If you follow physics, you have heard about the hypothesis that there are multiverses — multiple universes. But it’s unlikely you know the origin of this belief. Bobby Azarian provided the answer in his book, “The Romance of Reality”. Azarian is a science journalist with a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience from George Mason University in northern Virginia.
According to Azarian, cosmologists discovered “that if the value of a certain parameter of our universe, like the strength of the gravitational force, or the electromagnetic force, or the speed of light, were altered only slightly, we would not just have a universe with no life, we’d likely have a universe with no planets or stars or physical objects either” . Azarian calls this “The Fine-Tuning Problem”.
Stephen Hawking noted “The remarkable fact is that there that the values of these numbers seem to have very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life” .
Daniel Dennett, a highly respected atheist and skeptic quoted in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea:
“… If we change any of these values by the tiniest amount, we thereby posit a universe in which none of this could have happened, and indeed which apparently nothing life-like could ever have emerged: no planets, no atmospheres, no solids at all, no elements except hydrogen and helium, or maybe not even that—just some boring plasmas of hot, undifferentiated stuff, or an equally boring nothingness. So isn’t it a wonderful fact that the laws are just right for us to exist?”
This Fine-Tuning Problem reopened the debate about a cosmic designer — to the dismay of many atheists. In this case,[according to Azarian] that designer must be the god of deism — God was the great watchmaker (a big metaphor of 18th century philosophers and scientists) who created the universe wound it up, and then left it alone for humans to discover. This stance should not be confused with the “‘intelligent design movement’… because an intelligent creator, designer, or programmer that doesn’t intervene is consistent with science” .
But, “If our universe is the only universe in reality, it would be extremely improbable to find ourselves in a fine-tuned cosmos by chance”.
Azarian goes on: But “If you don’t assume that our universe is the only one in existence, the fine-tuning problem seems to disappear” . In other words, some scientists and philosophers created the belief in an infinite number of universes because they opposed the idea that there was a creator.
“This position, popular with atheists, reduces life’s significance once again and restores the idea that reality in its totality is purposeless and mostly, if not entirely, meaningless…. Today, many leading theoretical physicists and cosmologists support the idea of a cosmological multiverse, despite an inability to test the theory empirically” [emphasis mine] (263).
Scientific proof is based upon the concept of falsifiability. According to explorable.com: “Falsifiability is the assertion that for any hypothesis to have credence, it must be inherently disprovable before it can become accepted as a scientific hypothesis or theory” .
The hypothesis that multiverses exist can neither be proved or disproved. Therefore, according the above definition, it should have no credence. But this is not the case. Why not? The obvious answer is that there are many scientists and philosophers who don’t want to believe there might be a creator—even if it is a deist creator who created life as we know it on earth and then left it to humans to tend.
Another scientific theory called Occam’s Razor teaches us that “The principle gives precedence to simplicity: of two competing theories, the simpler explanation of an entity is to be preferred” . The simplest explanation for why life exists on earth today is because there was a creator who made it.
Now you know why and how the belief in multiverses came into existence. Now you know the rest of the story. The implications are enormous for all of us.
