Posted on 12/25/2011 7:25:35 AM PST by SeekAndFind
In the fifth century B.C., the philosopher Democritus proposed that all matter was made of tiny and indivisible atoms, which came in various sizes and textures—some hard and some soft, some smooth and some thorny. The atoms themselves were taken as givens. In the nineteenth century, scientists discovered that the chemical properties of atoms repeat periodically (and created the periodic table to reflect this fact), but the origins of such patterns remained mysterious. It wasn’t until the twentieth century that scientists learned that the properties of an atom are determined by the number and placement of its electrons, the subatomic particles that orbit its nucleus. And we now know that all atoms heavier than helium were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars.
The history of science can be viewed as the recasting of phenomena that were once thought to be accidents as phenomena that can be understood in terms of fundamental causes and principles. One can add to the list of the fully explained: the hue of the sky, the orbits of planets, the angle of the wake of a boat moving through a lake, the six-sided patterns of snowflakes, the weight of a flying bustard, the temperature of boiling water, the size of raindrops, the circular shape of the sun. All these phenomena and many more, once thought to have been fixed at the beginning of time or to be the result of random events thereafter, have been explained as necessary consequences of the fundamental laws of nature—laws discovered by human beings.
This long and appealing trend may be coming to an end. Dramatic developments in cosmological findings and thought have led some of the world’s premier physicists to propose that our universe is only one of an enormous number of universes with wildly varying properties, and that some of the most basic features of our particular universe are indeed mere accidents—a random throw of the cosmic dice. In which case, there is no hope of ever explaining our universe’s features in terms of fundamental causes and principles.
It is perhaps impossible to say how far apart the different universes may be, or whether they exist simultaneously in time. Some may have stars and galaxies like ours. Some may not. Some may be finite in size. Some may be infinite. Physicists call the totality of universes the “multiverse.” Alan Guth, a pioneer in cosmological thought, says that “the multiple-universe idea severely limits our hopes to understand the world from fundamental principles.” And the philosophical ethos of science is torn from its roots. As put to me recently by Nobel Prize–winning physicist Steven Weinberg, a man as careful in his words as in his mathematical calculations, “We now find ourselves at a historic fork in the road we travel to understand the laws of nature. If the multiverse idea is correct, the style of fundamental physics will be radically changed.”
The scientists most distressed by Weinberg’s “fork in the road” are theoretical physicists. Theoretical physics is the deepest and purest branch of science. It is the outpost of science closest to philosophy, and religion.
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The multiverse hypothesis which postulates that “all things are possible” necessarily includes the thesis that GOD did it.
Been following the multiverse concept FOR DECADES. This is not exactly new territory ~ some of the math is new ~ in fact, when the math started telling folks about “other places than here” that’s when the multiverse became acceptable discussion material for specialists in the area.
As to their motivation, I think a justification for immorality accounts for much of it. I think others are angry about their lot in life.
While I believe randomness plays an important role in reality, considering three observable facts, I don't see how our lives or the Universe are accidents. There is something rather than nothing. There are conservation laws, even if properties of various Universes are random. There is consciousness.
Dang! How do I get eyes like that?
At the least
Or those that use God as the explanation for anything they don't understand. No evidence required. Nothing about it in the Bible. Just say God did it.
The atheist cannot "prove" that God does NOT exist no more than the theist can "prove" that he does. Both are compelled to assert their position without their respective proofs. To be an atheist or a theist, you have to take a leap of faith!
It is a tradgic comedy to witness an atheist assert that he has unalienable rights when the Declaration of Independence and, by extension, our Constitution asserts that these very rights come from the Creator. This Creator is the God of the Bible. This same atheist wants the unalienable rights without the Creator. He wants the unalienable effect without the unalienable cause.
Math can tell about places that don’t exist and never have. Math is place less.
That’s the question ~ there’s a thought that there are invisible limits in math that we have not yet discovered.
A quaint few will say 'those are fairy tails, myths, stories made up to manipulate people. But that insults the witnesses and is no more an answer than to say 'it's a miracle; we can't understand the how' don'tchaknow. A few of the miraculous things are given way to a 'how it could be done'. In the case of the Jordan river, for instance, there is a substantial lake bottom which gets filled up on the rare occasion when a landslide blocks the Jordan way up stream. Discovering a how shouldn't be seen as refuting that God did it, given the extraordinary timing of each event.
You gotta kill a few people.
Indeed. This is the entire motivation of the multiverse idea: To "explain" the Universe without recourse to a divine creator. Alamo-Girl collected a whole slew of multiverse theories for our book. One very common feature was the presupposition of an "eternal universe," that is, a universe that did not have a beginning in space and time. Stephen Hawking has been working this problem relentlessly, along with many other theoretical physicists.
[Though I really do greatly admire Max Tegmark's Level IV Multiverse model!]
Yet oh so curiously, in order to hold to the iron-clad presupposition that there is no God, it seems they end up throwing "the historic mission of physics" under the bus:
If the multiverse idea is correct, then the historic mission of physics to explain all the properties of our universe in terms of fundamental principles—to explain why the properties of our universe must necessarily be what they are—is futile, a beautiful philosophical dream that simply isn’t true. Our universe is what it is because we are here.Yet it seems to me they no more "falsify" that "beautiful philosophical dream" than they "validate" their theory on the basis of observational evidence of other universes, which are not, nor can be, direct observables for us — in the same manner as God cannot be a direct observable for us — and therefore something that must be taken "on faith."
Not only must we accept that basic properties of our universe are accidental and uncalculable. In addition, we must believe in the existence of many other universes. But we have no conceivable way of observing these other universes and cannot prove their existence. Thus, to explain what we see in the world and in our mental deductions, we must believe in what we cannot prove.Check out all the "musts" there!
Sound familiar? Theologians are accustomed to taking some beliefs on faith. Scientists are not. All we can do is hope that the same theories that predict the multiverse also produce many other predictions that we can test here in our own universe. But the other universes themselves will almost certainly remain a conjecture.Thank you, dear MHGinTN, brother in Christ, for writing, and for the ping to SeekAndFind's outstanding post. Thank you SeekAndFind!
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