Is this the best argument for a multiverse?

But without free will, which materialists deny having, how can anyone 'choose' to make this universe count?

A Professor's Journey out of Nihilism: Why I am not an Atheist - University of Wyoming - J. Budziszewski Excerpt page12: "There were two great holes in the argument about the irrelevance of God. The first is that in order to attack free will, I supposed that I understood cause and effect; I supposed causation to be less mysterious than volition. If anything, it is the other way around. I can perceive a logical connection between premises and valid conclusions. I can perceive at least a rational connection between my willing to do something and my doing it. But between the apple and the earth, I can perceive no connection at all. Why does the apple fall? We don't know. "But there is gravity," you say. No, "gravity" is merely the name of the phenomenon, not its explanation. "But there are laws of gravity," you say. No, the "laws" are not its explanation either; they are merely a more precise description of the thing to be explained, which remains as mysterious as before. For just this reason, philosophers of science are shy of the term "laws"; they prefer "lawlike regularities." To call the equations of gravity "laws" and speak of the apple as "obeying" them is to speak as though, like the traffic laws, the "laws" of gravity are addressed to rational agents capable of conforming their wills to the command. This is cheating, because it makes mechanical causality (the more opaque of the two phenomena) seem like volition (the less). In my own way of thinking the cheating was even graver, because I attacked the less opaque in the name of the more. The other hole in my reasoning was cruder. If my imprisonment in a blind causality made my reasoning so unreliable that I couldn't trust my beliefs, then by the same token I shouldn't have trusted my beliefs about imprisonment in a blind causality. But in that case I had no business denying free will in the first place." http://www.undergroundthomist.org/sites/default/files/WhyIAmNotAnAtheist.pdf A Professor's Journey out of Nihilism: Why I am not an Atheist - 2012 talk University of Wyoming J. Budziszewski http://veritas.org/talks/professors-journey-out-nihilism-why-i-am-not-atheist/?view=presenters&speaker_id=2231

And, since atheists also deny the reality of their own person-hood, whom exactly is the universe to count for?

The Confidence of Jerry Coyne Excerpt: But then halfway through this peroration, we have as an aside the confession that yes, okay, it’s quite possible given materialist premises that “our sense of self is a neuronal illusion.” At which point the entire edifice suddenly looks terribly wobbly — because who, exactly, is doing all of this forging and shaping and purpose-creating if Jerry Coyne, as I understand him (and I assume he understands himself) quite possibly does not actually exist at all? The theme of his argument is the crucial importance of human agency under eliminative materialism, but if under materialist premises the actual agent is quite possibly a fiction, then who exactly is this I who “reads” and “learns” and “teaches,” and why in the universe’s name should my illusory self believe Coyne’s bold proclamation that his illusory self’s purposes are somehow “real” and worthy of devotion and pursuit? (Let alone that they’re morally significant: But more on that below.) Prometheus cannot be at once unbound and unreal; the human will cannot be simultaneously triumphant and imaginary. http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/06/the-confidence-of-jerry-coyne/?_r=0 The Heretic - Who is Thomas Nagel and why are so many of his fellow academics condemning him? - March 25, 2013 Excerpt:,,,Fortunately, materialism is never translated into life as it’s lived. As colleagues and friends, husbands and mothers, wives and fathers, sons and daughters, materialists never put their money where their mouth is. Nobody thinks his daughter is just molecules in motion and nothing but; nobody thinks the Holocaust was evil, but only in a relative, provisional sense. A materialist who lived his life according to his professed convictions—understanding himself to have no moral agency at all, seeing his friends and enemies and family as genetically determined robots—wouldn’t just be a materialist: He’d be a psychopath. http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/heretic_707692.html?page=3

Does making up a dream of purpose within an illusion of self mean more than the fact that self is an illusion?

Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow -- You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand -- How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep -- while I weep! O God! can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream? --- Edgar Allan Poe - 1850

Of note: Kant's empirical requirement for the moral argument for God to be verified, (influences arising from outside space-time, i.e. free will), has now been met in quantum mechanics:

God, Immanuel Kant, Richard Dawkins, and the Quantum - Antoine Suarez - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQOwMX4bCqk Antoine Suarez is the founding director of the Center for Quantum Philosophy in Zurich, based on philosophical questions raised in the 1970's and 1980's by John Bell. Suarez and Valerio Scarani, inspired by discussions with Bell, proposed in 1997 the "before-before" experiment (which confirmed quantum non-locality from another angle).,,, http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/suarez/

Verse and Music:

Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Brave - Nichole Nordeman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEUxX4kjOo8

Of supplemental note to the irrationality of the multiverse in general:

The Multiverse Gods, final part - Robert Sheldon - June 2011 Excerpt: And so in our long journey through the purgatory of multiverse-theory, we discover as we previously discovered for materialism, there are two solutions, and only two. Either William Lane Craig is correct and multiverse-theory is just another ontological proof a personal Creator, or we follow Nietzsche into the dark nihilism of the loss of reason. Heaven or hell, there are no other solutions. “How can this be? Did we not begin with an infinity of solutions, how then did we end up with only two?” Because of feedback. When our solutions include us, then we have introduced unavoidable feedback. For positive feedback takes any number or even infinite inputs and returns just two outputs. It is the inevitable consequence of wanting to explain ourselves. If, as in most of our science endeavors, we leave out ourselves, our feelings, our metaphysics, our guilt, our pleasures and focus merely on the task at hand–say, building a better telescope–then we don’t suffer this indignity. But as soon as we try to avoid something that is rightfully ours–our conscience, our responsibility, our will–then we are up to our neck in a mess. What can deliver us from this metaphysical pit? Only another person, who isn’t us. Only by having an outside force can we avoid the metaphysical feedback that unleashes the Titans. And only by making that force personal, is the cure any better than the disease. We need a pure light, a simple truth, a thing of beauty, something outside our self to guide us through the minefield. Pandora slammed the box shut, but it was too late, the only thing left in it was Hope. http://rbsp.info/PROCRUSTES/the-multiverse-gods-final-part/

bornagain77

January 31, 2015

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