, and Scientific American, and that’s how I understood them. Maybe not perfect sources, but as a start they seemed fine. Those sources more or less see the facts as I do.

Of course, we can do what you suggested, namely that for the sake of discussion you accept the assumption that I’m right about those facts and from there we continue the discussion.

Here is a quote from Wikipedia. Since we already agreed that most scientists accept the Big Bang model, all that remains is to clarify whether it in fact says what I claimed.

“The Big Bang is a physical theory that describes the formation of the universe. According to this theory, the universe expanded from a state of ‘gravitational singularity’ in which gravity, density, and heat are infinite. The known laws of physics cannot describe this point in time, and only after Planck time (about 10-43 of a second) can they be applied. According to the theory, the first particles were created because of quantum fluctuations. The Big Bang describes the processes that occurred since then and from which the universe was formed, the dimension of time was formed, the dimensions of space, and the physical forces known to us today.”

Doron,
Okay, the bottom line of my response will be that it is absolutely not the consensus that “space, time, and all the laws of physics were created ex nihilo in the Big Bang.” If the sources you read say something that sounds like that, they are mistaken, though I think that at least in the case of Hebrew Wikipedia they are more misleading than mistaken. The reasoning, I hope, will teach people something. I’ll limit myself to four paragraphs and list my sources at the end. I’ll add that I think we should clarify this point all the way through, for two reasons. One is so there will be a record for future readers about the Big Bang and what is known about it. The second is because I’m asking myself whether anything remains of the fine-tuning argument once the claims you mentioned are themselves disputed. If you’re willing to cooperate, I’m now putting myself into “Socratic mode” in this conversation in order to examine that question.

I’ll begin with the facts as I know them. In a series of very important studies published in the 1960s and 1970s, Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose examined the conditions for the appearance of gravitational singularities, points at which the curvature of space-time is infinite. Broadly speaking, all the theorems they proved have the following form: given certain physical conditions, relativity entails that a singularity will appear (what comes after the “then” is only “sort of true,” but close enough for our purposes). These theorems are now known as the Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems. These theorems are not relevant only to the Big Bang, but also to black holes and perhaps to other contexts I don’t know. I’ll add that these are really beautiful mathematical results. I studied more mathematical versions of them (without the physics) when I studied (semi-)Riemannian geometry. That is the reason I know the little I know about cosmology.

What matters for us is that the Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems (and other singularity theorems, which I didn’t study) have assumptions. In situations where those assumptions are true, their conclusion is true and a singularity is expected to appear. In situations where they are not true, those theorems tell us nothing. By all accounts, we are probably in the second situation. For example, the biggest assumption of those theorems is that they take into account only the effect of general relativity. However, if one “runs the clock backward” and imagines what happens when the universe was very small, one reaches a stage where the universe is so small that the effect of quantum forces on gravity starts to become relevant. For brevity, I’ll call everything prior to that stage “the very early universe.” No one is sure what the effect of quantum effects is in that situation. There is no near-consensus among physicists on a theory of quantum gravity.

There are other assumptions in those theorems, and it turns out that there is an abundance of mathematical models of the very early universe that violate them, and even some observations that do not fit the idea that those assumptions are in fact true of the universe we live in. And so there are models of the very early universe in which a singular point never appears, other models in which there is a singular point but there is also “time before the singular point,” and yes, even models in which “time” “begins” at a singular point but there were still things that happened “before” the singular point (which is totally bizarre, and I find it amazing that such bizarre things can be modeled mathematically!). Some of these models are “classical,” meaning they take into account only the effect of gravity without trying to enter the quantum swamp. I read one such model in depth (it belongs to the family of bizarre models I mentioned. Did I already say how awesome I think it is that such things can be modeled??? It still amazes me). Others combine various hypotheses about quantum gravity. I tried to read one such model, but I didn’t understand it at all. In any case, as of four years ago, it seemed to me as an outside observer that there was lively discussion over the correct model of the very early universe and no single model had won sweeping support. I’d be shocked if that’s not still the case today, because we’d hear about any breakthrough in the main headlines of every newspaper.

All this information is the reason for the answers I gave you earlier. First, no cosmologist I’ve ever read thinks the universe was created ex nihilo. That doesn’t even appear in the Wikipedia quote you brought, and certainly not in anything I’ve read on the topic. Even in models in which there is a singular point in the very early universe, such a point is certainly not “nothing” but something very… thing-like. Second, there is sweeping agreement about what happened in the early universe from the stage when its size passed the threshold at which quantum effects on gravity become relevant. That is what I meant when I spoke about Big Bang theory and the consensus around it. What happened before that stage, in the very early universe? I don’t know, and it doesn’t seem to me that anyone knows yet. Third, what is certainly true is that no cosmologist thinks there were no laws then or no concept whatsoever of space-time. There is consensus around the opposite claim. The only model of the very early universe that I read in detail was precisely a model in which there is “time before the singularity.” All the models I’ve heard anything about are all models of the very early universe in which there is exactly what you’re claiming cosmologists think there wasn’t.

Where does our conversation go from here? I think it would be good to clarify this point all the way through, if only because of my curiosity about its implications for the fine-tuning argument.

Sources
———
Below is a list of the sources I read at the time. I debated whether to give them, because most of them are technical literature there’s no point in your trying to read. As a compromise with myself, I read a few relevant Wikipedia entries. After reading the Hebrew entry on the Big Bang, I’ll say that in my opinion it was written by someone clumsy and it is quite misleading. It badly needs a language editor, and some content editing wouldn’t hurt either. Try reading it again in light of what I said above, and maybe things there will take on a somewhat different meaning. The English entry is very nice as popular science, and there are also entries devoted especially to the question of the existence of a singular point in which pretty much everything I said above is mentioned, along with additions that didn’t fit into the four paragraphs I limited myself to.

Technical sources:

O'neill, B. (1983). Semi-Riemannian geometry with applications to relativity. Academic press.‏
A textbook in semi-Riemannian geometry, whose last chapter blew my mind with several really beautiful theorems, among them Hawking’s singularity theorem. That’s what led me to get a bit deeper into cosmology. I’ll note that I claim high-level knowledge only of what appears in this book.

Liddle, A. (2015). An introduction to modern cosmology. John Wiley & Sons.‏
The only cosmology textbook I actually managed to understand. Not 100%, because I’m not a physicist and they like to make life complicated with physical terminology. There’s a short chapter there on the existence of a singular point, and you’re welcome to look at it for elaboration on a few more points where the assumptions of the singularity theorems do not hold.

Hartle, J. B., & Hawking, S. W. (1983). Wave function of the universe. In EUCLIDEAN QUANTUM GRAVITY (pp. 310-325).‏
This was a model of the early universe that I kind of understood back then. I tried to reread it now quickly without much success. If I can’t manage it, I don’t recommend you try either, but there you have it.

The following English Wikipedia entries were quite a pleasure to read, if only because of their correct syntax. They say what I said above and more. Among other things, they mention the existence of models of the physics of the very early universe (what Hebrew Wikipedia calls “Planck time” in what you quoted).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang#Singularity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_singularity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_units#Cosmology

This is a fairly technical entry, but it goes into the very-early-universe model that I said I had read in detail back then. Pay special attention to the criticism of it that appears in the last paragraph. That should illustrate that there is no model of the very early universe about which there is consensus among cosmologists that it is the correct model.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_time#In_cosmology

Well, it seems to me that neither of us is qualified, at least at the moment, to get to the facts. True, your position is better than mine, but not by that much, I think… after all, this is supposed to be a relatively simple question (the scientific consensus). And I hope that someone here on the site who does understand will step in to help.

Still, a few remarks/questions:

Why do you say that the Wikipedia quote doesn’t strengthen my position? If it’s misleading, then fine, but if not, then on its face it does support what I said.

Second, maybe you’re aware of the following point, but if not, here you go: it’s not especially important whether there are many physical models (all the more so abstract mathematical models) competing with the “conservative” model I know. What matters at this stage of the discussion is only one specific point: are they seen by most of the scientific community as plausible, that is, as indicating the existence of a distinct reality (empirical or even metaphysical)?

Third, regarding the model that proposes the existence of time prior to “our” time (the age of the current world, about 14 billion years): it matters a lot to understand what exactly is meant. Is it a much longer but still finite period of time? Or is it the claim that time is eternal into the past?

Fourth, a philosophical note about the concept (scientific?) of a “singular point”: at face value this seems to be only a convenient image with didactic value, but it doesn’t seem to have real cognitive content. I’m also not sure that the scientific claim that there is a state in which there is infinite heat and infinite density really fits with what I know about the scientific theories we have today. I hope someone will correct me here if I’m mistaken.

Doron,
I’ll start with your remarks/questions, in the order they appeared. At the end I’ll say something about your opening comments.

—

First, in the quote you brought from Wikipedia there is no mention at all of the idea that things were created “ex nihilo,” so an important piece of what you claimed is not supported by it. Also, I’ll remind you again that a singular point is entirely something that “exists,” and cannot be described as “nothing.” Even if we use Hebrew Wikipedia as the sole source, I think the talk of “ex nihilo” should be abandoned.

Second, I’ll try to explain why I think the Hebrew entry is misleading. Compare, for example, the following from the opening paragraphs of the English entry versus the Hebrew entry. From the English entry:

The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model explaining the existence of the observable universe from the earliest known periods through its subsequent large-scale evolution.[1][2][3] The model describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature,[4] and offers a comprehensive explanation for a broad range of observed phenomena, including the abundance of light elements, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, and large-scale structure.

From the Hebrew entry:

The Big Bang is a physical theory that describes the formation of the universe. According to this theory, the universe expanded from a state of “gravitational singularity” in which gravity, density, and heat are infinite. The known laws of physics cannot describe this point in time, and only after Planck time (about 10-43 of a second) can they be applied.

I tried to emphasize the parts where there is a gap between them, and I hope that comes through. To make sure the gaps are clear, I’ll spell them out. In the Hebrew version it is claimed that the Big Bang explains the formation of the universe, but according to the English version it explains the development of its current state from a certain stage onward (what I called above the early universe, as distinct from the very early universe). In the Hebrew version the Big Bang begins at a singular point in which the density of matter and the heat are infinite, whereas in the English version it describes what happens from a state in which their density is “high.” In short, if all a person reads is those opening remarks in Hebrew Wikipedia, it’s easy to get the impression that you were indeed right in what you said earlier.

However, the facts do actually come through later in the Hebrew entry. Under “Singularity” it says there:

When the expansion of the universe is estimated backward in time, one reaches the result that the density of matter and the temperature were infinite at some finite time in the past.[1] This singularity indicates that general relativity does not adequately describe the laws of physics in this context. The ability of models based on general relativity to estimate the singularity is doubtful, certainly not in the time before the end of the Planck epoch (10-43 seconds from the beginning of the Big Bang).

That primordial singularity is sometimes called “the Big Bang,” but the term also sometimes refers to the primordial, dense, and hot stage of the universe. In any case, one may refer to the “Big Bang” as an event, in colloquial language, as the “birth” of the universe because it represents the point in history at which the laws of physics as we understand them (especially general relativity and the standard model), including time itself,[2] began to play a role.

So the description in the introduction is clearly qualified later in the article by the facts I mentioned in my previous response. In my opinion, any reasonable reader would ask whether according to Big Bang theory there was a singular point or not, and that would be a reasonable question when one takes into account everything written in that article together. In addition to its general clumsiness, that’s why I think this article is badly written, and I don’t find much comfort in the fact that the facts I described in my previous response are indeed there. When I learned about the Big Bang, I learned what English Wikipedia says (or at least a mathematical version of it), without unnecessary confusions.

—

First, I don’t think your model can be described as a “conservative” model, because I don’t think it’s a model. You claim that there were no physical laws and yet things happened, and happened “ex nihilo.” I’m not even sure that’s coherent. Maybe you didn’t mean this, but it sounds like you’re saying things happened in the absence of anything that would make them happen. That certainly doesn’t make sense to me, and certainly doesn’t make sense to cosmologists.

Second, I don’t know what “a distinct reality in your eyes” means, so I’ll say the following in the hope that it answers your question. All these models purport to describe the reality in which we all live. Because models of the very early universe predict specific things and have specific properties, one can estimate how well each of them is supported by the available evidence. Evidence that exists in our reality, the one in which you and I live. In cosmology there are a number of measurable phenomena that every model has to explain and predict, and a number of theoretical criteria they have to meet. The reason no model has become the consensus is precisely because they all succeed in doing that only for some of those phenomena and meeting only some of those theoretical criteria, but not all or most.

That is typical of every open question in every scientific field: competing hypotheses compete, and the one that crosses the finish line and becomes the consensus in the field is the one that succeeds in explaining/predicting all or the overwhelming majority of the phenomena that needed to be explained/predicted, and even succeeds in predicting phenomena that had not previously been measured. My impression is that the state of cosmology today is that what happened in the very early universe is a partially open question. We know in what directions the answer probably lies, but there is still a fair stretch of research ahead to find the model that truly crosses the finish line. What is certain is that these are hypotheses about the reality in which you and I live, and they are tested against findings in the reality in which we live.

—

Pulling an answer from memory: in the specific model I mentioned earlier, “time” is infinite backward. There are models in which time is finite backward. I’ll add that you won’t necessarily like the models in which time is finite backward. Time being “finite backward” is not equivalent to “there is a first moment of time.” Time can be finite backward without there being a first moment. I know such models exist, but I never studied them in depth beyond seeing some slide about them in a lecture by some researcher visiting the faculty or something.

—

A singular point is really not just a convenient image. It has real content that I can understand, and people with a background similar to mine can certainly understand it. I know physicists understand it better than I do, because I understand only the mathematical formulation of the concept and they also understand its broader physical context. In any case, it is a concept well-defined mathematically in several ways, and the idea that it lacks real content sounds to me like saying that the word “table” lacks real content.

—

I’ll return to your opening comments. In my eyes, the statement that neither of us is qualified to get to the facts is strange and dispiriting. I admit that I’m in a rather unique position. I have background in things most people don’t and won’t have, and I enjoy fairly easy access to experts in a range of fields. It’s easier for me to find out what researchers in fields different from mine think. Still, I don’t think that should grant exemptions to you or anyone else. What is this hands-in-the-air approach??? If the topic interests you, and it clearly does, then investigate. Finding out whether what you said earlier is true or false should not be beyond you or beyond any person of average intelligence or above. Nor would it be months of drudgery. You could probably do it right now, in under 24 hours.

We’ve already seen that English Wikipedia doesn’t support what you said (certainly regarding “ex nihilo”), and I argued that Hebrew Wikipedia mainly confuses, but certainly doesn’t support what you said. That’s Wikipedia, a pretty accessible source, and it has already said something on the matter. This is true more generally. I’ve been in academia about a decade, and during that decade I discovered that research in general and science in particular are quite accessible, if you know where to look. Universities have information pages that try to present their research fields accessibly. Lots of cosmologists have written popular science books on the topic, popular-level articles, and more. Experts also tend to be pretty accessible. If you want to know what cosmologists today think about a question, you can find some at research university websites and send them an email. Cross-check their answers with what you’ve read. What’s certain is: there is no reason to give up. These are all things you can do right now and gain some insight into the issue in a single afternoon of reading.

In my opinion, the hard part is not finding out what is correct in cosmology. The hard part is standing on the implications of that for other things that interest us. In my experience with myself, that tends to be harder for me than finding out what is correct. It’s kind of the difference between buying the ingredients for sushi and actually making it. That leads me to a question I’ve been thinking about since last night and I’m totally curious about. Does the fine-tuning argument really fail to get off the ground if what I said about cosmology is correct? That is, if we assume the universe was not created “ex nihilo,” there were laws of nature in the very early universe (whatever they were), if there is no consensus around whether the universe began, and all that—can one really not build a fine-tuning argument? More and more, I’m inclined to think that even if we accept all these things, there is a version of this argument that would get off the ground. At the very least one can build a version of this argument that is no worse than the versions I know. To me that means the argument would still be mistaken, but at least it would be there and one could discuss it. Maybe I’ll try to build one in the future.

I openly admit: based on the knowledge each of us brings, your answer seems more reasonable at the moment. If that’s so, then basically I have to accept, at least for now, that there isn’t really a problem and therefore the fine-tuning argument as a solution to it can’t really take off. One-nil to you.
(It could be, as you say, that one can still propose “fine-tuning” even on the basis of models of an earlier universe, but right now I have no idea how to do that.)

The problem is that this doesn’t fit with the reading material I’ve read for many years—especially the philosophical material. So please don’t rejoice too much over your victory… I’m going to investigate a bit more deeply whether the facts are indeed as you say.

That said, I want to correct you: I didn’t claim that things happened ex nihilo just like that, but ex nihilo by the power of a transcendent factor (God) that brought them about.

The issue of the singular point is complicated, especially scientifically. What I tried to say is that it seems to me there are very serious philosophical conceptual problems here. For example, a point (we’re not talking about its mathematical concept) occupies size in space. If we agree—not sure we’ll agree…—that there was no space, then what is the meaning of talk about a “point”? Another question regarding its infinite “density”… can there scientifically exist a “body” made of matter or energy that has such density? The same regarding infinite temperature… does that have empirical scientific meaning?

I repeat my proposal that you deal with the hypothetical question I raised: suppose I am right and everything began ex nihilo about 13.8 billion years ago. And when I say everything, I mean everything: time, space, physical forces, particles, and anything you can imagine.
Would you then think there is a problem here for which fine-tuning may serve as a solution?

Doron,
You disappointed me very. For some reason you’re listening to everything Not a Cosmologist claims. Since I studied the subject at university and not on Wikipedia (true, it was part of an introductory course and not anything too serious, but that’s certainly more reliable than Not a Cosmologist), I feel I can speak about the topic with a bit of confidence.

The Big Bang does indeed claim that the existing space began at a certain point (time has no meaning without space, meaning time also began at that same point—that’s according to what I understand), from which all space expands. (That was also proven with cosmic background radiation.)

And indeed, as you wrote, “the singular point” is not really something known. The idea is that this is the point at which all space began, but scientists do not really know what was at the point itself (and of course they don’t know what was before the point either; there are all kinds of strange hypotheses). Certainly infinite temperature and density are not a precise scientific concept (that’s to the best of my understanding). Rather, the intention is that the point was extremely dense and had a very high temperature.

And it’s a shame that Rabbi Michi didn’t enter the discussion and make mincemeat out of Not a Cosmologist. It would’ve been nice to see that.
As for the beginning of the discussion, the many-worlds theory is a hypothesis for understanding quantum theory in reality. An alternative to the theory in which the wave function collapses to a particular eigenstate. To claim this is a proven model is complete nonsense, and to the best of my knowledge it also isn’t the model most physicists in the world accept.

Yishai,
(Are you the Yishai I discussed the historicity of Jesus with?)
I’m very glad for your comment, and it’ll be interesting to see whether Not a Cosmologist responds to it.

Doron,
I am indeed that exact same Yishai. (Why did you really stop that discussion?)

Doron,
Don’t worry. I’ll postpone the victory celebrations forever. I doubt I’ll repent because of this conversation, and I doubt you’ll become an atheist, and I doubt we’ll solve here the riddles of the early universe or the riddle of God’s existence. This is an internet discussion between two strangers. As long as the conversation is decent and there’s potential to learn something from it, that sounds to me like victory enough. Certainly compared to most internet conversations between strangers.

I said earlier that I’m starting to think there is a way to build a fine-tuning argument despite the state of affairs in cosmology. However, that would be specifically by “disconnecting” the argument from cosmology. In a certain sense, I think what passed through my head is a kind of attempt to make the fine-tuning argument more like the cosmological argument. It’s not sitting very well in my head yet, so I’ll give it some time to sink in. I’ll mention it again if it fully “sinks in.”

I assumed that in your view things did not happen ex nihilo. However, you did attribute that to cosmologists. My only point is that this is not part of the consensus among cosmologists; quite the opposite.

Regarding the singular point and the conceptual problems that supposedly exist in the term. The bottom line is that one has to distinguish between the question whether a singular point is a concept with clear content and the question whether claims about a singular point at the beginning of the universe are true. I’m not sure that distinction is clear to you, given the wording of the questions you asked there, and after reading Yishai it seems to me it isn’t clear to him either. I’ll simply say where I stand with respect to those two questions.

I know only the mathematics here, and there is a mathematical definition that is perfectly clear to me of what it is to be a singular point (there is more than one, but this is one of the simpler ones for me). I can state it: a point in Robertson-Walker space-time at which the scale factor of the space-time metric tends to zero and its derivative tends to infinity (well, let’s hope my translation from English to Hebrew resembles how physicists would speak about these things in Hebrew). I have background in a relevant area of mathematics, so I know what all these words mean, though they probably sound like total gibberish to you. For me, this completely delimits the “semantic field” of the words “singular point.” That is, given these definitions, those two words “pick out” a very specific phenomenon, very well defined, and very much do not “pick out” the overwhelming majority of things one could describe with them.

The point I am sure of is that there is a very clear sense of what it means “to be a singular point.” The open questions are not the basic semantic question of what it is to be a singular point. There are reasonable answers to that question. The open questions in cosmology are questions such as the following, which we have already mentioned here. Is there, or was there, or will there be a singular point in the physical reality in which we live? If there was such a singular point in the very early universe, was there something “before” it? Was that singular point something static or dynamic, in some sense of those words? And many more such questions. What they have in common is their subtext: these are questions about what it is reasonable to infer happened in the very early universe, given the available evidence. These are the kinds of questions cosmologists deal with, and I very much do not. What is certain is that the discussion among them is not about whether a singular point is a concept with real content, because it is.

I’ll answer Yishai and then I’ll have to leave the conversation for about 48 hours. I still think it’s worth trying to develop a fine-tuning argument without needing any of this. Sounds like a pretty cool intellectual exercise. I’ll keep working on it in my free time. It sounds like you’re into dropping all the cosmology discussion and adopting your assumptions for the sake of the discussion. I’ll go with that. To align and mark a new direction for the conversation, I suggest you write again what the problem is that fine-tuning solves. You can quote yourself again if that’s convenient. The main thing is that it should be clear where we’re starting from and that I can forget everything we both wrote before. I’d also be glad if you’d say something about how fine-tuning solves that problem, because that would in any case be my next question.

Yishai,
I’ll respond to what seems to me to add something new to the conversation.

The existence of cosmic background radiation is absolutely a prediction of the Big Bang model, and measurements of it provide quite a lot of information about the early stages of the universe. Contrary to what you say, its existence provides evidence for a more limited claim than you think. When I described the Big Bang above, I said that according to it, in the early stages of the universe the density of matter and energy in the universe was very high. That high density is enough to predict the existence of cosmic background radiation. There is no need to assume that in the very early universe there was a singular point at which the density is infinite in order to derive that prediction.

Also, you are confusing two concepts of a multiverse that are different from one another and have no necessary connection. You are talking about the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. That is sort of the idea that our universe is a kind of “branching process.” At every stage in which a quantum event occurs, the universe “splits” into several parallel universes, in each of which a different outcome of the quantum process is realized. Or something like that. My knowledge of quantum mechanics is entirely at the level of “popular science” plus a bit of knowledge of the mathematical formalism, and no more. In any case, what is certain in my eyes is that the questioner in this post was aiming at the multiverse in cosmology, the idea that there is (or was) more than one universe. That is because that is the multiverse atheists speak about when they use it as a response to the fine-tuning argument, which is what he asked about. The two ideas are different from one another.

You made me curious about the possibility that perhaps some cosmologist tried to connect these ideas and examine the implications of the quantum multiverse for the cosmological multiverse. That sounds like an obvious direction to try, so I’d be very surprised if it had never been tried. I wonder what came of it.

Not a Cosmologist,
First of all, it seems odd to me that you’re trying to think up by yourself a successful formulation of the fine-tuning argument while you’re on the website of someone who wrote an entire booklet on the subject. (See the Notebooks of Faith, booklet 3 if I remember correctly.)
Second, it’s clear that you have much more mathematical knowledge than I do. But it seems that this is exactly where you stumble. You understand the concept of a singular point mathematically just fine, but the question is: when we translate the mathematical term into the physical world, what exactly does it mean? Infinite density? Do you understand the problematic nature of the concept? It’s some sort of point where it’s not entirely clear physically what’s going on.
I didn’t claim it has no real content. I claimed that scientists themselves also don’t know clearly what the physical reality is at that point.
Now to your claims about what I wrote.
First paragraph: as I understand it, the reason one arrives at a singular point is through calculations of relativity theory. What I claimed is that cosmic background radiation proves that all space expanded from one place with very high density. Meaning all space began from that point. (I assume you know why cosmic background radiation constitutes proof, but I’ll write it simply just in case. Because the radiation is the same in the same place throughout all space—with the exception of gravitational-wave effects—that means the density was throughout all space, meaning space expanded from one point where the density was very high, and from there space began.)
Second paragraph: I don’t know the multiverse claim from a cosmological perspective. I know the multiverse claim from a quantum perspective. Where can one learn about the multiverse from a cosmological perspective? (Though we’ve already moved on to something else in the discussion.)

From what is written in Wikipedia about the multiverse from a cosmological perspective, it all sounds like hypotheses and that there is disagreement among cosmologists and no consensus.

Not a Cosmologist,
First of all, I don’t understand your getting all tangled up around the problem of fine-tuning… everything has already been explained—where the problem is and what fine-tuning comes to solve. All this on the assumption that for the sake of the discussion you accept the facts as I presented them. Go ahead.

I’ll repeat my remark (and Yishai told you this too): it seems you don’t understand, or understand and ignore, the claim that even a successful mathematical model, however successful, is not enough. You also have to explain what empirical and metaphysical reality it describes. This claim of mine is relevant to the description of the singular point (of course only on the assumption that for the sake of discussion you accept the model I called “conservative”).

This is also where your claim comes in that:

one has to distinguish between the question whether a singular point is a concept with clear content and the question whether claims about a singular point at the beginning of the universe are true.

What’s the problem? Obviously one has to distinguish!!!

I have no idea regarding your version of the fine-tuning problem, and I have nothing clever to say to you about it.

Doron and Yishai,
Sorry for the delay in responding. Something that required attention from sunset to the death of the soul took me longer than I thought.

——–

Yishai,
With your permission, I’ll first answer the points that can be answered briefly.

First, Michi’s formulation in the booklet explicitly assumes assumptions that the version I’m trying to think about does not. In particular, he implicitly assumes several assumptions about cosmology and the physics connected to it. They are relatively general, but they’re still there, and I’m wondering whether one can build a version of the argument that doesn’t rely on them.

Second, I assume you want popular-science-level sources on the multiverse in cosmology. I know there are a million popular science books—way too many in my opinion, given that this is no more than a hypothesis with some promise. I’ve never read any of those books. I sent an email for you to a colleague closer to the field in the hope that he knows. In any case, the general recommendations I gave Doron apply here too. Because it’s such a popular topic, I’m sure one Google search will find you lots of sources; certainly some of them were translated into Hebrew.

I’ll add that the idea that there is no consensus on the existence of a multiverse in cosmology and its properties is what I told Doron. It is no more than a hypothesis with some promise, and no more. That is also what I said in my first comment in this thread. I don’t know what you think follows from that, but at the very least we can say we agree on that.

Now to my main point. I reread your comments, and I did so carefully. In light of my rereading, the rest of my response to you will make a multi-stage move. In the first stage, I’ll clarify that the way you characterize the consensus among cosmologists is vague. In the second stage, I’ll clarify that according to your own words, you are wrong about at least one of the following two claims:
(1) Doron was wrong to accept the way I characterized the consensus among cosmologists about the singular point.
(2) There is difficulty in “translating” the mathematical term of singular point into the physical world.
Specifically, you cannot hold both at the same time. Finally, I will argue and attempt to substantiate that point (2) is correct. I’ve already given my sources for my opinion about the consensus among cosmologists, so I don’t feel obligated to justify my view about that consensus here.

As an important introduction, I’ll begin by describing the nature of a singular point in the very early universe. In free words, to say that there was a singular point in the very early universe is equivalent to saying that the curvature of space-time at that stage in the history of the universe is infinite and space-time is a point, lacking “volume,” in which all the matter in the universe is concentrated. In particular, it follows that the density of matter is infinite, and also that “time” in the “normal” sense in general relativity loses its meaning at that point. Therefore one can say that in a certain sense time and space “begin” the moment one “emerges” from that singular point and the expansion of space-time begins. In the book by O’Neill I mentioned earlier, a mathematical version of that claim about density and time was proved (under the assumptions of what is called the Robertson-Walker space-time model, which is widely used among cosmologists).

At this stage, it is important that I sharpen the difference between the idea that there was a singular point in the very early universe and the idea that the early universe was very small. To begin with, in a very small universe the universe still has “volume,” and in particular it is not a “point” in which all matter is concentrated. Consequently, the density of matter in the universe is high but not infinite, and space and “time” in their normal senses in relativity still apply there and certainly do not “begin” there in any sense (I am implicitly assuming here that the universe is large enough that quantum effects on gravity don’t change things). All these properties are entirely different from the properties of the singular point I described above.

Throughout this whole thread, I argued that there is no consensus among cosmologists that at the beginning of our universe there was a singular point. The consensus, I argued, is that in the early universe space-time was very small, and the density of matter in it was very high. What happened before that stage is under discussion, with a number of hypotheses from various researchers in the field that sound promising. One of them is that earlier, in what I called in this thread the very early universe, there was a singular point. But according to me that is not part of the consensus among cosmologists. It is disputed.

This is where the vagueness in your comments comes in. In your first comment you expressed disappointment that Doron listens to everything I say. And indeed, you explicitly tried to explain to Doron what Big Bang theory says. However, when you did so, you borrowed elements from two completely different ways of characterizing the consensus among cosmologists. Sometimes you wrote things that sounded like the idea that there was a singular point in the very early universe, as if that were the consensus among cosmologists. Sometimes you wrote things that sounded like the idea that the early universe was very small, without there having been a singular point in the very early universe. From your text it is not clear which of these ideas is, in your opinion, in the consensus among experts. I will show that this is the case, and after that I will explain why when one forces you to choose one of them, you cannot hold both claim (1) and claim (2) together. You will have to abandon at least one of them.

To see the vagueness, one has to track your use of the word “point.” In your first response you said that “the Big Bang does indeed claim that the existing space began at a certain point.” You immediately added that “according to what [you] understand,” “time has no meaning without space, meaning time also began at that point.” Clearly, you are describing here a property of a very early universe with a singular point. It is not clear whether this describes “what [you] understand” cosmologists think, or “what [you] understand” about the topic cosmologists study. Either way, you are describing here a property of the idea that there was a singular point in the very early universe.

A few short sentences later, you characterized “the singular point” as “the point at which all space began.” That is consistent with what I quoted earlier and with the idea that there was a singular point in the very early universe. However, you added that “infinite temperature and density are not a precise scientific concept” and said that this is “to the best of [your] understanding.” You concluded with the words “the intention is that the point was extremely dense and had a very high temperature.” That is no longer consistent with the idea that there was a singular point in the very early universe, but rather with the idea that the early universe was very small. In light of the placement of the words “to the best of [your] understanding,” it is not clear to me whether the “intention” you are talking about is yours or that of cosmologists. That only intensifies the vagueness.

In your current response, you are again vague about your use of the word “point.” What is especially amazing here is that within two sentences, you borrow elements from two completely different ways of describing the consensus among cosmologists! Thus, for example, you wrote that “cosmic background radiation proves that all space expanded from one place with very high density.” That sounds as though you are speaking about the idea that the early universe was very small. But then in the next sentence you add the words: “Meaning all space began from that point” (emphasis mine). But that is a property of the idea that there was a singular point in the very early universe, so you cannot use the word “meaning” here! That is explicitly not a property of that idea.

You sound confused and vague to me about what you yourself are trying to claim, repeatedly mixing two things into a kind of cosmological shaatnez. I am forced to impose a choice on you. Choose one of the following two ways to describe the consensus among cosmologists. One way is to claim that the consensus among cosmologists is that in the very early universe there was a singular point. The second way is that there is no consensus among cosmologists around the existence of a singular point, and the consensus is only that the early universe was very small. You must choose only one of these two options, because they contradict one another.

This leads you to your dilemma concerning claims (1) and (2). If you choose the second way of characterizing the consensus among cosmologists, then you agree with what I said to Doron on the matter. Since that is the only open thing you explicitly disputed in what I said in your original response, we have resolved the whole “don’t listen to Not a Cosmologist” matter, because we are saying the same thing. I’ll add that Doron shouldn’t listen to either of us, but should investigate these things for himself. There is enough material on the internet at the popular-science level.

Things become more interesting if you choose the first way of characterizing the consensus. I’ll examine that in detail. In your last response, you said something very general that is sort of true. Sort of. Not really. You said that “it’s not entirely clear physically what’s going on” at the singular point. This is true only in the following specific sense: there are open questions in cosmology about that singular point. Among those questions is whether at the beginning of the universe we live in there was such a point, and if so, whether something “preceded” it. I already mentioned the fact that there are such open questions about it earlier in my conversation with Doron.

If that were all you had said, I would say, “In a certain sense, I already agreed with that,” and close that issue in our conversation. However, it seems to me that you are trying to claim something stronger, but simply not saying it. I have no other way to interpret the question “when we translate the mathematical term into the physical world, what exactly is its meaning?” In those words, you are not explicitly claiming that such a translation, whatever it may be, is impossible. You are simply hinting that it is not, based on some vague difficulty in “translating” a mathematical term into the physical world.

I have two things to say about that. First, you cannot adopt the first way of characterizing the consensus among cosmologists and at the same time claim there is difficulty in “translating” the mathematical term of singular point into the “physical term.” Under the assumption that this is the way you choose to characterize the consensus, you yourself presented and used something that sounds exactly like such a “translation”: what you said about cosmic background radiation. If at the beginning of the universe all matter was concentrated at infinite density in a singular point and space-time expanded from that point, then indeed we would expect to discover cosmic background radiation. If that is not “translating” the mathematical term into the physical world, I don’t know what is.

Second, regardless of what you think on the matter, one really can build a model of our universe in which there is a singular point in the very early universe and predict from it the existence of cosmic background radiation. Regardless of which way you choose to characterize the consensus among experts, one absolutely can do this: one can develop a model that begins with a singular point and predicts the existence of cosmic background radiation. As I explained in an earlier response, it is a mistake to think that cosmic background radiation “proved” the existence of such a singular point, but that does not contradict the fact that such a model can be built.

So what exactly are you claiming when you speak about the difficulty of “translating” the mathematical term of singular point into the physical world? What is that difficulty of translation you spoke about from mathematics to the physical world? That final question is critical in light of the fact that it seems possible to translate “singular point” into the physical world in a way that allows one to answer very “physical” questions like “what would we expect to see in the universe if it began from a singular point?” I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I want to know. You need to substantiate that such a “translation” difficulty exists, especially if you think that one can indeed infer the existence of cosmic background radiation from the idea that in the very early universe there was a singular point.

I’ll end this whole response with a roadmap. In your reply, please answer the following questions in order to dispel the lack of clarity and put the conversation on a clear track, one that can clarify exactly what we disagree about (and maybe we agree on everything?):
1. Which of the two ways of characterizing the consensus among cosmologists do you choose?
2. What, in your view, is it to “translate” a mathematical concept into the physical world? Can you provide at least clues to what counts in your eyes as such a translation?
3. Do you agree that one can predict cosmic background radiation from a model of the very early universe in which there is a singular point?
3.a. If not, why?
3.b. If so, is that a “translation” of a mathematical concept into the physical world?
3.b.a. If not, why?
3.b.b. If so, what do we disagree about when it comes to the place of the singular point in cosmology?
I think the conversation between us will move in a more promising direction if you answer these questions.

Doron,
Regarding the singular point, see what I wrote to Yishai. I’ll add that, like the “challenge” he raised about “translating” the mathematical concept into the physical world, you too are presenting another challenge that is not well defined. If “also explain what empirical and metaphysical reality it describes” is equivalent to showing that this model is in fact correct, that it really describes the history of the universe in which we all live, then yes, we agree that this is an open question regarding a singular point.

Still, because of your word choice in several places throughout this conversation, I get the impression that that is not the challenge you meant. If that’s the case, then, like Yishai, who needs to explain what that “translation” he talked about is, you are invited to explain what in your eyes it means “to explain empirical and metaphysical reality” that a model describes. I’m only self-taught in philosophy, so maybe I’m missing some subtle point. Still, the meaning of phrases like “empirical and metaphysical reality” escapes me, and I haven’t the slightest idea what it means “to explain” such a reality. We don’t have a shared language here, and you’ll need to explain yourself in a language I understand.

Okay, all this is very interesting, and you and Yishai are welcome to keep having this conversation with me in parallel. In the rest of this response I’ll discuss what you wrote about intelligent design. I’ll quote the things I’m about to respond to explicitly:

As I understand it, the problem is very simple. Physicists agree among themselves that our universe was created ex nihilo from the singular point. As far as I understand, everyone agrees that before its creation there were no space and time and no physical laws (at least not laws in any accepted or intelligible sense for us). It seems to me that everyone also agrees that this universe contains several very, very, very specific constants… without which life could not have developed (even if only on the farthest fringes of this universe).
From here the question is: what is the best explanation for the existence of those constants?
And the answer that claims to be the most reasonable (and in my eyes indeed is the most reasonable, as far as I understand the matter) is that an intelligent designer was required to make this possible.

I highlighted in your words what we agreed I am to adopt as an assumption for the sake of this discussion. I’ll add that you already added a certain qualification to this description. “Ex nihilo” doesn’t really mean “ex nihilo.” At one stage you wrote:

That said, I want to correct you: I didn’t claim that things happened ex nihilo just like that, but ex nihilo by the power of a transcendent factor (God) that brought them about.

I don’t know whether that will change anything later for me or for you, but it’s on the table.

I like to be orderly. It’s an academic disease. I’ll try to write in an orderly way what I identify in what you wrote above. Your starting point is some phenomenon with two components, a general component and a specific component:
1. General component. The universe—including space-time, matter, and the laws of nature—was created ex nihilo (with that qualification) from the singular point in the Big Bang.
2. Specific component. In the laws of nature there are constants of nature whose values must be very specific in order for life to develop.
I’ll call this two-component phenomenon “a universe specific for life came into being.”

You say that a universe specific for life came into being, and as stated I’m assuming for the sake of the discussion that this is true. You are looking for the best explanation for the coming-into-being of this life-specific universe. The answer that seems most reasonable to you is an intelligent designer. This is the stage where I’m not so sure what you mean: I don’t know in what way, in your view, “an intelligent designer” is an explanation for the coming-into-being of the life-specific universe.

I asked you to elaborate, but you seemed to think this was obvious and already said. It isn’t obvious to me, and past experience taught me that if one doesn’t agree on this in advance, it will become a dialogue of the deaf. So I’ll try to give specific content to the idea that an intelligent designer explains the universe. I’ll try to keep this content as general and broad as possible, and faithful only to the raw connotations of the words “designer” and “intelligent” in Hebrew.

This is the content I propose for the claim “an intelligent designer created the life-specific universe”: some being wanted to create a universe specific for life, had the power to design a universe specific for life, had the power to devise a plan that would lead to the creation of a universe specific for life, had the power to carry out that plan, and indeed carried it out. To say that the claim “an intelligent designer created the life-specific universe” is true is to say that the life-specific universe we live in was created by an intelligent designer in the sense I have just presented.

There are a few hidden assumptions in this description. I’m using words familiar to all of us from our inner world. I attribute desires to this being. It needs the ability to think in order to plan. It also has the ability to plan ahead and causal power to “move” things. For all these words to have meaning, I must assume at the very least that there is something similar between how I, you, and all human beings “want” things, “think,” and “plan” things, and what this being does. Otherwise, we don’t know what “design” is, and certainly not what an “intelligent” one is. It is less clear whether the causal power it exercises and the causal power we exercise are the same “kind” of causal power, but that is not a point we need to enter into. I’m not basing my critique of the fine-tuning argument on that point.

Do you adopt this description as the opening framework of the conversation? In particular, do you accept the way I described the phenomenon “a universe specific for life came into being,” and the way I described the explanation from intelligent design? I’ll add that even if you accept both, they seem to me fairly general, so you can always add details and refine them later. Still, I want to know in advance that at least this general and broad description really is what you have in mind. If not, please propose an alternative. The main thing is that there should be on the table some description agreed upon by both of us of the claim “an intelligent designer created a universe specific for life.” Without at least some general description, we will definitely talk past one another, as always happens.

If you think I didn’t understand your view correctly, it seems to me we should clarify that. If I did understand your view correctly, we can move to the next stage and I’ll begin building my counter-argument. I will presume to conclude at the end that there is no basis at all for claiming that it is most reasonable that an intelligent designer created the life-specific universe. In fact, I will argue that it is more reasonable that this claim is not true.

Not a Cosmologist,
It’s a little hard to respond to comments as long as the exile (and I thought I was long-winded).
As for the remark about Rabbi Michi, I have nothing to answer.
Regarding sources on the multiverse—I’m not interested in popular science. Most of the time popular science is populism and not at a sufficient level.
Now to the core of your argument in the response (afterward I’ll answer the questions). As you wrote, you didn’t understand the meaning of what I wrote about translating mathematics into physics. The intention is that we have a certain mathematical expression; the question is what the meaning of that expression is in reality. For example, take the Hamiltonian operator. Its eigenvalue is a number; now the question is what the meaning of that number is in the real world. The translation from mathematics to physics is to come and say that this eigenvalue is actually energy.
Now let’s move to cosmology. We have a mathematical object of something with an infinite value (density), and now the question is what the meaning of that is in the real world. Can there be such a thing as infinite density? I hope mathematics hasn’t warped your brain too much and that you’ll agree the answer is no (please spare me the explanation). So now we are left with trying to understand the meaning of our mathematical result. And the answer is that we’re talking about very, very high density. In short, my claim is that there is no difference between a very, very small universe and a singular point. The singular point, in physical translation, becomes a very small universe (from which space expanded and therefore time also began at that moment; this is part of the mathematical conclusion that we have no problem translating into the physical world). Therefore the whole difficulty falls away from the start.
Now to your questions:
1. As I answered above, the two methods are one and the same.
2. As I explained above.
3. Indeed. 3.a. Indeed this is a translation from the mathematical world to the physical world. 3.b.b. On what the physical meaning of the singular point itself is.
Therefore in my humble opinion there definitely is a consensus on the beginning of space (which also entails the beginning of time) from a certain point (at least in our space, if one doesn’t leap into all kinds of fantasies). And my two claims remain in place.
(Because you told Doron that there is no consensus among cosmologists that time and space—ours at least—began at some point, and I claim you’re mistaken and you don’t understand that even someone who claims the universe was simply a small universe is actually translating the singular point, and he too claims that that is where space and time began. Hope that came out clearly.)

Not a Cosmologist,
I’m going to skip the technical matters you brought up here, especially in your reply to Yishai, which I don’t understand and which aren’t important to the principled (philosophical) issue.
I appreciate your precision very much, but you’re getting a bit carried away and ending up in unnecessary hair-splitting. I’m saying this in the context of the question of the applicability of mathematics to the world, and specifically its applicability to “the singular point.” There’s no need to get tangled up here: even a successful mathematical model, however successful, does not necessarily say something about reality itself. For example, we all accept and understand the concept of minus 3, but if I’m missing 3 oranges, I won’t be able to describe that physically (is there a physical world of minus 3 oranges…???).
As for your formulation of my opening position (the entire universe was created ex nihilo by an intelligent designer, etc.) I “authorize” you to continue. You described my position more or less successfully. Please sharpen and shorten. Good philosophy tries not to pile on words..

P.S.
I still haven’t found good confirmation for your position regarding the scientific consensus about the Big Bang. I have of course found serious people who probably support your position, but I haven’t managed to understand from them whether they are in the minority or not. Sean Carroll, for example, seems to me an interesting and serious person (he is an atheist physicist who assumes that, in his opinion, what is most reasonable right now is to assume that the universe was not created in time but always existed).

Doron,
Regarding the P.S., I didn’t see what Sean Carroll said, but I assume it’s not exactly as you describe. It seems to me that everyone (the cosmologists) agrees that the space we live in began in the Big Bang (at that very, very small point; see my reply to Not a Cosmologist). Rather, Sean Carroll says that the Big Bang is a phenomenon that repeats itself, and basically the universe always existed and every so often it contracts and opens up again. As you understand, this is a hypothesis that comes after reaching the conclusion that space began from the Big Bang. Meaning he too agrees that space began from the Big Bang; the question is only whether before that there were additional contractions and expansions. (I tried to see his view from Wikipedia, but it was very brief and I couldn’t verify what his view is.) This is part of what Not a Cosmologist claimed there is disagreement among cosmologists about: whether there was something before the singular point. But everyone agrees that the space in which we exist was created as a result of that point (more precisely: a very small universe).

Yishai, I don’t feel authoritative enough to answer you on what exactly Sean Carroll thinks. I know he’s an atheist and a naturalist and opposes fine-tuning (at least in its theistic version, as I presented it here). The important point is that from his words it appears that there were always some physical conditions (and it doesn’t matter whether that was our space-time or something else) out of which our familiar universe grew. If that is true, then there was enough “time” to make it probabilistically possible for life-supporting conditions to emerge in the universe. In other words: if his physical hypothesis is correct, it may weaken the explanation from fine-tuning. I’m betting he’s still wrong, just elsewhere. In my opinion he smuggles metaphysical explanations in through the back door without noticing it, and just calls it a “scientific explanation.” But I need to study this a bit more before expressing a more informed opinion. There is a long and interesting debate between him and my favorite philosopher, William Lane Craig, on this subject. Here’s the link

Doron,
What you’re saying is kind of what I meant. From what I gather from people who make claims similar to his, they first see that our space began from a certain place and time, and then they assume there is no possibility that the world began at some point, and therefore they reach the conclusion that there is an expansion and contraction of the universe that repeats itself every so often. Meaning they assume what they need to prove without scientific proof. That’s my impression; maybe I’m wrong.
I see that this William Lane is very dear to you, because even in the previous debate you basically said exactly what he argued.

It may be that we agree.
As for William Lane Craig, I have to qualify that all my acquaintance with him comes from things he said (lectures on YouTube), not from reading his work. In that sense my impression may be somewhat superficial… Still, I don’t remember ever encountering a living philosopher with such an all-encompassing, systematic, and above all rational approach as his. That’s relatively new for me. I spent several years around the university, and my impression is that in philosophy departments (and probably in the other departments too) what mostly walk around are “technicians.” He doesn’t seem like that kind of technician.

Sorry it took me about two weeks to reply. During most of the first week I was just busy, and during the second I read material in order to understand whether there was any chance Yishai was right in what he said.

Doron,
I’ll start with the main thing. I’m glad you accept my description of your position. I’d be happy if you’d tell me what was less successful in the description I gave and how you would correct it. I doubt it will change anything in the continuation of our conversation. Maybe it will, but I’m more curious about the potential to improve such conversations with others.

In my previous message to you I gave clear content to the claim “a universe specific for life came into being” and to the claim “an intelligent designer created the life-specific universe.” I’ll now add to that clear content for the claim “an inanimate factor created the life-specific universe”: some inanimate entity had the causal power to bring about the coming-into-being of the life-specific universe, and this indeed happened. For the avoidance of doubt, the word “inanimate” here excludes intelligent beings, and “entity” here is in its broadest meaning—something that exists. To say that the claim “an inanimate factor created the life-specific universe” is true is to say that the life-specific universe we live in was created by an inanimate factor in the sense I have just presented.

In the absence of an explicit argument showing otherwise, the idea that an intelligent designer created the life-specific universe and the idea that an inanimate factor created the life-specific universe both explain the life-specific universe in the same way, and in both cases the explanation explains the thing explained fully. I emphasize: in the absence of an explicit argument showing otherwise. In particular, on the table are two hypothetical explanations for the coming-into-being of a life-specific universe. Hypothetical—not necessarily true. You think the first is the explanation most likely to be true, and from that derive evidence for the existence of God. I, later on, will presume to show that the second is the explanation most likely to be true, given the cosmological assumptions of the discussion. I’ll note that I infer from this nothing about the existence of God, because I’m on the fence about those cosmological assumptions.

Of course, I can live just fine with the idea that these are two explanations of the life-specific universe and that there is no argument deciding which of them is more likely true. That is not a position open to someone like you, who thinks the fine-tuning argument provides evidence for the existence of God. All this leads us to a certain gap in what you’ve written so far. You explicitly wrote that in your opinion the most reasonable explanation is that an intelligent designer created the life-specific universe. In particular, in your view the idea that an inanimate factor created the life-specific universe is less reasonable than the idea that an intelligent designer created it. Can you build an explicit argument whose conclusion is indeed that it is more reasonable that an intelligent designer created the life-specific universe than that an inanimate factor created it?

I emphasize that I cannot build a sound argument bridging that gap. All the ones that pass through my head are riddled with holes from beginning to end. What is certain in my eyes is that such an argument is needed. If you think otherwise, we’ll need to discuss that as a preliminary matter.

——

I’ll move on to things from our various side discussions here.

First, you said Sean Carroll supports my position. Just so I understand, which position is that? Specifically, does Sean Carroll think there is no consensus among cosmologists around what happened in the very early universe? If so, I’d be glad for a reference so I can look into it. It might make my life easier the next time I get into a discussion on the subject.

Second, regarding characterizing the consensus itself. I don’t know what sources to give you beyond those I already gave. I remember Liddle’s book as being really explicit on the lack of consensus regarding the existence of a singular point, and it’s the only direct source from the literature that I know and think a person without background could reasonably follow. It’s possible you could also read the relevant chapter without going into everything else, though I recommend going into the rest too, both for context and because it’s interesting. Beyond that, I’m not sure what else to give you. In very few scientific fields do people conduct surveys of researchers’ opinions and publish them, and when that happens it is mainly on topics of public interest (climate change, for example). What is in the consensus and what is not becomes clear by reading the literature itself. I think my characterization of the consensus is in line with reality, in light of my reading of the literature (see the update on the state of the literature as it emerges from my response to Yishai below).

Third, regarding verbosity, I recommend you read articles by William Lane Craig from any philosophical journal. If you thought what I write is hair-splitting, I wonder what you’ll think of his texts. If good philosophy doesn’t pile on words at the scale going on here, Craig needs to shorten quite a bit. In any case, I think my responses did their best to shed light on the disputed points in order to clarify them. I have no intention of apologizing for that, and it’s not going to stop.

Quite apart from that, because you like Craig, I can recommend a few of his articles that I like which deal with topics adjacent to what we’re discussing. In general, in my opinion it’s always better to read than to discuss with people. The quiet always helps me form conclusions and makes me feel less like I owe someone an answer and have to defend my opinion.

Finally, the mathematics thing. Whether you intended it or not, at the heart of what you wrote there is a distinction between two things, a distinction I’ll state explicitly:
1. The claim that a mathematical model describes reality.
2. The mathematical model itself and its mathematical properties in themselves.
This distinction is trivial in my eyes. My work requires me to recognize it all the time. I’m an applied mathematician. Most of what I do is empirical work, at the interface between mathematics and science (in my case, roughly biology, not physics).

I’ll add that this distinction goes very far. For some reason you focused on negative integers as an example of some mathematical object that does not necessarily “grasp” something in the physical world. This is also true regarding the natural numbers. In light of part (1) of the distinction above, the justification for “counting” and describing “accumulating oranges in hand” with natural numbers is only the fact that it actually works. Imagine that we live in a different world from the one we live in, a world in which if you have two oranges and I give you two more, we consistently discover that you have 3 oranges in your hand. In that world, we would not use the system of natural numbers and the usual addition operation defined on it to count oranges. In such a world, a model that did so would not correctly describe “orange accumulation.” We do not live in that world, and in the world we do live in the model of “orange accumulation” that uses natural numbers and their ordinary arithmetic operations does work. That empirical finding is precisely the justification for using the natural numbers and their ordinary addition operation to represent orange accumulation.

And now I’ll answer your question directly. There absolutely is a physical world in which you have minus 3 oranges. It is precisely the same physical world in which plenty of people have a negative balance in their bank account (overdraft). It’s our world. In general, when one models how much of X we have (for example, how many oranges or how much money), it is quite common to give a negative value the meaning of owing X to others. Is that a property of mathematics? No. It’s a model of “how much X we have” built on top of the standard addition operation of the integers. That is no different from deciding to “count” how many oranges are accumulating in our hand using the naturals and their ordinary addition. And again, this model is useful because it really does capture the behavior of things that exist independently of this model, things like how much money we have in our bank account and the orange balance in your orange store.

I’ll note that the main difference between these models is the range of things that are true of reality that each can capture. The “natural” model doesn’t capture orange debts. The “integer” model does. And both of them don’t capture the idea of someone receiving half an orange, even though that can absolutely happen in the reality we live in. For that you would need to move to using rational numbers and their standard addition.

In short, it is trivial in my eyes that there is a distinction between the claim that a mathematical model correctly describes reality and the model itself and its properties. My career depends on the existence of that distinction and on the fact that certain skills are needed to build a mathematical model with convenient mathematical properties that actually describes reality. That’s how I make a living.

So what were you trying to say? I don’t know. Do you know? In this part of our conversation there is a recurring phenomenon. You claim, and mostly only hint, that there are all kinds of supposedly “metaphysical” or “conceptual” or “content” challenges with things like a singular point. If memory serves, you used the first words I quoted, not me. Perhaps you also agree with Yishai’s terms and think there is difficulty in “translating” a mathematical concept like “infinite density” into physical reality. “Translation” certainly wasn’t my choice of words. As far as I can see, what all these supposed challenges have in common is that they are distinguished from the following open question in cosmology: was there even a singular point in the very early universe? The challenge you are pointing to is apparently some problem with the hypothesis that in our universe there was a singular point, a problem that doesn’t depend on whether that hypothesis is true or not. If you see a dependency between them, I assume it is in the opposite direction: if this challenge has no answer, maybe it tells us something about whether there was or was not a singular point in the universe. What is certain is that the dependency doesn’t seem mutual.

Do you really think there is such a challenge? It sounds like yes, so please spell out what it is. This is not the first time I’ve asked that and you haven’t done it, so I’ll elaborate a bit on what you need to do in the hope that it spurs you to action. State explicitly the metaphysical principle that infinite density violates, and provide an argument that it does indeed violate it. Actually write what that metaphysical principle is, in words. Do a conceptual analysis of “infinite density” that challenges the idea that it can “be located” in the physical world we live in. Actually analyze that concept and confront it with the concept of “being in the physical world” at the conceptual level. Or alternatively, explain in detail what it means in your eyes to “translate” a concept into physical reality and show that “infinite density” cannot be “translated” in that way. Actually build at least the skeleton of an approach for “translating” a concept into physical reality. I focused here on the concept of “infinite density,” but you can choose any other concept connected to a singular point that came up here.

I don’t see this challenge, and I’m your target audience, so please make an effort to communicate yourself better. If you are unable to communicate this challenge to others, I recommend taking seriously the possibility that it simply doesn’t exist. I’ll state explicitly that I believe no such challenge exists, and I’m very curious to discover otherwise. Until now I thought, and I still think, that all we have before us is an open scientific question about the existence of a singular point in the very early universe. It is an open question like any open question in science, and no more. It is open in the same sense that it should be an open question in your eyes whether I have a table in my safe room or not.

—

To conclude, I’ll note that if you want me to respond to something specific Yishai says in this thread, you’re welcome to ask me and I’ll consider it. However, know that in general I will ignore him in the future. I simply don’t care what he has to say. See my response to him for the reason.

Yishai,
I’ll begin with the bottom line, which will be very unequivocal, both on the content of the discussion and on the personal side. Everything you wrote about the consensus among cosmologists is simply detached from reality. This will be my last response to you on the matters we discussed, because I do not regard you as contributing anything to me on these matters. The conversation with you is, in my view, one of the bad examples of conversations between strangers on the internet.

And now the reasons. On a first reading of what you wrote, I raised an eyebrow. Broadly speaking, you claim that the consensus among cosmologists determines that “infinite density” is actually finite density, “there is a singular point where the density of matter is infinite” is actually “there is no such point with infinite density, but rather a point with very high density,” and “time began” is the same thing as “there was time before the time we say time began.” And so cosmologists have decided that in their field “there is” is actually “there isn’t,” “infinite” is actually “finite,” and something existed before it was created. And all this is somehow obvious to anyone whose brain hasn’t been eaten by mathematics, even though a kindergarten child knows the difference between “there is” and “there isn’t,” no mathematical background is needed to have some grasp of the abyss between the finite and the infinite, and who knows what it even means to exist before one is created. On the face of it, I thought it very unlikely that this is what cosmologists think.

Still, I said to myself, well, maybe I missed something in what I read in the past. After all, several years have passed since I studied O’Neill, and Yishai knows what an eigenvalue is and what Hamiltonians are, so he’s not ignorant. So I opened the literature and started looking. My initial conclusion only grew stronger: what you claimed is completely disconnected from what cosmologists actually say. It’s pretty amazing how far off you are. This is not a case where there is any doubt about something. Cosmologists were very clear and specific in their wording. They do not say what you say they say, and they are conducting a discussion about what I say they are discussing. Period.

Specifically, cosmologists have conducted and continue to conduct lively discussion on the following three questions:
1. Was there a singular point in the evolution of the universe? Singular point here, under the various definitions in the literature, as I define it, with everything you say it is not.
2. If so, what was its nature?
3. Whether yes or no, what can be inferred about the evolution of space-time?

Just a few examples. In one article Hawking and Ellis (1968) tried to show that there exists a singular point in the very early universe based on a certain singularity theorem combined with the measurements available at the time of cosmic background radiation. An article from 1971 tried to get rid of the singular point in their model while still obtaining a model in which things become very “compressed.” In other words, those cosmologists tried to build a model in which something fairly similar to what you think everyone thinks happens indeed happens, and not the thing that Hawking and Ellis’s singularity theorem showed happens (Nariai 1971). Others built models that tried to “bypass” the singular point in an attempt to answer all sorts of physical questions about the evolution of the universe in which it arises (for example, Hawking and Hartle in a 1981 article—which I think I already mentioned here—did exactly that). And all this without mentioning work within the theoretical framework of steady-state cosmology, which was still kind of alive in the 1960s.

This literature is incredibly rich, and this richness is not a “new” phenomenon. For most of this week I limited the time window on Google Scholar to articles published up to 1985. When I widened that window to expose myself to newer literature, it seemed to me that the main thing that changed was chiefly the richness of the ways to avoid or “characterize” singular points. (I especially liked an entire theory the existence of which I hadn’t known, which makes it possible to extend various geometric quantities to situations in which a semi-Riemannian metric “degenerates.” The most useful thing I got from all that reading.) In any case, all these researchers are doing one of two things. Either they are explicitly trying to violate the assumptions of theorems that determine that a “singular point” appears—that singular point being everything you claim it is not—or they are building models of space-time in a way that allows them to “look at” or “beyond” that singular point.

Looking at this literature under the assumption that you are right yields a truly bizarre result. According to you, cosmologists do not really think there was a singular point in the sense I’m talking about. So cosmologists think that “there is” means “there isn’t,” “infinite” means “finite,” and “things exist before they begin,” and all that. As said, that is already bizarre in itself. In addition, under your assumption, the researchers in the field built a rich research literature in which they never bother to write that by the words “singular point” they actually mean what you say they mean, while they explicitly write that they mean what I say they mean. They are discussing the existence of a singular point to this day, even though you claim its existence is in the consensus. According to you, this is an entire community of researchers in a state of deep schizophrenia. They never write what they really mean; they consistently write that they mean what you insist they do not mean, while at the same time conducting a discussion about what you think is consensus. This isn’t Genesis Rabbah. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, turns to you and says “I am a duck,” it’s a duck—and in this case, it has a singular point on its beak!

Another way in which you are detached from reality is your argument. You claimed what you claimed in the name of the delusional idea that only people with mathematics instead of neurons can imagine things like infinite density. Because of course it is clear as day that infinite density cannot be part of the physical world. As though mathematicians with no familiarity with the field invented the concept of a singular point, and not cosmologists. Come on.

This is a position floating in the free market of ideas on a cloud of fairy dust. You suffer from a misunderstanding I’ve seen many times before, even in myself. You don’t internalize that what-feels-true-to-you simply doesn’t matter and isn’t relevant in science. In science, people don’t sit on the couch and think thoughts like “infinite density doesn’t seem right to me, and anyone who thinks otherwise has had his brain warped by mathematics.” This is science, not an armchair-philosophy lesson or a psychoanalysis session. No one cares what seems right to you or not right to you, and certainly not about your psychological analyses. The only thing that matters is what you are able to provide an argument for. In practice, the concept of infinite density in the context of the Robertson-Walker space-time model is a well-defined concept that very smoothly (very smoothly!) extends the ordinary concept of density in physics. (Of all the things to get hung up on in general relativity and its applications, this is one of the more “intuitive” ones! And this is what bothers you???) In the context of this model there is even a rather trivial geometric interpretation of that concept. If you have difficulty understanding how one “works with it” and how to connect it to the real world, go back and study the relevant physics and mathematics, instead of wasting your time putting words into the mouths of the cosmologists who actually did that.

To conclude, listen: just not with me. I wasted too much time on this conversation without getting anything from it, and the way you write and the content of your words make it clear to me that this also won’t happen. The week I spent reading the literature was interesting at times, but there is no chance I would have devoted that time to this goal for no reason. Just go to Google Scholar, type in “singularity theorems,” and start reading the literature. You’ll find the articles I mentioned here and many others. The sources from the literature in this thread will also be very easy for you to find if you search the authors’ names and the year. Most of them are pretty famous. I recommend finding a good book on general relativity as background for reading this, because if I had trouble following the literature I looked at this week, I’m sure that will happen to you too.

Not a Cosmologist,
I fear your frustration with Yishai’s comments is quite similar to my frustration with your response to the main point of our discussion (what is the most reasonable explanation for the bursting-forth of the universe from the Big Bang). I’ll say again what I said, although it’s not clear to me why I need to do so…
If science indeed agrees that all of nature—space, time, matter, energy, particles—was created ex nihilo nearly 14 billion years ago, then from a principled philosophical point of view the most reasonable explanation is that there is a directing hand behind it. That is because the other explanations (physical determinism or randomness) are less reasonable. Physical determinism is not reasonable because according to that position there was not even any “physics” before the Bang, and therefore there is no meaning to talk of such determinism; randomness is not reasonable because, in principle, explanations based on such rare and special coincidences are less successful (though they should not be ruled out categorically).

If you continue to insist even now that there is no “explicit argument” on my part, then apparently you haven’t distinguished the main thing from the secondary thing, and therefore didn’t understand what the discussion was about in the first place. That’s how I see it; maybe I’m mistaken….

As for the side issues you raised, I’ll bring a response separately. Those really are side issues…

As for your treatment of Yishai, trembling and dread seized me at your words to and about him. I wouldn’t want to meet you in a dark alley and I hope that my mentioning his explicit name won’t seal my fate as it sealed his. ? On the other hand, I also had a very hard time with him in a discussion we conducted not long ago on a completely different topic…. Yishai, my apologies.

So regarding the side matters…

1. I don’t know what Sean Carroll thinks about the scientific consensus on our issue. I brought him up because I thought it would contribute to the discussion from another direction. I don’t know if it did.

2. Regarding that consensus, maybe later I really will check the source you referred me to.

3. If Craig is verbose unnecessarily, then I have criticism of him too.

4. I completely agree with you that in philosophy it’s always better to read a text than to hear a lecture.

5. Regarding infinite values that science makes use of (for example the supposedly infinite density of the singular point). Here, in my opinion, you are confusing a philosophical discipline (specifically branches like metaphysics and ethics) and a mathematical discipline with the sciences (in our case physics). Modern science makes borrowed, kosher, and very useful use of the concept of infinity, which it “borrowed” from the a priori disciplines (philosophy and mathematics). There’s no problem with that. The problem begins with the interpretation given to that move, when people like you mistakenly think that the source and meaning of infinity lie in the “phenomena” or in physics. For example, when Sean Carroll claims that the material universe is eternal, that is, infinite in time, he may be right. But if he thinks this can be described from science alone—and that really is what he thinks—then he is creating a category confusion. The same goes for the singular point (assuming science does indeed describe it according to what I read in the conservative model). The only way to use it within science in a coherent and useful way is to “import” it from outside. What does that mean? It means there is no such thing as infinite density where all matter was supposedly compressed into one point, and if there was nevertheless such a thing, then it would not be matter… we are dealing with an abstract and “spiritual” entity.

6. This issue is connected to your confusion (in my opinion…) in the example of “minus three oranges.” You seem to be confusing the ability to make practical and useful use of the concept of minus, drawn from the a priori mathematical discipline, with the ontological question in its application to physics. And indeed the example you bring from bank debt strengthens my point: if I am in the red at the bank, that doesn’t mean this has a physical expression in some world. It is simply a mental operation, certainly relevant to the real world (and perhaps also the physical world), but very much not part of it.
I’ll offer you a challenge: describe to me in natural or physical language what “minus three oranges” looks like (as opposed to a description of “plus three oranges”). Explain to me please what, for example, the weight, color, or size of those missing oranges is. Note that the description will first of all have to include their ontological status (absence). Good luck.

Wow, wow—I wasn’t expecting a response like that.
In any case, Doron pretty much explained what I was trying to argue.