Today we’ll talk about two brief posts at the website of the Discoveroids — described in the Cast of Characters section of our Intro page. Each of them deals with a different, but long-debunked creationist argument. We’ll give you a few excerpts from each, with bold font added by us:
The first is The Multiverse Hypothesis: Refuting Cerberus. It’s by David Klinghoffer. He quotes from an email he says he received “about the multiverse hypothesis that seeks to do an end run around cosmic fine-tuning and the implication of design in the cosmos.” That email says:
The point of proposing the multiverse theory is that there exist an infinite number of universes of which ours happens to be lucky enough to have “just right” conditions for life. Implicit in the proposal is the belief that the system which generates universes always cycles through all possibilities of fundamental constants (gravitational constant, speed of light, etc.) so that each universe is randomly different. But since no one has any idea how universes are generated in such a scenario, why should we think that the constants in each universe will be different? Why might they not be always the same due to some fundamental quality of these constants?
Nothing wrong with that. As our regular readers know, we’re not keen on the multiverse, mostly because it’s a totally untestable and unnecessary concept — see Common Creationist Claims Confuted. Further, the multiverse isn’t needed to avoid the imaginary persuasiveness of the Anthropic Principle — the notion that the laws of nature and the fundamental physical constants seem remarkably suited to our own existence.
Why isn’t the multiverse needed to refute the anthropic principle? It’s because the anthropic principle, despite its allure in flattering us with the idea that the universe was designed with us in mind, simply isn’t a persuasive argument for the intelligent designer. It’s quite sufficient to accept the universe as it is. Therefore, even if the multiverse concept is a flop (and we’ll probably never know one way or the other), it doesn’t help the designer one little bit.
Then the email Klinghoffer is quoting from makes another (and far stranger) argument against the multiverse:
Given that the proposal is metaphysical and not subject to observation, doesn’t it boil down to mere preference? After all if we’re going to describe Cerberus, the three headed dog who guards the gates of Hades, we can describe him any way we wish. Who can ever refute the claim that he is red with bulldog heads and floppy ears?
Silly stuff. But as long as Klinghoffer raises the topic of mythical creatures, we should point out that the Cerberus argument applies to the magical designer too. Hey — why can’t Cerberus actually be the designer? This could be the version of the multiverse in which the designer has three heads.
That’s the end of Klinghoffer’s post (stimulating, wasn’t it?), so now we’ll go to the other gem they’ve posted today. That one is Whether Lab or Cell, It’s Design, and it says:
Art may sometimes imitate nature, but increasingly engineering is doing it, too. Some recent nano-engineering projects were inspired by cellular machines.
This is another creationist argument we’ve discussed in Common Creationist Claims Confuted under the heading “Copying Nature Requires Intelligence.” Let’s read on:
They’re hailed as great successes in engineering, but they don’t do nearly as good a job as the natural ones. If human engineers in the lab get molecular machines to imitate cellular machines, it’s intelligent design. What does this imply about the cellular machines?
That’s an easy question. It doesn’t imply anything about a magical designer who runs around like some kind of invisible Santa Claus tinkering with our DNA. Well, actually it does imply one thing. If we can imitate some aspect of nature, then we can be confident that whatever we’ve imitated wasn’t an impossible, miraculous thing that only the gods can do. But the Discoveroids never look at it that way.
Their article continues with a few examples of Nanobiotechnology and they quote from a paper that says:
Here, we report on the design, synthesis, and operation of an artificial small-molecule machine that travels along a molecular strand, picking up amino acids that block its path, to synthesize a peptide in a sequence-specific manner.
Well! There it is — the smoking gun! “What smoking gun?” you ask. You fool! Don’t you see it? They used the word “design” in the paper. To emphasize that, the Discoveroids say:
Design, design, design: that is the key word in the paper. It appears throughout, in contrast to evolution, which is notably absent.
Powerful argument, isn’t it? They conclude:
If the primitive artificial machine is designed, the superior natural machine, logically, is even better designed.
And they finish with this:
Need one say more?
No, they don’t need to say more. But we’ll end this by saying something complimentary that we’ve noticed about the Discoveroids: They’re obviously concerned about the environment, because they keep recycling their trash.
Copyright © 2013. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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SC says
Now, if the experiment needed 1.21 gigawatts, maybe they’d have a case.
Thanks SC for my laugh of the day. You never fail to keep me amused underside. In a previous post of yours, I can see why Barbara Forrest is a national treasure stateside re the Louisiana Science Education Act.
Off topic here…
We have a female atheist Prime Minister here that lives (as some folks imply) in sin. Am I worried? No, Julia Gillard is great and Charles, a hilarious link.
Klinghoffer:
If they are fixed/necessary, then the whole fine tuning argument for design disappears because the probability of a universe turning out to have the constants ours has is 1. Duh.
Klinghoffer appears not to understand that it’s the creationist argument that depends on them not being ‘the same due to some fundamental quality of these constants.’
SC:
Maybe Gabriel can weigh in on this, but my understanding (as a layman on this issue) is that a multiverse is the expected outcome of the leading physics theories, i.e. the ones other evidence best support. You should accept it for the same reason you should accept quantum entanglement across lightyears: because even though we can’t test that prediction directly, the underlying theory that predicts that also predicts many other things, and those many other things have been tested and turned out to be true.
If hypothesis A leads to predictions B, C, D, and E, and you show B, C, and D are true, you are justified in believing E pretty much to the extent that you believe A. No direct test of E is necessary; just confidence in A.
eric says: “my understanding (as a layman on this issue) is that a multiverse is the expected outcome of the leading physics theories, i.e. the ones other evidence best support.”
I don’t think it’s that well established yet, but the multiverse very far from my limited area of expertise.
eric also says: “You should accept it for the same reason you should accept quantum entanglement across lightyears”
I’m confident that hasn’t been demonstrated.
Khopper says”Need one say more?”
One does not need to say more and
in Kawackystinkle’s case, one hopes
he doesn’t say anymore.:)
SC
That was the point: it is a prediction of QM that we can’t test (at the moment), but which we should accept to the extent that we already accept QM.
As you say, my understanding may not be correct and this may not be a strong prediction of (otherwise) well-tested physics theories. But if it is, we should have no problem accepting a multiverse without directly testing it. If newtonian mechanics requires the cannonball on my shelf falls at 9.8 m/s^2, and I believe newtonian mechanics, then I don’t need to test my cannonball.
Well, eric, I say you can put the multiverse where the sun don’t shine.
Sir Robinhoffer Encounters The Designer.
In some other universe I can prove the multiverse.
Why did I look at that?
In some other universe, you didn’t.
Darn, I meant that to read “Three-Headed Designer”. Oh well.
SC – that’s where the universe already is… oh, I get it. Quite subtle humor there.
I’ve read that a test of the multiverse might involve analysis of the cosmic background radiation – it’s possible that if our universe were pressing against another one, there would be a footprint in the CMB. So at least there are a few ideas floating around as to how to test for it. Another thought is that it might have something to do with the Great Attractor.
That’s the difference between science and ID. The Multiverse concept comes out of existing physics and efforts to understand what happened before the bang – not some theological effort to do away with a designer. Being part of physics, scientists continue to search for ways to test it, even if they are hard to find, and most scientist do not assert that the multiverse is proven fact.
The DI, on the other hand, will always assert that there is no possible way to test for the presence a designer, his methods, etc. , however their entire enterprise is based on the assumption that he does exist – they start with that assumption and work from there. There is more evidence for bigfoot than for the DI’s cosmic designer.
Physicist have <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/experts-still-split-about-what-quantum-theory-means-1.12198"trouble with this stuff too.
Steven Hawking said the the Big Bang produced some 10^500 universes. I think he based this on quantum theory. I am proud of passing college algebra the second time through with a D. So when Steven Hawking, a mathmatical genius, says something, I just nod my head and pretend to understand.
I admit it; I’m a mathematical moron to begin with. On top of that, I’ve been out of college so long that my logic gears have rusted solid. For these, & perhaps many other reasons, I cannot understand why the multi-verse theory is any more credible than the god theory. If someone could explain it to me, I would be eternally grateful (or maybe not).
Eric-
” If they are fixed/necessary, then the whole fine tuning argument for design disappears because the probability of a universe turning out to have the constants ours has is 1. Duh.
Klinghoffer appears not to understand that it’s the creationist argument that depends on them not being ‘the same due to some fundamental quality of these constants.’”
Translation: Klingleberry stupid.
Creationists always assume flat probability distributions. How would they know?
Jim Thomerson says: “Steven Hawking said the the Big Bang produced some 10^500 universes.”
I have a poll showing that 66% of all shoe-bombers prefer the multiverse theory. I can post a pie chart that clearly displays the data.
May I recommend:
Ethan Segal: Why We Think There Is A Multiverse
It is not completely non-technical, but its about as close as you are going to get.
Thanks for the link, TA. I’ve been following Segal’s blog for a while, since someone else linked to it here, but this was from before I had discovered it. Great explanation.
The bottom line take-away for me, is that the multiverse is an unintended consequence of our best understanding of the very early evolution of the universe. The well-tested theory that best fits all the facts we can observe about the universe, requires that there be a multiverse. What it doesn’t require, and is much more speculative, is that the other universes could have different constants and attributes. In other words, the original “discovery” of the multiverse had nothing whatsoever to do with an effort to address the anthropic principle. The multiverse that Segal describes has the same properties as our universe.