What is the difference between belief in a multiverse and belief in God?

Naturalist_Atheist said:

The difference as far as I can tell is that Multiverse Theory is testable.

Click to expand...

Wrong.

tomspug said:

When it comes to determinism, aren't we just choosing one unknown over the other, based on our own personal bias?

Click to expand...

If someone really believe that there is a multiverse then there is no difference. He believe in something without any kind of evidence.... But I have yet to meet someone who as an unshakable faith in the multiverse.

tomspug said:

When it comes to determinism, aren't we just choosing one unknown over the other, based on our own personal bias?

Click to expand...

Universal laws are known, gods are by and large unknown.

Divine Spear said:

Touché; sorry Rolling_Stone.:sorry1::sorry1::sorry1::sarcastic

Click to expand...

I only wanted to point out that the multiverse idea is the result of two things: the anthropic principle (weak and strong) and the inability to isolate the observer from the observed. Together, these things made God a strong possibility (although it virtually destroys the God of dualism). This was intolerable and the multiverse theory, as unscientific as it is, was developed as a mathematically consistent alternative.

Edit: To the question, What is the difference between belief in a multiverse and belief in God? the answer is "none."

Rolling_Stone said:

I only wanted to point out that the multiverse idea is the result of two things: the anthropic principle (weak and strong) and the inability to isolate the observer from the observed. Together, these things made God a strong possibility (although it virtually destroys the God of dualism). This was intolerable and the multiverse theory, as unscientific as it is, was developed as a mathematically consistent alternative.

Click to expand...

Right. But thankfully people inside of science call it as it really is too. To quote the highly respected cosmologist Paul Davies from this article in the NY times:

"For a start, how is the existence of the other universes to be tested? To be sure, all cosmologists accept that there are some regions of the universe that lie beyond the reach of our telescopes, but somewhere on the slippery slope between that and the idea that there are an infinite number of universes, credibility reaches a limit. As one slips down that slope, more and more must be accepted on faith, and less and less is open to scientific verification.

Extreme multiverse explanations are therefore reminiscent of theological discussions. Indeed, invoking an infinity of unseen universes to explain the unusual features of the one we do see is just as ad hoc as invoking an unseen Creator. The multiverse theory may be dressed up in scientific language, but in essence it requires the same leap of faith."

Rolling_Stone said:

I only wanted to point out that the multiverse idea is the result of two things: the anthropic principle (weak and strong) and the inability to isolate the observer from the observed. Together, these things made God a strong possibility (although it virtually destroys the God of dualism). This was intolerable and the multiverse theory, as unscientific as it is, was developed as a mathematically consistent alternative.

Click to expand...

I really don't think that the multiverse theory was developed as an alternative to God. "God" was never a valid scientific theory and therefore there is no need to develop an alternative to it.

It is important not to mistake a-theism (or nontheism) with anti-theism. Some people may be anti-theistic, yes. But science is a-theistic. "God" is simply not on the radar. God's exclusion is not to be taken personally in the way that you are suggesting.

logician said:

Universal laws are known, gods are by and large unknown.

Click to expand...

Made-up universes using universal laws are still made-up.

rocketman said:

Right. But thankfully people inside of science call it as it really is too. To quote the highly respected cosmologist Paul Davies from this article in the NY times:

"For a start, how is the existence of the other universes to be tested? To be sure, all cosmologists accept that there are some regions of the universe that lie beyond the reach of our telescopes, but somewhere on the slippery slope between that and the idea that there are an infinite number of universes, credibility reaches a limit. As one slips down that slope, more and more must be accepted on faith, and less and less is open to scientific verification.

Extreme multiverse explanations are therefore reminiscent of theological discussions. Indeed, invoking an infinity of unseen universes to explain the unusual features of the one we do see is just as ad hoc as invoking an unseen Creator. The multiverse theory may be dressed up in scientific language, but in essence it requires the same leap of faith."

Click to expand...

Not that it has much bearing on the merits of his case, but as a matter of fact it has been my experience that most physicists share Paul Davies' skepticism of the frontiers in theoretical cosmology. Skepticism is always a good thing whenever we are pushing the boundaries of our knowledge.

However, the vast majority of physicists would reject Paul Davies' injection of "God" into cosmology, and the ways in which he equates science and religion generally.

The key difference is that if a hypothesis (say a multiverse theory) is precise and coherent -- and this usually means quantitative -- it is possible at least in principle to elucidate the observable consequences of the hypothesis, if any. Obviously any theory which is *merely* quantitative is on extremely shaky grounds. That was indeed the status of the atomistic theory of matter, until improvements in microscopy in the late 19th century allowed us to observe the Brownian motion of pollen grains, and Einstein showed mathematically that the quantitative observations followed from the atomistic theory. So I would say such theories are on very shaky grounds, and we have no right to embrace them, but they are valid avenues of scientific inquiry.

But theories of "God", on the other hand, are on no grounds at all. If there is a precise, physical "God equation" which defines "God" and his interactions with quarks and leptons coherently--something rigorous which could be used to predict observations even in principle--I have not seen it.

And of course, there is a difference between having faith that a proposition is true, and forming a tentative hypothesis and trying to elucidate its physical consequences. The former is generally what people are doing when they say they believe in God. The latter is what theoretical physicists are trying to do.

In fact if we have learned anything at all from science, it is that there exists a natural order which is never violated: particles cannot travel faster than the speed of light; an electron cannot be created without its positron partner; etc. These are incredibly precise restrictions on the smallest components of the universe, backed up by an enormous wealth of data. To the extent that we know these violations cannot happen, we can be even more certain that a traditional theist (rather than deist) God does not exist: the dead cannot come back to life, a Virgin cannot conceive, water cannot be turned into wine, lightning does not seek out sinners, and so on. Suffice it to say that it would indeed be remarkable if such catastrophic reversals of the natural order occurred, when particle accelerators fail to find minuscule violations of physics in the 20th decimal place of some proton-proton collision, after performing millions of experiments a minute for decades.

lilithu said:

I really don't think that the multiverse theory was developed as an alternative to God. "God" was never a valid scientific theory and therefore there is no need to develop an alternative to it.

Click to expand...

I read a lot of books written by scientists. Just taking their word for it.

"God" is simply not on the radar.

Click to expand...

That's the point. Materialist science wants to keep it that way. With the anthropic principle and quantum mechanics threatening to put a deanthropomorphized "God" back on the radar, some feel it necessary to offer something plausible that avoids any top down causation.

Rolling_Stone said:

I read a lot of books written by scientists. Just taking their word for it.

Click to expand...

Please name them. I am quite curious to see which scientists would make the claim that any theory was intentionally developed as an "alternative to God." I doubt that even Dawkins would make such a claim.

Rolling_Stone said:

That's the point. Materialist science wants to keep it that way.

Click to expand...

First of all, science does not "want" anything. It is not a personality. Secondly, science is materialist because that's the way it works.

I believe in God, RS. Philosophically and theologically, I am not a materialist. BUT.... when I want to bake a cake, the process is materialist. When I want change a light bulb, the process is materialist. The same with conducting science. That's how it works.

rocketman said:

Right. But thankfully people inside of science call it as it really is too. To quote the highly respected cosmologist Paul Davies from this article in the NY times:

"For a start, how is the existence of the other universes to be tested? To be sure, all cosmologists accept that there are some regions of the universe that lie beyond the reach of our telescopes, but somewhere on the slippery slope between that and the idea that there are an infinite number of universes, credibility reaches a limit. As one slips down that slope, more and more must be accepted on faith, and less and less is open to scientific verification.

Extreme multiverse explanations are therefore reminiscent of theological discussions. Indeed, invoking an infinity of unseen universes to explain the unusual features of the one we do see is just as ad hoc as invoking an unseen Creator. The multiverse theory may be dressed up in scientific language, but in essence it requires the same leap of faith."

Click to expand...

Right on, Rocketman! And he's not alone. Some even go further and flat-out denounce the larger scientific community's unscientific reluctance to entertain anything but materialist bottom up causation.

rocketman said:

Jumping back to ID for a minute, there are some good mathematical models that show how an irreducibly complex system cannot evolve for example, with complex details that perfectly align to the nth degree

Click to expand...

There are numerous ways irreducibly complex systems can evolve and it has been demonstrated experimentally:

When the Avida team published their first results on the evolution of complexity in 2003, they were inundated with e-mails from creationists. Their work hit a nerve in the antievolution movement and hit it hard. A popular claim of creationists is that life shows signs of intelligent design, especially in its complexity. They argue that complex things could have never evolved, because they don’t work unless all their parts are in place. But as Adami points out, if creationists were right, then Avida wouldn’t be able to produce complex digital organisms. A digital organism may use 19 or more simple routines in order to carry out the equals operation. If you delete any of the routines, it can’t do the job. “What we show is that there are irreducibly complex things and they can evolve,” says Adami.

Click to expand...

Testing Darwin | Computers | DISCOVER Magazine

rocketman said:

Right. But thankfully people inside of science call it as it really is too. To quote the highly respected cosmologist Paul Davies from this article in the NY times:

"For a start, how is the existence of the other universes to be tested? To be sure, all cosmologists accept that there are some regions of the universe that lie beyond the reach of our telescopes, but somewhere on the slippery slope between that and the idea that there are an infinite number of universes, credibility reaches a limit. As one slips down that slope, more and more must be accepted on faith, and less and less is open to scientific verification.

Extreme multiverse explanations are therefore reminiscent of theological discussions. Indeed, invoking an infinity of unseen universes to explain the unusual features of the one we do see is just as ad hoc as invoking an unseen Creator. The multiverse theory may be dressed up in scientific language, but in essence it requires the same leap of faith."

Click to expand...

That's nice.

There is always dissent in science. That's how new theories constantly arise to try to best fit the evidence. It's really quite like the process of natural selection. New variances are introduced. If they are backed up by evidence, they are kept... for so long as another version isn't shown to be better. But the majority of versions are brought up and then discarded. There is always dissent in science. That doesn't mean that a dissenting view is correct. In most cases (but not all), they are incorrect.

That said. Even if he's right... all that says is that the multiverse theory is wrong. It certainly does NOT suggest that "God" is in any way a valid theory. In fact, it's quite clear from his language that he is comparing "extreme multiverse explanations" to invoking a Creator in order to ridicule the former, not to validate the latter.

Rolling Stone said:

Right on, Rocketman! And he's not alone. Some even go further and flat-out denounce the larger scientific community's unscientific reluctance to entertain anything but materialist bottom up causation.

Click to expand...

Some, perhaps. The vast majority do not.

It's really quite simple: if you want physicists to take your hypothesis seriously, whether it's a God hypothesis or anything else, produce something rigorous. An equation. An inequality. A schematic for a proposed experimental setup. An analysis of previous data. SOMETHING! Yes the frontiers of physics are always pure speculation, but rigorous and precise speculation can at least be discussed, we can test them in principle or prove they cannot be tested (as Einstein proved with the ether). Fuzzy philosophical arguments cannot be treated with the rigor required for scientific discourse and cannot be tested *even in principle*.

Mr Spinkles said:

It's really quite simple: if you want physicists to take your hypothesis seriously, whether it's a God hypothesis or anything else, produce something rigorous. An equation. An inequality. A schematic for a proposed experimental setup. An analysis of previous data. SOMETHING! Yes the frontiers of physics are always pure speculation, but rigorous and precise speculation can at least be discussed, fuzzy philosophical arguments cannot (at least not scientifically).

Click to expand...

Indeed. Even if one believes in God (and I do), a scientist wants to know HOW God created the universe. Claiming that "God did it" does not in any way explain how.

lilithu said:

Whereas the "God did it" hypothesis is inherently untestable (unless one believes in the humanoid with superpowers that Seyorni was talking about).

Click to expand...

I agree with basically everything you've said on this thread, lilithu. But I would add that it is possible to imagine a set of observations which would all but demonstrate the existence of "God" (or a godlike being). Imagine a universe in which lightning, say, really did strike down the sinners; and electricity could not be controlled experimentally, and did not obey simple mathematical relationships. For that matter, imagine a God appearing before us and causing changes in our world, just as human leaders appear on TV and interact with the world.

I've said it before: there is a reason no one today believes God directly controls lightning bolts, even though many people believed it right up until the invention of the lightning rod in the 19th century, and the reason has nothing to do with advances in theology.

Mr Spinkles said:

I agree with basically everything you've said on this thread, lilithu. But I would add that it is possible to imagine a set of observations which would all but demonstrate the existence of "God" (or a godlike being). Imagine a universe in which lightning, say, really did strike down the sinners; and electricity could not be controlled experimentally, and did not obey simple mathematical relationships. For that matter, imagine a God appearing before us and causing changes in our world, just as human leaders appear on TV and interact with the world.

I've said it before: there is a reason no one today believes God directly controls lightning bolts, even though many people believed it right up until the invention of the lightning rod in the 19th century, and the reason has nothing to do with advances in theology.

Click to expand...

This is basically what I was saying with the sentence that you quoted. *IF* you do believe in a God that is humanoid with superpowers (such as a God that throws lightening bolts) then yes, the existence of such a God can be proven or disproven. I mean, he may be really good at hiding but one would think that sooner or later we'd catch evidence of him.

If, however, one believes in an omnipresent God, then I don't see how you could ever do the controlled experiment. There is no situation where God is not present in order to compare it to the "sample" where God is present.

lilithu said:

If, however, one believes in an omnipresent God, then I don't see how you could ever do the controlled experiment. There is no situation where God is not present in order to compare it to the "sample" where God is present.

Click to expand...

I don't understand. In the scenario I described, the fact that you can't do a controlled experiment is part of the supporting evidence for divine agency. The scenario makes no assumptions about whether God is present all the time or only some of the time. And we do not need a control sample to actually exist, we only need to be able to hypothesize it and show how it conflicts with observation. E.g. we were able to demonstrate all matter is composed of atoms despite the fact that no "control" samples of continuous matter exist.

Mr Spinkles said:

I don't understand. In the scenario I described, the fact that you can't do a controlled experiment is part of the supporting evidence for divine agency. The scenario makes no assumptions about whether God is present all the time or only some of the time.

Click to expand...

If God throws lightening bolts then God is only acting some of the time and not all of the time. One should be able to compare the times when lightening bolts are occurring to the times when they are not occurring. That seems like a control to me.

Mr Spinkles said:

And we do not need a control sample to actually exist, we only need to be able to hypothesize it and show how it conflicts with observation. E.g. we were able to demonstrate all matter is composed of atoms despite the fact that no "control" samples of continuous matter exist.

Click to expand...

True, but I don't see how you can do that with an omnipresent God.

lilithu said:

If God throws lightening bolts then God is only acting some of the time and not all of the time. One should be able to compare the times when lightening bolts are occurring to the times when they are not occurring. That seems like a control to me.


True, but I don't see how you can do that with an omnipresent God.

Click to expand...

An omnipresent God does not have to be constantly throwing lightning bolts. He could be present even when he is not throwing them.