Does God So Love the Multiverse?

Professor Don Page, of the University of Alberta, is quite the interesting character. He’s a theoretical quantum cosmologist, or in other words he studies the relationships between quantum mechanics (things really small that are indefinitely defined) and cosmology (the study of the universe). He’s also an evangelical Christian. In recent years he’s taken to giving a lecture entitled “Does God So Love the Multiverse?” in which he attempts to reconcile multiverse theories of the universe with Christian theism. He has also recently published it as a 26-page paper.

Update: You can also download an MP3 and Powerpoint of this presentation when he gave it for the Urban Bridge Chruch’s Thinking God series.

For my quick summary: Page presents here a brief summary of some multiverse ideas, shows their attraction and claims that these are compatible with Christianity. He presents no new arguments for theism, and merely tries to reconcile irrational belief with modern ideas.

Going more in depth (section by section):

1. God’s Love for All Humans

Here he begins by quoting John 3:16

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believed in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

And continuing to describe how God’s love (of everyone) is described through both the Old and New Testaments. He cites the efforts God put forth for the Israelites (I agree the OT God loved them), but also uses several other tales to demonstrate God’s love extending beyond His people. However, we could easily find many other tales of how His love didn’t extend beyond the Israelites. In short from the Exodus stories, we can see that God down right antagonized the Egyptians.

He ends section one with this bit:

The question arises as to how unique does that make us. The Bible certainly emphasizes that the image of God extends to all humans. But are we created entirely
separately from the rest of creation?

Some have taken the image of God for humans to imply that God created us
individually and separately from other living beings. However, Darwin’s theory
of evolution suggests that we are related to the rest of life. It also suggests that
we humans were not separately created by an individual act, independent of the creation of the remainder of the earth’s biosphere. [emphasis added]

This directly contradicts the Genesis story, but Dr. Page has no issue here.

2. Parallels Between Evolution and Multiverse Ideas

Here he explains how many Christians, including the original Fundamentalists, are able to accept both Christianity and evolution. He then claims that the ideas of multiverse theory parallel evolution in expanding our understanding and pushing back gods of the gaps. He claims that multiverse theory explains many of the fine-tuning arguments of the universe (which it does), however that does not mean God doesn’t exist (logically he’s right).

3. Fine Tuning in Our Universe

Here he basically describes the fine tuning that is apparent in the universe. There’s nothing really new or exciting here and he surprisingly makes no claims that this fine tuning requires a designer.

4. Explanations for Fine Tuning

He lists three possible explanations for fine tuning here:

Some suggest that the fine tuning was done by a separate act of God to allow life.
Others say that it is presumably an accidental fluke. And yet others propose that it
arises from a huge multiverse of very many different possible constants of physics.

He also notes these arguments are not mutually exclusive, so it is possible for there to be some mix between the three.

He continues to describe various multiverse theories (here is where the average reader will start to run into difficulty). He dismisses some as too general and others as not explanatory enough (or too explanatory - “the theory that explains everything explains nothing”). He moves from there into a discussion of the Bayesian probabilities of different theories involving the likelihood, a priori and a posteriori probabilities. I don’t have much experience here but much of it seemed subjective and arbitrary. It reminds me of the Drake Equation.

5. Applying Bayes’ Theorem

This continues his talk about theories and probabilities. The only interesting part is his conclusion:

Given our present knowledge, to me it currently seems simpler to hypothesize that God created a multiverse, and I would argue that that is a theologically acceptable option for Christians and other theists to consider.

Please note he has not “argued” for his option, but made a claim based on a subjective assignment of probabilities using his Bayesian algorithm.

6. Toy Multiverse Model from Arithmetic

For those of you who are mathematically inclined…

If you are not a math major or very inclined feel free to skim or skip this section entirely. I didn’t gain anything from it.

7. The Growth of Our Knowledge of the Universe

There’s a bit of philosophical/epistemological musing at the start of this section pertaining to knowledge and observations. He then postulates the existence of conscious extraterrestrials that could be theoretically impossible to make contact with (due to enormous distances or existence in alternate universes). The entire point of this section seems to be that the multiverse theory is logically allowed. Beyond that is seems somewhat incoherent.

8. Objections to Multiverse Ideas

Here he brings up philosophical objections to multiverse ideas.

First he addresses the issue of whether or not alternate universes are observable, and if not why accept them? This is a standard empiricist response, and valid, he claims that there may be some testable consequences, but aren’t any yet (which means the objection stands despite his claim to “highly plausible rebuttals to the objections”).

The second objection is that multiverse theories are not necessarily required from existing theories. His rebuttal is that string/M theory is “beginning to appear” to have multiverse as a consequence. Again, this is not a strong rebuttal, and the objection stands.

The third objection is that “it is extravagant to assume unfathomable numbers of unobservable universes,” or essentially that it is counter-intuitive to postulate the existence of more than one universe. His rebuttal is that “the whole can be simpler than its parts” and his example is his mathematical example from section 6. I have to agree that this isn’t a very good objection, as many “gut reactions” are not necessarily true. He continues his rebuttal invoking God with the excuse: if god is omnipotent (in that he can do anything logically possible - i.e. no burritos so hot He can’t eat them) he could do whatever he wanted, including creating a multiverse.

The final argument he mentions is that multiverses can be used to explain anything, and thus explain nothing (the same argument we could use against theism). He agrees several multiverse theories are subject to this failing, however there are more specific and better theories in existence.

He then continues into theistic arguments against multiverse theories.

The first is that it undercuts the fine-tuning argument. He agrees that it does this, however he maintains that God could still exist. It is critical to note that many theologians use this argument as key evidence. As argument after argument in favour of god’s existence fails, all that is left as a reason to believe is blind faith.

He then continues and declares:

I personally think it might be a theological mistake to look for fine tuning as
a sign of the existence of God.

He cites Matthew 12:38-41 and declares that the only evidence/argument for God’s existence there is is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered, saying, ‘Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.’ But He answered and said to them, ‘An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.
For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here.’

The issue here is there is NO evidence of the resurrection of Jesus Christ outside the Bible, and several suggestions he is a figure of fiction based on pagan origins. Therefore, the only evidence for Christian theism is the Bible, this is circular reasoning.

Another theistic objection he raises is that the multiverse theory leaves nothing for God to design. His response is that God would still have had the multiverse to design.

The final (Christian) theistic objection is that the multiverse idea would leave room for other intelligent races that sinned and therefore needed Christ to go and do another redemption trick to save them. The response is priceless:

But the Bible was written for us humans here on earth, so it seems unreasonable to require it to describe what God may or may not do with other creatures He may have created elsewhere. We could just interpret the Bible to mean that Christ’s death here on earth is unique for our human civilization.

This is the classic apologetic trick of “we don’t know God’s mind” or “He has a plan/reason to give us certain knowledge.” I think this God belittles humanity by failing to disclose such information. However a further response to his might be if another civilization is discovered that is entirely atheistic, but shows signs of “sin” in the Christian sense. This presents a second qualifying test of Christianity (after the historicity of Jesus) - if intelligent life exists, are they Christian? If not how can we posit that He exists?

9. Conclusions

The overall thesis here is how he sums it up:

I would argue that theists have no more reason to oppose them then they had to oppose Darwinian evolution when it was first proposed.

God might indeed so love the multiverse.

My overall take is this is a weak attempt for a Christian to continue to reconcile irrational faith with modern science. I do however appreciate an Evangelical Christian trashing the design argument.

Canada promotes debt of its young

I find it a bit odd that I’m currently being inundated by ads for Canada Student Loans.  I don’t think our government should be encouraging debt on its younger portions of society, although higher education is definitely a positive.  I can see a bank marketing its loan programmes, but the government?

My final beef with the ads is that many of the images of students show how happy they are - I guess the thought of over 300,000 young adults being in debt is something to smile about.

The money spent on these ads could have easily been spent on an extra couple scholarships or put into post-secondary institutions so tuition could be a tad bit lower.

What should I read?

This post is a request to Christians, theists, or anyone who has a suggestion for a good book (not including the bible) for me to read that would highlight the best arguments for god/religion/theism/response to Dawkins et. al. that are out there.  I’ll take any suggestions and then try to get through a couple through the summer with an open mind.

Superstition runs rampant

Taking a quick break from my studies I saw on CTS, while flipping channels, a news segment on the Archdiocese of Ottawa appointing two new exorcists!  Apparently Ottawa had been without exorcists for the past five years, so I’m not sure how people survived (apparently they get a couple calls per year).  Apparently exorcisms are back “in”:

In the past two decades, Italy alone has increased the ranks of its exorcists from 20 to 350. Just before Christmas, Rome’s chief exorcist, Gabriel Amorth, indicated the Pope wanted an exorcist in every diocese in the world.

Something to note is that despite media “glorification” of exorcisms, often times exorcisms are performed on misdiagnosed victims of mental illness, and even worse the exorcism can lead to death:

Exorcisms in film and fiction can be entertaining, while exorcisms in real life can be fatal. The tragic irony is that in many cases the evil is committed not by the Devil, but by those who believe in him.

Shooting fish in a barrel

Alright, so I feel like writing a post and I needed some brain fodder to get me going. Naturally I look up a mental opposite who is well known, and perhaps respected (among his peers, not mine) and decide to find a writing of Dinesh D’Souza’s.

The latest post on his blog is about Obama and race, not too intriguing for me, but his second latest reeks of failed ignorant arguments. The article is entitled “The Power of Pascal’s Wager.” Here we go (note, this “argument” for belief comes up a lot, so pay attention if you haven’t come across it before).

He launches with an interesting side note about the history of the wager,

Pascal did not invent the wager. It was offered by the Muslim theologian Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali in his medieval work The Alchemy of Happiness. Pascal was familiar with Ghazzali and probably derived the argument from him. But Pascal gave the wager its current classic expression, and in doing so he places an unavoidable choice before all believers and unbelievers.

This isn’t critical to the argument, but it does make D’Souza sound a bit more reputable and like he checks sources and knows what he’s talking about. He continues to dig into the meat of the argument itself, and expresses it fairly eloquently,

Pascal argues that in making our decision about God, we will never understand everything in advance. No amount of rational investigation can produce definitive answers, since what comes after death remains unknown. Therefore we have to examine the options, and we have to make our wager. But what are the alternatives, and how should we weigh the odds? Pascal argues that we have two basic choices, and either way we must consider the risk of being wrong.

Basically, the argument set up is that we all have a choice (belief in God), and we must make it before we die.

If we have faith in God and it turns out that God does not exist, we face a small downside risk: metaphysical error. But if we reject God during our lives, and it turns out God does exist, there is much more serious risk: eternal separation from God. Based on these two possible outcomes, Pascal declares that it is much less risky to have faith in God. In the face of an uncertain outcome, no rational person would refuse to give up something that is finite if there is the possibility of gaining an infinite prize. In fact, under these conditions it is unreasonable not to believe.

It’s pretty simple overall, and it’s a convincing argument for many, so where does it go wrong?

First, D’Souza (and Pascal) is assuming that when he “believes” in God that he has chosen the correct one. D’Souza is openly a Catholic, so I assume his faith is in the god of the New Testament (jesus and the trinity). It would be rather unfortunate for him if the Muslims were right, especially since Allah in some forms is very intolerant to the wrong belief. Following the spirit of the wager, should we not weight all religions (even dead ones) and decide which offers the best reward over punishment for belief for our decision? To me the constant threats from Islam are slightly more terrifying then the threat of being “eternally separated” from God. Pascal’s wager here sets up a one-or-the-other option that doesn’t accurately represent the myriad of possible beliefs (and remember, according to Christians^TM there is only ONE path to God).

Second, this wager is dealing with infinities, a mathematical construct, that people cannot possible comprehend.  Therefore, how is it that we’re expected to perform rational judgement on the decision?

Many people argue that Pascal’s wager assumes equal probabilities of being right and wrong, however in D’Souza’s form this is not an issue as the infinite gain/loss should negate that issue.  This still comes back to my last point about the problem of infinity.  Suppose the probability of God (the Christian one) is infinitely small, should you still believe?  Which infinity is larger, the probability of His existence or the reward for belief (trick question, they’re technically equal).

Another key issue with the argument is it assumes that belief is essentially a switch in your brain that you can switch on and start believing.  Or, it assumes that if you don’t believe you can get away by feigning it in front of the Almighty.  This underlying assumption insults D’Souza’s God by suggesting that faked belief is as worthy as ultimate devotion.

However, my main issue with his argument is that I believe you fundamentally lose something by believing that you potentially have by not believing.  If you focus your entire life on the expectation of an afterlife, you have fundamentally devalued the time that you have to be alive.  Suppose this argument is used in a strict Islamic context (the Islam references might be coming since I have the book Infidel in front of me), then you are required (if male) to at minimum pray multiple times a day in the appropriate direction (and much worse if you are female).  All of this time is essentially wasted if you hedged your bet wrong (I’ll grant some benefit to taking some meditation time, but that’s not equivalent to prayer).

I have one life to live, and based on the evidence available, I’m going to spend it enjoying it as long as it lasts (since after it ends there’s no more Ian).

Pascal’s wager devalues life.

But what was the aim for Pascal’s wager?  It seems that the best it does is give a weak reason for agnostics to move to belief, and for believers to feel good about, but not to convert atheists.

But D’Souza doesn’t stop writing once he’s finished about the argument.  He states,

With their trademark venom, atheists typically condemn, although they cannot refute, Pascal’s wager. Christopher Hitchens can do no better than to launch an ad hominem attack on Pascal as a “hypocrite” and a “fraud.” Attempting condescension, Richard Dawkins proclaims Pascal’s argument “distinctly odd.” And why? Because “believing is not something you can decide to do as a matter of policy. At least, it is not something I can decide to do as an act of will.” Dawkins is right about this, of course, but the real issue is whether he wants to believe and whether he is open to the call of faith.

This statement is a bold faced lie.  Almost every “new atheist” book comes complete with at least as good of a refutation of the argument as I have provided here.  Even Wikipedia contains a thorough refutation.  Are you telling me that D’Souza didn’t even bother looking at a Wikipedia site before writing his post?

D’Souza started with a common argument that I have heard from enough Christians that I came to expect it, however when his article devolved into bold-faced lies I lost another ounce of respect for the man.  I hope by this point we all understand the title for this post.

Obeying Atheist high command

A new order has come down from Atheist General P.Z. Myers: link to Expelled Exposed to boost their ranks in anticipation of the movie being released on Friday.

This is mindless atheist drone THz signing off.

Terahertz?

I’ve now received some criticism for not talking about “terahertz” on this blog.  I did discuss a bit about terahertz radiation when I first started, but have since moved beyond the physics-science only realm.

So why don’t I stick to writing physics and science?

1. It’s my freakin’ blog.  I’m allowed to call it whatever I want.  I chose the name “terahertz” because I find the subject interesting, but following the lead of others, I choose not to write solely on one topic.  Atheism interests me, so I write about that, the same goes for local politics, my life in general, and random other things (the tag cloud on the right should show where my biases are).  If you don’t want to read about that stuff, go else where (that’s the beauty of blogging).  As of now I have 16,312 hits (6420 without my oddly popular post), and regardless, if it was still <100 I’d still write the exact same things.
2. I’m not doing a lot of physics or fundamental science right now.  I am still in Engineering Physics and learning about physics, however not being in a lab leaves me with lab reports, club events and assignments, all of which take my mind off of physics.
3. There’s only so much I can write about terahertz radiation.  There’s the odd news story now and then, and papers released in every couple of journals, but regardless, it’s still not that big.  It gets boring to focus solely on one topic in anything, and so I write beyond that.

That’s my bit, if you do have a blog that speaks primarily about terahertz I’ll link to it and try not to distract people from the subject.

Quick answers

I don’t feel like doing work right now and want to post something.  So I’ll use Hemant’s post from almost a year ago to inspire me.  These are my short and sweet answers, push me further and I’ll expand on any of them (note, I cheated and gave some “yes/no” answers).

How would you respond to the following questions?

• Why do you not believe in God?

No evidence.

• Where do your morals come from?

My upbringing and society.

• What is the meaning of life?

42 (now it’s cliché) - so for enjoyment.

• Is atheism a religion?

Only if coherentism is (i.e. no).

• If you don’t pray, what do you do during troubling times?

Fix it.

• Should atheists be trying to convince others to stop believing in God?

Yes, to a point.

• Weren’t some of the worst atrocities in the 20th century committed by atheists?

But not in the name of atheism.

• How could billions of people be wrong when it comes to belief in God?

Easy.

• Why does the universe exist?

Why not?

• How did life originate?

Slowly.

• Is all religion harmful?

No, more of a disability.

• What’s so bad about religious moderates?

They allow for extremists.

• Is there anything redeeming about religion?

Getting to drink wine on a Sunday morning.

• What if you’re wrong about God (and He does exist)?

Whoops.

• Shouldn’t all religious beliefs be respected?

We don’t tolerate racism.

• Are atheists smarter than theists?

No.

• How do you deal with the historical Jesus if you don’t believe in his divinity?

What historical Jesus?

• Would the world be better off without any religion?

Probably not, but one can imagine.

• What happens when we die?

Nothing special.