![]() It is held, he believes, by a growing minority of scientists. It either requires an infinite regress of causes or, at some point, a necessary, uncaused, first cause.ĭavies views the multiverse as an extravagant way to explain bio-friendliness, which would be very difficult to test scientifically. The multiverse, anyway, runs into the same problem of causation as a universe. We need not speculate about matters we cannot verify and which are beyond our concern. Secondly, if God has created it, then it is God’s problem (or pleasure). Firstly, we will presumably never know if it exists. If a multiverse does exist, does it impact Christian theology? Not really. On his own criteria, he really shouldn’t believe that! No wonder the New Atheists agree that this is their biggest intellectual difficulty. ![]() Richard Dawkins, who insists we should not believe in anything without scientific evidence to support it, believes the unverifiable multiverse theory explains the fine-tuning of the universe. There is, of course, a delicious irony here. The multiverse theory would then explain everything because it contains everything!Īmong the major questions that advocates of the Multiverse Theory need to face are the quite incomprehensible number of universes that would be required to significantly alter that statistical probability, the force of Occam's Razor in the face of such extravagant ideas and whether the multiverse can be considered a scientific idea since it is beyond the reach of scientific observation and testing. There is also an extreme multiverse theory which maintains that all possible worlds really do exist. It avoids the riddle of fine-tuning (with its implications of a Fine-tuner) by replacing it with a way of resolving the statistical improbability of a bio-friendly world like ours existing. This supposes there is an utterly vast number of quite different universes, allowing the statistical chance that one of them would be like ours, capable of producing intelligent life. In this he refers to Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem and concludes that we shall therefore never arrive at the ToE. This is not to say it doesn’t exist but one would need also to have an external view of the system in order to comprehend it. However, in 2004 he went on record as saying that he believes the grand unified ToE cannot be found because we live within the system we seek to understand. Stephen Hawking has been one of the enthusiasts for this approach. It would not be possible for the universe not to produce human life. The bio-friendliness of the universe is incidental, as is the evolution of intelligence. There was inevitability from the outset that the universe would be like this or not exist at all. This view appeals to physicists, he notes. Everything will be explained by some deep mathematical principle. If this mathematical theory can ever be elucidated, it would leave no room for adjustment or variation. It can all be explained ultimately by a grand unified Theory of Everything (ToE). The second view is that this is a unique universe which has a deep underlying rationality. As they say in popular parlance, "Stuff happens!" B. The fact that scientific and rational minds are capable of understanding the universe is just part of the absurdity. Ironically, he believes that most scientists adopt this view, even though it implies an unjustified faith in the rationality of the scientific method. It is all one great accident, the product of chance, including the evolution of mind and intelligence. There is no point in searching for its meaning – it has none. There is no intelligence behind it and no coherent scheme of things. In this view, the universe just happens to permit life but there is no design, purpose or point to it at all. He puts forward eight options, which I will summarise. However, he is very well placed to consider the range of possible explanations to account for our bio-friendly universe. In fact, it would be very difficult to say he is peddling a viewpoint. That is not to say he is an atheist but he certainly does not accept Christian or any other theistic orthodoxy. ![]() It is a strength for most readers that Davies comes to this subject as an unbeliever. They are entitled Afterword: Ultimate Explanations. However, it is the nine pages at the end of the book that I would like to draw to your attention. In ten chapters and nearly 300 pages he explains the mysteries of the universe with singular clarity. His book, The Goldilocks Enigma, examines the extraordinary ‘bio-friendliness’ (i.e. Better still, he has a real enthusiasm for explaining complex scientific issues to a lay audience. As an eminent physicist and cosmologist, he knows his subject matter with distinction. Paul Davies is a brilliant science writer.
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