
From Sarah Lewin at LiveScience:
Space.com talked with Adam Frank, an astrophysicist at the University of Rochester in New York who consulted on “Doctor Strange,” about how the movie’s magic of the mind fits in with the more science-grounded (comparatively!) worlds introduced previously, the concept of the multiverse and what science philosophy has to do with superheroes.
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In general, the multiverse idea is very much built into the Marvel comics; Marvel has Earth 226A, Earth 213B … You can expect it to show up in different places. What’s interesting about the Marvel universe is, they would have these characters which would be the embodiment of impersonal forces. There’s a character who’s like, “I’m Eternity,” and he’s represented as this outline. Marvel has no problem with taking broad, sweeping philosophical abstractions and somehow storifying them, which is awesome. And in some sense, that’s also what’s happening here: You’re taking this idea of [the] mind. “Mind” is a thing in the universe — not just a derivative of other things in the universe, but somehow, mind is being an essential player in the universe, and they’re storifying it. They’re making it an actor. More.
Multiverse plus New Age? A long as it all stays in the common room and doesn’t end up in the lecture room, it should be tremendous fun.
See also: Forbes regrets to inform us that there is no evidence for a multiverse yet. But everyone is working on it. Otherwise, fine tuning is the only explanation.
Rob Sheldon: The universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. Or IS it? One gets the sense that Prof Sarkar is trying not to step on toes as he explains why the Nobel should never have been awarded for dark energy.
and
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So their proof for the multiverse is SpiderMan comics? How fitting. Imaginary characters providing imaginary proof for an imaginary hypothesis. Bet it gets peer reviewed in no time flat! 🙂 I wonder if in the next issue of Marvel comics SpiderMan and his fellow Marvel comic superheros are going to war against an army of theists riding on the horns of a great pink beast known to his tribesman as “The Saddlehorn Dilemma”.
Verse:
I’m obviously late to this discussion, but unfortunately I’m afraid many people miss the point and the real danger here. It’s easy to mock the idea of “proof through Marvel” but the fact is that movies like Dr. Strange are pouring the essence of an atheistic approach to cosmology and a very specific, pro-atheistic version of the multiverse into people’s skulls. Worse, it helps them emotionally by-pass the logical conclusion of atheism by presenting a shallow naturalism as heroic and engaging, provoking a semblance of religious awe.
People don’t turn off their imaginations when moving from the common room into the lecture hall. We’ve got to recognize the danger and engage them on that field too. Otherwise, we’ve ceded at least half the battle for the mind. You’re not going to effectively combat that with facts alone–and you certainly won’t win by relying on scorn. The best way to respond is with better stories containing more truth.