Is the Universe Designed?

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Is the Universe Designed?

• Revd Dr Rodney Holder
• The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion,
  St Edmunds College, Cambridge
• www.faraday-institute.org

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Is the Universe Designed?

• The Big Bang
• Specialness of the Big Bang Cosmic Fine-Tuning
• Explanations Why a Multiverse?
• Problems for Multiverses

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The Big Bang
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The Big Bang

• Predicted by Lemaître from Einsteins equations
• Extremely well-supported by evidence, especially
• - Cosmic background radiation
• - Manufacture of light elements
• - More active galaxies at largest distances

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Specialness of the Big Bang

• Initial conditions
• Physical constants

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Paul Davies

• Like the porridge in the tale of Goldilocks and
  the three bears, the universe seems to be just
  right for life, in so many intriguing ways.

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Examples of Fine-Tuning

• Density at the beginning is right to 1 part in
  1060
• Ratio of forces is just right for carbon and
  oxygen to be manufactured in stars
• Cosmological constant is right to 1 part in 10120

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Sir Fred Hoyle

• A superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as
  well as with chemistry and biology, and there are
  no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.

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Explanations Why a Multiverse?

• Design by God?

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Is There Really Anything to Explain?
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What are the Alternative Explanations to Design?

• Possible strategies for the atheist
• 1. Only 1 set of laws possible
• 2. A multiverse

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Problems with the atheist strategies

• For 1 Why does the only self-consistent set of
  laws give rise to life?
• For 2 Why this multiverse, which gives rise to
  at least one life-bearing universe, as opposed to
  another?

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How do physicists conceive of multiverses?

• Quantum branching
• Cyclic models
• Different regions within a single over-arching
  space

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Problems for Multiverses

• Physics speculative
• Problem about infinities
• Human identity
• Hypothesis not simple
• Lack of predictability
• Fine-tuning still required
• Amount of order in the universe
• Fake universes

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Comparing the Explanations

• Multiverse
• ? Complex
• ? Doesnt explain why there should be life
• ? This universe looks too special

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Comparing the Explanations

• God
• ? Simple
• ? Explains why there should be life
• ? Explains why the universe is so special

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Georges Lemaître

• There were two ways of arriving at the truth. I
  decided to follow them both.