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.