My (O’Leary for News)’s new piece at Salvo:
Proving Grounded Multiverse Supporters Put the Brakes on Falsifiability
… today, some scientists want to throw falsifiability overboard. They hope by doing this to protect the concept of the multiverse. Put simply, there is currently no evidence for the existence of any universes other than our own, making the theory of the multiverse unfalsifiable. But if the proposal to dispense with falsifiability were accepted, that would be very convenient for naturalist atheists. They could then argue that any stream of events that occurs in our universe may well have occurred differently in any one of an infinite number of other universes. So no inferences (other than their own) could be drawn from a given state of affairs here in the only world for which we have information.
Thus, falsifiability was one of the ideas included in This Idea Must Die (2015), a recent book on scientific theories that are allegedly blocking progress. As cosmologist Sean Carroll cheerily explains in his essay in the book: More.
As I have noted elsewhere, a lot of today’s “cosmology” could have been thunk up by a mystic sitting on a prayer mat thousands of years ago.
See also: Why the multiverse has become more important than falsifiability.
and
Will there still be science in 2020?
Note: ” … falsifiability was one of the ideas included in This Idea Must Die (2015), a recent book on Scientific Theories That Are Blocking Progress.” It is blocking progress, if progress means a gradual retreat from the demands of evidence.
Barry Arrington writes to say:
You write, “Put simply, there is currently no evidence for the existence of any universes other than our own, making the theory of the multiverse unfalsifiable.”
That is not quite right. Absence of evidence for a proposition does not make it unfalsifiable. A proposition is unfalsifiable if, in principle, there can be no empirical test that would disprove it.
In other words, the multiverse is unfalsifiable because all scientific experiments are limited to testing phenomena in this universe. We cannot, in principle, test the proposition that another universe exists.
Good to get that straight.
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Eh? That’s not quite right, is it?
There is currently no evidence for the existence of $1,000,000,000 cash in my garage (unfortunately), but that’s certainly not an unfalsifiable proposition.
“There is currently no evidence for the existence of $1,000,000,000 cash in my garage”
Bad Analogy. Assuming for arguments sake that you actually have a garage, you can examine the garage.
You can’t examine anything extra-the-only-known-universal.
Andrew
Hi asauber,
But that’s not what the OP states. The sentence I quoted says that the theory of the multiverse is unfalsiable because there is currently no evidence for it. It doesn’t say anything about whether we could ever examine other universes.
“But that’s not what the OP states. The sentence I quoted says that the theory of the multiverse is unfalsiable because there is currently no evidence for it. It doesn’t say anything about whether we could ever examine other universes.”
daveS,
I can see where you might nit-pick his phraseology, but that’s all it would be. I think the idea he was trying to convey is unarguable.
Andrew
This seems relevant:
OP: Put simply, there is currently no evidence for the existence of any universes other than our own, making the theory of the multiverse unfalsifiable.
How does the first phrase of the sentence (between the two commas) lead to the second? I’m thinking, to put it simply, when something is put too simply, it might be problematical.
If we could “examine” other universes, then those universes would necessarily be part of our universe. In other words, anything that can be observed, no matter how weird or how distant, is included by the term “universe.” If there is such a thing as a true other universe, it must necessarily remain inaccessible to us. If it’s accessible to us in any way, then it’s just another part of our universe.
groovamos@6:
You’re asking the same question as daveS @ 1, to which asauber gave a satisfactory reply wrt the OP’s wording AND the idea.
Further, there’s no way to observe/test something outside of our own universe. Other universes (i.e. the multiverse) are outside of our own universe. Why is this a difficult concept to grasp?
Even if you say that maybe there could be some evidence within our universe that suggests other universes exist (e.g. “imprint” in the CMB), the other universes cannot be observed and the multiverse could never become more than an unfalsifiable theory.
It is interesting to note that the multiverse hypothesis was not born out of any empirical observation but was born out of the atheist’s reaction to the design inference from fine-tuning.
Basically the argument from atheists against fine-tuning goes something like this.
Lucky us!
Unfortunately for atheists this argument fails on several levels.
One failure, in such a scenario, the multiverse generator itself will need to be fine tuned. Thus the atheist’s desperate appeal to multiverses, to escape the the inference to intelligent design from fine tuning, just kicks the problem of fine-tuning up a level:
Another failure in the multiverse scenario of atheist’s is that it predicts everything and therefore predicts nothing:
Last powerpoint of the preceding video states:
In fact one of the originator’s of inflation theory now rejects inflation theory because he realized it predicts everything and therefore predicts nothing:
In regards to the untestable multiverse conjectures of atheists, it is interesting to note that we have far more empirical evidence for higher, ‘heavenly’, dimensions above this one than we have evidence for the imaginary multiverses of atheists.
Higher Dimensional Special Relativity, Near Death Experiences, Biophotons, and the Quantum Soul
One of the more fascinating branches of Near Death Studies have been the studies of people who were born blind who have had NDE’s, who could see for the first time in their life during their NDE. This simply has no explanation within the materialistic framework, whereas, in the theistic framework, this is expected:
The reason why blind people can see during Near Death Experiences, and not while they are in their material bodies, is related to the reason why we cannot see higher dimensions while our souls are embodied within our material bodies, and yet people having NDEs can see higher dimensions during their NDEs.
Simply put, higher dimensions are invisible to our ’3-Dimensional’ sight, but are not invisible to our ‘spiritual sight’.
This following video gets this ‘we are blind to higher dimensions’ point across quite clearly:
of note: The preceding video is the lead off video on the outreach page of Dr. Anton Zeilinger’s quantum group in Vienna:
https://vcq.quantum.at/outreach/multimedia/videos.html
Some people may think we have no empirical evidence for higher dimensions above this one. They would be wrong in that presupposition. In fact, we have far more evidence for a higher dimension(s) above this one than we have for the infinite universes that are postulated by materialists to try to get around the theistic implications of fine-tuning for this universe.
In Theism, particularly Christian Theism, it is held there are two ultimate destinies for our eternal souls. Heaven or Hell. And in physics we find two very different higher dimensional ‘eternities’ just as Theism has held for millennia. An orderly eternity associated with Special Relativity and a destructive eternity associated with General Relativity.
In this post I will focus on the orderly eternity associated with Special Relativity.
One higher dimensional eternity in physics is found ‘if’ a hypothetical observer were to accelerate to the speed of light.
In this scenario, time, as we understand it, would come to a complete stop for the 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.
Some may think that time, as we understand it, coming to a complete stop at the speed of light is pure science fiction, but, as incredible as it sounds, Einstein’s famous thought experiment has many lines of evidence now supporting it.
This following confirmation of time dilation is my favorite since they have actually caught time dilation on film:
(of note: light travels approximately 1 foot in a nanosecond (billionth of a second) whilst the camera used in the experiment takes a trillion pictures a second):
This higher dimension, ‘eternal’, inference for the time framework of light is also warranted, by logic, because light is not ‘frozen within time’, i.e. light appears to move to us in our temporal framework of time, yet it is shown that time, as we understand it, does not pass for light. The only way this is possible is if light is indeed of a higher dimensional value of time than our temporal time is otherwise it would simply be ‘frozen in time’.
Another line of evidence that supports the inference that ‘tomorrow can exist simultaneously with today and yesterday’, at the ‘eternal’ speed of light, is visualizing what would happen if a hypothetical observer were to approach the speed of light. Please note, at the 3:22 minute mark of the following video, when the 3-Dimensional world ‘folds and collapses’ into a tunnel shape as a ‘hypothetical’ observer moves towards the ‘higher dimension’ of the speed of light, (Of note: This following video was made by two Australian University Physics Professors with a supercomputer.).
Moreover, we have eyewitness testimonies from Near Death Experiences testifying to these ‘higher dimensional attributes’ that are witnessed in Special Relativity. Specifically, we have testimony for both the ‘eternal’ attribute and the ‘tunnel’ attribute of Special Relativity.
Here is testimony from Near Death Experiencers experiencing the ‘eternal’ attribute of special relativity:
And here is testimony from Near Death Experiencers experiencing the ‘tunnel’ attribute of special relativity:
Vicky Noratuk’s, who is physically blind, ‘tunnel’ testimony is interesting to look at because her testimony also includes testimony of her being ‘a body of energy, or of light’:
But do we have scientific evidence that humans can be ”a body of energy, or of light’? The answer to that question is, surprisingly, yes! Yes, we do now have scientific evidence that humans can be ‘beings of light’:
You can see an actual picture of humans emitting the weak ‘biophotonic’ light here:
Moreover, this light coming from the human body is found to a emitted by a quantum process, it is not emitted by a classical process:
Thus Vicky Noratuk’s testimony that she was ”a body of energy, or of light’ during her NDE finds strong support from our present scientific evidence for biophotonics in our material bodies.
Moreover, besides the finding of massive biophotonic communication within, and emission from, our material bodies, it is now found that transcendent, and ‘conserved’, (cannot be created or destroyed), ‘non-local’, (beyond space-time matter-energy), quantum entanglement/information, which is not reducible to matter-energy space-time, is now found in our material bodies on a massive scale (in every DNA and protein molecule).
And here is the evidence that quantum information is in fact ‘conserved’ (i.e. cannot be destroyed);,,,
Besides providing direct empirical falsification of neo-Darwinian claims as to the generation of information from a material basis, the implication of finding ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, and ‘conserved’ quantum information in molecular biology, on such a massive scale, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious:
Verse and Music:
Of supplemental note:
Regardless of how much energy we pour into a particle of matter, we can never ‘push’ the particle of matter to the higher dimension of the speed of light:
of related interest:
Is there Life After Death ? – Scientific Research Facts – Jeffrey Long MD. – video (May 2015)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HhOZLN_9FM
Is there life after death ? Near Death Experience Researcher Dr. Jeffery Long shares his expertise after studying over 4000 NDE’s through his website: http://www.nderf.org
07:40 – Negative Near Death Experiences
11:09 – On Love
14:14 – New abilities after an NDE
33:40 – What we look like on the other side
34:22 – Dr.Long How has researching NDE’s affected your life?
40:12 – Special information brought from the other-side
41:12 – Why do people return & our purpose
42:55 – A typical ending scenario of an NDE why some come back
45:01 – Shown future events of their choice if they don’t return.
50:00 – Who are the beings people see?
51:08 – Time in the afterlife
55:07 – Do people reincarnate when they cross over?
59:33 – After effects of a Near-Death Experience
1:03:15 – What happens when you commit suicide?
1:06:48 – Description of the 1% of NDE’s that are hellish.
1:08:14 – Does everyone get a choice to stay or return?
1:14:46 – After Death Communications
1:20:04 – Do animals have Near-Death experiences?
1:21:17 – Do people have more that one NDE
1:22:52 – Are NDE’s just hallucinations of a dying brain?
There is no life after death. You either have life or you do not. You are either alive or you are dead.
John 1:3-5
All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
Mung:
There are documented cases of people who were dead that came back to life- life after death
Mung
“You are … or you are …”
So there are three elements in that construction.
You. Life. Death.
In one case, You ‘have life’. In the other case, You ‘have death’.
If “you are dead” then “you aren’t”.
So, it might be more accurate to say “either you exist or you don’t”. If you’re alive, you exist in that idea.
So, “you” come into existence at some point, and then go out of existence with death. So, “you” would be identified with the physical body.
But there’s no evidence of where a self comes from or that it is a product of physicality.
… if we lost all ID enemies, now we can debate each other. 🙂
Continuity
Origin: Latin continuus, from contin?re to hold together. (1673)
Is there a continuity to life, existence, given the discontinuous events called the death of the physical body? If life, existence is physically discontinuous how is it the case we persist to compulsively search for the continuity of life, existence? E.g., life after death, the world to come, common ancestry, cladistics, fossil record, extraterrestrial intelligence, life on other planets, transmigration of aggregates, reincarnation. What is this continuity, this holding together, which is apparently populated by discontinuities? The discontinuities have not dissuaded us from wanting to convince there is ontological continuity … have not dissuaded evolutionary thinkers nor supernatural believers. Philosophical naturalism (materialists) and theistic proponents (immaterialists) appear to share a belief in the fundamental continuity of existence. And a fundamental continuity to time. Otherwise, how could one make the case for the transformation of living organisms from simple to complex? How could one make the case for the life of the soul? If the continuities of existence and time are fundamental to materialism and immaterialism and both accept the discontinuous events called death, what is (are) the critical point(s) in thinking which severs materialism and immaterialism?