Late in 2008 Discover Magazine published an article that contains one of the clearest reasons any scientist has ever stated for favoring multiverse theory. I encourage you to follow this through to the end for the key statement, and then ask yourself: is he reasoning from science or from theology?
Discover Magazine tackled the fine-tuning problem in a December 2008 article titled “A Universe Built For Us.” You might enjoy reading it to discover what they’ve wrapped around this enticing introductory material:
Physicists don’t like coincidences. They like even less the notion that life is somehow central to the universe, and yet recent discoveries are forcing them to confront that very idea. Life, it seems, is not an incidental component of the universe, burped up out of a random chemical brew on a lonely planet…. In some strange sense, it appears that we are not adapted to the universe; the universe is adapted to us.
Call it a fluke, a mystery, a miracle. Or call it the biggest problem in physics. Short of invoking a benevolent creator, many physicists see only one possible explanation: Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes in an inconceivably vast multiverse.
That’s remarkably well stated. It highlights how some physicists want to run as fast as they can from the idea of God, the possibility that “life is somehow central to the universe.”
And so, says the article, work is proceeding in the area of string theory to try to provide evidence for the vast multiverse. Discover is refreshingly honest about the current status of the work: “evidence … is still lacking;” “Linde’s ideas may make the notion of a multiverse more plausible;” “still very much a work in progress.”
This I find disingenuous, however:
When I ask Linde whether physicists will ever be able to prove that the multiverse is real, he has a simple answer. “Nothing else fits the data… we don’t have any alternative explanations…”
There is an alternative explanation, one that can only be ruled out if you “like even less the notion that life is central to the universe.” The article makes a nod toward that other explanation, referring to John Polkinghorne’s objection to the multiverse. (Polkinghorne is an Anglican priest and philosopher, a theist. He was also at one time a theoretical particle physicist at Cambridge.) He says that the multiverse “can explain anything . . . If a theory allows anything to be possible, it explains nothing; a theory of anything is not the same as a theory of everything.”
Discover does not actually explain why that is a problem, but I suspect Polkinghorne was referring to a point that I have also made. It renders the multiverse theory trivial—or at least the infinite universes version of the theory does.
Discover also quotes Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, an atheist, on the matter of God.
“I don’t think that the multiverse idea destroys the possibility of an intelligent, benevolent creator. . . What it does is remove one of the arguments for it.”
Interesting how that works; and quite a nice example of circular argumentation:
- Evidence for the multiverse is completely lacking right now; its theoretical foundations are “still very much a work in progress,”
- But “nothing else fits the data.”
- Nothing else fits the data, that is, for those who dislike the theistic conception “that life is somehow central to the universe.”
- Having excluded that possibility, we infer a multiverse instead, and…
- What the multiverse does is remove one of the arguments for a creator.
It seems a waste of energy for Weinberg to think of removing arguments for a creator, since the whole thing seems rather handily to have assumed him right out of existence.
The psychology, the motivation for it all could hardly be clearer than it is in this from cosmologist Bernard Carr, quoted in the same Discover article: “If you don’t want God, you’d better have a multiverse.”
“Don’t want God.” Indeed.
The multiverse isn’t a conclusion arrived at by doing pure science. It’s a destination reached by running away from God.
Originally posted at Thinking Christian
Whether or not theoretical evidence counts as evidence (and I think it does and we do that all the time in science…). I think there are great scientific and philosophical evidence for a multiverse. I’m a proponent of the multiverse and it’s frustrating how so many Christians treat the multiverse as if it’s comic book shenanigans or “not science.” I certainly didn’t arrive at the conclusion that a particular level of the multiverse is true by running away from God. Actually, it happened by learning the philosophy of science, the inflationary and quantum arguments, and running TO God.
Max,
Could you expand on the evidence for a multiverse? Or at least point to some sources?
And I don’t mean the above to be read in a combative manner, I’m honestly curious as everything I’ve encountered as a layman from both proponents and opponents seem to offer it as a mere hypothetical construct.
Thanks!
Is belief in God based on fine-tuning a destination reached by running away from the multiverse?
The funny thing is, even IF some version of the multiverse were true, it does nothing to remove the need for a here-and-now sustaining cause of the multiverse. That’s why I like Aquinas’ arguments so much. Let the multiverse be true. Now you’ve just multiplied your need for a here-and-now sustaining cause of existence. As one of my professors has said, there is simply no place you can go in all of reality that does not point to its Creator!