Bible Contexts: Science Ch.4 - Multiverses Prove God’s Existence

Our finely tuned universe provides a valid proof for God’s existence – unless there are infinite multiverses that contain everything that can possibly exist. However, these multiverses also provide a proof for God – so either way, a creator exists.

It almost seems like an anti-Christian conspiracy. Just when God’s existence appeared to be proved by the fine-tuning of the universe, someone “invented” the multiverse – a hypothesis that makes this finding irrelevant because at least one of these infinite universes would be perfect for life.

It is similar to when the big bang was first discovered in 1927, and Christians celebrated its confirmation of the Bible in showing that the universe had a dramatic beginning. Many atheists denied this discovery, especially as it was made by Georges Lemaître, a physicist who was also an ordained priest. Fred Hoyle tried to dismiss the idea by coining the derogatory term “big bang” – which stuck. He came up with the “steady state” theory, that the universe was being continuously created.¹ But this and other theories that denied the big bang were eventually disproved by Stephen Hawking and others.²

Of course, most scientists who are seriously investigating potential ideas in cosmology aren’t interested in proving or disproving the Bible. But apologists who argue for or against Christianity certainly are interested in the theological consequences of these findings. Some atheist apologists see the multiverse as a way to avoid the conclusion that a fine-tuned universe implies a creator. From the other side, I want to point out that the opposite is actually true: a multiverse guarantees that a creator exists.

5-minute summary

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Exactly right for life

But first, what does it mean to say the universe is fine-tuned? An increasing number of discoveries about fundamental physical constants show just how precisely this universe is suited for life. For example, if gravity were a tiny bit stronger, the universe would contain nothing but black holes; and if it were a tiny bit weaker, no stars or planets could hold together. The tuning is as fine as you can imagine: an extremely tiny difference in the gravitational constant (0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000001%) would make this universe lifeless.³ This means that the chance of gravity being exactly right is roughly equal to someone accidentally picking out a winning lottery ball when every ball is as small as grain of sand, and the sand doesn’t just fill all the deserts on the surface of this planet – the whole planet is filled with this sand, and also every other planet in our solar system. If someone traveled to the correct planet, picked the exact spot, and then drilled down – perhaps thousands of miles – before selecting this one predetermined grain of sand, they would win the kind of lottery that makes gravity just right in this universe. Gravity could be like this by chance, or it could be that a creator set it at the correct strength.

And gravity isn’t the only constant that needs to be exactly right for life to exist. There is also Planck’s constant, the strong nuclear force, and up to twenty-four other independent variables (the exact number isn’t certain because some may turn out to be dependent on others).⁴ Some of these are more finely tuned than gravity and some less, but they are all large numbers. To calculate the final improbability, you multiply all of these numbers together to arrive at one, which is so huge that it becomes meaningless to our minds.

Cosmologists have recognized the implications just as much as Christians have. Stephen Hawking says, “The values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.” Martin Rees (the UK’s Astronomer Royal) says that the universe appears to be “tailor-made for man.”⁵ The finding is astounding, and it demands an answer. Either there is a reason in physics why these numbers are all exactly perfectly tuned to enable life (and no one has any clue where to find this reason), or there is a creative genius behind it.

Fine-tuning implies a creator

The multiverse hypothesis appears to have rescued atheists by supposing that our universe is just one in an infinite array of universes. This multiverse includes a countless multitude of universes where some or all of the physical constants are different so they can’t support life. If there is a multitude of different universes, it isn’t surprising that one exists where everything is exactly tuned for supporting life, and it is easy to explain why we happen to live in it – because that’s the only one we could live in. In this way, the multiverse hypothesis overcomes the need for a creator to fine-tune all the physical constants.

   By the way, the term “hypothesis” is more accurate than “theory” in this case because there is currently no testable evidence to support the idea of a multiverse. Actually, it is difficult to think of any way in which we could find such evidence because, by definition, a universe is a totality of what we can perceive, so anything outside our universe should be unmeasurable and undetectable.⁶

   Looking for a multiverse in the Bible is also futile because ancient Hebrew and Greek had no word for it. If such a word did exist, we’d expect to find it in Jeremiah 10:12, which lists God’s domain in increasingly larger terms: “God made the land by his power; he founded the world by his wisdom and stretched out the heavens by his understanding” (adapted from the NIV). God is first praised for creating the land of Israel (or possibly all of the land masses – the word erets can mean either), then for creating the planet (tevel, which, unlike erets, always refers to the whole of this world), and then the largest unit, “heavens” (shamayim) – a plural word that includes the sky that contains clouds and the sky that contains all the stars. This could be said to include the whole of our universe, but it couldn’t be stretched to make it include other universes. Of course, this doesn’t mean that we can definitely exclude multiverses from the Bible’s landscape. After all, we read that “God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1), which we normally regard as shorthand for everything.

   However, it is arguable that we can find fine-tuning in the Bible. God gave Job some wonderful insights into his creative work, in which he attempted to stretch Job’s understanding. God told him: “I laid the earth’s foundation … marked off its dimensions … shut up the sea behind doors. … I fixed limits for it … gave orders to the morning … and showed the dawn its place” (Job 38:4-5, 8, 10, 12). If Job had spoken modern English and knew some basic science, God could have put it like this: “I fixed gravity to set the earth in orbit, measured the nuclear force to make a planet the right size, gave the moon enough mass to make tides, and set dawn’s light at the right speed and luminosity.” This remarkable text gets very close to describing how God fine-tuned the universe.

A multiverse implies a creator

Are atheist apologists correct to conclude that a multiverse hypothesis removes the necessity for a creator? Surprisingly, the reverse is true: it turns out that a multiverse must contain a creator.

   One curious and unintuitive aspect of a multiverse is that it includes every possible variation, so that everything that can exist must exist in at least one universe.⁷ This infinite variety includes the highly improbable mix of physical constants that are exactly tuned to support things as complex as living creatures. But it also includes a universe where an all-intelligent, all-powerful individual would exist – someone with such awesome capabilities that they could communicate with other universes and even create universes. They would be able to control the forces of physics in their created universe and design the exact mix that enables the existence of biologically based life. In other words, an infinite multiverse must contain a creator God.

   I’m not suggesting that this describes the God of the Bible. My goal is only to point out that the existence of a multiverse does not disprove the existence of a creator – it implies that a creator must exist. In an infinite variety of universes, there must be one that contains every conceivable person or thing that we can imagine, and it is certainly possible to imagine a being who can learn to harness the power and ability to make matter into any form that they wish, including a universe such as the one we inhabit.

   So if the idea of a multiverse really is a conspiracy to get rid of God, it has backfired. Of course, most multiverse hypotheses are based on serious mathematical possibilities in quantum physics or string theory, and they don’t have any antitheological agenda. However, some people do use them to counter the argument that the supreme fine-tuning of our universe necessitates the existence of a creative genius.

   Atheist apologists are now painted into one of two corners. If ours is the only universe, then its perfectly fine-tuned design is a huge coincidence that is very difficult to explain without a creative designer. On the other hand, if ours is one of an infinite multitude of universes, then a creator who can design a universe like ours must exist somewhere within this multiverse. The existence of a creator is therefore inescapable, because it is a conclusion that arises from both of these mutually exclusive views of cosmology.

Summary

• Physical constants are exactly fine-tuned to allow life.
• This is so surprising it can be regarded as a proof of creation.
• It becomes unsurprising if ours is one universe in a multiverse.
• Everything that can exist must exist in an infinite multiverse.
• Proposal: If there is a multiverse, it must include a being like God; and if there is no multiverse, the fine-tuning of this universe implies that God exists.

^{1^} See Jim Holt, “Big Bang Theology,” Slate, February 12, 1998 (tinyurl.com/BigBangTheology).
^{2^} See Stephen Hawking, “The Beginning of Time” (tinyurl.com/HawkingBeginning).
^{3^} For a technical basis of this number, see Luke A. Barnes, “The Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Intelligent Life,” Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia (January 2, 2013) (tinyurl.com/GravConstant), 39-40. For a nontechnical summary of fine-tuning, see Brad Lemley, “Why Is There Life?,” Discover, November 1, 2000 (tinyurl.com/FineTuned).
^{4^} See Ethan Siegel, “It Takes 26 Fundamental Constants to Give Us Our Universe, but They Still Don’t Give Everything,” Forbes, August 22, 2015 (tinyurl.com/26constants).
^{5^} For these quotes and more details, see Wikipedia, “Fine-Tuned Universe” (tinyurl.com/FineTunedWiki).
^{6^} On the possibility of detecting a multiverse, see Alexander Vilenkin and Max Tegmark, “The Case for Parallel Universes,” Scientific American, July 19, 2011 (tinyurl.com/SciAmMultiverse).
^{7^} This discovery by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is the basis of the powerful tool of modal logic. See Brandon C. Look, “Leibniz’s Modal Metaphysics,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Spring 2013 ed., ed. Edward N. Zalta (tinyurl.com/LeibnizModal).

^{This was previously published in a similar form in Christianity magazine}

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