Ruminations on multiverses; Paul Davies (Introduction)

by dhw, Sunday, August 16, 2015, 17:11 (3386 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: nice review article of his pronouncements against the theory:-http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/physicist-paul-davies-killer-argument...-QUOTE: "In addition to the reductio ad absurdum advanced above, Professor Paul Davies has other objections to the multiverse. In an interview last year on Closer to Truth titled, Are There Multiple Universes? (August 23, 2014), Professor Davies explained why he finds the multiverse hypothesis intellectually unsatisfying:-"It's not an unreasonable speculation. However, it falls far short of being a complete theory of existence, which it's often presented as. That is, if there's a multiverse, we can forget about all the mysteries of the universe because it's all explained: everything's out there somewhere. End of story. Well, it's simply not true, because to get a multiverse, you need a universe-generating mechanism - something has got to make all those Big Bangs go “Bang!” - so you're going to need some laws of physics to do that. All of the theories of the multiverse assume quantum mechanics, quantum physics, to give the element of spontaneity to make the bangs happen. They assume pre-existing space and time, they assume the normal notion of causality - a whole host of things. You write down a list, there's about ten different basic assumptions they have to make to get the theory to work. And you can say, well, “Where did they all come from? What about these meta-laws that generate universes and impose effective local by-laws, as Martin Rees would call it, upon these universes? What is this distribution mechanism? How does that work? Where do those rules come from? So all you've done is shift the problem of existence up from the level of universe to the level of multiverse. But you haven't explained it."-TONY: He makes many of the same points we all have made, though I cringe that he blatantly refuses to follow them through to their logical conclusion that our universe was designed.-DAVID: As a highly respected scientist he has to couch his ideas carefully. he has alays come across as a deist to me.-We all make the same points about every hypothesis, because as he so rightly points out, no hypothesis can escape from the shackles of cause and effect. What caused the Big Bang (if it happened)? What caused the universe? What caused the multiverse (if there is such a thing)? What caused God (if he exists)? “First cause” is a philosophical cop-out: if you can say God has always been there, you might as well say universes have always been there. And “the rules” have always been there. Chicken and egg. If you say rules require a maker, the next question is who makes the maker? We can never know the origin of the universe for the simple reason that we can never know what existed before whatever cause we opt for. But Davies, you and I are stubborn and imaginative and indefatigable and idealistic, because we still keep trying to grasp the ungraspable. Aren't we humans wonderful?