[asa] Anthropic Principle, "proof," and "explanations"

The abundant, very detailed, carefully measured evidence for the "fine
tuning" of the universe, IMO, is most simply and easily "explained" by
divine creation ex nihilo. Now I believe in the latter independently of the
BB and fine tuning -- one of the reasons I believe in it is my belief that
Jesus was raised bodily from the grave, which requires a God powerful enough
to determine the nature of nature, and therefore powerful enough to have
created ex nihilo. Nevertheless, I believe that ex nihilo creation is
actually the simplest explanation for a universe that (to borrow the words
of Freeman Dyson) "looks as though it knew we were coming."

I do not regard this as a scientific explanation. Period. No science I am
aware of can "prove" that "God did it," or tell as anything specific about
God that we don't already believe (such as the idea expressed by Eddington
that God is a great mathematician).

However, IMO the multiverse hypothesis is equally unscientific -- at least,
not yet. No more scientific than ID or creation ex nihilo. It makes no
predictions about our universe that can be tested, and it is actually a far
more complex hypothesis than the idea of one God creating one world in one
specific way. That is, it fails Ockham's razor quite drastically, by
multiplying entities way beyond necessity, so far so indeed that we can't
even count them. It functions, IMO, as a kind of "god-of-the-gaps" for the
non-theist, who rules out creation for obvious reasons but still needs an
infinite (or quasi-infinite) entity to fill in the gaps in the explanation.

Furthermore, I think the multiverse is very much like the ether in the late
19th century. An interesting exercise would be to read Clerk Maxwell's
essay on "ether" in Enc Britannica from the late 19th century: note how many
of its properties were "known" in detail, then reflect on its existence (or
lack thereof), and think carefully about the multiverse. Maxwell had
"derived" Maxwell's equations from the hypothesis of a mechanical ether; the
equations looked darn good, when compared with nature, and it was logical
therefore to assume the existence of his ether (logical with or without his
equations, since light was an undulation and the verb "undulate" requires a
subject). Thus, the ether exists and has these properties. In our
situation today, the very early universe appears to have undergone
inflation; inflation makes better sense if there are many (hugely many)
other universes with different properties (all governed, however, by one
overall mathematics which must itself therefore be finely tuned, as it were,
so ultimately no escaping fine tuning). Thus, these universes exist and we
happen to be lucky enough to find ourselves in the one that just happens to
have produced us. The parallel with the ether, it seems to me, is obvious
and ought to give great caution to astrophysicists. Show me some of them
other worlds, I say, before we start calling this "science." And then, if
they exist, perhaps we ought to design a few more tests for the ether.
Maybe it wasn't such a bad idea, after all?

Ted

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Received on Fri Dec 7 13:34:46 2007