Why Some Scientists Embrace the ‘Multiverse’

Last week, in Nice, France, I was privileged to participate along with 30 scholars, mostly scientists and mathematicians, in a conference on the question of whether the universe was designed, or at least fine-tuned, to make life, especially intelligent life. Participants — from Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Berkeley, and Columbia, among other American and European universities — included believers in God, agonistics, and atheists.

It was clear that the scientific consensus was that, at the very least, the universe is exquisitely fine-tuned to allow for the possibility of life. It appears that we live in a “Goldilocks universe,” in which both the arrangement of matter at the cosmic beginning and the values of various physical parameters — such as the speed of light, the strength of gravitational attraction, and the expansion rate of the universe — are just right for life. And unless one is frightened of the term, it also appears the universe is designed for biogenesis and human life.

Regarding fine-tuning, one could write a book just citing the arguments for it made by some of the most distinguished scientists in the world. Here is just a tiny sample, collated by physicist Gerald Schroeder, who holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he later taught physics.

Michael Turner, astrophysicist at the University of Chicago and Fermilab: “The precision is as if one could throw a dart across the entire universe and hit a bullseye one millimeter in diameter on the other side.” Paul Davies, professor of theoretical physics at Adelaide University: “The really amazing thing is not that life on Earth is balanced on a knife-edge, but that the entire universe is balanced on a knife-edge, and would be total chaos if any of the natural ‘constants’ were off even slightly.

Roger Penrose, the Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, writes that the likelihood of the universe having usable energy (low entropy) at its creation is “one part out of ten to the power of ten to the power of 123.” That is “a million billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion zeros.”

Steven Weinberg, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, and an anti-religious agnostic, notes that “the existence of life of any kind seems to require a cancellation between different contributions to the vacuum energy, accurate to about 120 decimal places.” As the website explains, “This means that if the energies of the Big Bang were, in arbitrary units, not:

1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 00000000000000000000000000000000000000000001

Unless one is a closed-minded atheist (there are open-minded atheists), it is not valid on a purely scientific basis to deny that the universe is improbably fine-tuned to create life, let alone intelligent life.

Additionally, it is atheistic dogma, not science, to dismiss design as unscientific. The argument that science cannot suggest that intelligence comes from intelligence or design from an intelligent designer is simply a tautology. It is dogma masquerading as science.

And now, many atheist scientists have inadvertently provided logical proof of this.

They have put forward the notion of a multiverse — the idea that there are many, perhaps an infinite number of, other universes. This idea renders meaningless the fine-tuning and, of course, the design arguments. After all, with an infinite number of universes, a universe with parameters friendly to intelligent life is more likely to arise somewhere by chance.

But there is not a shred of evidence of the existence of these other universes — nor could there be, since contact with another universe is impossible.

Therefore, only one conclusion can be drawn: The fact that atheists have resorted to the multiverse argument constitutes a tacit admission that they have lost the argument about design in this universe. The evidence in this universe for design — or, if you will, the fine-tuning that cannot be explained by chance or by “enough time” — is so compelling that the only way around it is to suggest that our universe is only one of an infinite number of universes.

Honest atheists — scientists and lay people — must now acknowledge that science itself argues overwhelmingly for a Designing Intelligence. And honest believers must acknowledge that the existence of a Designing Intelligence is not necessarily the same as the existence of benevolent God.

To posit the existence of a Creator requires only reason. To posit the existence of a good God requires faith.

— Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His most recent book is Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

“You know perfectly well that it was a rhetorical question but you don’t know how to answer it.”

Oh, I see . . . it was a rhetorical question. The diversion into an argument over the meaning of a term not working, you’ve opted to flee from the awful necessity of having to deal with a legit issue by attempting to dismiss the whole affair as a mere “rhetorical question.” And, by the way, to reassert your (nonexistent) alpha male status in the process.

Very well. What, then, was your (rhetorical) point?

rhetorical, adjective
of, relating to, or concerned with the art of rhetoric: repetition is a common rhetorical device.
• expressed in terms intended to persuade or impress : the rhetorical commitment of the government to give priority to primary education.
• (of a question) asked in order to produce an effect or to make a statement rather than to elicit information.
1 rhetorical devices stylistic, oratorical, linguistic, verbal.
2 rhetorical hyperbole extravagant, grandiloquent, magniloquent, high-flown, orotund, bombastic, grandiose, pompous, pretentious, overblown, oratorical, turgid, flowery, florid; informal highfalutin; rare fustian.

I asked you to get back to me when you recalled what matter so excited your disdain and animosity for the term (free will) in the first place. You’ve chosen to ignore that request, so . . . second request.

In the meantime, you have number of unanswered issues that, should you choose, you might address:
You were asked to explain the dynamic of why “random chance is required for the existence of free will.” You were further asked if you were suggesting that free will is not the product of The Creator, but rather is the happenstance of “Random chance” and that, following your logic to its conclusion, are you then suggesting that the Judeo-Christian God is not at all The Creator, but is rather just another hapless outcome of random “chance” and, if that being the case, then what is the difference from any other tenet of Materialism and your particular POV?
And, finally, you were asked, “what would be the significance of “free will” were it not for the existence of “things” which The Creator does not “like”?

All of the above in response to assertions you have made.

The universe itself is a life force, so the universe and life were created within the same creation.

Indeed, Robert DeLong. I agree with you, because I agree with Plato (with whom you apparently also agree):

God, purposing to make the universe most nearly like the every way perfect and fairest of intelligible beings, created one visible living being, containing within itself all living beings of the same natural order.

Thus does Plato (d. 347 B.C.) succinctly describe how all that exists is ultimately a single, living organism.

For Plato, the Kosmos (universe) was one single living being possessing, and ordered by, divine Nous (or Reason, that word to be understood here not in its "instrumental" sense, but as the paradigm, or logos of all existing things. Indeed, the Greek word "kosmos" denotes "order." And Plato says that man is "microcosmos": The Kosmos "writ small," if you will. Meaning: Man recapitulates in his own nature the fundamental cosmic order as zoon noon echon, or "the ensouled animal that possesses reason."

It is clear that for Plato, God is “Beyond” the universe, or in other words, utterly transcendent, perfectly self-subsistent Being, the “uncaused cause” of all the multiplicity of existents in the universe. In yet other words we can say that, for Plato, the cosmos is a theophany, a manifestation or “presence” of the divine Idea — in Christian parlance, the Logos if I might draw that association — in the natural world.

The Judeo-Christian tradition confirms this insight. As Wolfgang Smith puts it, "The indisputable fact is that at its deepest level Christianity perceives the cosmos as a self-revelation of God."

The universe is One, and it is God's "creature." I do not understand why people have to postulate multiverses (other than to try to escape from the logical necessity of God). Such postulation is utterly futile, since it cannot be verified in principle. Moreover multiverse proponents seem never to have heard of the principle of Occam's Razor, which holds that "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity." For Nature is parsimonious, economical, elegant, succinct. The simplest explanation is very likely the best explanation.

Multiverse theory is, of course, a scientific cosmology. To put this in perspective, let me cite a great mathematician and complex systems theorist, Robert Rosen, from his epochal Life Itself (1991):

To the ancients, life simply was; it was a given; a first principle [because it was the "nature" of the Cosmos], in terms of which other things were to be explained. Life vanished as an explanatory principle with the rise of mechanics, when Newton showed that the mysteries of the stars and planets yielded to a few simple rules in which life played no part, when Laplace could say "Je n'ai pas besoin de cet hypothèse" [i.e., I have no need of the creator God hypothesis]; when the successive mysteries of nature seemed to yield to understanding based on inanimate nature alone; only then was it clear that life itself was something that had to be explained.

From whence shall explanation come?... The first thought is: to that same mechanics, that same physics, which first exorcised life from the heavens and which has since plumbed the depths of matter, space, and time. Living things are surely material; they are manifestations of matter; surely then the secrets of matter must contain the secrets of life. Surely the physicist, who is concerned with matter in all its manifestations, will have eagerly striven to translate insights about matter in general into corresponding insight about matter's greatest mystery.

Oddly enough, the physicist, qua physicist, has shown no such eagerness. The historical fact is that the phenomena of biology have played essentially no role in the development of physical thought or in the application of that thought. Why? Mainly, I think, because theoretical physics has long beguiled itself with a quest of what is universal and general. As far as theoretical physics is concerned, biological organisms are very special, indeed inordinately special systems. The physicist perceives that most things in the universe are not organisms, not alive in any conventional sense. Therefore, the physicist reasons, organisms are negligible; they are to be ignored in the quest for universality. For surely, biology can add nothing fundamental, nothing new to physics; rather, organisms are to be understood entirely as specializations of the physical universals, once these have been adequately developed, and once innumerable constraints and boundary conditions that make organisms special have been elucidated. These last, the physicist says, are not my task. So it happens that the wonderful edifice of physical science, so articulate elsewhere, stands today utterly mute on the fundamental question: What is life?
One of the few physicists to recognize that the profound silence of contemporary physics on matters biological was something peculiar was Walter Elsasser. To him, this silence was itself a physical fact and one that required a physical explanation. He found one by carrying to the limit the tacit physical supposition that, because organisms seem numerically rare in the physical universe, they must therefore be too special to be of interest as material systems. His argument was, roughly, that anything rare disappears completely when one takes averages; since physicists are always taking averages in their quest for what is generally true, organisms sink completely from physical sight. His conclusion was that, in a material sense, organisms are governed by their own laws ("biotonic laws"), which do not contradict physical universals by are simply not derivable from them....
...[T]here is no reason at all why "rare" should imply anything at all; it needs to be nothing more than an expression of how we are sampling things, connoting nothing at all about the things themselves. Even in a humble and familiar area like arithmetic, we find inbuilt biases. We have, for instance, a predilection for rational numbers, a predilection that gives them a weight out of all proportion to their actual abundance. Yet in every mathematical sense, it is the rational numbers that are rare and very special indeed. Why should it not be so with physics and biology? Why could it not be that the "universals" of physics are only so on a small and special (if inordinately prominent) class of material systems, a class to which organisms are too general to belong? What if physics is the particular, and biology the general, instead of the other way around?
...[A] rather strange and dreary consensus has emerged in biology over the past three or four decades. On the one hand, biologists have convinced themselves that the processes of life do not violate any know physical principles; thus they call themselves "mechanists" rather than "vitalists." Further, biologists believe that life is somehow the inevitable necessary consequence of underlying physical (inanimate) processes; this is one of the wellsprings of reductionism. But on the other hand, modern biologists are also, most fervently, evolutionists; they believe wholeheartedly that everything about organisms is shaped by essentially historical, accidental factors, which are inherently unpredictable and to which no universal principles can apply. That is, they believe that everything important about life is not necessary but contingent.... What is relinquished so glibly here is nothing less than any shred of logical necessity in biology, and with it, any capacity to actually understand.... Biology has so far spent itself in cataloguing the endlessly interesting epiphenomena of life, but at the heart of it there is still only a gaping void....

Plato's postulation of a living universe actually makes biology the "general" rule of science, and physics the "special case" — turning the present day materialist doctrine of physical science on its very head.

Anyhoot, Plato's living cosmos — universe — is one that is both ensouled and "rational." It is one living ordered system that dynamically encompasses to pan, the All. What need do we have of multiverse theory to explain anything (especially in light of the fact that not only the universe that we know, let alone the ones we have never seen, are not datums of direct experience anyway: No one — except for God — has ever "seen" the universe in toto, let alone any alternative universe imaginatively accessible by humans through multiverse speculation). We are living parts and participants of the former; the latter is effectively a fantasy — a fantasy willed by folks who refuse to acknowledge God as creator and sustainer of everything that exists in the Creation He willed into life....

And so, dear Robert DeLong, I think you are absolutely right in saying that "the universe itself is a life force, so the universe and life were created within the same creation."

In closing, let me just say that I don't for the life of me understand the logic behind Wanderer99's claim that free will depends on the existence of a multiverse. Neither do I understand his insistence that randomness is what makes free will possible.

Random in ordinary parlance refers to something "made, done, or happening without method or conscious decision." How can free will be the product of a process like that?

And to a scientist, it seems to me the word "random" nowadays stands as a placeholder for "something we don't understand." A natural process is "random" precisely because we do not understand its final cause....

Of course, the idea of "finality" in physics is furiously, desperately resisted these days....

Anyhoot, God's' gift of life is prior to reason and free will, and is necessary for them to become operational, as He intends. Matter, randomness, and multiverses have nothing to do with it.

Just some thoughts, for what they're worth....

Oh my, and just today I was explaining to someone that DNA carries not only the information to form a thing, it carries the information for function, the impetus of action.

Hmmmmm... But how does DNA actually "work?"

I struggle with this question; where I am with it so far is hypothetical. Here goes:

DNA is a universal language that all organisms share, animal and botanical alike.

I actually read somewhere that humans and daffodils share 27% of the elements — genes — of a common universal DNA inheritance, expressing differently in each case. What they don't share largely accounts for the difference between a man and a daffodil.

DNA is more than data, but less than meaning. I think of it as latent, fairly static encoded information that needs to be decrypted, read, and interpreted according to the descriptive "blueprint" that specifies a particular living being before "the message" can be deployed as relevant information necessary to do anything useful in the production and maintenance of said living being. Implicit in all of this is "two-way" communication.

But who or what is communicating with whom? And in what timeframe(s)? If we were to have a universal information set (which we may have for biology, in DNA), and a (here posited) universal decryption key used to generate particularity (that is in some measure accessible by all living beings), it needs to be said such entities would not be found on the ordinary timeline of common human experience, irreversibly moving past–present–future. Not even DNA, no matter how "physical" it looks to scientific observers today. DNA is strictly a "non-observable."

[It seems to me DNA does not "reduce" to its chemical constituents. It is far more than matter, than chemistry; for it is information, which is completely immaterial.]

Seems to me we have two time orders on our hands here, coming together in the apperceptive mind, dear MHGinTN — "planar" — our familiar world time —and "volumetric" — an additional temporal order that permeates our familiar world time, though perhaps only subconsciously....

Truly I admired your remarks:

"...the conceptualization of what dimension Time is and how there can be entire realms of space and time which are no further away from us than the length of your arm yet totally un sensible to us will be reality without reason."

Indeed, they are "no further away from us" than the ideas we hold in our own minds....

Personally, I don't think there could be "reality without reason." God's willed Reason — spoken as Word, Logos in the Beginning — is the source and ground of Reality and all its constituents, organic and inorganic.

Or so it seems to me.

I'm not sure that the "impetus for action" is a property of DNA. Actually, That strikes me as unlikely. It seems to me DNA is an information source, not a willing agent.

But it seems to me that observation is still conformable with your ideas on Time....

Thank you so very much for writing, dear brother! Thank you for your reflections on the inanity of KK — and on DNA, hers and others'. You suggest that DNA's "impetus for action" is another element of information contained within itself.

The 'reality without reason' is what I refer to as our omission of reason for that other realm existing.

BUT when we look at DNA carrying to us the impetus for action, DNA is information for the function of the thing DNA guides construction of ... if this other region which is no further away from us than the length of your arm is not there for reasons which we do not yet comprehend, it is then a reality without reason (a false premise to be sure, but due to our ignorance of the reason for that realm).

We are the very product of interaction with that realm (think DNA being the connection to the 'impetus', kind of like a radio receiver, not the source of the waves translated by the radio), yet it will be at first discovery by us a realm without reason for being. BUT the reason for that realm of space and time variables DOES have reason, and is connected to us via the message encoding found in DNA but not yet understood by us.

The spark of life does not originate as DNA, DNA is the plug, the wire, the circuit through which the spark of life reaches into our spacetime realm. If you will allow me/indulge me, I postulate that there is a continuum of Life, a dimension of life force, as real as dimensions space and time. DNA is the circuit connection to that dimension. This would mean, if accurate, that there is something about the double helix massive molecular structure known as DNA which has characteristics, variabilities, which are more than just the chemicals contained in the structure. Those variabilities are activated through impetus from that other dimension.

Rocks are not alive. But the elements in rocks are vital in the formation and maintenance of the organism. The organism is alive, but alive because it is connected to a dimension to which the rocks are not connected. The connection is due to the presence of DNA, the messenger carrier of God's information for building and activating a living thing.

When God breathed The Spirit into our earliest human, Adam, God added a dimensional characteristic that was even more than all other living things in His Universe of Creation. He gave humankind as thing into which He intended His Life to be expressed. That spirit in man is connected to a dimensional reality which is not time, is not space, and is not life force as we use the terms to describe 'being alive'.

That dimensional characteristic is what Jesus referred to when he said 'let the dead go bury the dead', for Jesus knew the young man's spirit was without the Life from God, but that place in the young man where God Life was to be would never end because it is not anchored in temporal limitations. And so is the message from Jesus to us. He brings Life for the spirit, which as we have seen throughout our earthly sojourn has an ability to transform the physical lives of beings, working out through their soul and even changing their bodies. How much more glorious will be the new body He promises each of us who believe on Him Whom God sent to be our Soter, our Deliverer.

To those who are perishing, these other dimensional realities are 'realities without reason'. I hope that I have not confused this even further. One of the most difficult things to do is convey new conceptualizations 'before' the new words for description have been set. But I'm trying, stuck as we all are in 'the volume of time'.

Hmmmmm... But how does DNA actually "work?" I struggle with this question; where I am with it so far is hypothetical. Here goes: DNA is a universal language that all organisms share, animal and botanical alike. I actually read somewhere that humans and daffodils share 27% of the elements — genes — of a common universal DNA inheritance, expressing differently in each case. What they don't share largely accounts for the difference between a man and a daffodil. DNA is more than data, but less than meaning. I think of it as latent, fairly static encoded information that needs to be decrypted, read, and interpreted according to the descriptive "blueprint" that specifies a particular living being before "the message" can be deployed as relevant information necessary to do anything useful in the production and maintenance of said living being. Implicit in all of this is "two-way" communication. But who or what is communicating with whom? And in what timeframe(s)? If we were to have a universal information set (which we may have for biology, in DNA), and a (here posited) universal decryption key used to generate particularity (that is in some measure accessible by all living beings), it needs to be said such entities would not be found on the ordinary timeline of common human experience, irreversibly moving past–present–future. Not even DNA, no matter how "physical" it looks to scientific observers today. DNA is strictly a "non-observable." [It seems to me DNA does not "reduce" to its chemical constituents. It is far more than matter, than chemistry; for it is information, which is completely immaterial.] Seems to me we have two time orders on our hands here, coming together in the apperceptive mind, dear MHGinTN — "planar" — our familiar world time —and "volumetric" — an additional temporal order that permeates our familiar world time, though perhaps only subconsciously.... Truly I admired your remarks: "...the conceptualization of what dimension Time is and how there can be entire realms of space and time which are no further away from us than the length of your arm yet totally un sensible to us will be reality without reason." Indeed, they are "no further away from us" than the ideas we hold in our own minds.... Personally, I don't think there could be "reality without reason." God's willed Reason — spoken as Word, Logos in the Beginning — is the source and ground of Reality and all its constituents, organic and inorganic. Or so it seems to me. I'm not sure that the "impetus for action" is a property of DNA. Actually, That strikes me as unlikely. It seems to me DNA is an information source, not a willing agent. But it seems to me that observation is still conformable with your ideas on Time.... Thank you so very much for writing, dear brother! Thank you for your reflections on the inanity of KK — and on DNA, hers and others'. You suggest that DNA's "impetus for action" is another element of information contained within itself.

That's so metaphysical that I have no idea how anyone could possibly respond to that. DNA is a molecule which binds with complimentary strands of itself, bonds with proteins, and is a template for the assembly of mRNA. Maybe some low frequency vibration...that's pretty much it...

multiverses are waaaay more complicated but also hold no metaphysical meaning.

…multiverses are waaaay more complicated but also hold no metaphysical meaning.

Multiverse theory is a physical cosmology. As such, it is relentlessly, intrinsically "metaphysical."

I draw that conclusion on the basis that the physical sciences are methodologically devoted to just two things: direct observation and measurement. Not everything in the universe is directly observable or susceptible to measurement. Science has no method to address this class of “objects.” Does that mean such things don't exist? I don't think so.

Plus as much as science tells us that it eschews the metaphysical and philosophy in general, it freely engages in both. Much of science today is devoted to the presuppositions of materialism — which is a philosophical doctrine of ancient heritage.

Also, what is a cosmology if not a metaphysical speculation? Has anyone ever directly observed the universe in its entirety? How do we measure a thing we cannot even observe in its entirety? And then we construct a multiverse or “many worlds” cosmology — when we don't even understand the universe that we actually live in.

We have a lot of facts, a lot of data, about the universe. But we do not have all the facts. In any case, as Rosen says, "a fact or datum by itself is essentially meaningless; it is only the interpretation assigned to it that has significance.... a fact or datum cannot, by itself, answer a question 'why?'"

Anyhoot, no matter how you slice it, any multiverse cosmology is clearly a metaphysical doctrine that, as such, will resist any attempt at scientific verification for the simple reason that science has no method by which to observe or "measure" any entity outside our universe.

What truly blows my mind is that scientists who engage in such efforts — and they are legion — seem to be completely unaware that they are practicing philosophy, not science.

You wrote:

"DNA is a molecule which binds with complimentary strands of itself, bonds with proteins, and is a template for the assembly of mRNA. Maybe some low frequency vibration...that's pretty much it."

You give us "facts" here. But these facts don't explain anything. In Aristotelian causal terms, we are only looking at the material cause here. The explanation of the formal, efficient, and final causes of DNA and its function are nowhere evident. Aristotle thought one needed to understand all four causes before one could fully understand the thing or process under examination….

Just some thoughts, FWIW dear Wanderer99. Thank you so much for writing!

Thank you all so very much for sharing your insights!

marron said: I often envision the spiritual realm as being a phase shift away from our own but otherwise as real and physical. So maybe thats our multiverse.

Anyone interested in physics supporting that view might enjoy P.S. Wesson's publication:

We review the idea, due to Einstein, Eddington, Hoyle and Ballard, that time is a subjective label, whose primary purpose is to order events, perhaps in a higher-dimensional universe. In this approach, all moments in time exist simultaneously, but they are ordered to create the illusion of an unfolding experience by some physical mechanism. This, in the language of relativity, may be connected to a hypersurface in a world that extends beyond spacetime. Death in such a scenario may be merely a phase change.

Time as an Illusion

betty boop said: Multiverse theory is a physical cosmology. As such, it is relentlessly, intrinsically "metaphysical."

Oh so very true. Indeed, the steady state universe model was overthrown by the cosmic microwave background measurements back in the 1960s and forward. Those measurements showed that the universe is expanding, which is to say there was a beginning of real space and time. In other words, space/time doesn't pre-exist but is created as the universe expands.

That was the most theological statement ever to come out of modern science (Jastrow et al). As the Scriptures say, "In the beginning, God created..." Gen 1:1

Thereafter, physical cosmologists went into high gear trying to obviate God the Creator evidently because methodological naturalism cannot allow for a Creator God.

But none of the theories – cyclic, ekpyrotic, multi-verse, multi-world, imaginary time, etc. – can avoid the problem that space and time do not pre-exist. In the absence of space, things cannot exist. In the absence of time, events cannot occur. Both are required for physical causation.

Chicken meet egg. One cannot have physical causation (energy, wave fluctuation, etc.) without pre-existing space/time. All the multi-verse theories accomplish is to move the goalpost back to prior universes each of which had a beginning.

Only Max Tegmark's Level IV Universe is a closed cosmology precisely because it is radical Platonism that essentially posits 4D reality is a manifestation of mathematical structures which actually do exist beyond space and time.

Finally, concerning the DNA discussion, I'd like to mention Shannon's mathematical theory of communication which is the foundation theory of the discipline of Mathematics called "Information Theory." His theory has been used in cancer and pharmaceutical research.

Namely, Shannon's theory defines information as the reduction of uncertainty in the receiver (or molecular machine) as it moves from a before state to an after state. (Schneider, Yokey et al)

It is the action of a message being successfully communicated, not the message itself. As applied to molecular biology, DNA is the message.

Information does not happen until the message has been successfully read, i.e. the receiver is "informed."

A letter in the outbox is also a message but it is not information. Information happens when the recipient has received and read the message.

DNA in a dead body is very much like the unopened letter.

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