The Multiverse vs. Design: Scientific Evidence for a Fine-Tuned Universe - FAS2605

SPEAKER 1 Are scientists inventing infinite universes just to avoid the evidence for God? Today we're pulling back the curtain on the anthropic principle, the wild claims of the multiverse theory and why the Big Bang model might not be as solid as you think. If our universe looks designed, why do some scientists go to such lengths to explain it away? Get ready to discover how the evidence points to a creator and why the real debate isn't just science versus faith but, but metaphysics versus metaphysics. Welcome to Faith and Science. I'm Casey Vacowker. Joining me to discuss these questions is Dr. John Ashton. Welcome to the program once again. SPEAKER 2 Hello Casey. SPEAKER 1 Dr. John has written a book entitled the Big Does God Exist? And in today's program we'll be drawing on some insights from this book, from chapter two. So John, in this book it talks about how the weak anthropic principle is used to dismiss the appearance of design in the universe. So if scientists are claiming that our universe only looks design, how would this be different from an archaeologist ignoring clear evidence of a crafted spear point, insisting it's just a naturally weathered stone to use that illustration which I think you've shared with us before. SPEAKER 2 Yeah, sure. I think as we said, there is a lot of evidence, and it was published earlier on for what they called the anthropic principle because there was so much evidence that the universe was so fine tuned, everything was pointing to some sort of supernatural design. The setup of the plants around stars, the way the stars were organized in spiral galaxies and other different types of galaxies, this sort of thing. And in particular the location of the Earth with our relevance to the sun, how far away we are, the size of the Earth with relevance to the strength of gravity here, the Earth's temperature range, all this sort of thing, the fact that we're protected a lot from cosmic rays by Earth's magnetic field and that's still there, the fact that we're protected from impact from, and bodies flying at us from outer space by the other giant planets like Jupiter and so forth. So there was so much that we were set up here for just life, you know, on, on the, on the Earth here. And so the, the evidence for this was what they call the weakanthropic principle which was yeah, yeah, sure, it appears that we're designed, but it, it's not really, it's, it's just by chance. And one of the reasons is of course going back to, if we look at, you know, archeology and this sort of thing and we find, you know, one of these shape spearheads or a particular hole that's been bored in the ground. And we say, oh, yes, this wasn't just the result of some whirlpool. This was used to, to grind grain, you know, this sort of thing, or this was a, a spearhead, you know, these sort of things. And, and it's the same. We see some of the, you know, cave, you know, drawings and this sort of thing. Oh, we say, well, that, you know, it's just a drawing or what essentially what they're saying. Well, no, that's just the, the pattern. Pattern of, you know, some sort of, you know, bacteria or fungi or water stain or something like that that happened to be in the shape of salt. SPEAKER 1 To argue that with an archaeologist, they'd be like, what? I'm explaining all true to you, and you're telling me it's just chance like that that would not go down well. SPEAKER 2 So that's essentially what, what they've done there. They've had to say that. Yeah, it just appears to be the sign and it's just a random thing that's. That's happened. We, we just happen to be lucky. SPEAKER 1 Wow. SPEAKER 2 So it definitely demonstrates the extent to which people don't want to have God in the picture, which is sad. SPEAKER 1 Yeah. Okay, thank you for explaining that perspective. And there was another thing discussed in the chapter talking about the multiverse theory. And this is something that's often promoted as a way to explain away the universe's fine tuning. So this is another approach to do this. And the book calls this philosophy masquerading as science. In the chapter here, the author has described it as such for that chapter. So why do you think scientists are more comfortable embracing something like the untestable multiverse theory rather than considering a creator? And what does this tell us about the metaphysical assumptions behind both of these views? SPEAKER 2 Yeah, sure. So the, and as we mentioned, I think in one of the previous episodes, the. When we look at the, the values that have been assigned to, you know, the gravitational constant and, you know, different other physical parameters, they allow for systems, for orbits, for stars to form this sort of thing just perfectly, you know, and to, and to carry on. And when we calculate the probabilities, they're improbable. All right. The numbers are so, so huge. As I talked about, you know, if even if you had a zero for every atom in the universe, it would be nowhere near enough. You'd be out by, you know, orders of the same, just about. And so one of the ways around this is to say, well, okay, what if there's an infinite number of universes, One of them is going to be like ours, right? Because you consider every possibility of everything that could possibly happen. I think going down the multiverse theory, because there's no evidence for it, we can't detect it. Okay? It's just the extent that some people want to go to, to deny the overwhelming evidence that we must have been created by some supernatural metaphysical being, some supernatural spiritual being, some supernatural being outside space and time and matter and energy as we know it, that designed and set up our system, that don't want to go there. But that's the most logical conclusion. Now it's a metaphysical position, that metaphysical position that there is only a material universe. Because they can't explain this universe on the basis of our known physics. They say, okay, well maybe there were an infinite number of universes of all different types with all different types of physical systems and we just happen to be one. So that's just pure imagination. We need to understand that now we can do all sorts of mathematics and play with different things, but essentially there's no way to know that. No way to know. Essentially what they're just simply saying is that, hang on, this overwhelming evidence for this universe was specifically created by a super intelligent mind that was able to balance everything out and design everything out. Because, you know, in the same universities they're teaching individual, you know, they're teaching, you know, physics and engineering. And we know if we want to build a spacecraft, if we want to build a mobile phone, we've got to design it, we've got to have all the different functions. There are very, very narrow parameters. SPEAKER 1 Yes. SPEAKER 2 Or otherwise things don't work. SPEAKER 1 Yes. SPEAKER 2 You know, and blow up, they fail, you know, the rocket won't launch. Yes. This sort of thing, everything has to be right just to work. And the other function is, of course, as we look at biological systems as well, we can see amazing micro machines and codes and all this sort of thing that is all going on. It all points to amazing design. Everywhere we look, everything works just right and it fits. And we have teams of engineers, you know, you know, I work for a company and we design and build machines for manufacturing things. And the amount of engineers we have, the design systems, all this sort of thing, and we build prototypes, check that they work. Takes a lot of time, a lot of brains. And these are people trained at top universities we have working for us in the, you know, designing these things. It's a massive effort just to design a machine to pack a particular thing, you know, yes. And so with an appreciation of this, when we look at the universe as a whole and you know, the structure of the atom, the way the different laws work, why the, the whole concept of electric, magnetic, gravitational fields, what these fields are, how they can work at a distance, all these sort of things. And the interesting findings of quantum physics, non locality, all these sort of predictions that are coming out of quantum physics, we can do experiments on these and measure. But it all fits, it works. Why? Why do they follow mathematical laws? Why do they follow mathematical laws which are logical? And it's very interesting. That's really only the field of mathematics that you can prove something. You can have a mathematical proof. You can have once again the evidence of science. You can have evidence that supports the data. Right. And what the thing is, we can't find evidence that supports the Big Bang model. We can't find evidence that supports and can explain in physical terms how we came to be. And this is a very important. But they're going to these extreme views like you know, multiverse theory to try and explain, obey God. They don't want to go near God. And I think people need to realize that. Hang on, science hasn't disproved God, no way. And the overwhelming evidence is for us that we came to be through a supernatural creator. SPEAKER 1 Wow. Very interesting to think deeply about that and recognize those arguments for what they are metaphysical. SPEAKER 2 It's one metaphysical view versus another versus another. And what we're having imposed on through our schools on our students is a particular metaphysical view that can't be proved. And in fact the evidence is strongly against it. The metaphysical view of a creator God is strongly supported by evidence that would suggest that is the only explanation. SPEAKER 1 Yes, yes. SPEAKER 2 It can't prove it, but it strongly suggests that that is the explanation. SPEAKER 1 Yeah, yeah. Now this brings us to another interesting question you've mentioned about the problems with the Big Bang model. And some of them include circular reasoning, some of them include anomalies in redshift data. With cases like Holton Arp and William Tiff's research, it was mentioned in the book. Should Christians be cautious about using mainstream cosmology as a foundation for apologetic arguments? SPEAKER 2 Oh, definitely, yes. I think this comes into the area of how can we know? We can know by making observations. And with the development of artificial intelligence, this is becoming even more questionable. Now seeing and believing may not be as valid as it was pre AI and so forth. So we can do repeatable experiments. That's a way of knowing based on empirical observations. Or we have revelation that's another way of knowing. People can have a vision and experience these sort of things. Now the people that follow scientism or materialism, they say, well, no, you can't have revelation, but we have a lot of evidence that revelation is, is a way of knowing. And that's why people need to be very cautious, in my view, of just basing their position on observable science. Because as things develop and we get better technology, maybe we can make better observations which may change things. And again, we had Newton's laws of mechanics that explained the way physics operated to a great degree. But as we developed further and began greater understanding of the atoms and so forth, we realized, oh, hang on, we've got relativity and the space time speed problem issue, relativity issues and also quantum mechanics have changed some of those things. One of the things that I find fascinating though, is, and you mentioned the work of William G. Tiffey, and he accumulated data looking at redshifts. And essentially as he showed that the redshift data seemed to be quantized around particular values. And it's pretty deep physics, but when you look at it, the effect of, and the easiest explanation of those particular redshift observations is that the universe is finite in size. And also we seem to be pretty close to the center of the universe, which really fits again, the biblical creation model. And that's why often not many people talk about his work. SPEAKER 1 And of course, the red shift's to do with background cosmic radiation. SPEAKER 2 Well, that's what it's believed to be. But they have a major problem with the redshift because it was found to be far more uniform than predicted. And therefore the Big Bang theory says, well, there's not enough time for it to all level out. So there are major problems. We could talk for quite a while. There are major problems on the, on the Big Bang theory. SPEAKER 1 But your main point there was simply that because of how much science changes in its conclusions, it's not really a stable foundation to really put, you know, base all your apologetic arguments on. SPEAKER 2 Well, particularly in the area of metaphysics. Yeah, how we came to be for sure. SPEAKER 1 Exactly. Yeah. So that's an important point to establish in this context with what we're discussing. SPEAKER 2 Very much. SPEAKER 1 Yeah. Thank you for confirming that. Have you ever struggled with doubts about God's existence or known someone who has what helped you through it? Share your thoughts and stories in the comments. Your journey could inspire someone else who's searching for answers. Thanks for tuning in.