One criticism of Intelligent Design (ID) theory (the theory that the universe and life were engineered by an intelligent agent or mind) is that it's a "God-of-the-Gaps" hypothesis. This is a derisive criticism of any theory that purports to use God as an explanation for any gap in our knowledge of how something happened.
For instance, we have no idea how life could have started, so, the criticism goes, ID theorists conclude it must have been started by God.
This is, however, a caricature of ID which is based not on what we don't know but on what we do know.
We know, for example, that information wherever we encounter it, in books, on signs, in signals, in codes, on DVDs, wherever, is always the product of intelligent minds. We also know that information is never produced by random, mindless processes like wind or gravity or chemical reactions.
Thus, the most plausible explanation for the information in the first living cell, the information encoded on its replication machinery, is that it was the product of a mind. This is not claiming to be a proof but rather an inference to the most likely explanation.
One place scientists encounter an extraordinary indication that a mind has been at work is the astonishing fine-tuning of the forces and constants that make up the fabric of the universe. If any of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of these parameters had deviated from its actual value by incredibly tiny amounts (like one part in 10^120) either the universe wouldn't exist or no higher life forms could arise or survive in it.
In order to avoid the conclusion that this breathtaking evidence of design is really not a result of an intentional agent some scientists have proposed the multiverse hypothesis. This idea posits the existence of an infinity of universes, all different, and all isolated from each other (Picture a vast bubble bath where each bubble is a discrete universe).
In such a multitude of different universes every possible universe will exist, just like if you were dealt an infinite number of poker hands you're bound to be dealt a royal flush at some point.*
Since our universe is certainly a possible universe, our universe, as improbable as it is, as astonishingly fine-tuned as it is, must exist, and we just happen to inhabit it.
So what are we to think of these ideas? In this short video, scientist and philosopher Kirk Durston suggests that the answer to that question is, "not much." Check it out:
*Actually if you're dealt an infinite number of hands then you'd be dealt an infinity of royal flushes, but let's not get bogged down in the arcana of infinity.
