Is the Existence of a Multiverse a Problem for Christianity?
Question of the week: Would the existence of a possible multiverse count against the Christian faith?
My answer: There are theistic and atheistic versions of the multiverse. The atheistic versions contain internal contradictions. In The Creator and the Cosmos, 4th edition (pages 148–153), I describe details on how nontheistic multiverse speculations actually give strong evidence for the Christian faith.1 The five primary evidences, briefly summarized here, are as follows:
The timing of when the nontheistic speculations were proposed is not coincidental. They were proposed only when the fine-tuning design evidences for a transcendent Creator became overwhelming.
Nontheistic multiverse speculations explain away too much. The arguments proposed to explain the fine-tuned designs without a Creator also explain the content of all science research papers without scientists or any other human agency.
Evidence for fine-tuned designs appears on all size scales of observation accessible to human investigation. It stretches credulity to surmise that conditions within a size scale speculated to exist beyond the reach of possible human investigation somehow will nullify all the observed designs. Such speculations are not scientific in that there is no possibility of subjecting them to scientific tests. Ironically, such speculations concede the existence of a metaphysical realm.
Evidence for fine-tuned designs appears on all time scales of observation. We humans are living at the one time in cosmic history where it is possible, thanks to the finite and constant velocity of light, to directly observe 100% of the past history of the universe. This capability yielded the space-time theorems which establish that a Causal Agent beyond space and time created and designed the universe.
Nontheistic multiverse speculations fail their one testable property. If there really is no personal Being behind the fine-tuned designs of the universe, Earth, and Earth’s life—making possible the existence of humans and human civilization—then further scientific experiments and observations at some point should yield declining evidences for fine-tuned designs. Instead, the scientific enterprise consistently yields exponentially increasing evidence for such designs.2
This question deserves a more detailed response. Again, I provide such a response in The Creator and the Cosmos.3 RTB astrophysicist Jeff Zweerink has devoted an entire book to answering this question: Who’s Afraid of the Multiverse?4 Connect with Jeff for a free chapter.
Endnotes
- Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos, 4th edition (Covina, CA: RTB Press, 2018): 148–153, https://support.reasons.org/purchase/the-creator-and-the-cosmos-fourth-edition.
- I provide a demonstration of exponentially increasing evidence for fine-tuned designs to make humanity and human civilization possible in “RTB Design Compendium (2009),” TNRTB (November 16, 2010), /explore/publications/tnrtb/read/tnrtb/2010/11/16/rtb-design-compendium-2009.
- Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos, 148–53.
- Jeffrey Zweerink, Who’s Afraid of the Multiverse? (Covina, CA: RTB Press, 2008), https://support.reasons.org/purchase/who-is-afraid-of-the-multiverse.