Multiverse
September 14, 2010
David Cloud, Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061
866-295-4143,
fbns@wayoflife.org
The following is excerpted from AN UNSHAKEABLE FAITH: A CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS COURSE.

multiverse
The multiverse proposition, also called megaverse and the Landscape, purports that our universe is only one of an infinite number of universes, none of the others being observable. The laws of nature that we find in our universe are not necessarily the same in other universes. Thus anything is supposedly possible somewhere.

“[the Multiverse hypothesis] popularized in David Deutsch’s book The Fabric of Reality ... postulates the simultaneous existence of many, possibly infinitely many, parallel universes in which (almost) anything which is theoretically possible will ultimately be actualized, so that there is nothing surprising in the existence of a universe like ours” (John Lennox, God’s Undertaker, p. 74).

The bottom line is that there is no scientific evidence whatsoever for a multiverse.

“Let us recognize these speculations for what they are. They are not physics, but in the strictest sense, metaphysics. There is no purely scientific reason to believe in an ensemble of universes” (John Polkinghorne, One World, 1986, p. 80).

Multiverse was invented for the sole reason of avoiding the necessity of the Almighty Creator of the Bible.

“Several factors are combining to increase belief (of the ‘faith’ variety, not the ‘demonstrated fact’ variety) in the multiverse among materialists. ... At the biological level materialists are beginning to understand that the probability that life arose by random material processes is so low (estimated in this article written by materialists to be 10 raised to -1018) that infinite universes are required for it to have occurred, the implication being that we just happen to live in the ever-so-lucky universe where it all came together. At the cosmological level, the probability that the fine tuning of the universe necessary for the existence of life arose by sheer coincidence is so low that again the multiverse is invoked to provide infinite ‘probabilistic resources’ to do the job” (Barry Arrington, “Multiverse Mavens Hoisted on Own Petard,” Uncommon Descent, March 6, 2010).

The mathematician Dr. David Berlinski, who describes himself as a secular Jew, acknowledges that there is no evidence for a multiverse.

“The Landscape has, after all, been brought into existence by assumption. It cannot be observed. It embodies an article of faith ... There are by now thousands of professional papers about the Landscape, and reading even a handful makes for the uneasy conviction that were physicists to stop writing about the place, the Landscape, like Atlantis, would stop existing--just like that. This cannot be said of the sun” (David Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion, pp. 119, 128).

Dr. Paul Davies explains that it would be impossible to detect a multiverse:

“Where are the other universes? The short answer is, a very long way away. It is a prediction of the inflation theory that the size of a typical bubble [containing one universe] is fantastically bigger than that of the observed universe. By fantastically, I mean ‘exponentially’ bigger. Our observed universe is likely to be deeply embedded in a region some 10 to the 10 billionth power kilometers across! Compare this with the size of the observable universe, a mere 10 to the 23rd power kilometers across. And if by some magic we could be transported to the edge of our bubble, we wouldn’t encounter the universe next door. Instead, there would be a region where space is still inflating, doubling in size every 10 to the minus 34 seconds or faster. So even though pocket universes like ours are expanding, they won’t intersect because they are being moved apart by inflation in the gaps between them much faster than their boundaries are growing. It is thus physically impossible, even for light, to cross the widening gulf between them” (The Goldilocks Enigma, p. 95).

To mock Theists who believe in God and to charge them with being unscientific and then to appeal to a wild-eyed multiverse for which there is not a speck of evidence is the height of evolutionary folly. As Berlinski observes:

“After all, the theologian need only appeal to a single God lording over it all and a single universe--our own. [Richard] Dawkins must appeal to an infinitely many universes crammed into creation, with laws of nature wriggling indiscreetly and fundamental physical parameters changing as one travels from one corner of the cosmos to the next, the whole entire gargantuan structure scientifically unobservable and devoid of any connection to experience” (The Devil’s Delusion, p. 153).

Philosopher Richard Swinburne is just as emphatic about the ridiculousness of the multiverse doctrine,

“To postulate a trillion-trillion other universes, rather than one God, in order to explain the orderliness of our universe, seems the height of irrationality” (Richard Swinburne, Is There One God, 1995, p. 68).

Cosmologist Edward Harrison adds,

“Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes, or design that requires only one” (Masks of the Universe, 1985, p. 252).

Further, the multiverse hypothesis solves nothing in that it does not answer how or why
any universe came into existence.

QUANTUM COSMOLOGY

The supposed evidence for the multiverse comes from “quantum cosmology,” which is a metaphysical abuse of quantum physics. It has become a favorite god of some 21st century evolutionists, including Richard Dawkins, to explain how the universe could come from nothing.

Quantum physics has given us such mind-numbing and incomprehensible concepts as “quantum fuzziness,” “maybe-space-maybe-time fuzziness,” “eternal inflation,” and “the bubble bath universe.”

Quantum and theoretical physicists are the modern Gnostics, delving into mysteries they cannot understand and pretending knowledge they don’t possess. Asking foolish questions and making foolish assumptions, they arrive at foolish answers.

David Berlinski gives a clever critique of quantum cosmology in his book
The Devil’s Delusion.

The details may be found in [Stephen] Hawking’s best-selling A Brief History of Time, a book that was widely considered fascinating by those who did not read it, and incomprehensible by those who did. Their work will seem remarkably familiar to readers who grasp the principle behind pyramid schemes or magical acts in which women disappear into a box only to emerge as tigers shortly thereafter.

The wave function of the universe cannot be seen, measured, assessed, or tested. It is purely a theoretical artifact. Physicists have found it remarkably easy to pass from speculation about the wave function of the universe to the conviction that there is a wave function of the universe.

... the doctrines of quantum cosmology are what they seem: biased, partial, inconclusive, and largely in the service of passionate but unexamined conviction.

A Catechism of Quantum Cosmology

Q: From what did our universe evolve?
A: Our universe evolved from a much smaller, much emptier mini-universe. You may think of it as an egg.

Q. What was the smaller, emptier universe like?
A: It was a four-dimensional sphere with nothing much inside it. You may think of that as weird.

Q. How can a sphere have four dimensions?
A: A sphere may have four dimensions if it has one more dimension than a three-dimensional sphere. You may think of that as obvious.

Q. Does the smaller, emptier universe have a name?
A: The smaller, emptier universe is called a de Sitter universe. You may think of that as about time someone paid attention to de Sitter.

Q. Is there anything else I should know about the smaller, emptier universe?
A: Yes. It represents a solution to Einstein’s field equations. You may think of that as a good thing.

Q. Where was that smaller, emptier universe or egg?
A: It was in the place where space as we know it did not exist. You may think of it as a sac.

Q. When was it there?
A: It was there at the time when time as we know it did not exist. You may think of it as a mystery.

Q. Where did the egg come from?
A: The egg did not actually come from anywhere. You may think of this as astonishing.

Q. If the egg did not come from anywhere, how did it get there?
A. The egg got there because the wave function of the universe said it was probable. You may think of this as a done deal.

Q. How did our universe evolve from the egg?
A. It evolved by inflating itself up from its sac to become the universe in which we now find ourselves. You may think of that as just one of those things.

This catechism, I should add, is not a parody of quantum cosmology. It
is quantum cosmology.

Quantum cosmology is a branch of mathematical metaphysics. It provides no cause for the emergence of the universe, and so does not answer the first cosmological question, and it offers no reason for the existence of the universe. ...

[The string theory] was an idea that possessed every advantage except clarity, elegance, and a demonstrated connection to reality (David Berlinski,
The Devil’s Delusion, pp. 98-107, 119).



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