He drags in Darwinism, of course:
What if, as the Harvard scientist (not a late-night radio host) suggests, our universe was “created in a laboratory of an advanced technological civilization … Since our universe has a flat geometry with a zero net energy, an advanced civilization could have developed a technology that created a baby universe out of nothing through quantum tunneling.” Such an idea, he concludes, “unifies the religious notion of a creator with the secular notion of quantum gravity.”
Loeb doesn’t speculate on the identity of our universe’s engineer(s), or the location of the “laboratory” where it came to be. But if his proposal sounds familiar, it’s because it is. Specifically, he’s proposing a form of intelligent design, only one with an infinite number of extra steps.
John Stonestreet & G.S. Morris, “Intelligent Design Without God?” at The Stream (November 6, 2021)
Is that how it works? Stonestreet and Morris go on to ask:
If the universe were cooked up through quantum tunneling in a cosmic laboratory by alien scientists, who made the alien scientists who created the universe?
Loeb certainly tries to answer that question by suggesting that there may be countless baby universes, all engineered by “advanced civilizations,” which in turn create more life-sustaining universes, but which are not self-existing or eternal. The process, he writes, may proceed along Darwinian lines, ensuring a selection advantage for life-sustaining universes since they can, in a manner of speaking, “reproduce.”
John Stonestreet & G.S. Morris, “Intelligent Design Without God?” at The Stream (November 6, 2021)
Somebody fetch Occam’s Razor quick:
Hat tip: Ken Francis, co-author with Theodore Dalrymple of The Terror of Existence: From Ecclesiastes to Theatre of the Absurd