The Splendors of the Multiverse

The URL in the previous post was automatically truncated. It's meant to be: http://books.google.com/ ngrams/ graph?content=fine+tuned%2C+multiverse j

What caused the multiverse: http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fine+tuned%2C+multiverse&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=0&smoothing=3 j

Tom Graffagnino: Lol.. This is awesome.. Thanks for posting it.. KRock

KF, If there is a non-contingent world with no beginning that is the cause of this one, I still don't see why that possibility wouldn't apply equally to pretty much anything. One could say that a completely unintended Big Bang resulted from something non-contingent with no beginning. I am of course, playing devil's advocate in a sense, and I'm more likely to use the same argument in just the opposite direction. Some people might say that to believe in an eternal God with no beginning and no creator is irrational. And to be honest, it seems completely impossible. But that exact same seeming impossibility applies to everything. It doesn't matter which explanation we believe. We must choose between an infinite regression of causes or a first cause with no cause. I find both equally incomprehensible for the same reason, and I've never heard an explanation that gets around it. And yet our existence depends on one of them being true. For the record, I choose the causeless first cause. But that's on the basis of trust, not because I claim to make sense of either. Believing that there is non-contingent first cause, which I do, isn't an explanation of it. ScottAndrews2

SA: Actually not. Traversing the infinite in successive steps is infeasible, but there is no reason why there is not an ultimate. Indeed the issue of infinite succession points to the limits of tie as an explanation. If there is a temporal and contingent world that credibly began and then has succeeded step by step since, there is another world that is not contingent, and had no beginning; the root of the contingent world we see. KF kairosfocus

Now I know you won't believe this, But I'm telling you...It's true! Lightning struck a muddy puddle, And then life appeared and grew! I'm not kidding! It was magik! You can trust me. It's no lie! Look around! The life you're seeing Came from mud by lightning fried! Yep, the scientists will tell you... “That was really how it was!” And we know we should believe 'em Since...well, friend...well,..Just because! After all, they're educated! They've got tenure and degrees. They just know stuff...They're not kidding! They've got clout and expertise! So, don't argue. Just accept it. They are wise and in the know! They are right...and so, it's finished Just because they told us so. Tom Graffagnino

I've always been puzzled that anyone would bring up infinite regress to argue for or against anything. It affects every possible explanation of everything equally. It's not like we can discard one explanation because of infinite regress and pick a different one that doesn't face it. ScottAndrews2

The obvious infinite regress seems to escape most materialists like dmullenix, blinkered as they are by their faith commitments.

How could that possibly be true; it is a very basic inescapable logic a young child can comprehend / recognise. I think the more likely answer is, it's a question that they just don't want to ask or answer.. you know, like putting your head in the sand. Stu7

The following interview is sadly comical as a evolutionary psychologist realizes that neo-Darwinism can offer no guarantee that our faculties of reasoning will correspond to the truth, not even for the truth that he is purporting to give in the interview, (which begs the question of how was he able to come to that particular truthful realization, in the first place, if neo-Darwinian evolution were actually true?);

Evolutionary guru: Don't believe everything you think - October 2011 Interviewer: You could be deceiving yourself about that.(?) Evolutionary Psychologist: Absolutely. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128335.300-evolutionary-guru-dont-believe-everything-you-think.html

Of related note:

"nobody to date has yet found a demarcation criterion according to which Darwin(ism) can be described as scientific" - Imre Lakatos (November 9, 1922 – February 2, 1974) a philosopher of mathematics and science, quote was as stated in 1973 LSE Scientific Method Lecture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imre_Lakatos#Darwin.27s_theory Science and Pseudoscience - Imre Lakatos - exposing Darwinism as a ‘degenerate science program’, as a pseudoscience, using Lakatos's rigid criteria https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LpGd3smTV1RwmEXC25IAEKMjiypBl5VJq9ssfv4JgeM/edit Blackholes - The neo-Darwinian ‘god of entropic randomness’ which can create all things (at least according to them) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fxhJEGNeEQ_sn4ngQWmeBt1YuyOs8AQcUrzBRo7wISw/edit?hl=en_US Jake: Math prodigy proud of his autism - 60 Minutes - CBS News - video http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7395214n&tag=re1.channel Quote of note at the 12:00 minute mark of the preceding video; 'The whole randomness thing, that's like completely against all of physics' Jake Barnett - Child Prodigy of Math Evolution and the Illusion of Randomness - Talbott - Fall 2011 Excerpt: The situation calls to mind a widely circulated cartoon by Sidney Harris, which shows two scientists in front of a blackboard on which a body of theory has been traced out with the usual tangle of symbols, arrows, equations, and so on. But there’s a gap in the reasoning at one point, filled by the words, “Then a miracle occurs.” And the one scientist is saying to the other, “I think you should be more explicit here in step two.” In the case of evolution, I picture Dennett and Dawkins filling the blackboard with their vivid descriptions of living, highly regulated, coordinated, integrated, and intensely meaningful biological processes, and then inserting a small, mysterious gap in the middle, along with the words, “Here something random occurs.” This “something random” looks every bit as wishful as the appeal to a miracle. It is the central miracle in a gospel of meaninglessness, a “Randomness of the gaps,” demanding an extraordinarily blind faith. At the very least, we have a right to ask, “Can you be a little more explicit here?” http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/evolution-and-the-illusion-of-randomness “Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning...” CS Lewis – Mere Christianity http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/cs-lewis-quotes.htm "But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?" - Charles Darwin - Letter To William Graham - July 3, 1881 “It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.” J. B. S. Haldane ["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209. John Lennox - Science Is Impossible Without God - Quotes - video remix http://www.metacafe.com/watch/6287271/

bornagain77

Let's also remember that the atheistic-materialistic insistence that 'randomness' is a perfectly rational 'designer-substitute' is, in itself, in reality, ultimately the 'anti-science' position that destroys science;. i.e. Insisting on randomness as the 'first mover', the 'first cause', for reality within science, as atheists insist that we do, ends up, at the end of the day, destroying the very presuppositions in science that enabled humans to practice science rationally in the first place!!!: notes: This following site is a easy to use, and understand, interactive website that takes the user through what is termed 'Presuppositional apologetics'. The website clearly shows that our use of the laws of logic, mathematics, science and morality cannot be accounted for unless we believe in a God who guarantees our perceptions and reasoning are trustworthy in the first place.

Presuppositional Apologetics - easy to use interactive website http://www.proofthatgodexists.org/index.php Random Chaos vs. Uniformity Of Nature - Presuppositional Apologetics - video http://www.metacafe.com/w/6853139 Epistemology – Why Should The Human Mind Even Be Able To Comprehend Reality? – Stephen Meyer - video – (Notes in description) http://vimeo.com/32145998 Why should the human mind be able to comprehend reality so deeply? - referenced articles https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qGvbg_212biTtvMschSGZ_9kYSqhooRN4OUW_Pw-w0E/edit

Materialism simply dissolves into absurdity when pushed to extremes and certainly offers no guarantee to us for believing our perceptions and reasoning within science are trustworthy in the first place:

BRUCE GORDON: Hawking's irrational arguments - October 2010 Excerpt: What is worse, multiplying without limit the opportunities for any event to happen in the context of a multiverse - where it is alleged that anything can spontaneously jump into existence without cause - produces a situation in which no absurdity is beyond the pale. For instance, we find multiverse cosmologists debating the "Boltzmann Brain" problem: In the most "reasonable" models for a multiverse, it is immeasurably more likely that our consciousness is associated with a brain that has spontaneously fluctuated into existence in the quantum vacuum than it is that we have parents and exist in an orderly universe with a 13.7 billion-year history. This is absurd. The multiverse hypothesis is therefore falsified because it renders false what we know to be true about ourselves. Clearly, embracing the multiverse idea entails a nihilistic irrationality that destroys the very possibility of science. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/oct/1/hawking-irrational-arguments/ Dr. Bruce Gordon - The Absurdity Of The Multiverse & Materialism in General - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5318486/ The End Of Materialism? - Dr. Bruce Gordon * In the multiverse, anything can happen for no reason at all. * In other words, the materialist is forced to believe in random miracles as a explanatory principle. * In a Theistic universe, nothing happens without a reason. Miracles are therefore intelligently directed deviations from divinely maintained regularities, and are thus expressions of rational purpose. * Scientific materialism is (therefore) epistemically self defeating: it makes scientific rationality impossible.

This 'lack of a guarantee', for trusting our perceptions and reasoning in science to be trustworthy in the first place, even extends into evolutionary naturalism, the atheists citadel of defiance, itself;

Should You Trust the Monkey Mind? - Joe Carter Excerpt: Evolutionary naturalism assumes that our noetic equipment developed as it did because it had some survival value or reproductive advantage. Unguided evolution does not select for belief except insofar as the belief improves the chances of survival. The truth of a belief is irrelevant, as long as it produces an evolutionary advantage. This equipment could have developed at least four different kinds of belief that are compatible with evolutionary naturalism, none of which necessarily produce true and trustworthy cognitive faculties. http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/09/should-you-trust-the-monkey-mind What is the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism? ('inconsistent identity' of cause leads to failure of absolute truth claims for materialists) (Alvin Plantinga) - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yNg4MJgTFw Philosopher Sticks Up for God Excerpt: Theism, with its vision of an orderly universe superintended by a God who created rational-minded creatures in his own image, “is vastly more hospitable to science than naturalism,” with its random process of natural selection, he (Plantinga) writes. “Indeed, it is theism, not naturalism, that deserves to be called ‘the scientific worldview.’” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/books/alvin-plantingas-new-book-on-god-and-science.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

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