[Questioner] For 30 years or so, it has been shown experimentally that in Quantum Mechanics you can have creation without a cause.
You mentioned subatomic particles. And at the very beginning of the universe, as you also said,
the universe itself was subatomic. Why is it so inconceivable that the mechanisms that work now didn't work back then?
[Dr Craig] The reason is that in the so-called "Quantum Creation of Subatomic Particles,"
you always have a material substrate - a
physical system from which these emerge.
For example, the quantum vacuum is not
'nothing' as the layman might think when
he hears the word 'vacuum.' It is a sea of
roiling energy and the particles come
out of the vacuum so that the vacuum is
the cause of the existence of these
particles. In the case of the universe
however, as we just discussed a moment
ago, we have an absolute beginning of all
physical reality so that there isn't
any sort of prior thing that could serve
as a quantum
substratum for the creation of the
universe. If there is this sort of
quantum gravity region in the early
universe that will be part of the
universe. It's an early stage of the
universe but it doesn't explain where
the universe itself came from. I should
also just add one other point and that
is this appeal to these quantum
processes simply assumes without
justification that quantum indeterminacy
is a real rather than merely epistemic -
in your mind. But there are at least 10
different interpretations of quantum
physics some of which are thoroughly
deterministic and all of these are
empirically equivalent and
mathematically consistent. In fact, it is
only the deterministic interpretations
that are compatible with quantum
cosmology so that there is no
justification for assuming that even in
the case of quantum creation of
particles this is indeterminate and that
they do not have deterministic causes
