A philosopher follows a chain of reasoning, for example:
The possibility of a Spatial or Quantum Multiverse may give you strong reason to doubt your memory and your scientific view of the world. If there are many copies of you being created all the time in all sorts of environments, then only a few of those copies have accurate memories of the world’s history and beliefs about its large-scale structure. The reason is that the majority of them will be created with false memories, even though (since they’re copies of you) they have the same memories you do. They have memories of having lived for years or decades already, but in reality, they popped into existence a few moments ago in a small “bubble” of stability in a chaotic whole. And “they” might be “us.” So a multiverse might force us to question our memories and scientific beliefs.Thomas Metcalf, “A Multiverse of Possibilities” at Arc
The multiverse is not a logical deduction from the state of our universe. It is an attempt to short circuit discussion of apparent fine-tuning by appealing to the idea that no conclusions can be drawn because there is an infinite series we do not know about.
See also: The multiverse is science’s assisted suicide
and
What becomes of science when the evidence does not matter?
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It’s also an obfuscated way of reintroducing an infinite past.
Our current universe is a branch of a branch of a branch……
There dare not be a beginning! Why, that implies things.
The materialistic conjecture of an infinity of other universes to ‘explain away’ the fine tuning of this universe also insures, through the ontological argument, the 100% probability of the existence of God:
The multiverse also forces the atheist into the uneasy dilemma of accepting that fluffy pink unicorns dancing on rainbows is real is some other universe, and yet not accepting that the omnipotent God of Christianity is real in some other universe, (and therefore, via the ontological argument, real in this universe).
As well, the article in the OP claims that,
I clicked on the link that he provided for supposed scientific evidence and, lo an behold, his supposed scientific evidence for all these multiverse theories comes from none other than Max Tegmark’s old 2003 article
Contrary to what the author of the OP may falsely believe, Max Tegmark has no scientific evidence for his claims. Here is a video I made that focused precisely on Tegmark’s paper
George Ellis himself wrote a paper pointing out the fact that multiverse advocates, Tegmark included, do not have any experimental evidence validating their claims for the various forms of multiverse theories that they have postulated over the last twenty years or so,,,
Tegmark’s ‘mathematical multiverse’ was particularly ripe for ridicule,,,
In critique to Max Tegmark’s 2015 book, Our Mathematical Universe:,, Nobel Laureate Sheldon Glashow, professor of Mathematics and Physics at Boston University, quips that “I may be a blockhead but I am certainly not a mathematical structure akin to a triangle.”
Of particular interest, the article in the OP states, “if space can be curved”. The main evidence that Tegmark puts forth for postulating that the space of this universe may be infinite, what he refers to as the LEVEL I MULTIVERSE, is that Tegmark speculates that the universe may not be ‘closed’,,, or more precisely, the universe does not have a “positive” convex topology,,, Specifically he speculates that “Space could be finite if it has a convex curvature”
Yet, the topology of the universe is not positive and closed nor is it negative and open, and therefore infinite as Tegmark had apparently presupposed.
In fact, the topology of the universe is now found to be the least likely of all topologies. Absolute flatness. John Gribbin commented that “Finding the Universe in a state of even approximate flatness today is even less likely than finding a perfectly sharpened pencil balancing on its point for millions of years,,, any deviation of the Universe from flatness in the Big Bang would have grown, and grown markedly, as the Universe expanded and aged.”
Moreover as the following paper states, by analyzing the tiny variations in the temperature of this background radiation, (Which is exactly what Tegmark was trying to do in his 2003 multiverse paper), researchers have now found that “These tiny temperature variations correspond to the largest scale structures of the observable universe. A region that was a fraction of a degree warmer become a vast galaxy cluster, hundreds of millions of light-years across.”
The researchers go on to state, “if the universe was curved in any way, these temperature variations would appear distorted compared to the actual size than we see these structures today.
But they’re not.
Our best scientific instruments can’t detect any distortion at all between the tiny temperature variations in the microwave background and the largest scale structures of the observable universe.
As well, the researchers then go on to state that, the universe must have been flat to 1 part within 1×10^57 parts over its entire 13.8 billion years of expansion.
And in regards to Tegmark’s claim that the universe is infinite, they state,, the biggest thing about the universe being flat is what it doesn’t tell us. We still don’t know if the universe is finite or infinite.
Thus, Tegmark has exactly zero empirical evidence substantiating his belief that the universe’s topology is negative and open and that it therefore must be infinite in size and contain an infinite number of parallel universes. The best Tegmark can claim from the evidence we now have is that we cannot yet rule out an infinitely large universe completely.
Whereas the Theist, on the other hand, with the 1 part within 1×10^57 parts finding for the flatness of the universe can claim another fairly incredible piece of evidence for the fine tuning of the universe.
As the following author commented,,, there are,,, no laws of physics that predict or restrict the topology of the universe to be flat.
And yet, despite the laws of physics failing to predict a flat universe, on the other hand, thousands of years ago, long before modern science came along, the Bible spoke of God stretching a measuring line to mark off the dimensions of the earth’s foundations.
It is also interesting to note that the observations for temperature variations in the Microwave Background that disconfirmed Tegmark’s claim that the universe must be open and infinite, have instead now confirmed, as Tegmark himself admitted in the following video, that the earth and solar system have a surprisingly special position within the universe.
At the 13:55 minute mark of this following video, Max Tegmark, an atheist, finally admits, post Planck 2013, that the CMBR anomalies do indeed line up with the earth and solar system
Here is an excellent clip from “The Principle” documentary that explains these recently discovered ‘anomalies’ in the CMBR, that ‘coincidentally’ line up with the earth and solar system, in an easy to understand manner.
Thus, not only is the universe not curved as Tegmark had imagined, but the universe is found to be the most unlikely of all topologies, i.e. perfect flatness. Moreover, that perfect flatness enabled us to discover that the Earth was intended from the very beginning of the universe and that the Earth is not some cosmic accident and/or fluke of random chance. In other words, Tegmark’s supposed evidence for his “Level 1 Multiverse”, i.e. the curvature of space, actually supports the Theistic view of creation not Tegmark’s conjecture of a multiverse.
BA77:
I was introduced to St. Anselm’s argument in the early 70’s.
At the time it was strangely attractive but seemed not sufficient.
As the years have rolled on I find that the argument has taken on a power that I did not appreciate.
The genius of the author is evident.
It’s worse than you think. (Ain’t it always?)
Darwin himself explicitly attacked the available physical evidence in formulating his atheist creation myth, setting aside the actual fossil evidence of the time and claiming that further investigation would discover the trillions of missing gradations.
The multiverse theory is, like darwinism, not really a theory at all, since like darwinism there’s no possible way to test it. And it’s also alike in that it rejects the available evidence in favour of some future discovery.
Atheism and darwinism are both Gap theories: they rely explicitly on a belief in things we simply have not discovered. Unfortunately for darwinism, in the years since Darwin we’ve filled in an enormous proportion of the biochemical gaps and we now know for absolutely certain that darwin’s entire shaky edifice has no foundation at all but relied for its (even then) slim shreds of credibility on the ignorance of the times. The massively complex and fragile nature of genetics does not admit any possibility of chance advancement.
I never understood the argument “If we can’t account for this ONE then let’s conjure up infinite verses”
The multiverse is a speculative explanation which, amongst other things, tries to get around the grandfather paradox which must arise in a single universe in which travel backwards in time is not forbidden.
Proponents of a single, finely-tuned universe, in many cases, prefer it because it can be argued as evidence for the God in which they believe.
Sev:
Hahahahahaha….Yeah that’s what I thought of first as a reason for postulating a multiverse.
I have a used time machine with only 235,000 years on it for sale if you want it.
It’s not an easy problem. If travel back in time is possible, how do you escape the grandfather paradox?
If there are loops in time built into the history of the Universe, a bit like in Groundhog Day, so that we cycled back to an earlier point time repeatedly, that’s a possibility. The problem with that is that the movie narrative depended on Bill Murray’s character remembering what had happened on the preceding cycles. But, as was pointed out in the movie, what if his memory was reset back 24 hours just like everything else? He would never know he was constantly looping back through time. We would never know if it was happening to us. Perhaps it is. Would that be more or less weird than a multiverse?
Sev:
Bold mine.
Is there no delusion that you won’t entertain to avoid the obvious?
Multiverse theory goes back at least to the ancient Greeks. Although some modern scientists may use it as “an attempt to short circuit discussion of apparent fine-tuning by appealing to the idea that no conclusions can be drawn because there is an infinite series we do not know about,” that is really the least-common, least-historical perspective.
Modern multiverse theory was not even in response to the modern fine-tuning argument – it actually predates that argument by 4 years. The “Many Worlds Interpretation” was one theory used to explain the evidence acquired via experimentation in quantum physics. As BA and others point out, it cannot even be used in an argument against the existence of God or even against fine-tuning, since it has been pointed out that any non-deliberate universe generating cause must be finely tuned to even have the potential for creating a universe like ours.
“The multiverse is not a logical deduction from the state of our universe.” I can’t even imagine anyone supporting that statement in any reasonable way. If one begins with the premise that it’s a choice between multiverse theory and fine-tuning, then there might be a reasonable way to make such a claim about what cannot be logically deduced, but that’s an outrageously false dichotomy. There could be infinite intelligently-designed universes; and even in MWI theory, no potential universe would be actualized into form until and unless there was some act of observation occurring to collapse wave potentials into specific locations and characteristics.
The logical arguments for the existence of many universes dates back to Parmenides; the direct inference of his logic is that if we can imagine a thing, it necessarily exists somewhere.
As far as “not being able to trust our memory” and “not being able to trust science” … that’s just good common sense, whether that distrust is based on the fallibility of the human condition, or based on the idea that we may be constantly traversing through different dimensions.
And, as KF routinely points out, some things are true in all possible worlds.” And to steal his line, that should be a very sobering realization.