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Professor Paul Davies is no friend of Intelligent Design. Nevertheless, he puts forward a formidable argument against its best scientific alternative, the multiverse, in an interview with Robert Lawrence Kuhn, creator and host of “Closer To Truth,” and author of a recent article titled, Is our universe a fake? (Space.com, July 31, 2015). Kuhn summarizes Davies’ argument as follows:
“If you take seriously the theory of all possible universes, including all possible variations,” Davies said, “at least some of them must have intelligent civilizations with enough computing power to simulate entire fake worlds. Simulated universes are much cheaper to make than the real thing, and so the number of fake universes would proliferate and vastly outnumber the real ones. And assuming we’re just typical observers, then we’re overwhelmingly likely to find ourselves in a fake universe, not a real one.”
So far it’s the normal argument.
Then Davies makes his move. He claims that because the theoretical existence of multiple universes is based on the laws of physics in our universe, if this universe is simulated, then its laws of physics are also simulated, which would mean that this universe’s physics is a fake. Therefore, Davies reasoned, “We cannot use the argument that the physics in our universe leads to multiple universes, because it also leads to a fake universe with fake physics.” That undermines the whole argument that fundamental physics generates multiple universes, because the reasoning collapses in circularity.
Davies concluded, “While multiple universes seem almost inevitable given our understanding of the Big Bang, using them to explain all existence is a dangerous, slippery slope, leading to apparently absurd conclusions.”
Davies’ reductio ad absurdum is a devastating one: the multiverse undercuts the basis of physics itself. And Davies is not alone. Physicist Paul Steinhardt, who helped create the theory of inflation but later came to reject it, declared last September: “Our universe has a simple, natural structure. The multiverse idea is baroque, unnatural, untestable and, in the end, dangerous to science and society.” Steinhardt believes that the multiverse hypothesis leads science away from its task of providing a unique explanation for the properties of nature. Instead, it simply deems them to be random – which, for Steinhardt, feels like giving up on the scientific enterprise. It’s a scientific cop-out. In an interview with John Horgan for Scientific American (Physicist Slams Cosmic Theory He Helped Conceive, December 1, 2014), Steinhardt made no secret of his disdain for both inflation theory and the multiverse (emphases mine – VJT):
Horgan: You were one of the originators of inflation theory. When and why did you start having doubts about it?
Steinhardt: From the very beginning, even as I was writing my first paper on inflation in 1982, I was concerned that the inflationary picture only works if you finely tune the constants that control the inflationary period. Andy Albrecht and I (and, independently, Andrei Linde) had just discovered the way of having an extended period of inflation end in a graceful exit to a universe filled with hot matter and radiation, the paradigm for all inflationary models since. But the exit came at a cost — fine-tuning. The whole point of inflation was to get rid of fine-tuning – to explain features of the original big bang model that must be fine-tuned to match observations. The fact that we had to introduce one fine-tuning to remove another was worrisome. This problem has never been resolved.
But my concerns really grew when I discovered that, due to quantum fluctuation effects, inflation is generically eternal and (as others soon emphasized) this would lead to a multiverse…
To me, the accidental universe idea is scientifically meaningless because it explains nothing and predicts nothing. Also, it misses the most salient fact we have learned about large-scale structure of the universe: its extraordinary simplicity when averaged over large scales…
Scientific ideas should be simple, explanatory, predictive. The inflationary multiverse as currently understood appears to have none of those properties.
These concerns and more, and the fact that we have made no progress in 30 years in addressing them, are what have made me skeptical about the inflationary picture.
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Even MIT Professor Alan Guth, a strong supporter of the theory of inflation (which he helped originate) and the multiverse, has acknowledged that it has some philosophically bizarre implications. As he put it in an interview with Natalie Wolchover and Peter Byrne (In a Multiverse, What Are the Odds?, November 3, 2014):
“In a single universe, cows born with two heads are rarer than cows born with one head,” he said. But in an infinitely branching multiverse, “there are an infinite number of one-headed cows and an infinite number of two-headed cows. What happens to the ratio?”
Why I think a transcendent Creator would make computer simulations of consciousness impossible
An interesting question for Intelligent Design proponents to ponder at this point is: supposing that the universe was designed by a Being Who wished to make His existence scientifically knowable to any intelligent life-forms living within the cosmos, and suppose that this Being was not only intelligent but also transcendent, how would He design the universe in such a way as to prevent human beings (and any other intelligent life-forms that might exist in outer space) from drawing the wrong inference about the nature of the Designer, and conceiving of Him as merely super-human (like the Greek and Roman gods of antiquity), rather than transcendent?
In his article, Robert Lawrence Kuhn finds that the argument that our universe might be a simulation rests upon five critical premises: “(i) Other intelligent civilizations exist; (ii) their technologies grow exponentially; (iii) they do not all go extinct; (iv) there is no universal ban or barrier for running simulations; and (v) consciousness can be simulated.” Kuhn goes on to say that the notion that our own universe is a simulation is not incompatible with theism, but he adds that it would be a weak form of theism, as the super-intelligent designer(s) of our universe “wouldn’t need unlimited or infinite minds.” Kuhn wonders how scientists, philosophers and theologians would distinguish between “the traditional creator God and hyper-advanced creator-simulators.”
Here is a prediction I would make. If the transcendent God of traditional theism exists, and wishes to make Himself known to His creatures, then the last thing He’d want to do is give the intelligent life-forms within this universe the power to create other universes. For if these intelligent life-forms discovered that they had this power, then they would also realize that it was highly likely that they, in turn, were created by intelligent life-forms in another universe. This disturbing realization would make it much harder for them to infer the existence of a transcendent God. So my prediction would be that to prevent this from happening, a Transcendent Creator would make it impossible for intelligent life-forms to simulate human consciousness on a computer – and probably animal consciousness, as well. This is just what we find, as I reported in my article, Could the Internet ever be conscious? Definitely not before 2115, even if you’re a materialist. In that article, I calculated that the human brain is 31 orders of magnitude more complex than the entire Internet. And to those who would appeal to Moore’s law as a way for scientists of the future to catch up, I have some bad news: Moore himself declared in 2005 that his law would reach a “fundamental limit” in 10 or 20 years – i.e. by 2025 at the latest – and according to Intel’s former chief architect, Robert Colwell, Moore’s law will be dead by 2022, largely for economic reasons. Darwinist philosopher Daniel Dennett is also skeptical of the Internet ever becoming conscious. In a recent article by Slate journalist Dan Falk (September 20, 2012), he remarked:
“The connections in brains aren’t random; they are deeply organized to serve specific purposes,” Dennett says. “And human brains share further architectural features that distinguish them from, say, chimp brains, in spite of many deep similarities. What are the odds that a network, designed by processes serving entirely different purposes, would share enough of the architectural features to serve as any sort of conscious mind?” (Emphasis mine – VJT.)
Dennett also pointed out that while the Internet had a very high level of connectivity, the difference in architecture “makes it unlikely in the extreme that it would have any sort of consciousness.”
The massive number of assumptions upon which the multiverse hypothesis is built
In addition to the reductio ad absurdum advanced above, Professor Paul Davies has other objections to the multiverse. In an interview last year on Closer to Truth titled, Are There Multiple Universes? (August 23, 2014), Professor Davies explained why he finds the multiverse hypothesis intellectually unsatisfying (emphasis mine – VJT):
[0:40]
It’s not an unreasonable speculation. However, it falls far short of being a complete theory of existence, which it’s often presented as. That is, if there’s a multiverse, we can forget about all the mysteries of the universe because it’s all explained: everything’s out there somewhere. End of story. Well, it’s simply not true, because to get a multiverse, you need a universe-generating mechanism – something has got to make all those Big Bangs go “Bang!” – so you’re going to need some laws of physics to do that. All of the theories of the multiverse assume quantum mechanics, quantum physics, to give the element of spontaneity to make the bangs happen. They assume pre-existing space and time, they assume the normal notion of causality – a whole host of things. You write down a list, there’s about ten different basic assumptions they have to make to get the theory to work. And you can say, well, “Where did they all come from? What about these meta-laws that generate universes and impose effective local by-laws, as Martin Rees would call it, upon these universes? What is this distribution mechanism? How does that work? Where do those rules come from? So all you’ve done is shift the problem of existence up from the level of universe to the level of multiverse. But you haven’t explained it.
Davies’ philosophical misgivings about the multiverse – and Intelligent Design
Continuing in a philosophical vein, Davies explains why he rejects both the multiverse and Intelligent Design (emphases mine – VJT):
[3:00]
I suppose for me, the main problem is that what we’re trying to do is explain why the universe is as it is by appealing to something outside of it – in this case, an infinite number of universes outside of it – that, to me, is no better than traditional religion, that appeals to an unseen, unexplained God that is outside of the universe.[5:01]
I would like to try to find an explanation for the universe from entirely within it, without appealing to anything external. And as a matter of fact I believe that if somebody did a proper mathematical analysis, they would find that the complexity of the explanation of the multiverse – an infinite number of universes we don’t see – is the same as the explanation of traditional theology: an infinitely complex God outside the universe that we don’t see. They’re really the same thing, in different language, and so my point of view now is: a plague on both your houses. We need to try to find the explanation for the universe from within it, from what we see, and not multiply these unseen entities.
Religious believers will point out, correctly, that the God of classical theism is not complex at all, but utterly simple. However, one needs to distinguish between God’s necessary Being and God’s contingent operations: the former is dogmatically defined to be simple, whereas the latter is not. Even supposing God’s operations to be complex, however, it does not follow that they are infinitely complex. The question that mathematicians should be asking, in my opinion, is: how much information would you need to put into the universe, if you were going to fine-tune not only its laws but also its initial conditions, in such a way that it would be guaranteed to ultimately generate living cells and later on, complex life-forms, some of which would possess consciousness?
More problems with the multiverse
Finally, I should point out that the multiverse is plagued by no less than five severe problems, which I briefly enumerated in a recent post. The first two have already been discussed above; the last three are equally devastating (emphases mine – VJT):
The multiverse hypothesis faces five formidable problems: first, it merely shifts the fine-tuning problem up one level, as a multiverse capable of generating even one life-supporting universe would still need to be fine-tuned; second, the multiverse hypothesis itself implies that a sizable proportion of universes (including perhaps our own) were intelligently designed; third, the multiverse hypothesis predicts that most of the intelligent life-forms that exist should be “Boltzmann brains” that momentarily fluctuate into and out of existence; fourth, the multiverse hypothesis predicts that a universe containing intelligent life should be much smaller than the one we live in; and fifth, the multiverse hypothesis cannot account for the fact that the laws of physics are not only life-permitting, but also mathematically elegant – a fact acknowledged even by physicists with no religious beliefs.
Further discussion of these problems can be found here. The elegance of the laws of Nature has been remarked on by many scientists, including Paul Davies, who wrote in his best-selling book, Superforce: The Search for a Grand Unified Theory of Nature (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster):
A common reaction among physicists to remarkable discoveries of the sort discussed above is a mixture of delight at the subtlety and elegance of nature, and of stupefaction: ‘I would never have thought of doing it that way.’ If nature is so ‘clever’ that it can exploit mechanisms that amaze us with their ingenuity, is that not persuasive evidence for the existence of intelligent design behind the physical universe? (1984, pp. 235-36. Emphasis mine – VJT.)
That was what Davies wrote in 1984. In recent years, sadly, he has changed his mind – not for scientific but for philosophical reasons. In a 2007 article for the <i.New York Times titled, Taking Science on Faith, Davies stated why he now prefers an explanation of the universe’s laws from within the cosmos, even as he candidly acknowledged that no such theory presently exists (emphases mine – VJT):
It seems to me there is no hope of ever explaining why the physical universe is as it is so long as we are fixated on immutable laws or meta-laws that exist reasonlessly or are imposed by divine providence. The alternative is to regard the laws of physics and the universe they govern as part and parcel of a unitary system, and to be incorporated together within a common explanatory scheme.
In other words, the laws should have an explanation from within the universe and not involve appealing to an external agency. The specifics of that explanation are a matter for future research. But until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus.
The way forward for ID?
For my part, I do think Davies is right about one thing. It is not enough to argue that the laws of the universe must have been designed by some Intelligence. For a hypothesis to be scientifically fruitful, it needs to make predictions. What the Intelligent Design movement needs is physicists who are not afraid to “get inside the mind of God,” and freely speculate about why the universe has the laws, fundamental principles and underlying mathematical structures that it does. Why was the universe designed this way, and not some other way? To say that it was designed to support intelligent life is all well and good, but we need to go further, and explain why alternative life-permitting designs for the cosmos would have been less suitable than the one that we find ourselves in. I have previously suggested that Intelligent Design could be rendered more fruitful if it incorporated the assumption that one of the Designer’s aims was to make His existence known to His intelligent creatures, and I also suggested above that the Designer wants to make His transcendence known to us. Finally, I would suggest that the cosmos is as beautiful in its underlying principles as it possibly can be, while at the same time remaining mathematically comprehensible to the human mind. Taken together, these three assumptions might narrow the range of life-permitting possible universes to the point where we can eventually conclude, on purely scientific grounds, that this universe is the best possible design that a Transcendent Creator could have selected, had He wished to make His existence known to human beings. That, I think, would be a fruitful line of inquiry.
What do readers think?
Personally, I am not a proponent of the multiverse idea. However, I don’t see the Davies argument as persuasive.
VJTorley, Have you read “The Privileged Planet” and its premise that the universe was designed for (scientific) discovery?
That would mean that it requires agents of discovery and they need to be places that are conducive for discovery. Our Earth is one such place and the laws make scientific discovery possible.
“Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.” John 18:36
“Not of this World?” asks Joe Skeptic. “Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence!”
Be patient Joe. Sean Carroll & Lenny Susskind & others are working on the evidence thing. When they’re done, maybe they can figure out how many Angels can dance on the head of a pin.
I go to prepare a place for you.” In the NASB it says, “In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.” The word for “mansion” is ????, monay. It means a dwelling, an abode. “In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you.”
Davies:
Am I the one one who thinks Davies has set up a logically impossible problem for himself on the order of “we need to find a square circle”?
Davies again:
Refreshing to see a materialist admit the obvious. Indeed, the multiverse is the greatest conceivable violation of Occam’s Razor. I said this in 2008 to howls of indignation from our opponents.
I think we should take a closer look at these alleged laws.
Are the entities which comprise the universe essentially passive and controlled by laws which stand aside from and apart from those entities, or are the entities which comprise the universe essentially active, and rather than being controlled by laws are actually the source of them?
http://www.iep.utm.edu/lawofnat/
Robert Kuhn channeling Davies:
The multiverse is nonsense but this is a weak argument, IMO. What circularity is Davies referring to? A multiverse proponent will simply respond that we may just happen to be in one of the zillions of non-fake universes.
The biggest problem with the multiverse hypothesis is that nobody has yet managed to demonstrate, even hypothetically, that one or more laws of physics can give rise to multiple universes. In what universe do these laws exist and why would the same laws apply to all universes? Don’t different universes have their own set of laws? One would think that, at least in some of those universes, the local laws of physics would ban multiple universes. So you end up with a bunch contradictory parallel universes. Thinking out loud.
“Professor Paul Davies is no friend of Intelligent Design”
I don’t think that’s quite accurate. He’s not pro Intelligent Design, but he is honest and acknowledges facts that are inconvenient to anti Intelligent Design people.
I thought that was very well demonstrated in one of his books when talked about how catastrophism was initially rejected by many scientists for religious reasons (it supported some religious beliefs). He also talks about how the current theories of the origin of life are lacking. Its true that he is a supporter of Darwinism (or whatever the current incarnation is), but he always seems to acknowledge the problems that are ignored or trivialized by others.
Dr. Torley,
How are you defining super-human, versus transcendent? (I think you’re saying that transcendent trumps super-human at least.) Super-human implies a being that is still material?
Tough question though, because a lot of people sure have reached the wrong conclusion so far…
Being finite ourselves, and being on the “inside” in either case, I’m not sure that this is theoretically possible.
Seems like the universe thing is probably ruled out quite nicely by the sheer size of the task, at least if the universe we would try to simulate is anything like ours in scope. As far as consciousness, we might have difficulty distinguishing it from simulacra, since we can’t get inside another conscious creature even.
Thought-provoking questions in any case. Thanks!
Insisting that an explanation for the observable universe is unacceptable unless it is itself observable is as illogical as saying that when we want to find the man who built a house, we must confine our search to the house.
EvilSnack
Nobody has chosen to confine themselves to observing our universe alone. If we could observe another one we would.
Yes, we want to find the man who built the house. Evidence from the house itself, without having to look elsewhere indicates that it was designed and built.
We observe a universe. Evidence from the universe itself indicates it was designed. We can’t, however, in principle, gain any scientific observations from outside the universe.
Other terms for ‘bizarre’ would be ‘contradictory’ or ‘self-refuting’.
This kind of question indicates something I’d consider a mental disorder (if I was able to diagnose such things).
Worried about the ratio …? The premise is: “the theory of all possible universes”.
A universe with 100 two-headed cows is possible. Therefore, it must exist in a set of all possible universes.
A universe with a million two-headed cows is possible.
Therefore it must exist.
A universe with one three-headed cow — not possible?
Evolutionary biologists like to do classifications. Perhaps they could start counting the precise number of one and two-headed cows that are available in all possible universes. Then after that, move on to three-headed cows.
Then see how the ratio holds up. Maybe it’s not so bad after all?
The multiverse is deist religion, although the god is unintelligent.
In my honest opinion, besides the self-refuting nature of the multiverse where anything goes, i.e. everything is predicted and therefore nothing is predicted, I think the empirical evidence itself gives ample support for the Theist’s contentention that God created this universe.
From the best scientific evidence we now have, from multiple intersecting lines of evidence, we now have very good reason to believe that the entire universe came instantaneously into being at the Big Bang.
Not only was all mass-energy brought into being, but space-time itself was also instantaneously brought into being at the Big Bang!
Thus, since space-time matter energy were, as far as the evidence itself can tell us, instantaneously brought into being at the being at the big bang, it necessarily follows that whatever, or Whoever, brought the universe instantaneously into being had to be transcendent of space-time, mass-energy.
Yet the only thing that we know of that is completely transcendent of space-time, matter-energy is information.
Dr. Stephen Meyer, (although discussing biology in particular and not the universe specifically), puts the transcendent nature of information like this:
Moreover, Dr. Meyer also notes that every time we see information we habitually associate its origination with conscious activity:
Of course, without any empirical support whatsoever that non-trivial functional information can possibly be created by unguided material processes, neo-Darwinists still insist that functional information in biology must be emergent from, or reducible to, a material basis.
Yet that unsupported materialistic belief about the ’emergence’ of information from a material basis is now shown to be false.
It is now shown that ‘non-local’ quantum information, which is not reducible to a material basis, exists in molecular biology on a massive scale, in every DNA and protein molecule:
Quantum entanglement/information simply is not reducible to a material basis:
Where Dr. Stephen Meyer’s argument for the intelligent origination of information in biology gains traction in cosmology is by realizing that it is now found that both energy and matter are not the foundation material stuff of the universe as is presupposed in reductive materialism.
Indeed, matter and energy, instead of being the foundational ‘stuff’ of the universe, as is held in materialism, are both now found to reduce to beyond space and time quantum information. (of note: energy is completely reduced to quantum information, whereas matter is semi-completely reduced, with the caveat being that matter can be reduced to energy via e=mc2).
In fact an entire human can, theoretically, be reduced to quantum information and teleported to another location in the universe:
Here are a few more quotes testifying to the fact that the foundational ‘stuff’ of the universe is information, not matter-energy,
As well, in support of the contention that the universe is information theoretic in its basis, not materialistic, it is now found that a ‘uncollapsed’ photon, in its quantum wave state, is mathematically defined as ‘infinite’ information:
Thus every time we observe, (i.e. collapse a quantum wave of), a single photon we are actually seeing just a single bit of information that was originally created from a very specific set of infinite information that was known by the consciousness that preceded material reality. i.e. information that was known only by the infinite Mind of omniscient God!
In learning about the transcendent nature of information, and how information exists in a dimension that is completely transcendent of any space and time constraints, it is also important to learn about the ‘timelessness’ that is inherent to information.
In learning this, it is important to first learn about the ‘eternal’ attribute of light.
If a hypothetical observer were to accelerate to the speed of light, time, as we understand it, would come to a complete stop for that hypothetical observer.
To grasp the whole ‘time coming to a complete stop at the speed of light’ concept a little more easily, imagine moving away from the face of a clock at the speed of light. Would not the hands on the clock stay stationary as you moved away from the face of the clock at the speed of light? Moving away from the face of a clock at the speed of light happens to be the same ‘thought experiment’ that gave Einstein his breakthrough insight into e=mc2.
,,,Yet, even though light has this ‘eternal’ attribute in regards to our temporal framework of time, for us to hypothetically travel at the speed of light, in this universe, will still only get us to first base as far as quantum entanglement, and/or teleportation, are concerned.
That is to say, although speed of light travel is ‘eternal’, speed of light travel is still not completely instantaneous and transcendent to our temporal framework of time, i.e. Speed of light travel, to our temporal frame of reference, is still not completely transcendent of our framework since light appears to take time to travel from our temporal perspective.
Yet, in quantum teleportation of information, the ‘time not passing’, i.e. ‘eternal’, framework is not only achieved in the speed of light framework/dimension, but is also ‘instantaneously’ achieved in our temporal framework. That is to say, the instantaneous teleportation/travel of quantum information is instantaneous to both our temporal framework and to the speed of light framework. It is not only instantaneous in just one framework as the speed of light is.
i.e. Information travel, as shown in entanglement experiments, is not limited by time, nor space, in any way, shape or form, in any frame of reference, as light is seemingly limited to us in this temporal framework.
Thus ‘pure transcendent information’ is shown to be timeless (eternal) and completely transcendent of all material frameworks.
Moreover, the framework in which this transcendent, eternal, infinite information exists is indeed real and the framework is the primary reality (highest dimension) that can possibly exist, (in so far as our limited perception of a primary reality, highest dimension, for this can be discerned as the source of reality).
Although I focused on matter-energy, and how it reduces to transcendent information, in order to make the case for a Theistic origin of the universe, it should also be noted that space-time itelf can also be viewed as ‘information theoretic’ in its basis.
In fact, Seth Lloyd used the fact that space and time have smallest indivisible units, (in other words space and time have ‘bits’, i.e. Planck length and Planck time), to calculate the number of elementary logical operations that could have been performed since the universe began
Also of note: Below the Planck scale ‘the very notions of space and length cease to exist’…
In other words, just as it makes no sense, from a space-time perspective, to ask, ‘What was before the Big Bang?’, it also makes no sense, from a space-time perspective, to ask, ‘What is below Planck length and planck time?’
And to add to the contention that space-time is information theoretic in its basis, it is also interesting to note what Richard Feynman stated in regards to space time:
Irregardless of what Feynman may have felt about the situation, as for myself, being a Christian Theist, I find it rather comforting to know that it takes an ‘infinite amount of logic to figure out what one stinky tiny bit of space-time is going to do’:
Supplemental note:
Music:
I think those are all very good questions that are being raised. Questions to which we do not yet have good answers yet, only vague inferences and conjectures.
The multiverse concept is essentially conjecture. According to my limited understanding, it was devised to try and answer certain problems in cosmology but there appears to be no way to test it so its value is questionable. That is not a reason to give up on it, however. We have no way of knowing in advance where such speculations might lead. All we can do is keep trying.
The OP also discusses whether an Intelligent Designer, usually taken to mean the God of Christianity, would provide a better alternative as an explanation and urges physicists to explore such possibilities as well, which is, to me, as unobjectionable as the multiverse.
Of course, the traditional objection to such a being as a Creator still stands. Why would a necessary, perfect, eternal being, which such a being would have to be by definition, bother to create a universe at a certain time in a certain place, indeed, why would it bother to create anything all?
Seversky:
There is a solid reason to give it up. The multiverse hypothesis is nonsense because an ex-nihilo universe is the only ontology of substance that does not lead to an infinite regress. Since there is only one nihilo (nothing), there is only one universe.
Why? The only thing that the creator needs to be is sufficiently powerful and knowledgeable. The traditional Christian requirement of an omnipotent and omniscient creator is just misguided medieval dogma based on bad logic, IMO. In fact, I believe it is the work of the devil. LOL. One Christian’s opinion, of course.
Seversky
Creation from infinite being does not happen at a certain time. As for why? — Goodness is diffusive.
A multiverse has far more problems. If infinite and eternal, in the sequence of time, then whatever could have happened has already happened — and an imagined string of events with no beginning never can get started.
Infinity is crackpottery, IMO. It’s odd that both Christians and materialists worship infinity. It’s also a form of idolatry, IMO. LOL.
here are a few more notes that go along with my previous post on the eternity of light and the timelessness of information
We now know that the odds of the Big Bang mindlessly and accidentally producing a Universe where life would become a possibility were 1 in 10^10^123 (See Roger Penrose’s The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe). The double exponentiation results in a number so large that it gives the assertion that the fine-tuning of the Universe for life was intended by an intelligent agent far more certainty than we are expected to have regarding the operations of the laws of physics, i.e., it is far more likely that gravity will stop working tomorrow than it is that the Universe being fine-tuned for life was dumb luck. So, it turns out that theism requires only a very small, profoundly reasonable faith. Atheism, on the other hand, requires a gargantuan, irrational, blind faith based on nothing more than one’s extreme dislike of the idea that there is a God Who will hold us accountable for our behavior. The atheist will obtain for himself the knowledge of good and evil and decide for himself what is right and what, if anything, is wrong. This is not a very original sin. In fact, it is the original sin.
The first person though to present the Boltzmann Brains paradox argument was Arthur Eddington in 1931.
Richard Feynman presents it as well at the end of his chapter on entropy in the Feynman Lectures on Physics.
To summarize, in the vast majority of universes in which astrophysics happen to arise as a fluctuation, they just barely exist. That is, they exist in a small bubble of entropy surrounded by a sea of chaos that will collapse and destroy the contents an instant later. However, our universe does not barely exist. As such, the multiverse in the cosmic sense (not to be confused with the multiverse of the Many Worlds Theory of Quantum Mechanics) is a bad explanation for what could be described as the apparent fine tuning of the universe.
So, we simply lack an explanation at this time. And that’s fine.
Merely saying “That’s just what some designer must have wanted” isn’t any better.
Popperian @22
My comments are in brackets:
I’d respectfully suggest you are exaggerating the significance of his argument. It’s not a particularly strong argument. It depends on there being super advanced worlds that simulate reality with actual experiences on the inside. There’s no reason to think this ever happens.
That said the multiverse deserves all the scorn it hopefully gets.
harry: Things don’t barely exist. They either exist or they don’t.
That’s not so clear with regards to quantum phenomena.
harry: The assertion that a unit of chaos is destroyed and replaced by chaos is meaningless.
That’s a description of the quantum vacuum state, which has empirical support.
harry: Isn’t the “vast majority of universes” nothing more than imagined magic without any evidentiary foundation?
Multiverses are mathematical solutions in string theory constituting a hypothesis, just as antimatter was a mathematical solution in physics constituting a hypothesis.
harry: Multiverse in any sense is a bad explanation for anything and everything since there is not and can never be evidence for the existence of other universes as long as our evidence gathering abilities are confined to this Universe
That’s not necessarily correct. Multiverses may overlap or otherwise interact.
harry: Such is the case with our life supporting Universe and the life within it; there is only 1 chance in 10^10^123 that that isn’t so.
Or it’s simply a measure of human ignorance.
harry: Such is the case with our life supporting Universe and the life within it; there is only 1 chance in 10^10^123 that that isn’t so.
Zachriel: Or it’s simply a measure of human ignorance.
Speak for yourself. It may be a measure of your ignorance. Although your denial of the obvious isn’t so much an indication of your ignorance — you know better — as it is an indication of your irrational, blind-faith based commitment to atheism. Your fanaticism and zealotry are demonstrated by your refusal to acknowledge facts that undermine what you want to believe.
harry: It may be a measure of your ignorance.
What are the chances that, under Newtonian Mechanics, inertial mass and gravitational mass would be the same exact value within the limits of measurement?
Coincidences may be provocative, but they are not evidence in and of themselves.
Yeah naturalism cuts is own throat in so many ways.
About consciousness, it’s absurd to think it can be simulated in the first place but if they deny that they must admit there is a soul. About God preventing it…. No amount of data is gonna get a program to know what it is, have an internal life, have a concept of what “RED” means to it. This is an atheist delusion. They are so embarrassing they must conclude under their worldview that consciousness is just an illusion anyway which undercuts their very plan to someday simulate an illusion.
But there is no mental illness in which a person suddenly has no internal life, which should show all that consciousness is not what they think. In relation to God, I would say we have consciousness because God makes us Real persons and it has nothing to do with the brains mechanics. We cannot make things Real persons no matter what we do.
In regards to Multiverse, there is simply nothing more self refuting, with perhaps the exception of Freewill, that the deniers of God spew out of there mouths. A child can see it doesn’t work. It doesn’t solve the fine tuning and I find the level of proper conceptual thought dedicated to it, even by those who oppose it, lacking. It much worse than people think. I suggest proponents actuactually go there in their minds instead of just kicking the can down the street and staying here. You will see, if your honest that is an impossible structure thats absurdities refute everything in our universe that leads to the proposal in the first place. The simple fact that it could be fine tuned but you could never know it displays the desperation. Of course a magical everything maker machine begs fine tuning but I think it shows even more of an assault on science and logic that you could never know and still be pushing this as a solution to fine tuning. Its mental illness, but denying God even exists has its pathologies
The Big Drag Model of the Multiverse, even as a work in progress, has already taken what are considered to be “laws” to the mat.
https://www.facebook.com/paul.adamson.965/posts/1414137255280013