Last week, in Nice, France, I was privileged to participate, along with 30 scholars, mostly scientists and mathematicians, in a conference on the question of whether the universe was designed, or at least fine-tuned, to make life, especially intelligent life. Participants -- from Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Berkeley and Columbia among other American and European universities -- included believers in God, agonistics and atheists. But it was clear that the scientific consensus was that, at the very least, the universe is exquisitely fine-tuned to allow for the possibility of life. It appears that we live in a "Goldilocks Universe," in which both the arrangement of matter at the cosmic beginning and the values of various physical parameters -- such as the speed of light, the strength of gravitational attraction and the expansion rate of the universe - are just right. And unless one is frightened of the term, it also appears the universe is designed for biogenesis and human life. Regarding fine-tuning, one could write a book just citing the arguments for it made by some of the most distinguished scientists in the world. Here is just a tiny sample found on the website of physicist Gerald Schroeder, holder of bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he later taught physics. Michael Turner, astrophysicist at the University of Chicago and Fermilab: "The precision is as if one could throw a dart across the entire universe and hit a bulls eye one millimeter in diameter on the other side." Paul Davies, professor of theoretical physics at Adelaide University: "The really amazing thing is not that life on Earth is balanced on a knife-edge, but that the entire universe is balanced on a knife-edge and would be total chaos if any of the natural 'constants' were off even slightly." Roger Penrose, the Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, writes that the likelihood of the universe having usable energy (low entropy) at its creation is "one part out of ten to the power of ten to the power of 123." That is "a million billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion zeros." Steven Weinberg, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, and an anti-religious agnostic, notes that "the existence of life of any kind seems to require a cancellation between different contributions to the vacuum energy, accurate to about 120 decimal places. This means that if the energies of the Big Bang were, in arbitrary units, not: 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000, but instead: 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001, there would be no life of any sort in the entire universe." Unless one is a closed-minded atheist (there are open-minded atheists), it is not valid on a purely scientific basis to deny that the universe is improbably fine-tuned to create life, let alone intelligent life. Additionally, it is atheistic dogma, not science, to dismiss design as unscientific. The argument that science cannot suggest that intelligence comes from intelligence or design from an intelligent designer is simply a tautology. It is dogma masquerading as science. And now, many atheist scientists have inadvertently provided logical proof of this. They have put forward the notion of a multiverse -- the idea that there are many, perhaps an infinite number of, other universes. This idea renders meaningless the fine-tuning and, of course, the design arguments. After all, with an infinite number of universes, a universe with parameters friendly to intelligent life is more likely to arise somewhere by chance. But there is not a shred of evidence of the existence of these other universes. Nor could there be since contact with another universe is impossible. Therefore, only one conclusion can be drawn: The fact that atheists have resorted to the multiverse argument constitutes a tacit admission that they have lost the argument about design in this universe. The evidence in this universe for design -- or, if you will, the fine-tuning that cannot be explained by chance or by "enough time" -- is so compelling that the only way around it is to suggest that our universe is only one of an infinite number of universes. Honest atheists -- scientists and lay people -- must now acknowledge that science itself argues overwhelmingly for a Designing Intelligence. And honest believers must acknowledge that the existence of a Designing Intelligence is not necessarily the same as the existence of benevolent God. To posit the existence of a Creator requires only reason. To posit the existence of a good God requires faith. COPYRIGHT 2013 CREATORS.COM Read more: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/ar...race_the_multiverse_118852.html#ixzz2YUD591Nn Follow us: @RCP_Articles on Twitter
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/06/dennis_prager_e073471.html ... The great irony of the multiverse, of course, is that it doesn't really help materialists escape the problem of cosmic fine-tuning. In order to render their postulations of multiple universes plausible, physicists have had to formulate various speculative cosmological theories involving hypothetical "universe-generating" mechanisms. But universes won't multiply without good reason. Thus, these "universe generating" mechanisms themselves require prior fine-tuning as a condition of their generating universes. And so, even taken on their own terms, these multiverse theories do not ultimately explain away fine tuning. There's another serious problem with the multiverse hypothesis, as we explain in Discovering Intelligent Design: Another danger of "multiverse thinking" is that it would effectively destroy the ability of scientists to study nature. A short hypothetical example shows why. Imagine that a team of researchers discovers that 100% of an entire town of 10,000 people got cancer within one year -- a "cancer cluster." For the sake of argument, say they determine that the odds of this occurring just by chance are 1 in 1010,000. Normally, scientists would reason that such low odds establish that chance cannot be the explanation, and that there must be some physical agent causing cancer in the town. Under multiverse thinking, however, one might as well say, "Imagine there are 1010,000 universes, and our universe just happened to be the one where this unlikely cancer cluster arose -- purely by chance!" Should scientists seek a scientific explanation for the cancer cluster, or should they just invent 1010,000 universes where this kind of event becomes probable? The multiverse advocate might reply, "Well, you can't say there aren't 1010,000 universes out there, right?" Right -- but that's the point. There's no way to test it, and science should not seriously consider untestable theories. Multiverse thinking makes it impossible to rule out chance, which essentially eliminates the basis for drawing scientific conclusions. (p. 59) Given a choice between destroying the logical basis for doing science, or inferring design, it seems that some scientists opt for the multiverse. - See more at: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/06/dennis_prager_e073471.html#sthash.UZNG0VL9.dpuf
thinking about multiverses and how it was created. still without cure for cancer. brilliant. oops sorry, actually its known for ages. its delivering enough oxygen through correct breathing (or yoga) and alkaline diet. anyway. universe or multiverse always existed. it was never created.
Good articles, jem. Of course, stu will be along shortly to tell us why all of this is non-sense since he is smarter than the scientists who learnedly postulate about this stuff every day.
multiverse is eternity for atheists. They were jealous of the rest of us so they made their own... pretty smart, those atheists. I've known a few atheists. They tend to have astoundingly bad lives! Does anybody else notice this? Here on the Central Coast of California there are a lot of people that pray to a nameless faceless god called "the Universe", they tend to have astoundingly bad lives too..
Next you'll be saying you're not a self-righteous, pious, sanctimonious bigot, and some of your best friends are atheists.
Then might I suggest you next try typing in no fine tuning and get a bit of balance in your life as it sits there on hold.