A Bad Day for "Science" Worshipers

The blog post you linked to was hardly a paragon of polite debate.

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Sure, and to be clear it is an adequate response to the fine-tuning argument.

There’s a set of observations that we want to explain, in that the physical constants take certain values that allow life to exist in this universe.
Theists then say that we have good reason to believe God exists, because they have a really good explanation for the physical constants, because we can just hypothetically postulate that there’s a God that made the laws of physics because that God wants there to be life in this universe.

And atheists then respond that other explanations for those constants are also possible, such as a multiverse where the laws of physics can vary.

But that’s not what mr. Revealed_Cosmology was referring to, he was creating some absurd caricature. The implication being that atheists are claiming that the multiverse has been mathematically proved in order to (quoting him): “shield themselves from the knowledge of God”.

All that happens is basically that one camp is saying there’s evidence to believe in God because hypothetical explanation X accounts for the data, and another camp is saying we don’t have to because, there’s another candidate explanation Y that also accounts for the data. Nobody is claiming that the multiverse has been proved because math. That is a caricature designed to make the atheist response to the supposed obviousness of fine-tuning arguments look ridiculous.

There are of course other formulations of both the fine-tuning arguments, and associated responses to those too. But even so, I don’t believe anyone responds in the way Revealed_Cosmology claim.

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Thanks, this is how I have understood the discussion as well. So, it is the caricature to which you object, then? I agree that the phrasing was less-than-charitable. I’m curious, though, about the multi-verse theory. Clearly, as you say, it has not been “proved because math”… Here’s what was said in the blog post:

Well, excuse me if I don’t have a lot of confidence in your appeals to a vast number of supposed universes we can’t see based on some hypothetical mathematical model. Especially when the same scientific community can make such a titanic mistake for so long when it comes to measuring the properties of the one universe we can in fact detect. It sounds to me like you are resorting to desperate escapism to avoid the knowledge of God. Your belief that these universes exist is on pretty shaky ground- and the existence of multiple universes in itself doesn’t rule out the fine-tuning argument for the existence of God anyway, those universes would also have to have certain properties and not others).

I think that choosing to say “proves” here in this thread, was an unfortunate slip and doesn’t really convey what was intended:

It’s a shame that the conversation went awry… it was an interesting topic.

@PdotdQ Is there physical evidence (or indications) for the multi-verse? Or is it a plausible hypothetical intended to counter a design argument? Or something other?

Something other. A multiverse is a prediction of some physical theories.

Note that a multiverse in this sense may not have universes with different physical constants.

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Yes.

Yes, and there are many unanswered questions and unknowns about multiverse hypotheses. We simply don’t know anything at this stage. The problem here is our resident interlocutor seems to be of the misapprehension that the God-hypothesis has a leg up here, as if that isn’t ALSO a merely hypothetical explanation for the observed phenomenon.

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Understood. Thanks. I think that this is a situation where the doctrine of parsimony is relative. One who is a believer feels as though God creating one universe, as is, is the most simple and obvious alternative, especially when compared to (admittedly, situationally defined) something that creates an infinite number of universes on its own. From a Christian perspective, God spoke the universe into being for a purpose (us) so a finely-tuned cosmos points to this same God. For an unbeliever, this position would seem most obscure and forced.

People are looking at one another’s responses to the fine-tuning problem, and ironically, having the same reaction, which is to favor one option as making perfect sense and rejecting the other, outright. Thanks, as always, Rum. The point you make about God also being a hypothetical explanation gets lost on us sometimes.

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There is physical evidence for the multiverse in the sense that some of our theories that can predict our current Universe also predict a multiverse. Note that these theories are not the only theories in the game. There is no evidence if by evidence you mean directly detecting these multiverses.

That article is wrong, or at least misleading. Please read e.g. chapter X of this paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.03951.pdf

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20 posts were split to a new topic: R_speir: questions about cosmology and dimensions