As atheists scientists like Stephen Hawking or Leonard Susskind are confronted with the undeniable twin improbabilities of both Darwinist Evolution (DE) and the chance Origin of Life (OOL), they have floundered about like passengers on the Titanic, clinging to every piece of driftwood as if it were a lifeboat. Somehow they think that if life is so incredibly unlikely in our universe, multiplying by an infinite number of universes will solve their problem.
I am reminded of the man who said he started a company selling widgets at a loss, but he’s planning to make up for it in volume.
With all due respect, the concept of infinity has caused more than one person to go insane. The paradoxes multiply without any need to invoke metaphysics or multi-verses. But if we take a very sane mathematical approach, we can handle small amounts of infinity the way mathematicians since Archimedes have handled it, by taking the limits as numbers approach infinity. So let’s see if Stephen Hawking is right, that multiverses solve the Darwinian dilemma.
Let’s start with a textbook example:
Robert,
I think infinity is a concept that exists only in mathematics, I don’t believe an infinite amount of anything could actually exist. (Of course I could be wrong!)
I think it’s funny when people appeal to an infinite number of universes to explain OOL but still argue that Darwinism explains evolution from that. Why do you need Darwinism if you can explain anything by pure chance??
The multiverse, what a brilliant idea conjured in the minds of men! My father in law told me the other day that the local priest gave a lecture on billions of universe’s. I then asked “Really? Did he see them?” The answer was of course no but that they exist is nonetheless true.
I want to take a stab at this, it may not be from a scientific point of view but the reasoning is good enough for me. If God is true and Christ is true then there can only be one universe and there can only be life on one planet in that universe. A God that became a man to go and die for the sins in many or billions of universes and on billions of planets inside one universe is illogical it makes the resurrection a natural event because it just happens everywhere.
1 God 1 Universe 1 planet, a 1 time event!
Dr. Sheldon as to this comment of yours:
This following video ‘Dangerous Knowledge’ which is on ‘the mathematics of infinity’ gets its name from that tendency of infinity to drive people over the brink,,,
The preceding video looked at the lives of Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Gödel & Alan Turing
Georg Cantor’s part in getting the infinity ball rolling is noted here:
Kurt Godel’s part in bringing the incompleteness theorem to fruition, from ‘the mathematics of infinity’, can be picked up here
Alan Turing’s part in helping ‘put meat on the bones’ of Godel’s incompleteness theorem is picked up here:
Chaitin states one of the implications of incompleteness here:
Also of note from Chaitin’s work:
In perhaps the most precise way I’ve ever seen the problem stated, Dr. Gordon clearly states the implications of all this here:
And it turns out that out of a ‘infinite variety of mathematical descriptions’ we have ‘only’ two basic equations that describe this entire universe; General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Two equations that, like two jealous siblings, refuse to play nicely with each other. But, perhaps not so surprisingly, it is found that the main reason the two eqautions will not play nicely with each other is an ‘infinity problem’ that prevents the two equations from being reconciled into a ‘theory of everything’:
Of related interest Dr. Dembski states
Of important note: I hold ‘growing large without measure’ to be a lesser quality infinity than a fraction in which the denominator goes to zero. The reason why I hold it to be a ‘lesser quality infinity’ is somewhat stated at the 4:30 minute mark of the following video:
As well, the reason why ‘growing large without measure’ would be a lesser quality infinity than ‘a fraction in which the denominator goes to zero’ can be partially be grasped in this following video which I listed earlier:
i.e. if the ‘absolute transcendent infinity’ of God were to be reached from a finite material system, then that ‘reach to the absolute transcendent infinity’ of God would have to look very much like what almighty God accomplished in Christ:
Quote of note:
Verses, song, and video:
Also of note: Dr. Sewell stated at post #1
Well to try to flesh that concept out a bit,,, with God all things are possible (even an infinity of ‘things’), but without God infinite regress does rear its ugly head time and again:
And indeed the math of space-time itself has shown that there is not an infinite regress of the universe,,:
Apparently Hawking did not like that answer because it necessitated God
Yet despite Hawking’s philosophical druthers, infinite regress was further refined by Vilenkin to show:
Thus, as I think Dr. Sewell holds, an actual infinite must be based on a transcendent reality not a material one.
The multiverse theory is the Atheist Concession Speech. I love it when they have to resort to it.
Actually the multiverse would just give them more things that need to be explained that they cannot explain. Seriously, what’s the thinking? “Well we cannot explain this universe so we will conjure up a multiverse that we also cannot explain.”
Granville in #1
Indeed! One of the recurring themes among the anti-ID crowd is the notion of special creation. The thinking goes something like if evolution didn’t the diversity of life into existence, then God must have specially created each species. Now, if chance probabilities are at infinity, then why couldn’t chance alone account for, say, a bacterial flagellum appearing all at once from one generation to the next, fortuitously? Intuitively, Darwinists know that such a system that exhibits such a high level of CSI must be explained in a step-by-step fashion. But, as Granville notes, why is that necessary if probabilistic resources are infinite that the assembly could just fortuitously come to be?
If saying “God did it” is throwing in the towel on science, so is saying “chance did it”! This is a no win for atheists!!
My favorite dialog to have with a true believer in the multiverse – for sake of discussion let’s call the true believer Smith – I will be Jones
Smith: “I believe in an infinite amount of universes so that the chances of OOL are not just possibility, but that it has to eventually happen in at least one”
Jones: “So since you believe in the multi-verse any event we describe must occur eventually in at least one of the infinite amount of universes.”
“So in on of those universes, Jones comes up to Smith and asks him, ‘Would you like to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?’ and Smith answers, ‘Yes’. Why is this not that universe?
Does the Bible point to a Tripleverse?
Christ was, and is, and is to come.
Why not more?
If there was/is no design in the fashioning of the universe, there is no design, period.
In comparison with the design manifested throughout the universe, man’s efforts at design are so puny, that to impute the design of the Hadron Collider to a group of creatures closer to catatonia than cretinism, would be no exaggeration.
Design as a very concept does not and cannot exist, if we can blind ourselves to the grandest, most sublime and most complex designs imaginable. And call them the product of happy accidents that somehow seem to be infinitely purposeful and, indeed, resourceful.
WAKE UP atheist noggin-heads! Go an have a good cry. Then get over it. You LOSE!
I think that it is easy to argue against infinite multiverses but harder to argue against many multiverses. Do they claim infinite multiverses or just a whole bunch?
If there are infinite multiverses, then there must be a planet just like our somewhere where the Christian god is true. And Santa Clause.
Ah, theoretical physics: the field of science where it’s difficult to discern between what’s profoundly scholarly and what’s just plain silly.
I remember reading of a quantum model of the universe, similar to that of Edward Tryon, which states that there is a “mother” universe (which is made up of a quantum vacuum where fluctuations occur) and these fluctuations become “baby” universes (ours is one). Our “baby” universe is expanding, but the “mother” universe is infinite and eternal.
However, this model does not explain where the quantum vacuum comes from. A quantum vacuum is a sea of fluctuating energy. What accounts for its beginning?
Hawking would presumably nail it as, ‘the laws of nature’.
And the laws of nature ain’t nuttin’!
You got that right. Just observed patterns of behaviour, not indicating their origin or the origin of their subjects in any way, shape or form.
It’s like saying, ‘I know how a thermos flask (an old friend of mine in physics…) works: you pour hot stuff in it.’
What I don’t understand is the tacit assumption made by people who are regarded as highly intelligent scientists that before there was a universe, time and space existed. But without time and space, chance and quantum fluctuations do not exist. So, they are not starting with Nothing.
To put it a different way, let’s consider something that we know doesn’t exist. Let’s consider the Easter bunny. Would, for example, Stephen Hawking suggest that given enough time in a different universe, the Easter bunny could be the source of a completely new universe?
But that’s just my point, William. Your empty post is not Nothing!
You caused a field to come into existence where there was none before, a field that can host characters in a Sequence (roughly equivalent to our concept of Time) that obey The Laws of ASCII and HTML.
And the existence of a multiverse of previous comments depends entirely on a higher order of existence. Thus, ultimately, you must face either an infinite regression of existence, or an uncaused Cause who tells us that in the beginning was the Word . . .
#1 Granville,
I’m honored to have a *real* mathematician read a physicist’s attempt to do statistics! You are in good company if you think infinity is merely a mathematicians conceit. Georg Cantor didn’t think so, however, and I’m inclined to believe him. On the one side, he had all the Ernst Mach deniers, and on the other side the Platonist idealists. The deniers said nothing that couldn’t be constructed was real, and the idealists reserved infinity for God alone.
But what Cantor had found was a hierarchy of infinities, I suppose, like St Paul’s 7 heavens. And this heirarchy had important properties, that allowed him to make progress on mundane, and very real, problems in mathematics. His point was that heaven does touch earth, which the deniers hate; and that earth touches heaven, which the idealists hate. I like to think of Cantor as the Martin Luther of Mathematics.
The point of many of these calculations, is that they suspend the laws of physics. What is logical in one universe, ought to be logical in another, or otherwise why are we logically trying to make something probable by invoking so many universes? Wouldn’t one illogical universe do the trick? Just as Cantor said about hierarchies of infinity, there is one infinity associated our type of “physical” universe, an even bigger infinity associated with unphysical universes, yet a bigger one associated with illogical universes, and so on. Conflating these universes to make some sort of point about OOL shows that nothing has been learned from Cantor.
#13 Collin
It is not that a finite number of universes are an easier sell than an infinite number of universes, but that the concept of infinity is being twisted into unrecognizable shapes. It is being abused. Heaven’s infinity is there, and we can access it, and it does make a difference on Earth. But let us not debase it with incoherent babble of Easter bunnies or atheist nirvanas.
Um, my point about the Easter bunny was that it does not exist. It is Nothing, not infinity. There are no hierarchies of nothing. There are no quantum fluctuations in the Easter bunny. Ever.
While in mathematics comparing infinities, indeterminates as in L’Hopital’s rule, and the theorums in non-Euclidian geometry are legitimate, “real” non-physical universes are sorta like the concept of kosher ham. Or, ahem, the place in the New Testament where Paul mentions the seven heavens. [smirk]
@ your #6, homerjt1, ‘The multiverse theory is the Atheist Concession Speech. I love it when they have to resort to it.’
Absolutely brilliant, homerjt1! Partly because absolutely true, and partly because hilariously elliptical thinking. Another of our number with a wonderful corkscrew mind, to banjax the enemy!
Reminds me of mung’s RPS sat nav system – for locating the mind, in response, I believe, to some earnest but daft question.
I decided to give up studying medicine in NZ, when I saw they were bandying infinity around like so much confetti. Gnuff’s gnuff!