More recently (2019), a new solution has been proposed. In the paper titled “Birth of de Sitter Universe from time crystal”, japanese physicists Yoshida and Jiro stated:

“We show that a simple sub-class of Horndeski theory can describe a time crystal Universe. The time crystal Universe can be regarded as a baby Universe nucleated from a flat space… Inflation has succeeded in explaining current observations of the large scale structure of Universe. However, inflation has a past boundary… The incompleteness of the inflationary Universe strongly motivated us to explore non-singular scenarios in the very early Universe… Interestingly, once a cosmological constant is introduced, it turns out that de Sitter Universe can be created from time crystal. Thus, we have a completion of inflationary scenario, namely, the past boundary of an inflationary Universe is time crystal.”

Or here is another. In the paper titled “Island Cosmology”, the authors claim: “If the observed dark energy is a cosmological constant, the canonical state of the universe is de Sitter spacetime. In such a spacetime, quantum fluctuations that violate the null energy condition will create islands of matter. If the fluctuation is sufficiently large, the island may resemble our observable universe. Phenomenological approaches to calculating density fluctuations yield a scale invariant spectrum with suitable amplitude. With time, the island of matter that is our observable universe, dilutes and re-enters the cosmological constant sea,but other islands will emerge in the future, leading to an eternal universe.”

In the page 11, they say: “Our first assumption is that the dark energy is a cosmological constant. This is consistent with observations and moreover is the simplest explanation of the Hubble acceleration. We assume that the cosmological constant provides us with a background de Sitter spacetime that is. As de Sitter spacetime also has a contracting phase, the singularity theorems of Ref. [36 – BGV] are evaded.”

Lol. Is this serious? Of course it does address the BGV. But Marshall is too ignorant and biased to realize.

“It was shown recently that replacing classical geodesics with quantal (Bohmian) trajectories gives rise to a quantum corrected Raychaudhuri equation… [and] since it is well known that Bohmian trajectories do not cross, it follows that even when θ → −∞, the actual trajectories (as opposed to geodesics) do not converge, and there is no counterpart of geodesic incompleteness, or the classical singularity theorems, and singularities such as big bang or big crunch are in fact avoided… [which] predicts an infinite age of our universe.”

Dr. Marshall, what is the conclusion of the BGV?

“in a much more general context. Again we see that if Hav > 0 along any null or concomoving timelike geodesic, then the geodesic is necessarily past-incomplete”

“Whatever the possibilities for the boundary, it is clear that unless the averaged expansion condition can somehow be avoided for the past-directed geodesics, inflation alone is not sufficient to provide a complete description of the Universe, and some new physics is necessary in order to determine the correct conditions at the boundary. This is the chief result of our paper.”

The theorem proves a classical expanding universe is * geodesically incomplete.* But in the paper Dr. Carrier presented, it is explained that the classical geodesics are replaced, and therefore, inflation can be eternal in the past – since there is no convergence of wordlines in a point.

Of course time dilation collapses, not expands time as one approaches an event horizon. But yes, as particles hit or cross the event horizon they freeze in time while all remaining time for them collapses into a single instant, and thus the particle at that moment exists at all points of time simultaneously that may exist in that particle’s future. That’s technically infinite into the future, not the past.

Marshall says it’s okay to be infinite into the future. But only because he is (I suspect) an A-Theorist about time, which entails rejecting all known science about how event horizons and Lorentz transformations work. On what all mainstream physicists now concur is correct, B-Theory, indeed, a particle completes its entire infinite future in a single instant upon contact with the event horizon, but from it’s POV, it does not experience infinite but finite time. From our POV, it takes that particle infinite time to reach that event horizon. Marshall would thus say there is never a time when it does get there. But Relativity Theory says otherwise, because that is only true from his reference frame, not in the reference frame of the falling particle itself.

Although quantum mechanics complicates this. The particle is actually likely to quantum mechanically dissolve before it ever contacts an event horizon (it collapses into Hawking radiation; either spontaneously or by collision with other spontaneously formed matter and antimatter particles), and the black hole itself will dissolve (“evaporate”) in result before any particle lucky enough to avoid dissolving hits its event horizon (at which point those remaining particles still falling in will likely continue to collapse into a neutron star or something else short of a black hole, and then radiate away into space over time in the usual way). So actually, as best as I understand it, no particle, on current physics, can ever actually complete an infinite course toward contact with an event horizon. Because event horizons have finite lifespans.

Benjamin,

I replied to your previous comment in some detail. Why address only “a single element” of my reply, and that with an unattributed copy-and-paste from StackExchange? (https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/622/what-distinguishes-cause-from-effect-when-they-are-simultaneous).

But that aside, my argument for the coherence of simultaneous cause and effect has nothing to do with their observation, and you’re confusing temporal order with causal order.

Moreover, whatever one thinks about the usual temporal order of cause and effect, in the case of the beginning of space, time, matter and energy, the cause has ontological priority but in the nature of the case will be temporally simultaneous with its cause. The alternative is being arising from non-being, which is absurd.

Dr. Marshall, you’ve already asserted that differing metaphysical hypotheses make testable predictions about what we ought to see in the observable universe. I’ll quote that again:

“If the cause of the universe were an impersonal entity (in the philosophical sense of lacking will or intelligence)—as an abstract object obviously is—we would expect the effect (the universe) to be eternally co-existent with the cause, since there would in that case be no will to bring the universe into being at a definite point/boundary in the finite past.”

In other words, “will” (or “intelligence”) is what explains the temporal boundary of the observable universe.

Whether or not you want to call that a cosmological model, it certainly functions as one. (It posits a hypothetical cause for the temporal boundary of the observable universe and cites empirical evidence in support of the hypothesis.) But it leaves the critical terms undefined, or defined only by loose analogy to human will and intelligence; it fails to establish how will or intelligence can be said to function in the absence of space and time; and by doing so it forfeits any claim to self-evident “simplicity” or, really, any substantive explanatory power at all.

ou812invu-

Thanks for sharing these comments from Siegel. Again (see my comment just above) he takes an issue that is a completely open question and writes as if it were decided.

There are both deterministic and undeterministic views of quantum events, and they are both mathematically sound and empirically equivalent. One or the other may be correct. Sean Carroll has written a lot about this: he’s a scientist on the atheist side you can check out in this connection.

But more importantly, even IF quantum events are undetermined, they do not by any means originate ex nihilo. The quantum vacuum is a sea of energy with a rich physical structure. As Columbia University philosopher of science David Albert explains: “Relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical vacuum states — no less than giraffes or refrigerators or solar systems — are particular arrangements of elementary physical stuff.”
David Albert, “On the Origin of Everything” (Review of Lawrence Krauss’ A Universe From Nothing), New York Times, 23 March 2012.

MChase Walker and OU812INVU:

Thanks for linking this article. Two comments: (1) Siegel (the author of the article) overstates the case. Inflation is a competing model to the traditional Big Bang theory, not a “certain” thing.

(2) Siegel is absolutely wrong that “whether inflation was eternal to the past — is still an open question.” Hear it from Alan Guth himself, the founder of the inflationary model, whom Siegel discusses in his own article. Here is what Guth says:

“We refer to it as eternal inflation, but the word ‘eternal’ is being used slightly loosely. Semi-eternal might be more accurate. It’s eternal into the future. We do not think it’s eternal into the past…. We’ve been able to prove, mathematically, that it’s in fact not possible to extrapolate arbitrarily far into the past.”

Alan Guth, Interview with Robert Lawrence Kuhn on Closer to Truth (PBS program). http://www.closertotruth.com/series/did-our-universe-have-beginning, starting at about the 3:15 mark. Accessed 1/6/2015]

Robert- Of course ‘will’ is a contentious and difficult philosophical subject. My point is that the thing itself is common and beyond dispute. God’s will has very commonly–since antiquity!–been posited as the cause of the observable universe.

That of course doesn’t mean that the will of God actually is the cause of the universe, but it does mean that one can’t arbitrarily rule out the explanation on the grounds that “will” is some bizarre entity we have no experience of and has not been part of the traditional idea of God.

Finally, if it were true that God created the universe, his will to do so wouldn’t be “part of a cosmological model.” Cosmology, and all science, is concerned with the laws governing physical causes. By the same token, if the universe originated ex nihilo from non-being, how it did so would also not be part of a cosmological model, because there can’t be a physics of non-being.

Both hypotheses are metaphysical. Whichever were true, there would be a physical history of the cosmos on the other side of it, and that physical history, as described by whatever cosmological model ends up describing it, would be the same.

Keith,

Of course I do reject the idea that causes have to precede their effects in time. As you’ll see in my next entry when it posts, philosophers have long pointed out that causes can be simultaneous with their effects. Some contemporary philosophers argue that ALL causation is simultaneous because causes always coincide exactly in time with their effects. Moreover, as I pointed out in a previous entry, in the case of the origin of the universe, in the very nature of the case, the cause cannot be in time. The alternative would be the absurdity of being arising from absolute non-being.

My next entry also address how Dr. Carrier’s idea of the instability of “nothingness” (it’s actually the quantum vacuum, which is emphatically not ‘nothing’ from a scientific point of view) supports the temporal past-finitude of the universe.

Re. [5], I’m happy to accept that there are reasons (even “evidence”!–see my definition of that in my very first entry) to disbelieve in disembodied minds. My only contention is that one can’t beg that question one way or the other.

You say you’re not persuaded that my logic for arguing from the “the universe has a cause” to “the cause of the universe is mind.” Could you specify precisely where you think my logic runs askew there? (see my second entry, where I lay out the case for the Kalam: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/15276).

In that same entry, I provide no less than four reasons in support of “ex nihilo, nihil fit.” Where specifically do you disagree with those?

Finally, re. “simplicity,” thanks for taking a stab at a definition. A couple of things: First, I said that the explanation was simple, not that God himself is simple. I mean, who would expect to come to the be-all, end-all, fountain of existence (as God must be if he existed) and find something with no mystery?

Second, I don’t think it’s correct that God has “a longer list of properties than any other thing in existence.” The classical lists of essential divine attributes probably numbers around five (necessary existence, goodness, eternity, omnipotence and omniscience). And it has for centuries been a significant part of the monotheistic tradition that even these collapse into a single “Actus Purus” or divine “simplicity” (that’s actually one of the classical divine attributes going back to the Middle Ages).

Third, when it comes to the role of simplicity in evaluating alternative explanations, the question is whether multiple components are present in the explanation, and especially components that further compound the problem one is trying to explain. Obviously God is not a complex entity in that sense.

Fourth, simplicity is hardly the only factor in evaluating competing explanations, so one can’t automatically rule out an explanation on that basis (just think of how a multiverse would fare on that score).

Fifth and finally, all of the above aside, in the case of the ultimate origin of things, it’s essential to recognize that if the preponderance of evidence is against the past-eternity of the universe (and about that–I mean the preponderance–I frankly don’t think there’s any legitimate doubt), then we have just two options before us: a transcendent cause, OR, as I said above, being arising from absolute non-being. And if one has to compare those options, it seems an easy decision as to which makes sense, and which is absurd.