From: Don Winterstein (dfwinterstein@msn.com)
Date: Thu Jul 10 2003 - 04:22:27 EDT
Jim Armstrong wrote:
>...I don't need more complicated and speculative MWH's and such when our one universe is as astonishingly pregnant with potential as it appears to be.
Good point. And why wouldn't it be more relevant to discuss theological implications of intelligent life on distant planets, as I suggested earlier? We're far more likely to detect such life within our lifetimes than we are to interact in any meaningful way with parallel universes.
Don
----- Original Message -----
From: Jim Armstrong
To: asa@calvin.edu
Cc: Bill Williams
Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2003 5:06 PM
Subject: Re: Predeterminism and parallel universes
I like the general line of thought here. I don't cotton to the MWH in part because it fails to negotiate Occam's razor.
I think one ought to think real hard about why creation does not consist of just our Sun, our Earth, and perhaps our moon (or some other larger or smaller rather minimal ensemble of "components"). If everything is finely tuned enough, everything we count to be of value - and perhaps feel to be the end objective of creation - could presumeably have been created/evolved right here in just this subset of the extant universe. Do we really need all those other stars, galaxies, and other enigmatic denizens of the space beyond our solar system if the course of creation is simply the implementation of a combinatorial recipe?
I am still persuaded that the basic design of creation and its fine tuning have to do with creating the possibility of something of divine intent happening over the course of time, and that the size of the universe has to do multiplying the opportunity sufficiently to ensure that it will/did happen. It doesn't have to be an infinite multiplier either because there are forces and rules in play that significantly shape what happens along the way in a system as complex as ours.
There is a sufficient sense of multiple-ness in this for me. I don't need more complicated and speculative MWH's and such when our one universe is as astonishingly pregnant with potential as it appears to be.
Jim Armstrong
Iain Strachan wrote:
Richard wrote:
There is another aspect to consider. Atheists use the many-universes
theory to defeat fine-tuning arguments. If every possible
configuration is not merely possible but necessary, then there is no
need to account for the fine-tuning of our universe that allows for
life to exist. Indeed, there is no need to account for anything at
all since everything is guaranteed to be found somewhere in one of
the many universes. It seems to be an atheist philosophers cosmic
dream that would greatly aid them in their attempt to diminish God to
absolutely nothing.
Jumping late in on this interesting thread (my physics is a bit rusty to
comment in detail), it seems to me that the MWI not only diminishes God, but
also science as well. One should take note how easily it sidesteps the
entire evolution/creation/ID debate. So what if natural selection isn't a
powerful enough process to design us? Mutations are (ultimately) down to
quantum events that have many possible outcomes. If we stick to one
universe, then the theories we have ought to be a model of the most probable
of all possible worlds. But if every single alternative universe exists
that arose from every single possible outcome of every quantum event that
ever occurred, then it doesn't matter if life is vanishingly unlikely to
have occurred. Because the right sequence of mutations must have occurred
in some universe for life to assemble itself without the aid of Natural
Selection. In one of the many sets of outcomes of quantum events, a complex
and highly specific protein for performing some useful function can
accumulate over a vast number of mutation events, without any gradual
advantage until the end. The "irreducibly complex" object can and will
assemble itself because all possible outcomes happen in some universe.
Therefore it might well have happened in ours because (anthropic principle),
we are here asking the question. So we don't need to evoke Natural
Selection as the designer; we could simply appeal to the
Many-Worlds-Interpretation-Of-The-Gaps.
That may be a silly argument to appeal to the MWI to explain the complexity
of life issue, but I think it's no different than evoking multiverses to
explain away the fine tuning. What we are saying is that we are born in one
of the _less_ probable universes; the one in the tails of the distribution
of the parameters, instead of in the middle where nothing interesting
happens. But I think most scientists would prefer an elegant explanation
rather than appealing to a fluke.
But I may be wrong here. What do others think? Maybe you feel it's a great
privilege being in an incredibly unlikely universe? But then you wouldn't
"be" at all in a very likely one.
Iain.
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