The tools of science are unable to deal with the supernatural. That is why science doesn’t deal with supernatural explanations.
1 Like
The FBI is not long but it does have some which are in danger no matter how deadly they may be individually. I hope you don’t mind me talking about the FBI because their survival is a concern of mine. People think that just because they are dangerous then they should be exterminated. But that just isn’t right. The balance of the environment depends on them. We just have to keep track of these ferocious beasts in this inventory so they don’t harm human beings or livestock.
OK, then how are you planning on stopping people from talking about the multiverse? BTW some of those people are scientists.
Who said I planned on stopping people from talking about the multiverse? The multiverse isn’t a religious concept.
1 Like
I’m guessing then that you are not familiar with multiverse discussions. It is a God alternative, a metaphysical belief.
There is nothing supernatural about a multiverse. If it exists, it is entirely natural. Can we say the same about God? (I would say yes.)
2 Likes
It comes down to what we think is WITHIN the scope of science and what is NOT within the scope.
A religious interpretation of the multi-verse is not going to be quite the same as a physicist’s explanation for the multi-verse.
If there was a religious group called MVR (i.e., Multi-Verse Reality), they could make interesting conversation about the Multi-Verse, just as Christians can make interesting conversations about the Higgs Boson particle.
But if a Christian physicist asserted that science can prove God made the Higgs Boston, that would be “out of scope” for authentic science.
No, it isn’t a metaphysical belief.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/metaphysics: the branch of philosophy that treats of first principles, includes ontology and cosmology, and is intimately connected with epistemology.
@MarkD that is a question of how we want to define “natural.” More traditionally it has been “within nature”, implying within this universe. “Natural law” is a very well understood term in that way.
While I appreciate that if a multiverse or a god exists, that is immediately arguably “natural” in one sense, I think for purposes of being understood by most people I would tend to avoid using the term in that way. If you use “natural” that way, what term would you then use for “what happens by the laws of this universe?”
But suppose we were at a point in time when the expanding universe accelerated to the point that no light from any galaxy but our own could be seen from earth? Would that render talk of other galaxies supernatural? No. Why not? Because the reasons for the unviewabiity of other galaxies is complete comprehensible by familiar natural laws.
The situation for a multiverse, if that does correctly describe the context within which the big bang which started what we now think of as our universe, is exactly the same. The reasons why other such singularity events wouldn’t be viewable from earth is completely comprehensible in terms of natural law as we know it now.
1 Like
U would disagree. As I understand the multi-verse, it postulates many, many universes, all of which have different natural laws and structure. How can the multiverse be natural if it is made up of parts which are not natural. That is the problem with the multiverse, its parts are totally other, unnatural to us, so they cannot be known to us.
I would not call the multiverse “supernatural,” but it is not natural. On the other hand as I have said before, if there is no God, and the universe cannot think, then humans should be called supernatural, because we would stand alone “above” unthinking nature.
I shall try to match your agreeable standard of disagreement. But you have set the bar high.
While I’m about as far from being an astrophysicist as a nursery rhyme is from being a Shakespearean sonnet, I doubt that much can be known with much certainty regarding anything whose existence is unknowable. So while I agree there might well be many I absolutely disagree that each one of them would operate under a unique set of laws natural to itself alone. There might in fact be some variability but my untutored suspicion is that there would be something about the commonality of the process which would result in any universe that was at all stable being much like our own. I don’t often reach for Occam’s razor but here I feel it may be justified. Heck, I’d wager 15¢ on it. 
As I see it, if in fact there was any degree of variability between singularity events, then there ought to be some natural explanation for why that is so - whether or not we are ever in any position to know what that is.
From my point of view, if we knew that our universe was a cog in a greater process we’re calling a multiverse, then we would have to immediately upgrade our definition of natural law from that which obtains in our universe to include the factors which account for the variability. Operating under descriptive laws different than those which obtain here would no more disqualify another universe from counting as “natural” than a galaxy that operates differently from our Milky Way would disqualify it from being classified as a natural galaxy. If the multiverse is a fact, then there is likely some pattern in the production and extinction of singularity events which accounts for it -and- accounts for why our particular event should exhibit the local natural laws which it does.
But I have no idea what the big boys upstairs would think of any of this. Should we see if @pevaquark or @mitchellmckain have any opinion on the matter? Do you know of any other practicing physicists we might appeal to?
And some consider evolution a religion.
So true! And for some it may be. But in any case, and not to be argumentative but hopefully to inform from my experience, in discussions around ultimate things where God is brought up as a first mover, the multiverse is often proposed as an alternative.
So what? When people don’t believe in God for whatever reason, they don’t need the multiverse as an alternative. Atheism has been around much longer than the multiverse theory.
Well, now that we know that space, time and matter had a beginning in the Big Bang, you kinda need something infinite, eternal, and immaterial to give rise to it. Since previous generations believed the universe itself to be infinite and eternal, atheists didn’t need anything to start it. Now they do.
Neither the “multiverse” nor the supernatural/spiritual are part of the measurable universe. I have mentioned how both the theist and the naturalist simply start with different first causes, one with God and one with the natural law. But in both case we are talking about something outside what is measurable and outside of demonstrable science. So both belong to the realm of subjective judgement, subjective arguments, and subjective evidence. The simple fact is that we have no basis for expecting other people to agree that such things exist, and that is all there is to it. Whether you can appeal to scientists who happen to agree with your particular subjective view doesn’t change anything.
Fair enough and thanks for weighing in. Any chance my analogy between the status of the multiverse and that of other galaxies at a time when the accelerating expansion of our universe makes the light from other galaxies undetectable and so not measurable would have moved the needle any?
Also, I’ve never believed I was entitled to a complete account of origins. That science can let us peer back as far as it does is pretty spectacular. Before that, “no one knows for certain” works for me. Nonetheless my personal intuition remains that beyond the limits of what can be demonstrated or at least reasonably argued for, it is simply the difficulty of the problem - not the absence of natural processes that explains why the trail has gone cold. But I do not argue for the reasonableness of my intuitions for the reasons you say. But then that time, space and everything else began to exist from pure nothing is no more indicated than any hypothetical naturalistic explanation.
No, because the light from them remains in our portion of the universe impacting things like photographic film. The causal link remains.
The point is that it began to exist from nothing we can measure or demonstrate. And anything you want to fill in that unknown does not have the epistemological superiority of science to back it up.
As far as I am concerned, “supernatural” just means that something is not part of the measurable universe so that would apply just as much to a multiverse as it would to the spiritual.
“Spiritual,” however, means a little bit more than that to me. My belief in it derives from a conviction that the mathematical and the objective cannot be the sum total of reality. Thus I believe there is a portion of reality which is inherently subjective because it is responsive to what we want and believe.
1 Like