Does the Multiverse Explain Away Divine Design?
Question of the week: Can you give a brief response to atheists’ appeals to the multiverse to explain away divine design?
My answer: Very briefly, the same multiverse logic used by atheists to explain away divine design simultaneously explains away all human design achievements. Hence, the atheists’ appeal to the multiverse to avoid divine design is philosophically inconsistent.
Here is a not-so-brief illustration of my point:
In an infinite number of universes, where all conceivable variations on the features of the universes are manifested, there could be an infinite number of planets just like Earth. On those infinite number of Earth-like planets, there could be an infinite number of trees that shed pieces of white bark that are indistinguishable from 8.5 x 11-inch sheets of paper. This infinite number of pieces of white bark could fall upon soil containing chemicals that would imprint random ink-like markings on the pieces of bark. With an infinite number of pieces of such bark falling upon such soil, inevitably there will be a set of those pieces of bark that will possess imprinted markings that look identical to all the research papers published by all the nontheistic research scientists in the world. One, therefore, could presume that none of those research papers came from the minds of scientists. A mindless multiverse did it!
It is important to add that all multiverse speculations require a Creator to explain the existence of a multiverse. All multiverse models are speculative in that it is impossible for us to measure or physically detect anything beyond our universe. All multiverse speculations are subject to the space-time theorems.