I had fun back in January pilloring the scientistic nonsense Lawrence M. Krauss propagates in his recent book, A Universe From Nothing. Meanwhile the book has shown up at the local library and tomorrow I will borrow it. I would never buy a piece of crap like this, though, to be fair, I will first have to read it to be sure that it is crap. That it is crap is an excellent bet, however, given what I quoted Krauss as saying and given David Albert's New York Times review of a couple days ago.
I won't quote from Albert's review. Study it carefully and you will see why Krauss' book is junk.
One mistake many people make is to think that any opposition to scientistic nonsense of the sort that Krauss spouts can only be religiously motivated. Carefully pointing out the confusions to which Krauss and Co. succumb gets one labeled an 'apologist for religion.' Now an affirmative answer to the question whether contemporary physics has the resources to explain why the physical universe exists does of course have negative implications for those forms of theism that posit a transcendent divine creator. But the question itself is not a religious question but a metaphysical question. Every clear-thinking atheist should reject Krauss's specious reasoning. Rejecting it would not make our atheist an apologist for religion.
People sometimes question what philosophy is good for. Well, one thing it is good for is to debunk bad philosophy, Krauss' scientistic nonsense being a particular egregious example of bad philosophy.
Philosophize we must and philosophize we will. The only question is whether we will do it well.
Recent Comments