Image from the ICR article.
Posted on 06/03/2013 9:38:50 AM PDT by fishtank
Hiding from God in the Multiverse by Jake Hebert, Ph.D. *
ICR research sometimes involves detecting flawed logic in common evolutionary arguments. One such argument claims that something called the “multiverse” removes the need for a Creator. Is this claim valid?
In an attempt to solve serious problems in the original Big Bang model, secular cosmologists invoked something called “inflation”—an enormous hypothetical “growth spurt” in the early universe. Originally, these theorists believed that inflation would have completely ended shortly after the Big Bang. However, they later concluded that different regions of space stopped inflating at different times. This would result in the formation of “bubble” or “pocket” regions that continued to expand at a “normal” non-accelerated rate, while the surrounding space kept inflating at the faster rate. These pockets of space would become, in effect, their own universes, isolated from one another by the enormous surrounding gulfs of still-inflating space.1
Theorists also concluded that inflation would never completely stop. This would result in infinitely many universes in a great multiverse, each having possibly different physical constants and perhaps even different laws of physics.2
Some secularists argue that a multiverse removes the need for a Designer, claiming that with infinitely many universes in existence, it was simply inevitable that some of these universes would have physical laws permitting life to exist. Hence, they claim a Creator is not needed to explain our existence—we exist and live simply because our particular universe allows life to exist.
At first glance, this may sound plausible. Have evolutionists actually found a non-miraculous explanation for our existence?
No, they have not. Their claim is pure speculation; there is no evidence that other universes actually exist at all. But even if they did exist, this argument still falls short of reason.
Proponents argue that ours is one of the universes whose physical laws allow life to exist. However, it is a foregone conclusion that the physical laws in our universe permit life to exist; if they didn’t, we wouldn’t be here!
In order for the evolutionist’s argument to truly remove the need for a Creator, however, these physical laws must do more than simply allow life’s existence—they must also permit spontaneous generation, the non-miraculous development of life from non-life. Because evolutionists argue that living organisms came from non-living chemicals, they must argue that spontaneous generation occurred at least once in the distant past.
This raises an obvious and far more substantive question: Do the physical laws in our universe permit spontaneous generation?
Apparently not. Scientists have never observed spontaneous generation, and there are seemingly insurmountable chemical and physical obstacles to it ever occurring.3,4,5 Whether spontaneous generation could possibly occur in other alleged universes is completely irrelevant to the matter at hand, since secularists are trying to explain (apart from a Creator) the existence, not of life in other universes, but of life in this universe.
Those arguing that a multiverse explains our existence are implicitly claiming that we live in a universe whose laws of physics and chemistry permit spontaneous generation. But there is absolutely no evidence that we live in such a universe! Hence, evolutionists gain absolutely nothing by making this multiverse argument, and they remain in precisely the same wishful position that they were in before making the argument. They assert that spontaneous generation occurred in the distant past, but they have no idea or explanation of how it could have occurred. Here is more evidence that turning one’s back on God often involves turning one’s back on reason itself.
After sinning, Adam and Eve could not successfully hide from the Lord in the Garden of Eden. Nor can secular cosmologists hide from Him among a forest of non-existent universes!
References
Steinhardt, P. J. 2011. The Inflation Debate. Scientific American. 304 (4): 36-43.
Folger, T. Science’s Alternative to an Intelligent Creator: The Multiverse Theory. Posted on discovermagazine.com November 10, 2008, accessed May 1, 2013.
McCombs, C. 2004. Evolution Hopes You Don’t Know Chemistry: The Problem with Chirality. Acts & Facts. 33 (5).
McCombs, C. 2004. Evolution Hopes You Don’t Know Chemistry: The Problem of Control. Acts & Facts. 33 (8).
McCombs, C. 2009. Chemistry by Chance: A Formula for Non-Life. Acts & Facts. 38 (2): 30.
* Dr. Hebert is Research Associate at the Institute for Creation Research and received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas at Dallas.
Cite this article: Hebert, J. 2013. Hiding from God in the Multiverse. Acts & Facts. 42 (6): 9.
Image from the ICR article.
Any theory of everything that doesn't explain consciousness is not a theory of everything.
A child blowing bubbles?
OK article...barely.
I’d like to know how the Institute for Creation Research views the development of atoms heavier than hydrogen and helium. A brief glance at their website topics did not seem to include this one.
Thanks to anyone in advance.
BTW, regarding the evidence for spontaneous generation of life, we may well be close to figuring that out through the simple expedient of taking a real good look at what seems to be a FIFTH DIMENSION that operates only at very small scale ~ and BTW, that leaves us with 6 more dimensions to find and evaluate. ER,...... before we exhaust the ones intuited by (or revealed by God to) medieval orthodox Jews.
Glad you asked that question. First off, consciousness is a quality of conversation.
Did these multiple universes come to be after the moment when the Big Bang started it all, as described in the article (as proposed by multiverse proponents)?
Deus ex machina.
And vice versa
On my next rotation I’ll watch closely
I thought the goal of cosmologists was to develop a very simple explanation of all things, the singularity theory. Doesn’t the theory of multiple universes complicate this goal?
What is that supposed to mean other than misdirection?
You must have read William Joseph Bray’s book. Not an easy read and in much need of a good editor (unless the Kindle version was an early draft with flaws since corrected) but it’s fascinating stuff.
A few flaws.
Space does not expand or inflate. Space is not something. Language allows us to talk about the absense of something and give it a name, thus leading others to think that it exists: dark. cold. silence. space.
The “big bang” is not a sufficent explanation for the origin of the universe.
There is one universe. Universe is by definition all that there is, was and will be. (Carl Sagan.)
These “multiverses” can not be seen or experienced in any way. Therefore science has no right to talk about them. Science is the science of the observed and the observable.
Read St Thomas of Aquinas. The motion in the Universe did not come from itself. All motion came from a prior motion. This regresssion can not be infinite. There must be an unmoved mover.
His logic is unassailable.
Consciousness is a quality of conversation. Will you please explain its ontology and episemology? Is consciousness spatio-temporally extended? What is its physical makeup? How does one reduce consciousness to its basic elements? Is consciousness "sui generis"? How does physical matter give rise to any mental event? Famously, Collin Quinn< atheist, said, "How can mere matter originate consiousness? How did evolution convert the water of biological tissue into the wine of consiousness? Consciousness seems like a radical novelty in the universe, not prefigured by the after-effects of the Big Bang; so how did it contrive to spring into being from what preceded it?"
If you can reduce consiousness to a naturalistic ontology, do it.
“The multiverse explains consciousness and anything else you might like since an infinite number of universes must ultimately have all things possible.”
I’m sure a lot of mental midgets will agree with that statement. Not FR readers.
Infinite means that if you start counting you will never reach the end. That doesn’t not mean that all things will be possible.
They’re trying desperately to disprove God, just like the entire liberal government establishment. This is a really hairbrained idea.
Take a look at “Hammeroff and Pendrose’s Thoery of Consciousness” at
“http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/penrose-hameroff/consciousevents.html";
The Greek philosophers started with an assumption that matter is infinite or eternal, and a conclusion that history was an endless repeating cycle.
The Stoics' response to this was "Take it like a man." The Epicureans' response was "Eat, Drink. For tomorrow we die."
IMHO, it is the Epicurean philosophy which seems to be driving today's search for infinite/eternal matter. Kind of a backward approach to a philosophy of life: I don't want to be held accountable; now how do we get there?
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