Multiverses All the Way Down

George Rebane

The existence of an Intelligent Creator (IC), aka God, is so abhorrent to some scientists that they are willing to jump through any number of hoops to avoid satisfying at least one of the pillars – Occam’s razor - on which science claims to rest (the other is Falsifiability).  Instead they are advancing tenuous theories that satisfy neither.

Tim Folger in his ‘Science's Alternative to an Intelligent Creator: the Multiverse Theory’ tries to put his arms around the debate so that it is accessible to the intelligent reader, and, I think, does a creditable job.  Here’s the problem – our Universe is constructed in such a way as if it anticipated our coming.  This construction is now accepted by all the scientists, those who do and don’t accept the IC as the progenitor of everything that is.  However, the ones who are determined to deny the existence of an IC have a burr under their blanket that will not go away.

The non-IC scientists are now frenetically invoking very complex, and (so far) untestable theories of physics to argue that our universe is just one of an uncountable number of different kinds of universes.  And ours just happens to be one in which the laws of physics and the physical constants were such that gave rise to life on this planet, and probably many more of them out there.  In sum, the fact that we’re here to discuss such ideas is just dumb luck because in the many more universes ‘out there’ there is no life – so there!

But let’s pause here for a little illuminating story that you may not have heard.  It seems that there lived an old gentleman, call him Harry, of a curmudgeonly nature who held very strong and definite views about, well, about everything.  A young smart-ass reporter fresh out of journalism school was sent to do a human interest spot for the six o’clock news.  He sticks the mike in Harry’s face and asks, ‘So tell our viewers of your theory about how the earth is held in place.’  Harry says, ‘No problem, you see the earth sits on the back of a giant turtle.’  The reporter sees an opening for a little fun with Harry and says, ‘OK, but that brings up the question of what might that giant turtle be standing on.’  Harry obligingly answers, ‘Well, you see, that turtle is standing on the back of another giant turtle.’  The reporter now knowingly looks at the camera (wink, wink) and turns to Harry, ‘And then what is that turtle standing on?’  In a flash Harry replies with some irritation, ‘Oh no you don’t, you young whippersnapper, it’s turtles all the way down!’

Now we return to our befuddled scientists who are cobbling together string theory, dark energy, and “eternal chaotic inflation” to support the notion that the cosmos is really a continuing explosion of universes from universes – a mulitverse.  But the problem is that none of these theories are testable, they just give rise to a plausible set of scenarios that may explain that it’s different kinds of universes all the way down, and we just happen to live in a convenient one (this is the so-called anthropic principle).

Folger’s article doesn’t cover the alternative piece of news from other physicists, that when we examine the fine structure of our universe, then it looks as if it (and all of us in it) were a running program in some kind of a cosmic computer.  In any case, positing our existence as the work of an IC is just as plausible, and to boot, a much simpler explanation for the almost unbelievably fortunate configuration of our universe.  At least the IC approach satisfies Occam’s razor which says to accept the simpler of two theories that explain the observable facts.

In the end though, let us be generous to these determined secular humanist scientists (actually, atheism is also a religion in the sense that it is an untestable belief system).  Let’s posit that in some future time we really can show that the cosmos is a multiverse and who knows what else.  Each universe in the multiverse has its own physical laws and constants and dimensions and … .  But they are still a part of the one cosmos from which they apparently sprang and continue to spring.  So there still exists one cosmos, one framework from which all of this wondrous complexity arises.  What then gave rise to this cosmos??  Oh no you don’t, you young whippersnapper, … !