What about the multiverse?

I would rather say: The hypothesis imply that the “physical reality” we live in is more than what we can access with our senses.

In my view this is the truth behind the Multiverse and a very fitting conclusion from a Christian point of view.

1 Like

First, I expect that many “secular” scientists do accept creation out of nothing.

Second, the Creation or as I have called it, the Beginning is a point where Science, Philosophy, and Christianity come together. Each discipline has a part of the puzzle and they all need to work together for humans to understand the whole.

They complement each other, rather than conflict which each other. Science understands how the physical aspect of Reality works, philosophy how the rational aspect of Reality works, logic and Einstein, and Christianity how the spiritual aspect of Reality works.

It is strange to me that YEC claim that the Bible has absolute truth of the Beginning, and has squandered all sorts of time and credibility on that claim. That means that when Christianity has a much better case that the Bible depicts the Beginning of Time, Space, Matter, and Energy in terms of the Big Bang, we are in a much weaker position to pursue these questions.

CS Lewis liked the idea of a multiverse. The Chronicles of Narnia is set in a multiverse too, with a coherent vision of Jesus in Aslan. Is that not relevant here?

1 Like

The point of fine tuning is that our universe has a very narrow range of characteristics that allows it to produce something like our solar system through trial and error. You have already rejected the idea that God would use trial and error to produce something habitable for humans, so I am not sure why you would point to fine tuning.

Most scientists agree that the theory of relativity breaks down in singularities. They also agree that the theory of relativity doesn’t work at the quantum level.

Sadly this is false. Multiverse is used to claim that there is a physical reality beyond the universe, not that there is a spiritual reality beyond the universe.

The hypothesis of “the Multiverse” is one thing, how it is (mis)used is quite another.

In any case it is plain that by supporting the Multiverse one acknowledges that the physical reality is more than what we can access with our senses. And this amounts to acknowledge that what we call “physical reality” is actually in part spiritual, and can be considered as contained in God’s mind.

If you take this perspective then it is plain that the Multiverse becomes a parable of God’s omniscience, and you can even say that “nature is what God does”.

Admittedly there are people who use the Multiverse to propagate atheism. What are they doing?:

Actually they utter a magnificent argument in favor of the existence of God but at the end they loudly state:

“And therefore God does NOT exist”.

This is a clever tactic. Because they lead you to counter: “You are wrong”, and thereby reject what in fact is a proof of God.

We have to be aware of this tactic and avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I don’t think you meant to write this. Relativistic Quantum Mechanics is one of the most successful theories that we have.

The point of fine tuning (in my opinion) is that the universe has a narrow range of characteristics that permit it to manufacture stars which then (in their own narrow-range way) produce heavy elements and which then (some of the stars) explode and seed space with the essential ingredients of life. What do you mean by trial and error?

If anyone is interested, just like week I gave a talk on Cosmological Fine Tuning to our philosophy department. (I’m in the physics department.) You can see it here if you like.

A google search for “relativity at the quantum level” returns lots of hits talking about the incompatibility of relativity and quantum theory.

It can’t really be refuted, it is (at least in the weak version, WAP) tautological. It says that the physics of a universe with observers must be consistent with the existence of observers.

3 Likes

That process has produced trillions of solar systems, only a small percentage of which are presumably compatible with human life. @Relates seemed to be saying that the idea of a multiverse did not match up with how he viewed God because it would produce a lot of universes through trial and error, and in the process produce a lot of universes that were not compatible with human life. If the multiverse poses problems for certain views of God, then I would think that the production of solar systems in our own universe would pose the same problem.

@Relates seemed to be arguing for a different version:

“The anthropic principle is based on the fact that it is our whole universe that supports life including human life. All the planets and stars are needed, not just our solar system.”

Every particle accelerator (including the one where I conduct my research) and every experiment done at these accelerators explores and is understood only in the realm of relativistic quantum mechanics, first formulated by Dirac and later blossoming into Relativistic Quantum Field Theory under such notables as Feynman (and many others.)

I think what you are getting at is that Gravity and Quantum Mechanics haven’t been joined. One theory of gravity is General Relativity, so you could say that General Relativity and QM have not been united. But to say relativity and QM are not compatible is just wrong.

He may be right. For example, one of the parameters that may be fine tuned (I’m not an expert on this so maybe someone else can chime in–I could be dead wrong) is the initial baryon density, and that baryon density will consequently and necessarily produce a vast universe. Put differently, there is no way the big bang could have produced just a single star and solar system. To produce any stars, it may have needed to produce huge numbers of stars.

Fair enough. What I was originally getting around to was the problem of singularities within relativity, and how they would apply to the proposed singularity at the moment of the Big Bang:

"Most people worry about singularities involving general relativity: two examples being a black hole and the singularity that classical general relativity predicts was our universe at the moment it began. If you try to apply the laws of general relativity in these situations you will inevitably find the same 1/x singularities I’ve been talking about. How are we going to resolve these singularities? We expect quantum mechanics to do the job, since it is the theory that correctly describes physics at small distance scales. Unfortunately, while we have good theories of atomic physics, we don’t real have a good theory of quantum gravity. Many of us think string theory will ultimately provide the resolution to these problems. "

Cool beans!

Then perhaps the same could apply to the multiverse, where the process of creating our universe required the production of all those other universes.

Perhaps! I certainly could not say otherwise.

Not precisely the multiverse, but similar cosmic questions in today’s article in The Atlantic…

Thought it might be of interest to readers here.

The fine tuning of the universe is not really about “trial and error” at all. It could include trial and error but it doesn’t necessitate it. The fine tuning of the universe suggests that there are far more “options” of universes that would not allow for life (or, in many cases, anything beyond stasis–no galaxies, no stars, etc.), so that our universe appears to have been “set up” to allow for galaxies, stars, and…life!

There is controversy over how to “statistically predict” the likelihood of all these things, because with one iteration, such statistics are kind of meaningless, and the multiverse idea (with an infinite number of universes) also makes such statistic predictions meaningless, because with infinite universes, the likelihood moves towards “probable.”

This fine tuning is, however, striking. As has been stated (and probably better).