The atheist’s most
recent god, the multiverse, was laid to rest this January at a rather unusual
event: the 70th birthday celebration of Stephen Hawking, which was
held at Cambridge. Delivering the eulogy was Dr. Alexander Vilenkin, who had
written a recent paper that was presented at the “State of the Universe”
meeting of scientists who had gathered to honor Hawking.
After demonstrating the fallacies of the various theories
that have attempted to validate a multiverse, Vilenkin summed up his
conclusions by saying, “All the evidence we have says that the universe had a
beginning.” This, naturally, put every philosophical naturalist and atheist
into mourning because Hawking himself has admitted, “Many people do not like
the idea that time has a beginning, probably because it smacks of divine
intervention.”
For those unfamiliar with the idea of a multiverse, the
multiple universe theory has postulated the simultaneous existence of many (possibly
infinitely many) parallel universes in which almost anything which is
theoretically possible will ultimately be actualized. The multiverse has been used by atheists and materialists
as a way of dodging both the cosmological and fine tuning arguments for the
existence of God.
On the fine tuning of the universe, physicist Andrei Linde
has said, “We have a lot of really, really strange coincidences, and all of
these coincidences are such that they make life possible.”[1]
Linde stated this in a 2008 Discover article and added that the multiverse
theory was a very compelling possibility for answering the question about the
universe’s fine tuning, which permits life on earth.
Vilenkin, one of Linde’s peers and co-workers, now seems to
have shut the door on that option.
Even before Vilenkin’s address, the multiverse theory had
suffered plenty of debilitating blows before its 2012 death. A multiverse has
always had the philosophical problem of an infinite regress. Such an issue is
not limited to this universe; it applies to any reality. You still must always
get back to a first cause – an uncaused cause for everything – and this
includes a multiverse.
Scientifically speaking, no evidence has ever been provided for
a multiverse. In fact, there has been no model that has supplied any evidence
showing any reality that extends into the infinite past. But, surprisingly,
many atheists and philosophical naturalists have hailed the multiverse almost
as something like a god – describing its beauty, power, etc., with absolutely no
proof that such a thing has ever existed. A strange stance to be sure for those
who constantly criticize believers in God for having ‘faith’ in something that
(supposedly) has no proof for its existence.
Prior to his most recent paper, Vilenkin along with Arvind
Borde and Alan Guth had shown there to be strong scientific evidence against a
multiverse. Together, they demonstrated that any universe which has, on
average, been expanding throughout its history cannot be infinite in the past
but must have a past space-time boundary.
What makes their proof so powerful is that it holds
regardless of the physical description of the universe. The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin
theorem is independent of any physical description of that moment. Their
theorem implies that even if our universe is just a tiny part of a so-called
multiverse composed of many universes, the multiverse must have an absolute
beginning.
In other words, Hawking’s worries about needing a divine
kick-starter for our universe haven’t been squelched. This may be why Hawking
made a pre-recorded phone message for his birthday event which said, "A
point of creation would be a place where science broke down. One would have to
appeal to religion and the hand of God."
Vilenkin’s recent paper dismantles the three possible
options for a multiverse and is in keeping with prior statements he’s made
which include the following: “It is said that an argument is what convinces
reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable
man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the
possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face
the problem of a cosmic beginning.”
You can read more about Vilenkin’s findings in an article by
Lisa Grossman entitled "Why
Scientists Can't Avoid A Creation Event", which is in the January 11th
issue of New Scientist.
With the passing of the atheist’s recent god, the multiverse,
it’s hard not to think about what in philosophy is called “drowning the fish”. When
atheists or materialists propose spontaneous or self-creating universes, multiverses,
quantum mechanics hypotheses and other such things to try and explain reality,
they use all the water in the oceans in an attempt to drown the animal (God),
but in the end, the fish is still there affirming its existence and presence.
John Lennox sums up the somewhat humorous situation this
way: “It is rather ironical that in the sixteenth century some people resisted
advances in science because they seemed to threaten belief in God; whereas in
the twentieth century scientific ideas of a beginning have been resisted
because they threatened to increase the plausibility of belief in God.”
Why is our universe here and so fine tuned for life? Why
does it look, as some scientists admit, like “a put up job”? St. Augustine
gives us the answer: “Out of nothing didst Thou create heaven and earth – a
great thing and a small – because Thou are Almighty and Good, to make all
things good, even the great heaven and the small earth. Thou wast, and there
was nought else from which Thou didst create heaven and earth.”[2]
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