Newsweek's science writer Sharon Begley talks about the phenomenon of cosmic "dark energy" which is thought to be responsible for the fact that the expansion of the universe is actually speeding up rather than slowing down. This dark energy is believed to result from sub-atomic particles popping into existence of the vaccum of space, but there's a problem. The energy that would be produced by this process is calculated to be 10 to the 55th power greater than the dark energy of the universe. Something must be cancelling out the surplus and doing so with an astonishing level of percision. Were there just a little more dark energy the universe would rip apart. As Begley puts it:
[S]omething else cancels out all but a smidgen of the energy from the popping particles. That something else is anyone's guess. Worse, the precision of the required cancellation-erase the ink on every magazine ever printed except for exactly one comma, here-strains credulity.
Indeed it does, and add to this incredible fine-tuning the fact that dozens of other cosmic parameters are similarly precise and it just boggles the mind. For example, it has been calculated by Roger Penrose that the initial entropy of the universe had to be exact to one part in ten to the 10 to the 123rd power or else a universe suitable for life would not have formed.
This sort of unimaginable number is an embarrassment to the materialist who is compelled by his metaphysical beliefs to argue that such incredible calibrations are merely a fortuitous accident. Many materialists, however, are so uncomfortable with this line of thinking that they've retreated to the refuge of the "many worlds" hypothesis. This theory, for which there is absolutely no empirical evidence, states that there are as many as 10 to the 500th power universes of all different types. With so many possibilities, the argument goes, there has to be at least one suitable for life and we're it. In other words, by raising the number of worlds we can lower the improbability of the existence of a world as finely calibrated as this one is.
Begley writes:
...unless "the" universe is actually only one of many universes. Cosmologists are seriously entertaining that possibility. In the big bang that started our universe, little bits of space might have pinched off, said physicist Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas. Each pocket universe could have different features. In one-ours-the improbable cancellation of most of the cosmological constant would have occurred, leaving just enough to explain the dark energy.
The irony of the many worlds hypothesis is that it's not a scientific idea because there's no way to test it, and neither is there any evidence for it. It's an ad hoc metaphysical theory developed to lower the astronomically high improbability that our universe exists purely by chance. Since it's a philosophical hypothesis it is on the same plane as its only real rival, the concept of cosmic design. This is bad news for the materialist, to be sure, since there is a way to test competing metaphysical claims - Occam's razor, i.e. the principle that the simplest explanation that fits all the facts is the best.
In the present case the simplest explanation is that there's just a single universe which has the parameters and laws that it does because it has been intentionally designed to support life. The alternative, that there are a near infinite number of undetectable universes which exhibit the entire range of possible values for their physical parameters, is refuted by its own extravagance. If it weren't that this theory is the only way scientists and philosophers could rescue their materialism, no one would be caught dead endorsing it.
In order to avoid the conclusion that the universe is intentionally designed materialists have to resort to a highly speculative and ad hoc theory that makes a shambles of the principle of simplicity. Not only that, but it doesn't really help anyway because it raises more difficult questions: If there are all these universes what is producing them and why should we expect they would have different parameters than our universe? Why not expect that they be identical to ours? And what's generating these different universes and their parameters and laws in the first place?
Perhaps Ms Begley will write about those questions in a future column.
RLC