(Excepted from our series “The New Scientific Evidence that Points to the Existence of God – Part 2.” Edited for publication. See our store at jashow.org to order this entire series.)
(Continued from Part 1)
Dr. John Ankerberg: Let’s talk about the current go-to alternative materialistic explanation for the fine tuning, and that’s the multiverse. What is the multiverse hypothesis, and how does it purport to explain the origin of the cosmic fine tuning that we see all around us?
Dr. Stephen Meyer: Well, the multiverse hypothesis is the idea that there are billions and billions and billions of other universes out there, causally disconnected from our own—after all, a universe is a self-contained system. And that there are so many of these other universes, each with their own set of fine-tuning parameters and each set of initial conditions, that a universe with just the right combination of parameters would have had to arise somewhere. Even if it’s very improbable, there’s enough universes to render it probable somewhere. And we just happen to be in that lucky universe.
And an extension of that idea is sometimes called the observer selection effect, the idea that we mistakenly perceive design in the highly improbable ensemble of parameters that make life possible, not realizing that we’re only observing one universe among this grand ensemble in the greater multiverse.
Dr. John Ankerberg: Yes. Where did it originate? In other words, if you can describe how this originated, who dreamed it up?
Dr. Stephen Meyer: Well, the multiverse is a consequence of a couple of different speculative cosmological models.
Dr. John Ankerberg: Speculative is the key word, I think.
Dr. Stephen Meyer: Yes. They each have their own force and their own possible explanatory power within their own domains. One is called the inflationary cosmology, which is still quite popular with a lot of cosmologists, and the other is called string theory. And string theory is a theory about the fundamental units of matter, little vibrating strings. And for different theoretical reasons people have proposed that these two models of, first cosmology and the other reality, imply the existence, or possible existence, of other universes.
In the case of inflationary cosmology, all of the basic parameters of physics, the strength of the fundamental forces, for example, would be the same in all the different universes that emerge. But as the universe expands and spits off new universes—which is one of the ideas of inflationary cosmology—you get a new set of initial conditions. So that would explain part, but not all, of the fine tuning that needs to be explained.
In string theory it’s a little more complicated. We won’t go into it all here, but it’s in the book. String theory would provide a possible explanation for the fine tuning of the laws and constants of physics, but not initial conditions. So, to explain everything that, for example, the God hypothesis explains, the single postulate of a transcendent mind explains, the multiverse needs to combine these two speculative cosmologies, one based on inflationary cosmology, one based on string theory, to explain both classes of fine tuning.
And that, in turn, requires positing a whole host of purely abstract theoretical postulates or entities. You have to believe that strings exist; you have to believe that there are multiple dimensions of space beyond the four dimensions of space and time that we know; you have to posit what’s called an inflaton field within the inflationary cosmological model.
And in my book, Return of the God Hypothesis, I detail the 10 or so different theoretical postulates that have to be formulated, or believed in, in order to make these two cosmological models an adequate explanation for the fine tuning. And then I compare that list of 10 things that you must believe to the one simple postulate of a transcendent intelligence, and argue, by Ockham’s razor, that theistic design provides a more parsimonious, or more simple, explanation for the fine tuning than does the multiverse. Because you need these two speculative cosmological models and all the separate theoretical postulates that are part of those models to explain what the one postulate of theistic design explains very simply and elegantly.
You may remember that Ockham’s razor is the idea that, all other things being equal, in science we should prefer the simplest explanation, where by simple we mean one that does not multiply explanatory entities; does not needlessly posit the existence of things that we can’t detect in order to explain things we can.
(Discussion continues in Part 3)