Best current statement of fine tuning, and best arguments against multiverse explanation?

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snarflemike

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The long title says it. What is the best current statement of the fine tuned-ness of the universe for our existence? I don’t want to be referring to numbers from 10 or 20 years ago! And what is the best current argument against the multiverse “explanation”?

Thanks.
 
OK, this is decidely unscientific, but the term “multiverse” just sounds stupid for one thing. It just doesn’t resonate with me.

Beside, we can always say to some proponent, have you ever been there? 😃
 
Zero empirical evidence for a “multiverse” as understood by comic books. In physics, the concept is much more narrow, and even that is merely one hypothesis among many to explain difficult observations/theoretic mathematical gaps.

I am uncertain what you mean by “fine tuning”; perhaps the idea that the laws of physics, the position of the earth, etc, are exactly tuned to what is needed to support life? I do not think this idea ever had any merit. All it proves is that life as we know it developed under the situation that we found ourselves in; it does not disprove that life in a different form could have evolved under different conditions.
 
Hmm, who are the major physicists we could look to for perspective on these topics?

I know one is Dr. Anthony Rizzi. Maybe I should read up on this stuff just for my own edification.

iapweb.org/director.htm
 
snarflemike said:
The long title says it. What is the best current statement of the fine tuned-ness of the universe for our existence? I don’t want to be referring to numbers from 10 or 20 years ago! And what is the best current argument against the multiverse “explanation”?

Thanks.
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You may want to use work by Australian astrophysicist Luke Barnes. Some good links (in order):

arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1112/1112.4647v1.pdf

commonsenseatheism.com/?p=8697

commonsenseatheism.com/?p=8109

winteryknight.wordpress.com/?s=luke+barnes
 
We don’t really need to argue about the multiverse. If a multiverse does exist that doesn’t really explain anything, all it does is push the question up a level. The multiverse would still have to have been created. It doesn’t matter how many levels up you push the question, -something- exists, and therefore had to come into existence at some point. This fact has been clearly laid out through physics, and really can’t be circumvented, so trying to use a potential multiverse to explain creation is kind of stupid.
 
runningdude said:
I am uncertain what you mean by “fine tuning”; perhaps the idea that the laws of physics, the position of the earth, etc, are exactly tuned to what is needed to support life? I do not think this idea ever had any merit. All it proves is that life as we know it developed under the situation that we found ourselves in; it does not disprove that life in a different form could have evolved under different conditions.
Click to expand...
I understand it to refer to the value of various physical constants, which are not set by the laws of physics but by some other mechanism (??), and which all exist in an extremely narrow range that allows for the formation of atoms, the formation of stars, the formation of life, etc. Here’s one video: youtube.com/watch?v=UpIiIaC4kRA
 
snarflemike said:
And what is the best current argument against the multiverse “explanation”?
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The multiverse concept solves the fine-tuning problem of our particular universe, but it is generally overlooked by its proponents that it does not really solve the overall design problem.

In fact, it creates another fine-tuning problem. In order to solve the fine-tuning problem of our particular kind of universe, the multiverse would have to make the occurrence of that universe by a pure chance process statistically inevitable, against all overwhelming odds. Yet this would require a truly random distribution of physical constants in extremely fine grades among the members (universes or domains) of the multiverse, in order to allow for a sufficient variety of physical constants between them (trillions times trillions times trillions etc. variations), so that ours would be guaranteed to arise by chance out of a huge possible parameter space of physical constants. This could only be achieved by careful design of the underlying many-universe generator. Thus, instead of solving the design problem, the multiverse theory just pushes it back one step.

As Stephen Barr concludes in his book Modern Physics and Ancient Faith (p.154):

“having laws that lead to the existence of domains of a sufficiently rich variety to make life inevitable would itself qualify as an anthropic coincidence. There seems to be no escape. Every way of explaining anthropic coincidences scientifically involves assuming the universe has some sort of very special characteristics that can be thought of as constituting in themselves another set of anthropic coincidences.”

(Here the term ‘universe’ includes also the multiverse as an overarching ensemble.)

Robin Collins makes a similar point and explains the very special requirements for a multiverse that would explain the random appearance of our particular universe:

Universe or Multiverse? A Theistic Perspective
(Heading “Multiverse Generator Needs Design”.)

The eminent cosmologist George Ellis agrees:

“All the same anthropic issues arise as for a single universe: Why this multiverse, and not another one?”

The well-known cosmologist Paul Davies, who cannot exactly be called ‘religious’, appears to agree as well, in his essay Taking Science on Faith:

“The multiverse theory is increasingly popular, but it doesn’t so much explain the laws of physics as dodge the whole issue. There has to be a physical mechanism to make all those universes and bestow bylaws on them. This process will require its own laws, or meta-laws. Where do they come from? The problem has simply been shifted up a level from the laws of the universe to the meta-laws of the multiverse.”
 
snarflemike said:
The long title says it. What is the best current statement of the fine tuned-ness of the universe for our existence?
Click to expand...
With reference to fine tuning, if I am in Las Vegas and observe a gambler at the Master Grand Prize slot machines, pull the handle and all of a sudden the bells and whistles ring out loudly announcing that she has just won $100,000, is that an example of an unlikely event occurring by chance or was it fine tuned that she should be there at that particular moment in time?
 
Tomdstone said:
With reference to fine tuning, if I am in Las Vegas and observe a gambler at the Master Grand Prize slot machines, pull the handle and all of a sudden the bells and whistles ring out loudly announcing that she has just won $100,000, is that an example of an unlikely event occurring by chance or was it fine tuned that she should be there at that particular moment in time?
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I think the analogy would require only 1 handle pull, ever, anywhere.
 
snarflemike said:
I understand it to refer to the value of various physical constants, which are not set by the laws of physics but by some other mechanism (??), and which all exist in an extremely narrow range that allows for the formation of atoms, the formation of stars, the formation of life, etc. Here’s one video: youtube.com/watch?v=UpIiIaC4kRA
Click to expand...
Ok, that is a bit more of a generalization than I used, but the basic premise remains the same; we see all the physical phenomenon correspond to these constants, and find that things as we understand them do not mathematically work out if the constants are changed. This does not preclude a totally different system from forming if different constants were “provided”.

There is perhaps an unspoken assumption that these theories are inherently atheistic. Science, however, only addresses the question of “what” God made, without addressing “why”. It would be incorrect to infer anything about God from science, because God has chosen other means to reveal his truth.
 
The multiverse explanation arose out of the fine tuning and Big Bang observations in order to avoid a theistic explanation. With a single bang, the statistics are not favorable to the existence of life because there isn’t enough probability resources to remotely create it. But if you have unlimited Bangs, eventually, one could possibly arise out of randomness or at least what proponents would like to appeal to. Of course this can never be proven or observed because the observer can be in one universe at a time.

Science is what can be observed and measured and the single bang is what we have. The rest are mental projections.

Notwithstanding single or multiverse, scientists are still hard pressed for a solution to life itself. How did life began out of non-life elements? Where did the intelligence to assemble life with its reproduction system come into being? Appealing to randomness as a solution is worse than appealing to a theistic answer because randomness has no intelligence in itself. It is an abstract thing. The mantra “with time, everything is possible” is just not science.
 
The way I see it, the multiverse is fatal for atheism anyways, at least regarding its popular understanding. With an infinite (or at least a number large enough to be measure in hundreds of orders of magnitude) number of universes, it seems almost a statistical certainty that one would run into many gods (small g). Think in terms of guys like Zeus, Cthulu, etc. And it would seem perfectly plausible that given enough universes, one of these gods would develop the ability to transcend or travel between different universes or pockets of space-time and be able to exert influence over us, including create us. Now, we aren’t going to have any metaphysically necessary ultimate ground of being, but we don’t need that to spell the death of atheism as we know it.
So in short, as soon as an atheist invokes the multiverse hypothesis as it is popularly conceived, they have basically statistically guaranteed the existence of gods, and, in all likelihood, gods that can travel between universe pockets and exert a causal influence over them.
 
ccmnxc said:
So in short, as soon as an atheist invokes the multiverse hypothesis as it is popularly conceived, they have basically statistically guaranteed the existence of gods, and, in all likelihood, gods that can travel between universe pockets and exert a causal influence over them.
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I am confused. I thought multiverse was invented to do away with the need of a god.?
 
ericc said:
I am confused. I thought multiverse was invented to do away with the need of a god.?
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Interestingly, cosmologist Paul Davies has made a similar poin as ccmnxc:

*Problems also crop up in the small print. Among the myriad universes similar to ours will be some in which technological civilizations advance to the point of being able to simulate consciousness. Eventually, entire virtual worlds will be created inside computers, their conscious inhabitants unaware that they are the simulated products of somebody else’s technology. For every original world, there will be a stupendous number of available virtual worlds – some of which would even include machines simulating virtual worlds of their own, and so on ad infinitum.

Taking the multiverse theory at face value, therefore, means accepting that virtual worlds are more numerous than ‘‘real’’ ones. There is no reason to expect our world – the one in which you are reading this right now – to be real as opposed to a simulation. And the simulated inhabitants of a virtual world stand in the same relationship to the simulating system as human beings stand in relation to the traditional Creator.

Far from doing away with a transcendent Creator, the multiverse theory actually injects that very concept at almost every level of its logical structure. Gods and worlds, creators and creatures, lie embedded in each other, forming an infinite regress in unbounded space.

This reductio ad absurdum of the multiverse theory reveals what a very slippery slope it is indeed.*

Link:
nytimes.com/2003/04/12/opinion/a-brief-history-of-the-multiverse.html?pagewanted=all
 
snarflemike said:
The long title says it. What is the best current statement of the fine tuned-ness of the universe for our existence? I don’t want to be referring to numbers from 10 or 20 years ago! And what is the best current argument against the multiverse “explanation”?.
Click to expand...
I believe the “observer-participatory universe” (a.k.a. the “participatory anthropic principle”) is the best statement for fine-tuning and the best argument against the multiverse.
“Observers are necessary to bring the Universe into being.”- John Archibald Wheeler
Click to expand...
“All things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe… Observer participancy gives rise to information; and information gives rise to physics.” - John Archibald Wheeler
Click to expand...
 
ccmnxc said:
The way I see it, the multiverse is fatal for atheism anyways, at least regarding its popular understanding. With an infinite (or at least a number large enough to be measure in hundreds of orders of magnitude) number of universes, it seems almost a statistical certainty that one would run into many gods (small g). Think in terms of guys like Zeus, Cthulu, etc. And it would seem perfectly plausible that given enough universes, one of these gods would develop the ability to transcend or travel between different universes or pockets of space-time and be able to exert influence over us, including create us. Now, we aren’t going to have any metaphysically necessary ultimate ground of being, but we don’t need that to spell the death of atheism as we know it.
So in short, as soon as an atheist invokes the multiverse hypothesis as it is popularly conceived, they have basically statistically guaranteed the existence of gods, and, in all likelihood, gods that can travel between universe pockets and exert a causal influence over them.
Click to expand...
Interesting! And I can see no guarantee that these gods will be all-good, all-just, all-merciful, all-loving, etc. So the multiverse would seem to be guaranteed to inflict EVIL gods on various populations. Not an exciting prospect!
 
ericc said:
I am confused. I thought multiverse was invented to do away with the need of a god.?
Click to expand...
One can debate why the concept of a multiverse was initially conceived. However, there is no question that it is often invoked by atheists to avoid God. I just think that, at the end of the day, the multiverse utterly fails in that regard for the reason given, whatever the intent of those who support the popularized concept of the multiverse hypothesis.
 
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