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Bradski
Guest
i wouldn’t worry about it. Nothing in science excludes God. It would be kinda silly to say: ‘There is a multiuniverse, therefore there is no God’.
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Bradski
Guest
Quite right, Charles. And again, try not to worry about it so much. It’s not going to affect your faith one way or the other.
Unless for some reason you think it might…?
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NM505StKate
Guest
While a model is not evidence it is a tool that science uses to make predictions and hypothesize. From some the language Brad is using this is a bad thing? Am I wrong?
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Confiteor_Deo
Guest
Yes, it is quite silly, but many people believe in silly things.
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Confiteor_Deo
Guest
I am actually a high school student. I have heard professors speak about this, but not in a classroom.
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Charlemagne_III
Guest
Would you be upset if it were discoverable that there is no multiverse?
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Bradski
Guest
What an odd question.Would you be upset if it were discoverable that there is no multiverse?
But no. This universe is too big to start with. I think that when my time comes, hopefully in a great number of years to come, I’ll be ready to shuffle off. But it is monstrously frustrating to think that there will be all these great discoveries made after I’ve gone.
Knowing my luck, they’ll discover alien life, the secret of the universe and how to cook a perfect brisket the day after I leave.
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Aloysium
Guest
Your gut feeling is interesting. I would have thought that after you’re gone what happened in the preceding weeks, months, years, decades, even centuries will not matter.
If you are thinking about your offspring, they would enjoy these in their time.
So there’s no need to feel frustrated.
Sorry for being a wet blanket but:
Most people I know are Jewish, and the perfect briskest been done.
Catholics have been telling people the secret of the universe for over two millennia.
Being an older guy, I can tell you it’s much the same regardless the discoveries or so called progress.
Gravitational waves today - whoopdeedoo. Nothing’s significantly changed except somebody’s in line for a heck of a lot of funding.
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Arizona_Fat_Gir
Guest
Read a good Astronomy book. They are discovering “rogue planets” out there, but it doesn’t appear any of them have intelligent life. If by chance there were any persons with souls, God created them, and it would not affect things here in the least. He knows how to deal with both intelligent life and also planets without life. Some of the scenery in Astronomy is absolutely beautiful. It is a difficult subject, but worth studying.
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Bradski
Guest
Ever missed a party or just a get together or a few beers because you got the time wrong? Or the venue? Imagine someone’s having the biggest party ever tomorrow and you desperately want to go but…there’s no more tomorrows.
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Charlemagne_III
Guest
Hard to imagine, because I desperately want to go to the biggest party ever, which for me is just ahead and there will be an eternity of tomorrows.
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Aloysium
Guest
As I said your gut feeling is interesting. Sounds like paradise to me. Why the mourning of something doable. Too good to be true? Don’t want to be duped? There’s nothing to lose being a loving person other than stuff that has no tomorrow’s.
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ericc
Guest
I don’t see how multiverses eliminate God. The multiverse is “something”. How did the multiverse create itself? Where did the multiverse gets its intelligence and existence to get it going in the first place? Putting an infinity to endless modeling doesn’t really eliminate God. God could be in every one of this universes.
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Bradski
Guest
I have seen a tendency to refute the possibility of a multiverse from Christians. As you say, it can’t be used as an argument against God, so why the reticence?
I think it’s because our knowledge of what entails ‘everything’ has obviously increased over the last couple of millennium, so what ‘everything’ actually is is consequently growing at an ever increasing rate.
Anselm’s description of God as being ‘that which nothing greater can be conceived’ sounds like it a safe bet. It encompasses everything. The greatest thing that you can imagine, God is it. The problem is lack of imagination.
People a couple of thousand years ago thought that everything was all that they could experience. So much so that filling a boat with a couple of all the animals that existed wouldn’t be too much of a problem when all the animals they knew ran into a few dozen. And God created the world. How much bigger does He need to be? Land and seas, pretty lights in the sky and we are the centre of creation.
Well, we all know where that parochial view went. And at every step in our knowledge (we go around the sun?), we become smaller in relationship to what everything entails, a fact with which people had and still do have a problem (a quick hello to all the Young Earthers and ID fans here). The bigger the stage gets, the smaller the role we have in the production. And God has to become more powerful than we used to, or could, imagine at every step. And I think that this becomes a little difficult for some people.
But God created everything: the world and the sun and moon! Well, actually, we’re just one of quite a few planets. Oh, OK, then he created everything: the whole solar system. Well, actually, there are a few billion of these in the galaxy. There are? Well, OK. Then that’s everything and He created this galaxy of systems
Except we have to keep cranking it up. Billions of galaxies. And billions more outside of the observable universe. And maybe an infinity of universes.
So if you asked anyone even a hundred years ago to imagine something ‘greater than which nothing can be conceived’, that persons conception would have been woefully lacking. People for centuries have been saying: ‘THIS is how big God is. He created EVERYTHING’. Except that science keeps saying: ‘Excuse me, but if there is a God, He needs to be a lot bigger than you currently imagine’.
And I think we left behind what we can imagine God to be a long time ago. If it was just this world, then people can conceive God having made it. Maybe all the planets. But we are then already waaaay past what we can conceive. The distances, even in our own backyard, are literally unimageninable.
God keeps needing to be bigger. Which shouldn’t be a problem. Big deal, whatever you find, God did it. But I think people are psychologically unable to keep cranking their concept of God ever upwards. What they can conceive keeps getting bigger, so their concept of God has to keep getting bigger and if you already thought He was as big as He could be, that might be a problem.
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Charlemagne_III
Guest
Truly problematic.
More science fiction than science.
But if it helps you sleep at night, go for it!
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Confiteor_Deo
Guest
I was told that two multiverses tapped each other to make the big bang, so God didn’t do it. Of course, this doesn’t mean there is no God, but some people think that it does mean that (which is ridiculous). If people really thought about things, they would see that there must be a God. Sadly, many scientists don’t think like that.
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ericc
Guest
It is not surprising. Conjuring an endless possibility for other universes does not answer the question of existence, how these universes can come about without an external (name removed by moderator)ut of intelligence and existence.
While certain knowledge has increased, the new knowledge does not refute God at all. Non-believers will continue to seek a non-God solution in their own pre-defined non-God universe.
It is just a lower species trying to understand or define a higher being. It is a best attempt basis based upon limited knowledge.
A person with limited knowledge can only define something on the best of their ability. As with new knowledge, scientific or otherwise, the newer definition becomes more and more precise or comprehensive. It may require invention of new words to express that new knowledge. If you say God needs to keep getting bigger, then the response to that is you need to think bigger in the first place. Your inability to think bigger, silo-ed God. Hence, blame it on our own inability to think bigger and placing self-imposed limits on what/who you think God is.
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ericc
Guest
Until there is some evidence to demonstrate that, it is just as good as my version of 2 pink monkeys shaking hands to create the big bang. We are in one universe and can only observe this one universe. If one can stand aside and observe 2 universes tapping each other, then the universe one was in to observe the 2 universes shaking hands would be an illogical act of a universe containing other universes. Like “Horton Hears a Who”.
Secondly, is there any evidence that more than one universe can exist simultaneously? What/whose space would these universes be occupying to exist simultaneously and where would the observer be standing/existing to observed that happening?
Thirdly, who gave the impetus/command/information to the 2 universes to “tap” each other?
Fourthly, the Big Bang created this universe. Chicken and egg. You need 2 universes to make one universe? Over time, you will not have enough universes to make new ones. And you are left with this universe as the last remaining one.
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Confiteor_Deo
Guest
I agree. It’s an untestable hypothesis.
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Iron_Donkey
Guest
And even if we do come up with a way to test it and it does pass all the tests, it still doesn’t matter. The doctrine of creation is not “God directly, using no proximate causes (no middle steps) made the big bang happen”. The doctrine of creation predates the theory of the big bang. Rather, we say God is the reason why there is something rather than nothing.
Whether He brought reality to its current state by smashing two multiverses together (or arranging for two multiverses to smash together via a long chain of events), by directly causing the big bang, or by snapping His fingers and causing the universe to come into existence in exactly the same way that it would exist if all of that stuff had happened, but without that stuff happening, or even by creating a flying spaghetti monster and letting that being do most of the work makes no difference to the statement “God created the universe.”
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